The Great Feminization

The idea that there are straightforward “female” and “male” traits should seem quite shaky to anyone who is even a little bit into humanities. The problem is that both sides of the equation are constructs of the mind, both the thing we would like to measure, and the measure itself. Fighting journalistic simplification with journalistic simplification is not the mentioned “pursuit of truth”. So before arguing whether pink is “for silly girls”, or “proud female colour”, it would be great to remember that its association with gender basically only started yesterday.

Even if we assume that there are “standard men” and “standard women”, there's another problem: office politics occurring in country M in century N is most certainly the product of specific culture, and not some cavemen rituals. Problems of Patrick or Patricia Bateman are probably quite alien to a lot of people in the world.

The irony is that the image of “good old days” is itself based on modern day stereotypes. So-called progressive propaganda was quite focused on the caricature of concentrated Bad Masculine Man, and now, freshly painted, it is presented as a positive example (because public is familiar with it, and making public think is too hard).

I can’t take this author seriously for a number of reasons, but the main one being that she assumes groups of men are more likely to behave rationally. Anyone who has experience with teenage boys should know better than to say that, but even if you take that out of consideration life is just not that simple. Similarly for truth-seeking, men and women lie the same amount if their incentives are the same. Most people default to lying to achieve political aims because they assume moral superiority in positive outcomes for their group.

A majority women group may be more rational, competitive, or risk-seeking (all values she attributes as more likely to appear in groups of men), but it depends on the women in the group. She already admits that individual characteristics are variable across sexes or genders.

There’s also an implicit assumption that masculine traits are de facto optimal for making an organization fit or successful. They can be, but so are the feminine traits which she would like to see less of. Feminine traits evolved in the first place to provide a necessary counterbalance to problem-solving without a myopic and invariable approach. If a team member is sick, you take care of them so they can contribute again (their domain knowledge and inherent capabilities are their main contributions), instead of chucking them over the side of a hill.

Successful populations in nature have thrived because of adaption, flexibility, and variability. It doesn’t make sense to say that any aspect of society achieved the success that it did because of the presence of masculine traits alone. I think masculine traits are important, but a monoculture approach has almost always lead to the downfall of an empire. Great ideas have come from all sorts of people (and cultures), and we do humanity a disservice by reducing ourselves down to what may essentially be skin deep (literally). The goal should be to enable individuals to reach whatever level of excellence that they’re capable of achieving, regardless of sex or gender. That’s feminism as I remember it, that’s the core of egalitarianism.

There are a lot of factors which are polarizing American society, and other places, but it’s more geopolitical than sociocultural, due to the connected nature of the world now. I could be wrong, but the main thrust of wokeness is restorative justice, and it’s not centered around feminization, necessarily. I think people who advocate for restorative justice need to exercise some caution because I don’t think they fully appreciate the constancy of human nature across different dimensions of being human. If you change the positions of a mean rich person and meek poor person, don’t expect that only the rich/poor parts of those labels will change. People will make the same terrible decisions that you hate the current dominant groups for, that’s just who we are. It’s better to create systems which enable egalitarian self-actualization of individuals than ones which optimize for tribal success.

Last point on the counterbalance of feminine and masculine traits—I like this metaphor from a Samurai film (I forget which): a sword dulls faster if it is never sheathed. Taking Joan of Arc as an example, her literal sword was sheathed by her faith, in many ways.

This is an actually interesting take on the societal problem (ie, some people hate woke, some people absolutely embrace it), and based on my understanding of human behavior, this isn't actually that wrong: men and women do have different behavior inside the tribe, and these behaviors, both good and bad, keep modern society from optimally functioning.

Everything in society is colored by this, good or bad. Everything. Even politics, even dynamics in families, even your work place, even your school.

Not every individual is 100% male behavior or 100% female behavior (something the alt-right podcasters keep bringing up to drive a wedge between their victims and society at large), but generally your average male is going to, on average, have male behavior and it will come naturally to them; vice versa, average female is going to, on average, have female behavior, and it will come natural to them. Conflict resolution is one of those things that differ between the two.

This article would probably benefit greatly from citing works on psychology and neurobiology, because it has been noted by science over the decades that testosterone and estrogen levels mediate many things in human behavior, including which conflict resolution camp you belong to. The article paints this entirely too black and white, because nobody is firmly in either camp.

The article also fails to actually state the correct solution: you're gonna be who you are, and you shouldn't be shamed for it, but you're gonna have to learn how to deal with both kinds of conflicts, and realize when a conflict doesn't actually exist and its just a mismatch between the two camps. Sometimes you need to negotiate the "conflict resolution even if it compromises the truth/logic" side, sometimes you need to negotiate the "logic even if it steps on people's feelings" side, and sometimes the logic side does actually need to win out and you have to pay the toll on that, and sometimes the feelings side needs to win out because it isn't worth the cost.

Also, a woman wrote that article, and I think the people here on HN missed that.

What an absolutely hilarious idea that appeals to emotion are a uniquely feminine way to tackle a problem, while men just go on and make logical arguments, which I assume they then scrutinize rationally to be convinced by the most rigorously argued-for one.

No additional comment on the male vs female thing, just want to say that the "proof by emotion" described in the article is something to watch out for in universities.

One example of many I remember was a social/music class where the prof asked the lecture if there are any innate, non-culture-specific features that make music enjoyable. I raised my hand to say I think so, because octave equivalence seems pretty universal, but the right answer was no. Suggesting that there's anything innate about music means you can't chalk everything up to cultural difference, leading to the possibility that some cultures have better music than others, which needless to say would be very offensive. So I learned something valuable.

Compact is "post-liberal" illiberal, anti-individual, syncretism clickbait trash. They're trying to reinvent elimination of individual freedoms with elements of totalitarianism to make it seem palatable or acceptable. They're as misguided as the Unabomber's prescription for technological unemployment.

Yeah there's a few red flags here that belie the problem with this piece.

Women emphasize "empathy over rationality" ... what a strange dichotomy. As if empathy could not be rational, or rational thought automatically leads to dis-empathy.

She asserts that feminine culture emphasizes cohesion, but then brings up a biracial (what's the point of this note?) reporter at the NYT not having coffee with Bari Weiss and says that this snub is "feminine". What? Are woman about cohesion or not? The previous graph would assert that colleagues would have coffee to not hurt each others' feelings, but then she claims the backhanded animosity ALSO as feminine.

Make up your mind, woman.

Clearly they should have had a man write this article. It probably would have some solid research behind it beyond just “vibes” and “theory pulled out of my ass”. Quite demonstrative of her points at least.

Powerful article, Helen Andrews just won some respect from me. I think this is going to be one of the big "relearnings" of our age, that Men and Women are different. Not just that we wear different clothes or have different heights, but that we are truly, honest to goodness Different. No need to cite any studies, no need to proclaim some proof of higher learning. It's just, obvious.

There’s a lot of male/female behavior I observe that varies with culture, I have doubts that if you are seeing behavior patterns that it’s an innate thing strictly related to gender. Particularly group behavior, you will see female groups from other countries that don’t understand American female groups.

this article is so deeply misogynistic i thought it was satirical. is it?

"the rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority female". are you kidding me?

> This cancellation was feminine, the essay argued, because all cancellations are feminine. Cancel culture is simply what women do […] Everything you think of as “wokeness” is simply an epiphenomenon of demographic feminization.

Did she intend to make that veiled dig suggesting the “feminization” of MAGA with the recent highly emotional calls for cancellation lead by the (feminine??) Trump, Vance, Carr?

For the rest of it, randomly spouting off things she heard random others tell her were true -- makes it true I guess?

I was hoping that this article would be about a hypothetical future where people have evolved to have a lower amount of bravery and a lower "fighting spirit", so that they're simply to afraid to fly fighter jets or be nuclear submarine captains.