It strikes me that many people do not know what "projection" is, or how that psychological dynamic is used in the construction of gender. Generally, "projection" is viewed as something anomalous, eccentric, and the product of rare individuals who express themselves in pathological ways.
In actual fact, projection is the means by which societies maintain inequalities between people. It is indispensable for creating hierarchies of class and gender. Without projection, we would not be persuaded to the belief that people have certain unchanging and essential qualities that mark them, independently from the social context, as being either "inferior" or "superior".
Projection, however, facilitates this sense we often have that society is structured by people expressing their "essential natures" as it were. If more women than men find themselves at the bottom of their societies, with few economic resources, this is because of their essential natures. Likewise, a male has power because he is essentially powerful. A change of social context, therefore, ought not to change the degree of power he has over others. He retains that power, independent of his context, just because he is "a man".
Clearly, this way of reasoning is fallacious -- a fact that men's rights groups expose whenever they point out that "men, too, are discriminated against." Suddenly, a social basis for organisation comes to light when men feel that they are being made into victims. Otherwise, such organisation remains deliberately obscured and unnoticed. Such is the ubiquitous and self-serving view that society is generally just made up of individuals (except when women are behaving nefariously and in a "socialistic" fashion, by making males feel that "social forces" actually exist).
Projection, however, continues to reinforce social hierarchies, whilst rendering them invisible. The way in which projection "works" is through the culturally engendered trope of "reading between the lines". This way of handling others from a different class or different gender from one's own places an impermeable membrane between you to prevent communication.
How much do you "read between the lines"? (The answer to this question may answer : 'How much do you "project"?')
If I tell you that society has been harmful to me because of patriarchal practices, do you read me as saying something completely different; something I hadn't thought to say, at all?
Perhaps, (you think), what I am really saying is that I feel I am one of the weaker members of society. Perhaps you think I out to conquer the world by "making excuses" for all sorts of things. (With what motivation? To what end? Why now?)
It has never ceased to astonish me how mentally secure most patriarchal men become, as they set to work to undermine my speech with all sorts of bizarre interpretations of their own. They become busy securing their positions in society as superior to me, but their projections are outlandish; their ears tone deaf. They have absolutely no idea what I am actually saying.
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