The Sailer line is "progressives don't believe in IQ but know they're smarter than conservatives". And progressives do in fact cite studies that say right wingers have lower IQ (and lower openness), the only time I've seen this permitted without comment.
A cynical person might say that how people inveigh against sexism/racism/otherism is meant to demonstrate higher learning and intelligence. Think about the increasingly arcane examples of racism, backed by scholarship inaccessible to the public.. Think about the claim that most people are basically blind because they haven't figured out the underlying structures that shape society. Think about the defense of trans activism: sex is way more complicated than you think prole - you're not qualified to have a take. And oh god, the fucking jargon, that old shortcut to appearing smart.
Intellectuals are arguably the highest status people in progressive spaces, even if we think that the fields they love are not particularly rigorous or g-loaded.
Obviously he's achieved atypical things and is talented. The point is that they're not the same sort of achievement as Musk's.
b) the (usually correct) fear that any men's movement or space will rapidly become anti-woman.
There was a story not too long ago about Men's Sheds, an organization for men to get together to combat social isolation. These were not young incels. These were not redpillers. Many were married older men.
If any institution wouldn't need to be feminized in order to avoid sexism, you'd think it'd be this. And yet...
I think it's just zero sum thinking on the part of ideologues + an obvious realization among others that society makes it easier for people to force entry into someone else's organization rather than being forced to do their own thing. The Men in Sheds women were not really nefarious or trying to maintain their gender's power, they just wanted to spend time with their husbands. Once upon a time, it'd just be accepted that men can have a little corner to themselves. Now it's more dubious (since we know men and women aren't really that different), so some people push in.
I don't think that trans-identifying males barging into woman's spaces is because of a real sense that women would be otherwise sexist (though that sort of neuroticism can be encouraged as a pretext). Society has simply corrected for past sins by moving towards a suspicion of allowing groups to determine their own affairs if it cuts against certain protected characteristics. If Ibram Kendi is right about anything, it's that these legal norms then spread out to the rest of society.
Men & Women are judged and valued by society differently. Men are valued based on their ability to climb up social hierarchy to obtain status.
This cuts no ice with gender abolitionists because they're social constructionists and their response to something like this is simply to demand society change this judgment.
You're actually falling into the same dynamic that causes the the quoted post. I doubt that no one has given them an explanation of why they think male roles are valuable. They likely reject those explanations because a)most are seen as sexist/essentialist and b) they find what remains to essentially be content-free because no one can make a substantive defense of actual gender roles (precisely because it is sexist/essentialist). Which makes sense: we have changed a lot of gender roles. Appealing to how society treats people without explaining why those things are anchored in biology or dynamics we can't or shouldn't change is useless.
There's no way out of this new folk religion without recreating the old, it's just hard between technological and social change. But that's where you're gonna have to go.
Women don't grow up thinking about how to be woman, because much of what defines femininity is there by default. You are simply born a sexy girl - you simply gestate a fetus - and then give birth to it. There is little to no skill barrier required in comparison.
And yet societies put a lot of effort into controlling the transition into womanhood. Conservative Muslims start training their women on how to be at puberty, Westerners had finishing schools, etc.
How far back are we going here?
If we're going very broad, I'd say the advantage intellectuals have is that their achievements are still legible today, preserved as they are by other intellectuals. The conquering noble (who may legitimately be illiterate) may have been higher status in the past but we only see him through the eyes of historians.
Modern era? Sure.
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