This piece is part of a series for paid subscribers, sharing experiences and lessons that have shaped Hacking Narcissism’s educational content and my worldview on the human condition and culture. Our stories, when read in good faith, help us feel seen, less alone, more connected, and build immunity to influences that erode our humanity.
Status seeking is the pursuit of reputational, material, class, or social elevation through association with those who already hold it within a particular hierarchy or social sphere. It is the drive to increase one’s visibility and authority by connecting to people or ideas that carry established recognition. The status seeker measures their progress through proximity to admired figures, drawing validation from how others perceive their access to influence. Status seeking flourishes in hierarchical environments where association gives the appearance of belonging and status functions as a form of social security. We all seek some degree of status to grow and progress, but the problem begins when it becomes a way to extract value, access, or resources from others for personal gain, and at the other’s expense.
A feminist status seeker looks like every other well-intentioned professional woman committed to equity, inclusion, and progress. What sets her apart from other women is her motive: professional and social advancement that draws on competitive behaviour disguised as support and collaboration, spoken in the language of liberation.
She seeks attachment to women she admires and perceives as synergistic, and perceives that their social or professional status can provide important leverage to expose her work to broader audiences through her affiliation with the object of her envy affection.
Here’s how this collaboration will go down. The unconscious intent of the altruistic feminist is to subdue the message that gains her attention and recognition, assimilating its author into feminist rightthink so she is no longer challenged by what that message represents. She wishes to access another woman’s authority without developing her own, using stealth knowledge vampirism. The feminist status seeker aims to neutralise the message that draws attention to that woman, so she can later teach a more awakened version that aligns with feminist rightthink. Through soft, covert, coercive control, she will gaslight the object into gradually letting go of her position so that her message mirrors the approved moral authority of feminist rightthink and rightspeak. The object becomes absorbed by the devouring, corrective mother archetype that defines this form of feminism. This is the essence of passive assimilation under the guise of bridge building that claims to advance each other’s ideas and work.
I’m perpetually amused when I’m solicited by these covert coercive insecure women with requests of collaboration.
I also understand where this behaviour comes from. Many of us were trained to find comfort and success in affiliation with respected authorities. We learned that being liked and connection opens doors and code switching will make us more acceptable. This is true to a degree when code switching enables you to be genuinely respectful to others. The problem is when the acceptable code is defined by modern feminist rightthink that claims to reject the patriarchy while employing the same controlling tactics it critiques. Collaboration in this setting becomes a survival instinct of women who learned that proximity to the rightthink power core is what all of us women want.
I’ve done it too when I admired someone’s messaging and expression, reached out to connect but secretly saw her as a rival. Competition is in our DNA and a survival feature across the animal kingdom, but feminist status seekers often pretend it isn’t, that they’ve transcended it, or that it’s only acceptable as “healthy competition.” Competition driven by narcissistic defence is not the same as healthy competition that plays out in sport or project teams with a clear goal or reward. Narcissistic feminism turns competition into entitlement. It believes women deserve to win, yet fails to see how that belief embeds itself deep within the feminist psyche and justifies vicious takedowns disguised as collaboration.
I’m thankful I was never a card-carrying feminist for more than a few months and my objective in life is in cultivating virtues and gaining status as a person who has positively impacted others. I see that this is not a priority for feminist status seekers, which is why I don’t vibe with them.
What I’ve described in myself and others isn’t personal anymore. It’s a pattern that shapes professional and activist cultures where feminism often becomes a vehicle for control and image management.
I respect difference and welcome thoughtful disagreement. But there is a limit to what I will welcome under the expectation of openness. There are moments when remaining open is an intrusion, and this is one of them.
In professional and activist spaces, many educated feminists (members of the managerial class, AWFLs, and other well earned monikers) look for affiliation with people or frameworks that boost their credibility. They call it solidarity, bridge building, or collaboration, but it’s often a way to attach themselves to status and power. Their goal is to raise their own profile and legitimacy through the discourse of collective empowerment™.
If I wanted to weaponise this behaviour back at the toxic feminist practitioner, I’d call her a content coloniser (thanks to
for coming up with this term), not a knowledge vampire. Every coloniser begins as a knowledge vampire, feeding on another person’s embodied expertise and wisdom. Once she’s extracted enough to build her own image of authority, she reshapes what she’s taken into posts, talks, or programs that present her as the more evolved thinker. Knowledge vampirism becomes content colonialism as a woman’s embodied knowledge is translated into the coloniser’s familiar activist language to gain prestige and legitimacy. Eventually, the material is recycled publicly until the original source is erased from view and the authority appears to have always belonged to the coloniser.Let’s be real — this behaviour is about control. By positioning themselves as amplifiers or interpreters of other women’s work, they gain authority without professional risk. They mirror another’s language, reframe her ideas in justice or DEI terms, and gradually make her work sound like an extension of their own. It appears as shared purpose but functions as a takeover to consolidate their status among the approved feminist authorities. This is not collaboration.
