I'm going through this at my university. Our department is mostly female, and the infantilization is beyond my comprehension. Recently a gaggle complained to the director that they 'felt belittled' in my class because I hinted that perhaps other (marginalized!) students could speak too. One has a thick accent, and in asking her to repeat herself several times, I offered that it was the accent -- this is an ESL writing course, and normally I can understand the most convoluted things, but this accent really threw me.
Anyway, they complained, and their FEELINGS were taken far too seriously. I was advised to NOT CHALLENGE them. Making them feel CHALLENGED makes them "anxious and uncomfortable" and despite the fact that the students are in the course to improve their English language skills, I am not to mention an accent that everyone can hear either...also, I'm apparently the only professor ever who was advised not to tell the students that I'm a writer, (teaching a writing class) because that can make them feel intimidated.
I felt like I was on a different planet.
During the racial hysteria of 2021, I was called a "racist" for not exempting a student from my writing course based on objective analysis of her writing samples. While trying to explain this to her, she started screaming at me -- which was fine with HR because FEELINGS. She then ran to HR to complain. I had also steel manned a feminist work of art, and critiqued it. The critique made me a 'racist.'
In exiting the meeting with HR, I was advised to find witnesses to support that I am not a "racist." When I asked what evidence the student supplied that I am one (it was all appeals to emotion) the HR biddy replied: She doesn't have to provide evidence. All that matters is the way you made her feel.
I've been toying with responding to the director with that statement saying, So the students feel 'anxious and uncomfortable' because I'm doing run of the mill classroom management, yet I'm not going to feel "anxious and uncomfortable" in an institution where anyone's feelings can trump not only my feelings, but the evidence to support that I was just doing my job.
Your problems may soon be over. Your ESL students can just use ChatGPT to write their schoolwork, and then you can give them what I understand is now the most common grade in college, an A. So, a win-win situation, no? And you can get some proper work done. I'm so glad I don't teach anymore. Best of luck.
"Women have excelled in domains of care and cohesion, tempering the male proclivity for violence and conflict. But they have not created autonomous truth-seeking institutions."
Exactly. Key point. Humanity has advanced precisely because of the melding of the two differing approaches to human interactions. A strong functioning society requires the appropriate approach to the situation at hand. It takes two to tango, and I don't mean just reproductively.
"56% of men said that students should not be protected from controversial ideas, whereas 64% of women said they should."
That is a sad state of affairs. The number for men should be at least 75%.
"I do not believe women will destroy the West nor that cancel culture is simply what happens when women gain power."
I am not as sanguine. If the loss of balance continues long enough, Western Civilization will suffer greatly.
There are many valid points in this article by @Aporia but the analysis oversimplifies the strengths of women, while underestimating the destructive potential of their(our) shortcomings. Female groups are treated as cooperative and harmony-seeking while ignoring what is known about intrasexual competition, status anxiety, and reputation management. Female hierarchies are not absent, only enforced differently. What looks like peace is forced consensus imposed by the more dominant women of the group.
Women claim to want equity, justice, and integrity but lack the institutional capacity to make that happen. In practice, the result is conformity, social punishment for dissent, and the policing of thought and behaviour. In female-dominated environments such as nursing, aggression runs both laterally and vertically. Hierarchies are maintained through surveillance, exclusion, and reputation attacks rather than open disagreement.
It might be that without a strong structural framework provided in more male-led systems, institutions lose coherence. As structure weakens, competition and insecurity appear to intensify, and the same social dynamics seen in informal female groups begin to surface in professional contexts.
Anuradha Pandey writing offers a useful reality check on this pattern, showing how the female-dominant professional managerial class has accelerated institutional decline under the banner of empathy and inclusion, when it’s anything but.
"Female groups are treated as cooperative and harmony-seeking while ignoring what is known about intrasexual competition, status anxiety, and reputation management. Female hierarchies are not absent, only enforced differently. What looks like peace is forced consensus imposed by the more dominant women of the group."
Undoubtedly truth to this, and certainly women compete intensively against each other for access to resources and desirable mates. Their competition, however, is more covert and relational. But yes, I probably emphasized their pursuit of harmony too much.
"Anuradha Pandey writing offers a useful reality check on this pattern, showing how the female-dominant professional managerial class has accelerated institutional decline under the banner of empathy and inclusion, when it’s anything but."
I do think empathy plays a large role, but I take the point about inclusion. If a person empathizes with a victim, they will often become righteously indignant about the perpetrator, feeling justified in barbaric punishment for vengeance.
Anyway, I largely agree and probably emphasized female peacefulness because I did not want to get into female intrasexual competition.
Thanks, Bo. I understand the framing. My concern remains with how covert forms of dominance (soft control) get misread as cooperation, and how both men and women often can’t see it even though they feel its effects. That dynamic still deserves scrutiny, and we should stop trying to equalise the impact of male and female behaviour. Both have their own forms of power and harm that need to be understood on their own terms.
You are a consistent apologist for feminine pathology. You only ever acknowledge it as a predicate to "but men, you see, are doing this too, or worse."
You're an "equalizer." You function to (softly, indirectly, by implication) silence vigorous critiques of women. Always.
The best book I've read about this topic is "Warriors and Worriers: The Survival of the Sexes" by Joyce Benenson and Henry Markovits. Here is the general gist:
"For thousands of years, males have constructed the rules that underlie religions, governments, economic systems, businesses, educational structures, and of course judicial courts and the military. Since ancient times, games with rules created by boys and men have predominated all over the world. Even men who break established rules often end up adhering to an alternate set of rules such as those found in criminal gangs or militias. Men and boys who join rule-bound systems prosper when they follow the rules of other boys and men.
Men solve narrow problems that can be easily tackled. Done! Women don’t have problems like that. Women have long-term projects, primarily the constant care they must devote over long years to keep a baby alive. Because vulnerability is a state, it has no solution.
Women find the state of vulnerability more attractive than men do. Vulnerability extends beyond human babies and young children. It includes any individual who needs long-term assistance: those with sensory, social, behavioral, emotional, mental, cognitive, and other handicaps; those with diseases; those who are elderly, poor, lost, orphaned, confused, or kidnapped. It applies to humans and nonhumans, maybe even inanimate objects. These are all particularly attractive to girls and women, and not so much to boys and men.
A man’s wealth can improve a woman’s health. How she protects her health is what’s most important. A woman’s best friend is fear."
The pseudoscience of Gender Theory needs to be dumped and replaced by the simple, clear facts of biology and human sexual differences, strategies and pair bonding etc.
A bit of egalitarianism is nice and healthy, but the modern West has gone overboard to the point where most brains are rotted and really believe "We are all the same", which is sentimental nonsense.
Not only has academia become more feminized, it's become stupider.
Personal experiences: My daughter (retired military officer) was working with a bunch of "mean girls" and eventually moved a better work environment which appears to be mostly men. I have also observed the "mean girls" and the queen bee syndrome in my software jobs where the female workers (mostly support staff) all seemed to know their place in an invisible hierarchy of women. I never felt like the men i worked with had much of a hierarchy except that everyone know who the go to guy was when you had a programming problem. I'm not sure if the problem is feminism or just the way women group together.
"I'm not sure if the problem is feminism or just the way women group together."
I think that the invention of the term "feminism" simply put an artificially ennobling label on the way women work together. However, the way they work requires no value judgement. It works well in some situations, and less so in others.
Another area in which feminization can be dangerous is immigration and foreign policy. Consider the terrible immigration policies in the UK (which led to the gang rape epidemic in Rotherham), or the progressive activists who openly support Hamas.
I think this is due to these domains becoming overstaffed with women with frustrated maternal instincts.
To explain with an analogy, consider the following hypothetical scenario: Two young, delinquent males have been arrested (e.g., for arson or property damage) and the police bring them back to their mother's house.
But when the police bring the sons back to their mother, she DOESN'T punish them.
Instead, she gets mad at the POLICE; she insists that her sons are actually “good boys at heart” and that the only reason they’re misbehaving is because “life has been unfair to them”; that “people like you [the police] have been too hard on them,” and that if she “showed them more love/affection and just ‘reasoned’ with them better, they would behave better and stop getting into trouble.”
Leftists' sympathy for both Hamas and (sexually) aggressive and misogynistic, middle-Eastern immigrants operates on this EXACT SAME psychology.
They are the naive mothers who view Hamas and Pakistani men as innocent children/blameless victims, because they grew up in underdeveloped and impoverished nations where violence is almost a necessity for survival. Likewise, they think that Hamas and Pakistani men can’t be expected to “know any better” (regarding sexual violence) because of the culture/environment in which they grew up.
In other words: Leftists see dangerous migrants as "uneducated heathens" who - as I said above - haven't yet been taught *the Gospel of Political Correctness* (also known as: "soft bigotry of low expectations").
“Put more simply, men are relatively more interested in advancing what is empirically correct, and women are relatively more interested in advancing what is morally desirable.”
It’s a particularly modern claim (of the Enlightenment/scientism) to equate “truth-seeking” with “empirically correct” and not also “morally desirable.” Ancient and medieval philosophy hold these together.
If women tend to seek what is morally desirable - which I’m not ready to deny - then surely it matters what they view to be morally desirable. And secularization (and want of liberal education) has had a major impact on that. Both of these are transformations in the academy and the law that predate women’s entry into them - and so certainly impact their ascendance too.
The most relevant factors are that (for now) heterosexual white women are the largest cohort in the western world and possess victimhood status alongside "minorities"-blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, homosexuals etc Thus benefitting from Affirmative action and quotas DEI and so on and often forming alliances with those groups. Across Europe they vote for open borders that skews the sex ratio and obviates any pressure to have children, Spain and Italy obvious examples.
The " caring professions"like medicine and education are mostly female staffed and have become particularly poisonous.
Historically the status of women was related to their child bearing role which is now of secondary or of little or no importance to them. The abortion pill has created a new level of promiscuity and disregard for that role of child bearing, evidenced by the UK decriminalising self administered abortion up to term.
"Historically the status of women was related to their child bearing role which is now of secondary or of little or no importance to them. The abortion pill has created a new level of promiscuity and disregard for that role of child bearing, evidenced by the UK decriminalising self administered abortion up to term."
It remains a question of power. And women's primary problem with which they must contend for all of history is male aggression. Because of this all women have had to accept subjugation to men in some form. But women still have to make choices and live their lives in spite of being permanently out of power while also living in fear of potential male aggression. The phenomenon that is far more fascinating is that it is fully accepted by society that male aggression is a normal part of social interactions and men get to simply say that they were born that way and this makes it ok. Of course, we have laws against violent crime, but no one questions male behavior, male authority male leadership. No one questions a man's right to dignity, self-determination, and full agency in spite of all of human history being a litany of male violent greed for power. Yet women's right to even begin to engage in full moral agency is immediately questioned if a woman or group of women make poor choices with their liberty.
And men are emotionally dis-regulated, impulsive and egotistical to the point of irrationality, yet men will tell women that they are inferior, emotional, and irrational and should therefore have their full humanity and agency limited.
The author is concerned with building great and enduring institutions, yet ignores the fact that, for example, women in medieval Europe who became too rich or too powerful were often accused of and murdered for being witches having their property confiscated. When knowledge and comprehension by the general population of the natural world superstitions were a normal part of life. This accusation of witchcraft was successful, because the belief by religious men that a woman, being so inferior to men, could not become that wealthy unless she was working with the devil. You really can't build institutions when you are murdered for being wealthy. These murders were very effective at keeping the rest of the female population in fear. Great institutions are not built under these circumstances. In fact, the only way a woman could be this successful was when she was a part of a convent. Safe guarded by religion, allowed women to work and engage their full moral agency away from the interference of men.
I’ve never heard anyone say, “Men as a group are violent. We should restrict all men’s access to power and limit their agency.”
Women say some hurtful words and men say, “See. Women just can’t be leaders. Their access to power and their agency should be restricted.”
So, the restriction goes through and girls are trained starting at a young age to limit their minds to the small things. And what do men say?
“See. Women don’t think about the big issues and primarily focus on small the things. They should have their access to power and their agency limited.”
I already replied to this but I don't see the reply for some reason. Trying again.
Men's proclivity to violence does not prevent the institutions they build from being truth-seeking.
By contrast, Women's proclivity to conformity and equity over truth-seeking does prevent the institutions they dominate from being truth-seeking.
It is a straw man to say that Helen Andrews' and Bo Winegard's articles are written because women say some "hurtful words".
It is also a straw man to say that either of these articles are arguing that women's access to power and their agency should be limited because they focus on small things. I don't think it would be reasonable to argue that women's interests are small things.
It is an inaccurate feminist trope to claim that girls are trained at a young age to limit their minds. Women across all cultures have - as a group - different interests to men. That doesn't mean that anything is wrong, it is perfectly natural.
That's true. He merely notes that men can also create "cancel cultures." Which is certainly true. Men can and do suppress free speech and inquiry and crackdown on dissenters. So his argument is really just "Yeah but men do this to." It's as if Andrews wrote, "When dogs get together they make a mess," and French responded, "Nonsense, when rabbits get together they also make a mess."
Men's proclivity to violence does not prevent the institutions they build from trying to be truth-seeking. Men's proclivity to violence does not even make the institutions they build particularly violent, in fact it limits and controls that violence (even the military, police, and the prison system). So there is no reason for their proclivity to violence to limit their access to power.
By contrast, women's proclivity to conformity and prioritizing harmony over truth does prevent institutions they join from trying to be truth-seeking. Helen Andrew's article and Bo Winegard's article are not about women saying "hurtful words", that is a straw man. It's also a straw man to say that they are arguing that women's access to power should be limited because "Women don't think about the big issues and primarily focus on small the (sic) things". Also I wouldn't argue that the things that women have a proclivity to focus on are small things.
"Girls are trained at a young age" is a feminist trope which ignores the observable reality of how differently - on average - boys and girls play. It is group differences that are important here.
The problem isn’t about universities, nor is it primarily about women. Every institution that once sustained Western civilisation — the family, the Church, the army, the professions — now shows the same pattern of decay. And among these, the most vital — the family and the Church — had nothing to do with 'truth-seeking.' Even the universities grew out of the Church and were ordered toward belief, not discovery.
The Western family, Church, academy, military, and guilds each embodied a vertical orientation — a shared telos — that bound the West into an organic whole. When that spiritual axis was replaced by managerial rationality and self-referential ideals like efficiency, safety, and fairness, those institutions became prey to subversion.
'Feminisation' is only a symptom of this deeper collapse, not its cause. The West is not suffering from the elevation of the wrong sex, but from the enthronement of the wrong spirit — one that serves a rival symbolic order.
I'm going through this at my university. Our department is mostly female, and the infantilization is beyond my comprehension. Recently a gaggle complained to the director that they 'felt belittled' in my class because I hinted that perhaps other (marginalized!) students could speak too. One has a thick accent, and in asking her to repeat herself several times, I offered that it was the accent -- this is an ESL writing course, and normally I can understand the most convoluted things, but this accent really threw me.
Anyway, they complained, and their FEELINGS were taken far too seriously. I was advised to NOT CHALLENGE them. Making them feel CHALLENGED makes them "anxious and uncomfortable" and despite the fact that the students are in the course to improve their English language skills, I am not to mention an accent that everyone can hear either...also, I'm apparently the only professor ever who was advised not to tell the students that I'm a writer, (teaching a writing class) because that can make them feel intimidated.
I felt like I was on a different planet.
During the racial hysteria of 2021, I was called a "racist" for not exempting a student from my writing course based on objective analysis of her writing samples. While trying to explain this to her, she started screaming at me -- which was fine with HR because FEELINGS. She then ran to HR to complain. I had also steel manned a feminist work of art, and critiqued it. The critique made me a 'racist.'
In exiting the meeting with HR, I was advised to find witnesses to support that I am not a "racist." When I asked what evidence the student supplied that I am one (it was all appeals to emotion) the HR biddy replied: She doesn't have to provide evidence. All that matters is the way you made her feel.
I've been toying with responding to the director with that statement saying, So the students feel 'anxious and uncomfortable' because I'm doing run of the mill classroom management, yet I'm not going to feel "anxious and uncomfortable" in an institution where anyone's feelings can trump not only my feelings, but the evidence to support that I was just doing my job.
Your problems may soon be over. Your ESL students can just use ChatGPT to write their schoolwork, and then you can give them what I understand is now the most common grade in college, an A. So, a win-win situation, no? And you can get some proper work done. I'm so glad I don't teach anymore. Best of luck.
Great article, Bo
"Women have excelled in domains of care and cohesion, tempering the male proclivity for violence and conflict. But they have not created autonomous truth-seeking institutions."
Exactly. Key point. Humanity has advanced precisely because of the melding of the two differing approaches to human interactions. A strong functioning society requires the appropriate approach to the situation at hand. It takes two to tango, and I don't mean just reproductively.
"56% of men said that students should not be protected from controversial ideas, whereas 64% of women said they should."
That is a sad state of affairs. The number for men should be at least 75%.
"I do not believe women will destroy the West nor that cancel culture is simply what happens when women gain power."
I am not as sanguine. If the loss of balance continues long enough, Western Civilization will suffer greatly.
"I am not as sanguine. If the loss of balance continues long enough, Western Civilization will suffer greatly."
I agree. I'm not sanguine either. But I think men are also doing a fine job of destroying the West : )
"But I think men are also doing a fine job of destroying the West : )"
Oh, absolutely...some men.
Maga morons
There are many valid points in this article by @Aporia but the analysis oversimplifies the strengths of women, while underestimating the destructive potential of their(our) shortcomings. Female groups are treated as cooperative and harmony-seeking while ignoring what is known about intrasexual competition, status anxiety, and reputation management. Female hierarchies are not absent, only enforced differently. What looks like peace is forced consensus imposed by the more dominant women of the group.
Women claim to want equity, justice, and integrity but lack the institutional capacity to make that happen. In practice, the result is conformity, social punishment for dissent, and the policing of thought and behaviour. In female-dominated environments such as nursing, aggression runs both laterally and vertically. Hierarchies are maintained through surveillance, exclusion, and reputation attacks rather than open disagreement.
It might be that without a strong structural framework provided in more male-led systems, institutions lose coherence. As structure weakens, competition and insecurity appear to intensify, and the same social dynamics seen in informal female groups begin to surface in professional contexts.
Anuradha Pandey writing offers a useful reality check on this pattern, showing how the female-dominant professional managerial class has accelerated institutional decline under the banner of empathy and inclusion, when it’s anything but.
"Female groups are treated as cooperative and harmony-seeking while ignoring what is known about intrasexual competition, status anxiety, and reputation management. Female hierarchies are not absent, only enforced differently. What looks like peace is forced consensus imposed by the more dominant women of the group."
Undoubtedly truth to this, and certainly women compete intensively against each other for access to resources and desirable mates. Their competition, however, is more covert and relational. But yes, I probably emphasized their pursuit of harmony too much.
"Anuradha Pandey writing offers a useful reality check on this pattern, showing how the female-dominant professional managerial class has accelerated institutional decline under the banner of empathy and inclusion, when it’s anything but."
I do think empathy plays a large role, but I take the point about inclusion. If a person empathizes with a victim, they will often become righteously indignant about the perpetrator, feeling justified in barbaric punishment for vengeance.
Anyway, I largely agree and probably emphasized female peacefulness because I did not want to get into female intrasexual competition.
Bo
Thanks, Bo. I understand the framing. My concern remains with how covert forms of dominance (soft control) get misread as cooperation, and how both men and women often can’t see it even though they feel its effects. That dynamic still deserves scrutiny, and we should stop trying to equalise the impact of male and female behaviour. Both have their own forms of power and harm that need to be understood on their own terms.
You are a consistent apologist for feminine pathology. You only ever acknowledge it as a predicate to "but men, you see, are doing this too, or worse."
You're an "equalizer." You function to (softly, indirectly, by implication) silence vigorous critiques of women. Always.
Well said !
A: All communist societies fail.
B: What are you talking about. Some capitalist societies sometimes fail, too.
A: What you just said in no way refutes what I just said. I thought you trained as a lawyer? Aren't lawyers supposed to be clever?
Ha! Exactly.
"No procedure is perfect, so let's just have no procedures at all."
Also known as the Nirvana Fallacy.
The best book I've read about this topic is "Warriors and Worriers: The Survival of the Sexes" by Joyce Benenson and Henry Markovits. Here is the general gist:
"For thousands of years, males have constructed the rules that underlie religions, governments, economic systems, businesses, educational structures, and of course judicial courts and the military. Since ancient times, games with rules created by boys and men have predominated all over the world. Even men who break established rules often end up adhering to an alternate set of rules such as those found in criminal gangs or militias. Men and boys who join rule-bound systems prosper when they follow the rules of other boys and men.
Men solve narrow problems that can be easily tackled. Done! Women don’t have problems like that. Women have long-term projects, primarily the constant care they must devote over long years to keep a baby alive. Because vulnerability is a state, it has no solution.
Women find the state of vulnerability more attractive than men do. Vulnerability extends beyond human babies and young children. It includes any individual who needs long-term assistance: those with sensory, social, behavioral, emotional, mental, cognitive, and other handicaps; those with diseases; those who are elderly, poor, lost, orphaned, confused, or kidnapped. It applies to humans and nonhumans, maybe even inanimate objects. These are all particularly attractive to girls and women, and not so much to boys and men.
A man’s wealth can improve a woman’s health. How she protects her health is what’s most important. A woman’s best friend is fear."
The pseudoscience of Gender Theory needs to be dumped and replaced by the simple, clear facts of biology and human sexual differences, strategies and pair bonding etc.
A bit of egalitarianism is nice and healthy, but the modern West has gone overboard to the point where most brains are rotted and really believe "We are all the same", which is sentimental nonsense.
Not only has academia become more feminized, it's become stupider.
It's a great book. I also like Geary's Male/Female, which is more academic.
Bo
Equality, like respect, needs to be earned, not awarded.
And both are earned by merit.
“From each according to their privilege; to each according to their intersectionality.”
Wokeism defined in one sentence. Nice!
One of the other fundamental institutions that has perhaps been subverted by feminisation is marriage.
Although participation has always been equal by definition, control of the institution has shifted from one sex to the other in recent decades.
Personal experiences: My daughter (retired military officer) was working with a bunch of "mean girls" and eventually moved a better work environment which appears to be mostly men. I have also observed the "mean girls" and the queen bee syndrome in my software jobs where the female workers (mostly support staff) all seemed to know their place in an invisible hierarchy of women. I never felt like the men i worked with had much of a hierarchy except that everyone know who the go to guy was when you had a programming problem. I'm not sure if the problem is feminism or just the way women group together.
"I'm not sure if the problem is feminism or just the way women group together."
I think that the invention of the term "feminism" simply put an artificially ennobling label on the way women work together. However, the way they work requires no value judgement. It works well in some situations, and less so in others.
Like most closely constrained methodologies.
Another area in which feminization can be dangerous is immigration and foreign policy. Consider the terrible immigration policies in the UK (which led to the gang rape epidemic in Rotherham), or the progressive activists who openly support Hamas.
I think this is due to these domains becoming overstaffed with women with frustrated maternal instincts.
To explain with an analogy, consider the following hypothetical scenario: Two young, delinquent males have been arrested (e.g., for arson or property damage) and the police bring them back to their mother's house.
But when the police bring the sons back to their mother, she DOESN'T punish them.
Instead, she gets mad at the POLICE; she insists that her sons are actually “good boys at heart” and that the only reason they’re misbehaving is because “life has been unfair to them”; that “people like you [the police] have been too hard on them,” and that if she “showed them more love/affection and just ‘reasoned’ with them better, they would behave better and stop getting into trouble.”
Leftists' sympathy for both Hamas and (sexually) aggressive and misogynistic, middle-Eastern immigrants operates on this EXACT SAME psychology.
They are the naive mothers who view Hamas and Pakistani men as innocent children/blameless victims, because they grew up in underdeveloped and impoverished nations where violence is almost a necessity for survival. Likewise, they think that Hamas and Pakistani men can’t be expected to “know any better” (regarding sexual violence) because of the culture/environment in which they grew up.
In other words: Leftists see dangerous migrants as "uneducated heathens" who - as I said above - haven't yet been taught *the Gospel of Political Correctness* (also known as: "soft bigotry of low expectations").
“Put more simply, men are relatively more interested in advancing what is empirically correct, and women are relatively more interested in advancing what is morally desirable.”
It’s a particularly modern claim (of the Enlightenment/scientism) to equate “truth-seeking” with “empirically correct” and not also “morally desirable.” Ancient and medieval philosophy hold these together.
If women tend to seek what is morally desirable - which I’m not ready to deny - then surely it matters what they view to be morally desirable. And secularization (and want of liberal education) has had a major impact on that. Both of these are transformations in the academy and the law that predate women’s entry into them - and so certainly impact their ascendance too.
It's perhaps better to phrase it as the opposition between justice and mercy, which were recognized to be different even before the enlightenment.
Has anyone graphed “number of females in an organization” vs “time/number of meetings in the organization”?
linear, with a slope near unity...
The most relevant factors are that (for now) heterosexual white women are the largest cohort in the western world and possess victimhood status alongside "minorities"-blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, homosexuals etc Thus benefitting from Affirmative action and quotas DEI and so on and often forming alliances with those groups. Across Europe they vote for open borders that skews the sex ratio and obviates any pressure to have children, Spain and Italy obvious examples.
The " caring professions"like medicine and education are mostly female staffed and have become particularly poisonous.
Historically the status of women was related to their child bearing role which is now of secondary or of little or no importance to them. The abortion pill has created a new level of promiscuity and disregard for that role of child bearing, evidenced by the UK decriminalising self administered abortion up to term.
"Historically the status of women was related to their child bearing role which is now of secondary or of little or no importance to them. The abortion pill has created a new level of promiscuity and disregard for that role of child bearing, evidenced by the UK decriminalising self administered abortion up to term."
Excellent point.
It remains a question of power. And women's primary problem with which they must contend for all of history is male aggression. Because of this all women have had to accept subjugation to men in some form. But women still have to make choices and live their lives in spite of being permanently out of power while also living in fear of potential male aggression. The phenomenon that is far more fascinating is that it is fully accepted by society that male aggression is a normal part of social interactions and men get to simply say that they were born that way and this makes it ok. Of course, we have laws against violent crime, but no one questions male behavior, male authority male leadership. No one questions a man's right to dignity, self-determination, and full agency in spite of all of human history being a litany of male violent greed for power. Yet women's right to even begin to engage in full moral agency is immediately questioned if a woman or group of women make poor choices with their liberty.
And men are emotionally dis-regulated, impulsive and egotistical to the point of irrationality, yet men will tell women that they are inferior, emotional, and irrational and should therefore have their full humanity and agency limited.
The author is concerned with building great and enduring institutions, yet ignores the fact that, for example, women in medieval Europe who became too rich or too powerful were often accused of and murdered for being witches having their property confiscated. When knowledge and comprehension by the general population of the natural world superstitions were a normal part of life. This accusation of witchcraft was successful, because the belief by religious men that a woman, being so inferior to men, could not become that wealthy unless she was working with the devil. You really can't build institutions when you are murdered for being wealthy. These murders were very effective at keeping the rest of the female population in fear. Great institutions are not built under these circumstances. In fact, the only way a woman could be this successful was when she was a part of a convent. Safe guarded by religion, allowed women to work and engage their full moral agency away from the interference of men.
"No one questions male behavior, male authority and male leadership". Except these things are questioned constantly.
I’ve never heard anyone say, “Men as a group are violent. We should restrict all men’s access to power and limit their agency.”
Women say some hurtful words and men say, “See. Women just can’t be leaders. Their access to power and their agency should be restricted.”
So, the restriction goes through and girls are trained starting at a young age to limit their minds to the small things. And what do men say?
“See. Women don’t think about the big issues and primarily focus on small the things. They should have their access to power and their agency limited.”
I already replied to this but I don't see the reply for some reason. Trying again.
Men's proclivity to violence does not prevent the institutions they build from being truth-seeking.
By contrast, Women's proclivity to conformity and equity over truth-seeking does prevent the institutions they dominate from being truth-seeking.
It is a straw man to say that Helen Andrews' and Bo Winegard's articles are written because women say some "hurtful words".
It is also a straw man to say that either of these articles are arguing that women's access to power and their agency should be limited because they focus on small things. I don't think it would be reasonable to argue that women's interests are small things.
It is an inaccurate feminist trope to claim that girls are trained at a young age to limit their minds. Women across all cultures have - as a group - different interests to men. That doesn't mean that anything is wrong, it is perfectly natural.
David French does not actually rebut “Cancel culture is simply what women do whenever there are enough of them in a given organization or field.”
That's true. He merely notes that men can also create "cancel cultures." Which is certainly true. Men can and do suppress free speech and inquiry and crackdown on dissenters. So his argument is really just "Yeah but men do this to." It's as if Andrews wrote, "When dogs get together they make a mess," and French responded, "Nonsense, when rabbits get together they also make a mess."
Bo
Men's proclivity to violence does not prevent the institutions they build from trying to be truth-seeking. Men's proclivity to violence does not even make the institutions they build particularly violent, in fact it limits and controls that violence (even the military, police, and the prison system). So there is no reason for their proclivity to violence to limit their access to power.
By contrast, women's proclivity to conformity and prioritizing harmony over truth does prevent institutions they join from trying to be truth-seeking. Helen Andrew's article and Bo Winegard's article are not about women saying "hurtful words", that is a straw man. It's also a straw man to say that they are arguing that women's access to power should be limited because "Women don't think about the big issues and primarily focus on small the (sic) things". Also I wouldn't argue that the things that women have a proclivity to focus on are small things.
"Girls are trained at a young age" is a feminist trope which ignores the observable reality of how differently - on average - boys and girls play. It is group differences that are important here.
The problem isn’t about universities, nor is it primarily about women. Every institution that once sustained Western civilisation — the family, the Church, the army, the professions — now shows the same pattern of decay. And among these, the most vital — the family and the Church — had nothing to do with 'truth-seeking.' Even the universities grew out of the Church and were ordered toward belief, not discovery.
The Western family, Church, academy, military, and guilds each embodied a vertical orientation — a shared telos — that bound the West into an organic whole. When that spiritual axis was replaced by managerial rationality and self-referential ideals like efficiency, safety, and fairness, those institutions became prey to subversion.
'Feminisation' is only a symptom of this deeper collapse, not its cause. The West is not suffering from the elevation of the wrong sex, but from the enthronement of the wrong spirit — one that serves a rival symbolic order.