The Hate Valley Trajectory

Hating successful women has never been a new concept, but today I’m proposing a new theory about why and how society sabotages successful women through my theory called The Hate Valley Trajectory. 

Put simply, I have noticed a pattern in reception to successful women throughout history that typically follows this model:

1. A woman becomes successful in terms of her society's values for monetary success, fame, etc.

2. As the woman achieves further success, she is increasingly despised and resented by her society. She collapses into the Hate Valley.

3. If her success survives through the Hate Valley, she reaches a status one might not expect.

Before I describe the Hate Valley Trajectory, I would like to preface that this article will predominantly be using post-modern feminist metaphysics. 

One aspect of the way women are differentiated from men is through biological differences. In Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self, Linda Martín Alcoff states that, “[w]omen and men are differentiated by virtue of their different relationship of possibility to biological reproduction, with biological reproduction referring to conceiving, giving birth, and breast-feeding, involving one’s own body”1.

However, this article will focus on something different. What I am describing is post-modern and transcendent of 20th-century feminist theory. I will put aside the embodiment and anatomic facets of women to explore the metaphysical identity and reality of modern women, i.e., success, fame, hatred, and icon status.

The Hate Valley Trajectory Chart

Success 

Achieving success as a woman, as compared to men, is the first hill a woman must climb in The Hate Valley.

Although it's the first step, it is not at all the easiest, and it's more difficult for women who are not at the top of the social hierarchy, i.e., white, heterosexual, cis-gendered, wealthy.

For example, according to McKinsey & Company statistics, for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 79 women were promoted. Amongst those women, only 7% were women of colour2. Furthermore, in the 118th United States Congress, only 25 of the 100 senators were women. Of those 25 female senators, none were black or Native3.

Once women are in the position to be successful, they are expected to have a complementary, and sometimes subservient, relationship to men. Women are expected to avoid “overstepping” their roles and must remain in alignment with the male-centered idea of success. As Simone De Beauvoir puts it, there must be a “fraternal” collaboration of men and women4. 

Some women find comfortable success within the confines of “fraternal” collaboration. However, some women recognize the flaws and male-centeredness of the ladder to success. They dislike conforming to complementary relationships with men because conforming to fraternal collaboration is the safest position a woman can imagine herself in; however, it only goes so far.

The first hill in the valley, of being able to become successful in the first place, is what women fought for during the first-wave feminism. It is baseline successes like being able to work without discrimination. Yet, as women aim to progress past baseline successes, the Hate Valley Trajectory obstructs their progress. 

This is not a new phenomenon. There are many historical examples of this theory, like Marie Antoinette or Virginia Woolf. However, I argue that as the world progresses further from the era of first-wave feminism, it is much easier for women in modern times to find themselves on the “Hate Valley” trajectory.

The Hate Valley 

Women seemingly have two choices once they are successful. They can either fit inside the box of “female normality”, that being a successful but not too successful woman, or they can try to explore their success further. 

However, in reality, these choices are more of an illusion, since once a woman steps outside the framework of female normality for success, people begin to dislike her. The more successful she becomes, the greater the bandwagon of hate she faces, and ultimately, she is loathed. 

What I believe this stage of success boils down to is a deeply internal sense of resentment. 

In popular discourse about alpha-male and incel culture, it is quite often mentioned that men have seemingly begun to hate women more than they have historically, because women are becoming more successful than they are. They believe women have found loopholes to achieve this success, and they feel women’s success is unfair. 

This sense of injustice has led men today, especially young men, to become more conservative. 

Men are noticing that women are gaining power, and are subsequently becoming more successful than they are, and are turning to sexist figures like Andrew Tate for advice. Whether they would like to admit it or not, men do not want to see a world where women are more successful than they are.

It is because of this that resentment festers and forms the deep pit within the valley: hatred. 

Women can be moderately successful, but once they are too successful, people resent them for overstepping their place and the limits of their gender. What is most demoralizing about this step in the trajectory is not the social isolation that results from the hate bandwagon; rather, it is that a large chunk of this hatred comes from other women. 

For example, we can discuss Taylor Swift, who has been a notable victim of the Hate Valley Trajectory.

Taylor Swift began her career as a small-town girl singing with her guitar at local venues. Then, she was signed to a shady record label and found the limelight. She faced ups (topping the Billboard charts, Grammies) and downs (Kanye West in 2009) but rose to become a beloved musician. Then, when she had been successful for nearly a decade, resentment formed. A hate train formed. The public called Taylor Swift a "snake" en masse, and she received intense criticism for every step she took. 

Some will say they hate her because they dislike her music or her gigantic carbon footprint, but there are many male musicians with unsuccessful albums or constant private jet trips who never receive the same amount of hate as Taylor Swift. And I intentionally use the word “hate” because it seems that no one has a neutral stance on Taylor Swift. 

Like Taylor Swift, most successful women cannot avoid the Hate Valley, especially normal women who have fewer resources to defend themselves. 

Successful women will receive hate trains or excessive criticism, not necessarily because they deserve it, but because the public resents their success and wants to demean them. 

Icon Status 

The most complex aspect of The Hate Valley Trajectory, being that it is the hardest to achieve and articulate, is the icon status that can emerge from a hate train.

The diagram’s depiction of “icon” as transcending the image is intentional since if a woman’s success can survive the Hate Valley, she can emerge from it more successful. Typically, the hate bandwagon runs its course, and the public mostly forgets about the woman in question. Eventually, the woman can come back into focus and be met with a newfound sense of iconic status.

This trajectory can be seen through Britney Spears. Britney rose to stardom in the early 2000s, then, after becoming extremely relevant in pop culture, she was met with a smear campaign in the media, as seen in TMZ articles and sleazy paparazzi photos. It took almost 15 years after the initial hate campaign for the “Free Britney” movement on social media to expose the truth behind what happened during her years of fame, and suddenly, she reached the icon status of the trajectory.

However, the icon summit is more than meets the eye. As the name would suggest, there is an aspect of reaching this iconic status that causes the woman to become stagnant. Something occurs to the personal identity of the woman after becoming an icon, where pop culture views the woman as highly inspiring and a social “blueprint”. Then the woman is fixed to being a symbol, unable to change or advance her category of being an “icon”. The woman may now have support she never received during the lows of her career, but she has reached an unbeatable summit of the trajectory. She can either struggle to remain on the tightrope of icon status or fall towards irrelevancy as the audience moves on to its next successful woman. 

There is a reason that Britney Spears doesn't make new music or go on worldwide stadium tours anymore. 

She is an icon, and she can never be more than that. 

Reflection

By giving a name to a trajectory we see all too often in pop culture, I hope we will see more discourse on this phenomenon of fame as it relates to women. 

I do not believe this trajectory applies to all women and all women with fame. However, it is a noticeable pattern in many stories about fame.

The concept and identities of modern women are evolving, and more philosophical work is being done to revolutionize the concept of post-modern feminism. And for the hope of future generations of women, I believe the work can be done, and will be done. 

For now, I encourage people, especially other women, to think more critically of why you may dislike a certain famous woman, or a woman at your school, or a woman who made a popular piece of art. 

Do not let society trick you into thinking that because a woman is more successful than you, she 

deserves to be resented.

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1. Rachel Anderson Droogsma, “Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self, by Linda Martín Alcoff,” Women’s Studies in Communication 29, no. 2 (November 2006): 265–268. https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2006.10162501

2. “Women in the Workplace 2024: The 10th-anniversary report,” McKinsey & Company, September 17, 2024, https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/women-in-the-workplace

3. Katherine Shaeffer, “The Data on Women Leaders,” Pew Research Center, September 27, 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/fact-sheet/the-data-on-women-leaders/

4. Sonia Kruks, “Gender and Subjectivity: Simone de Beauvoir and Contemporary Feminism”. Signs 18, no. 1 (Autumn, 1992): 89–110. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174728