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Speak plainly, please, and respond charitably. The article directly addresses what I take to be your sarcastically-expressed criticism. If you do not think it addresses your objection sufficiently, you should explain that clearly and effortfully. Mockery does not raise the level of discourse.
What makes you think this is sarcasm? I am going to the logical end of her argument. Granted, it's a reductio ad absurdum but it does follow on from what she claims.
(Also, I get to luxuriate in the gender essentialism of it all. You, dear mod, can't understand what is going on when it's woman versus woman! You are man-brained with man qualities and man virtues, you have no idea what the mysteries of the feminine mind entail, so you cannot intervene in our disagreement! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 This is not a matter of rationality, which is something reserved clearly and solely for the male of the species, but the mystic crystal revelation of feminine intuition and the rest of the blah Mrs. Andrews argues herself: "In short, men wage conflict openly while women covertly undermine or ostracize their enemies." Step back and lemme get on with the undermining in my sneaky female way!)
If the professions are becoming increasingly feminised, if many are now majority female, if society is following suit and this will lead to disaster, then she is part of the rot herself. It doesn't matter if she's trying to argue "oh no, I got here on merit". It doesn't matter if she's One of the Good Ones. It doesn't matter if I'm Not Like Other Girls. By entering formerly male-dominated/majority male professions, she is part of the creeping tide of turning them majority female. By taking senior and leadership positions, she is undermining men by displacing male role models for young men and by blocking the career advancement of more senior men. Can she, as a woman, really claim to be able to mentor subordinate male employees and model leadership to them, in the way that is both appropriate and increasingly necessary in today's feminised world?
She should, if she is sincere, step back and step down. But this is the Land Acknowledgement trope. "This territory was unfairly and unjustly taken from the unwilling". "So are you going to give it back?" "Of course not!" So she's being a hypocrite.
Strong words, you say? Nothing more than her own argument turned upon her.
Very well then, but what is the "right" or "correct" proportion of men to women in the workplace? What ratio of men to women in a profession or field? Forget meritocracy, because now we're talking about quotas, and those are every bit the fruit of wokeness that she decries. 50/50? Two-thirds male to one-third female? Three-quarters to one-quarter? It depends? Kindergartens should be majority female but going up the scale of schools, we end with high schools majority male teachers (the ladies can teach home economics) and colleges (save for specialised fields like nursing) all-male?
She convicts herself out of her own mouth: "What man wants to work in a field where his traits are not welcome?" And what man wants to work under a lady boss, even if that lady boss is Mrs. Andrews, former senior editor here and former managing editor there? If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem!
And so she should yield the positions she has usurped to the rightful holders, men, and remain within the feminine sphere of domesticity, supporting the man in his career of risk-taking rationality, and raising those sons with the little feminine graces that soften the harsh edges of the competitive, striving male psyche so that they will be gentlemen as well as scholars. Let her lead by example! Has she ever considered she may have benefited from being a diversity hire as per her "anti-discrimination law" example? If she had to compete on strict merit, there were no men better than her? Part of Larry Summers' ill-expressed but not incorrect point about "“different availability of aptitude at the high end” applies just as much to her; it makes little difference that she is competing in the world of letters, since that world not so long ago was majority male and women's talents were held to lie in writing novels, if they must write, rather than factual reporting and scholarship. Even if Mrs. Andrews is smart (for a woman) there are still men out there smarter than her and thus better qualified for those jobs.
Since I am participating in this thread as a moderator, I'm not going to get any further into the substance of the argument than I already have.
Banned one hour for use of emojis.
Okay, that was novel. I don't think I've ever been banned for an hour - it's generally a week or "get the hell outta here, ya bum".
No emojis - gotcha!
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My opinion about banning people for using emojis, especially when they are obviously used as a rhetorical device (as opposed to the entire post being written in zoomer brainrot) is: 🤡.
I’m sorry, but we have to apply the rules equally.
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There are few things I would support a permaban for, but this is one of them.
Emojis are a plague that must be rooted out by fire and steel.
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I'm emoji-prone myself but think this is probably a correct standard for this site. Did it become official at some point?
No, but emojis often fail to meet the standards for effort (particularly when posted without other text) or inflammatoriness, and they are in almost all cases also egregiously obnoxious. I do feel like I've seen at least one of the other mods use emojis on occasion, and I don't think I've dropped a ban on emojis more than a handful of times, though. I think I may even be the only mod who has ever done it. Fortunately, that may be because it has rarely been necessary; people seem to pick up pretty quick that this is not really the venue for that sort of thing.
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I think you're both being unfairly piled on, and also kind of missing the point and being a little disingenuous about it (hence the pile-on).
Helen Andrews, from what I can tell, is not arguing that there should be zero women in "male" professions and that all women in such fields should step aside and let a man take her place, let alone is she going full Serena Joy. She is arguing that "feminization" (changing the norms in a field to cater to women's preference) is harmful and contributing to the "wokening" of these fields. This can be true without taking the position "Therefore we should exclude women from these fields."
I understand that you don't like femaleness being associated with lack of rationality, objectivity, or vigorous discourse, but this is hardly a novel argument. Even the most hardcore gender essentialists don't usually claim that no woman can be smart and rational and meritorious, able to hold her own in a male field. Helen Andrews certainly does not seem to be claiming that. If you resent the implication that there are probably relatively few women who should be considered qualified- well, you can't have it both ways and argue as you do against the encroachment of gender ideology (that says gender is a social construct and a man can be a woman) but also object to any implication that sex differences might be disadvantageous.
Yeah, but she nowhere gives a solution to the problem. How to prevent a feminised society? Well the simple and quick answer is: bar women from those jobs and those positions. How many women in a profession is "too many"? If the answer is "compete on meritocracy" then let Mrs. Andrews show that she is better than the men she beat out for the job. That there is no man at all in the entire USA better qualified or better at the job than she is.
I do wish there was more respect given to honour, but men have cast that aside just as fast as women did. See how "honour culture" is not a compliment, but has connotations of inequality and fast resort to violence instead of negotiation. Conflict versus mistake, if you will.
Yes she does, right here:
"Feminization is not an organic result of women outcompeting men. It is an artificial result of social engineering, and if we take our thumb off the scale it will collapse within a generation."
She then goes into some specifics such as getting rid of anti-discrimination laws.
TBH I don't think you read the article; or if you did it was apparently with so much bias that you may as well not have. This is the straightforward answer to the question which your entire blustering performance has revolved around her not answering, thus allowing you to fill in your own preferred boogeyman and cantilever your eye-rolling dismissals out to infinity.
The worst part, to me, is that this would work for you, too, almost anywhere else. But not here, in one of the last remaining places where male modes of discourse are allowed exercise. Hence the downvotes.
I think Andrews has not thought through what she is proposing. She seems to imagine that "taking the thumb off the scale" will mean ladies like her get to keep the positions they have colonised, because she's just so smart and male-brained. I think it's entirely possible that junking anti-discrimination laws will result in "well it was great knowing you, Helen, but we need new blood and new male blood in particular so say hello to Tim, who will be replacing you".
And again, nobody is answering the real question I am genuinely asking: what is the perfect ratio for society? 50/50 male/female? Majority male? The ladies get to run their little cafés and knitwear shops, bless their hearts, while the men do the real work of the world? Given that Andrews is a political commentator amongst other things, I imagine she feels her views, opinions, and insights are valuable, but in the Men's World Redivivus, is there a place for her?
I'm mostly sitting this one out, but I've seen several people answer you: no one knows and it doesn't matter, just stop tipping the scales. What's your answer to: why is this question supposed to matter at all?
It's also a bit strange watching you fight on this particular hill, given how often you make a point of how Catholic you are.
"Tipping the scales" requires that we know what the endpoint should be. "We'll know it when we see it" is a recipe for disaster, because no matter how you change the ratios, there's always the argument that "no, go lower and then it'll all be great!" So 60% female profession becomes 50/50? Still not good enough, society too female? Go down to 40% female? 30%? 0%?
Because some on this very thread have argued for 0%, that smart women should be having unstressed babies instead of going to work like a man in a man's job. I don't think Andrews would accept that, but she's set up that argument.
Yeah, I'm Catholic and broadly complementarian, but we're equal opportunity for female religious leaders (not priests and deacons, I'm heading that one off before it begins) and saints. One of the big sticking points for the entire Reformation was the veneration of Mary and how her worship was seen to be displacing that of Christ, after all!
EDIT: As I said, I'm an older generation than Andrews. I do think she's unaware of the fruits of the fights won before her which fruits she enjoys; she grew up with "of course I can apply to study this; of course I can enter that career; of course I can go forward for that job" where this is 'fish swimming in the water' for her, but for my generation and the one before, it very much was not "of course you can do that". For example, I bet she has no idea about the marriage ban and that if you told her "Okay, now you're married, time to quit your job!" she'd laugh at you, and coming back with "Nope, sorry Helen, it's law. Now trot off home and look after your husband like a good little woman" would not fit her mental model of "society too female, let's fix that by meritocratic competition".
But why though? We can see the hand applying pressure to the scale, we know the exact force with which it is doing so. We don't know the weight of the object being weighed, so we can't tell you the result you'd see sans the extra force, but we can tell you pretty precisely what the force is. We can measure it in subsidies for feminist projects, in women-only scholarships, in quotas, in anti-discrimination laws that don't apply to men, etc.
But no one here seems to want to target specific ratios. If you get rid of the specific measures people are complaining about, and the ratios don't change that's absolutely fine.
Right, one of the thing that attracts me (back) to Catholicism is how it has honored roles for both, but from what I understand it's also pretty clear about men and women having different natures (hence the exception you had to head off right from the start).
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Because it is patently clear you are not "genuinely asking". You are staking a position of female superiority, and leveling that oh-so-stereotypically-female weapon of scorn at anyone who cares to dispute it and claim that in fact, something about women may be causing problems. There's no answer to that, and no point in trying.
Given that I got banned for emoji usage, I'm probably tempting the wrath of the mod gods here, but fuck no.
I don't believe in female superiority any more than I believe in male superiority. I do believe the problem, if it exists, is not "too many women in that job". Men can be bitchy, backstabbing, boot-licking, and players of political games in work every bit as much as women. Every guy who put on a suit and tie for a middle manager job is a bold, truth-seeking, risk-taking innovator? Really, Helen?
How many women is too many women, Nybbler? How many men is too few men? Or too many?
Honestly, Andrews' article reminds me, from the other side, of Houston, Houston, Do You Read? by James Tiptree Jr. where I didn't agree with the position there (women indeed superior) back when I read it as a teen. And I don't agree with the opposite position (men indeed superior).
We have different abilities and different gifts, and we need a mix of both to survive and indeed thrive as a society. No boots on necks, no matter who is wearing the boot; side-by-side into the future!
Fuck yes. It's entirely predictable that if someone makes a claim stating or implying that something about women is causing a problem, you will respond exactly how you responded here. A lot of people (and not just women) do; that's actually part of the problem. No one has a problem believing that e.g. male tendencies towards aggression or risk-taking might cause problems in some situations, but the counterpart is unthinkable to many.
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I doubt you can develop a hard and fast rule unless you say "literally any." The thesis seems to be that at some point you reach a critical mass that is "too many." If you don't want to absolutely exclude women but you also believe there shouldn't be so many that they change norms, then you'll have to have some pretty vigorous gatekeeping and resistance to change, which presents its own problems. But the fact that she doesn't have a solution doesn't mean she isn't pointing at a real problem.
How does this follow? Advocates of meritocracy don't usually claim that any given system is going to be a perfect meritocracy. Andrews can believe she is good enough without necessarily believing she's better than literally every other man in the country.
Honor culture rapidly devolves to "might makes right." Achieving a culture that respects some concept of "honor" but doesn't just use that as an excuse for "do violence to anyone who offends you" is not a problem I think any society has solved.
She also doesn't need to, nor does she need to (as the previous poster) prove "That there is no man at all in the entire USA better qualified or better at the job than she is".
To have perfect meritocracy, she obviously just needs to prove that she's better than the best man in the country who applied for a job in her field and was turned down. She doesn't need to be better than Bari Weiss or Ezra Klein, she just needs to be better than the marginal next-best candidate.
There is room in America for more than one journalist.
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This is really an analogous ‘gotcha’ to saying “woke people think society is white supremacist and has too many white people in positions of power, therefore any woke person that doesn’t resign their job so a POC can have it is a hypocrite.” Even among the anti-woke crowd this argument has always been considered poor because even granting its truth, so what? So you have established their inconsistent behavior, you haven’t disproven the claim that society is white supremacist. This is essentially a version of the classic meme “yet you participate in society”
It's like I said: it's the Land Acknowledgement farrago. "Yes the problem is now women are going for men's jobs and there are too many women in those jobs, but not me! I may be a woman but I'm different! It's okay if I have that male-coded job and my sons see me taking a position from a man!" She could start by giving example by stepping down in favour of a guy, but she likes her career too much. So why should other women not like having a career, as well?
I disagree with her but her argument is sawing off the branch on which she sits: if there are too many women in male professions, she's one of the too many women. So what is she going to do about it, apart from telling other women to quit their jobs or not go into that profession in the first place?
Not interested in engaging here but I did want to compliment your excellent use of 'farrago.'
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I do not understand where you get this. The author does not call for quotas, but the removal of rules and policies that drive artificially higher representation of women in certain roles.
One reasonable response to that is that it's reasonable to question whether those policies and laws do drive higher representation of women, though it does seems a bit chud-coded to me to claim that progressive policies have been entirely ineffectual.
Yeah, but before we can say "artificially high" we have to first establish the "natural level" and if we haven't done that, then we can't talk about "there are too many female lawyers".
We absolutely don’t have to establish any kind of natural level. We know for a fact that the national government of the United States is putting a thumb on the scale by creating laws mandating female-friendly workplaces, benefits for woman-owned businesses, encouraging STEM and leadership programs that are open only to women, lighter sentencing, family law preference, Title IX tribunals, maternity policies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that’s just the Feds.
In the same way, we know for a fact that the Federal government is putting its thumb on the scales for farmers by providing farming subsidies. The present level of farmers and farming done in America is higher than it would be in the absence of those subsidies. I don’t need to tell you that America requires a natural level of precisely 1,348,756 farmers before we can agree on the number of farmers being kept artificially high for policy reasons.
Now, in both these cases, the government of the nation is pursuing policies it, at least nominally, believes to be in its strategic interest. They might be wrong, but those are understandable goals.
Andrew’s argument is simply that, in the specific case of women in the workforce, the thumb of the government should be taken off the scale. Men should be allowed to have frat house workplaces as women are allowed to have longhouse workplaces. Men should be allowed to only hire other men, as women are allowed to hire all-female workplaces without concerns of successful diversity lawsuits. The Federal government shouldn’t prioritize woman-owned businesses in its contracting rules. Just let nature take its course, and the winners will win and the losers will lose. It may be that the losers are all the pro-men men on “my side.” But then at least we’d know and that would be quite interesting.
It seems like a very simple argument to me.
I don't think that is the argument Andrews is making, because she sticks in some caveats about "I'm not saying women shouldn't work in these fields". She wants meritocracy, which means "if Susie is better than John, then hire Susie". She doesn't want "it doesn't matter if Susie is better than John, John went to the same school as Mike who is doing the hiring".
I do think it would be interesting to roll back society to 1930 or so, before women were in the workplace in the same numbers and the same professions. But I don't think that is what Andrews wants, and she does need to put a number on it rather than just vague handwaving about "too many girls".
Does she? Why? This seems like an isolated demand for pointless rigor.
Didn't she rather write along the lines of "too many of the wrong kinds of girls"?
Did she? Because I didn't get that fine distinction; women en masse have the feminine qualities of x, y and z; a majority female workplace and majority female society will be disadvantaged because of the lack of masculine qualities a, b and c; the solution is more men and more male-values and male-oriented workplaces.
Nothing about "but the right kind of women are this kind". It was "too many women" simpliciter was the problem. I think this must be the part of her piece you have in mind:
So her idea there is that by applying "fair rules", the trend will naturally reverse to having more men than women. She doesn't develop the argument about "what sort of women?", presumably she means "judging on male metrics rather than female ones, the best candidates regardless of sex will come to the top".
That does presuppose that some of those best candidates will be women, and that those women will fit in to a "masculine office culture" (so, no more getting offended by "grab 'em by the pussy", then?)
But even the "One of the Guys" gals are at risk, see comments higher up about intelligent women are being wasted by going into the workplace instead of having babies which they breastfeed at home and do the whole skin-to-skin contact thing (very much less frequent in reality than presumed by such comments) because stressed moms are bad for the babies. Take even Helen Andrews out of the workforce so she can prop up the cratering TFR and have smart kids with her (presumably) smart husband, which she raises herself in the perfect domestic environment!
I don't think Andrews wants that, despite her comments about being the mother of sons, but that's where the logic leads if we extend it out: not just too many women in the workplace, there should be no women at all! For the sake of TFR and raising non-neurodivergent kids!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the argument #1 for unregulated meritocracy being better for institutional health and productivity, as made by Andrews, and the argument #2 for women in general but especially intelligent women to stay at home and focus on their biological role, as made by some commentors here, are separate, and it takes conflating them to reach the conclusion that Andrews is requesting that intelligent women focus on breeding the next generation. I think Andrews is only making argument #1, not #2.
And, full disclosure, I think both arguments are valid.
Also, what do you mean by
At risk of what?
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What is artificially high, though? If being majority female is wrong but majority male is right, how much admixture of female into a profession can you have before it tips over into "too much"? She claims that now women are flooding into professions and fields they are ruining those, but she also says that it's not a problem of having women in those fields as such. So we're back to "what proportion of journalism or medicine or law or education or working on an oil rig should be female?" and she doesn't answer that.
She's happy enough to be one of the women in the professions, which as I point out makes her part of the problem. Her answer seems to be "meritocracy! let men and women compete on equal terms!" Great, but what then if it still turns out more women than men make the grade?
I guess she would say, well, women are outcompeting men, so they should get the jobs. If it turns out that women would naturally comprise 90% of oil riggers, so be it. I don't know that she has secret beliefs that would override her publicly professed beliefs.
I don't see how she can say that. Her whole argument is that once the field is >50% female it changes to become worse. If that is not the case and a female majority profession works out just fine, then I don't even know what she is trying to say.
I think I agree with Hereandgone -- if meritocratic employment results in women dominating a field, quotas would have to be implemented to prevent this from wrecking the field. OR she is admitting that some female dominated communities can be truth seeking, competitive etc. and in that case it seems she just has a problem with certain specific corporate cultures rather than with their gender composition.
Or there are fields where women's natural strengths (empathy, nurturing, etc.) are more important than men's natural strengths (competitiveness, truth-seeking, etc.). I don't think anyone is going to mind if the majority of nurses or elementary school teachers turn out to be female.
Sure, that's one of the possibilities. But it also means "nurses = women, doctors = men". And, as I suggested rather tongue-in-cheek (sorry, naraburns, that's too emoji-adjacent isn't it?), that she should step back from leadership roles like being the editor and instead take up the traditional support role of secretary.
And what's wrong with that?
From "Rebel Girl: An Interview with HBD Chick" by Chip Smith and hbd chick:
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It depends on the particular women and the resistance to those in the profession (both male and female) to switching over to the objectionable norms. It has long been noted in tech that the few women who were in the profession were often not happy at the change when normie women forced their norms upon the profession. Men in tech got beaten up rhetorically over the phrase and concept "fake geek girl", but it was a woman who popularized it, making just this point.
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