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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   27136 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

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Helen Andrews and the Great Feminization

https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-great-feminization/

Some excerpts:

Wokeness is not a new ideology, an outgrowth of Marxism, or a result of post-Obama disillusionment. It is simply feminine patterns of behavior applied to institutions where women were few in number until recently.

Possibly because, like most people, I think of feminization as something that happened in the past before I was born. When we think about women in the legal profession, for example, we think of the first woman to attend law school (1869), the first woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court (1880), or the first female Supreme Court Justice (1981). A much more important tipping point is when law schools became majority female, which occurred in 2016, or when law firm associates became majority female, which occurred in 2023. When Sandra Day O’Connor was appointed to the high court, only 5 percent of judges were female. Today women are 33 percent of the judges in America and 63 percent of the judges appointed by President Joe Biden.

Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition. Other writers who have proposed their own versions of the Great Feminization thesis, such as Noah Carl or Bo Winegard and Cory Clark, who looked at feminization’s effects on academia, offer survey data showing sex differences in political values. One survey, for example, found that 71 percent of men said protecting free speech was more important than preserving a cohesive society, and 59 percent of women said the opposite.

The field that frightens me most is the law. All of us depend on a functioning legal system, and, to be blunt, the rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority female. The rule of law is not just about writing rules down. It means following them even when they yield an outcome that tug at your heartstrings or runs contrary to your gut sense of which party is more sympathetic.

A feminized legal system might resemble the Title IX courts for sexual assault on college campuses established in 2011 under President Obama. These proceedings were governed by written rules and so technically could be said to operate under the rule of law. But they lacked many of the safeguards that our legal system holds sacred, such as the right to confront your accuser, the right to know what crime you are accused of, and the fundamental concept that guilt should depend on objective circumstances knowable by both parties, not in how one party feels about an act in retrospect. These protections were abolished because the people who made these rules sympathized with the accusers, who were mostly women, and not with the accused, who were mostly men.

Women can sue their bosses for running a workplace that feels like a fraternity house, but men can’t sue when their workplace feels like a Montessori kindergarten.

And we wonder why men are dropping out of the workforce/university...

The problem is not that women are less talented than men or even that female modes of interaction are inferior in any objective sense. The problem is that female modes of interaction are not well suited to accomplishing the goals of many major institutions. You can have an academia that is majority female, but it will be (as majority-female departments in today’s universities already are) oriented toward other goals than open debate and the unfettered pursuit of truth. And if your academia doesn’t pursue truth, what good is it?

I found the whole essay quite interesting and also somewhat obvious in that 'oh I should've realized this and put it together before' sense. I read somewhere else on twitter that you could track the origins of civil rights/student activism to women gaining full entry to universities in America, as opposed to just chaperoned/'no picnicking out together' kind of limited access. Deans and admin no longer felt they could punish and control like when it was a male environment, plus young men behave very differently when there are sexually available women around. So there's also a potential element of weakened suppression due to fear of female tears and young men simping for women, along with the long-term demographic change element.

Though I suspect it may be more multi-factorial than that, with the youth bulge and a gradual weakening of the old order. A man had to make the decision to let women into universities after all.

I also find Helen Andrews refreshing in that she's not stuck in the 'look at me I'm a woman who's prepared to be anti-feminist, I'm looking for applause and clicks' mould, she makes the reasons behind her article quite clear:

Because, after all, I am not just a woman. I am also someone with a lot of disagreeable opinions, who will find it hard to flourish if society becomes more conflict-averse and consensus-driven. I am the mother of sons, who will never reach their full potential if they have to grow up in a feminized world. I am—we all are—dependent on institutions like the legal system, scientific research, and democratic politics that support the American way of life, and we will all suffer if they cease to perform the tasks they were designed to do.

Another idea that occurred to me is that the committee that drafted the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, FDR's wife. The UN Declaration of Human Rights was instrumental in establishing what we now understand as progressivism. That piece of international law, (really the origin of 'international law' as we understand it today, beyond just the customary law of embassies) directly led to the Refugee Convention of 1951 that has proven quite troublesome for Europe's migrant crisis, it introduced the principle of non-refoulement. It also inspired the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965):

Each State Party undertakes to encourage, where appropriate, integrationist multiracial organizations and movements and other means of eliminating barriers between races

Shall declare an offence punishable by law all dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or hatred, incitement to racial discrimination

Sounds pretty woke! Note that states don't necessarily follow through on international law or sign up with it fully in the first place: Israel, America, Russia and so on routinely ignore these kinds of bodies in the foreign policy sphere. The Conventions and Committees are feminine in a certain sense in that they can be ignored without fear of violence, unlike an army of men. Nevertheless, their urging and clamouring is real and does have an effect, the UN Human Rights Commission helped get sanctions on apartheid South Africa.

To some extent international law could be considered an early feminized field, or perhaps it was born female. Are there any other feminized fields we can easily think of? Therapists, HR and school teachers come to mind, though that seems more recent.

I agree, but I want to present a different way of looking at it: Men and women are offended by different things.

Within the typically-male psyche, there is a revulsion against certain behaviours instilled by evolution. Someone downthread described how male animals (especially mammals) use competition rituals to battle for dominance without being injured. The idea is to work out the dominance hierarchy without wasting too much energy on infighting, and to emerge from that with a strong coalition that can be used to fight the next battle. Men feel revulsion at anything that deviates from this.

Key point: There is always a next battle. The need to balance victory in this battle with continued strength afterward. This gives rise to a beautiful tapestry of complex psychology. Forgiveness becomes a martial virtue, because sometimes the winning strategy is to ally with A against B and then B against A. Loyalty becomes a complex and many-faceted thing; loyalty to a state or a crown can adapt to the needs of a situation more effectively than loyalty to a person; for example, a patriotic Frenchman like Talleyrand managed to be loyal to the Bourbons, the Revolution, Emperor Napoleon, and then the restored Bourbons again in quick succession. Battles become more perfunctory and symbolic the more sophisticated the combatants become, as opposing sides are increasingly able to predict the outcome of a fight and skip to the end without killing each other.

Male psychology is the product of a literal evolutionary arms race, one that has given rise both to warfare and to most of politics.

A few images to think about: In medieval Italy, armies of mercenaries fought wars of maneuver on behalf of city-states. Opposing armies would compete for strategic positions and supply lines, then whichever side lost would often give up without fighting - both sides being mercenaries, they took a pragmatic view of war. In ancient Rome, Julius Caesar made a show of forgiving politicians who sided against him in the civil wars, which is a big part of how he was able to take so much power so quickly after winning just a few battles (but then the enemies he forgave assassinated him).

Men have a culturally mediated disgust reaction against dishonorable conduct. Executing prisoners, attacks that violate the local rules of warfare, assassinations, these things are regarded as unacceptable. They happen, of course (there would be no evolved reaction if they didn't) but note the common result: Instant and massive loss of legitimacy. I recall a certain Roman emperor who schemed against his brother; when the Praetorians found out what their leader was up to, they rose up and hacked him to pieces.

If your leader gets caught breaking the rules you and your fellow men fly into a rage and murder him on the spot. Think about how intense of a psychological reaction that is.

Women aren't programmed to work like that, generally. Female chimpanzees are much less active in coalitions to overthrow the alpha chimp, and likewise with female humans. They don't have as much of an evolutionary benefit in terms of number of expected offspring from rising up and overthrowing their leaders. They don't have a longstanding need to mediate dominance contests because they don't have the same need to fight an internal war followed in quick succession by a bunch of external wars. A male coalition that weakens itself by infighting will be displaced by rival males; a female coalition that weakens itself by infighting has no such risk because female coalitions don't invade and displace each other. The whole reason to evolve that pattern of behaviour doesn't exist.

The coming war against outsiders is equivalent to the mission of the organization. A male coalition battles for dominance and then organizes itself and conquers new territory. A female coalition battles for dominance within the existing territory and never tries to expand. In a business or a government where the 'conquest' means capturing market share or winning new voters, that kind of stagnation is poisonous.

Executing prisoners, attacks that violate the local rules of warfare, assassinations, these things are regarded as unacceptable.

Codes of honour differ in different societies, and those are male-run societies as well. There are very few universal rules that all cultures accept. Politics means friends today, enemies tomorrow. Spying may be disgusting and dishonourable, but you need a secret service. And that includes state assassinations of the bothersome:

The goals of the secret service, in Arthashastra, was to test the integrity of government officials, spy on cartels and population for conspiracy, to monitor hostile kingdoms suspected of preparing for war or in war against the state, to check spying and propaganda wars by hostile states, to destabilize enemy states, to get rid of troublesome powerful people who could not be challenged openly. The spy operations and its targets, states verse 5.2.69 of Arthashastra, should be pursued "with respect to traitors and unrighteous people, not with respect to others".

Political advisers may recommend the role of virtue, but they always have a touch of Machiavelli about them, as see Chanakya (the so-called "Indian Machiavelli") and the popular legends that grew up around him:

Chanakya had two potential successors to Dhana Nanda: Pabbata and Chandragupta. He gave each of them an amulet to be worn around the neck with a woolen thread. One day, he decided to test them. While Chandragupta was asleep, he asked Pabbata to remove Chandragupta's woolen thread without breaking it and without waking up Chandragupta. Pabbata failed to accomplish this task. Some time later, when Pabbata was sleeping, Chanakya challenged Chandragupta to complete the same task. Chandragupta retrieved the woolen thread by cutting off Pabbata's head. For the next seven years, Chanakya trained Chandragupta for imperial duties.

Picking someone as future emperor on the basis of "ruthlessness in achieving objectives, including murder" is not really inclining towards "dishonour is the worst thing of all!"

I recall a certain Roman emperor who schemed against his brother; when the Praetorians found out what their leader was up to, they rose up and hacked him to pieces.

The same Praetorian Guard that was behind the assassinations of god knows how many emperors?

I know. I described just such an event. See: Emperor hacked to pieces by Praetorian Guard.

You'll forgive me for being skeptical that this particular assassination happened because the Guard suddenly developed a moral compass.

I didn't say they did. I said they exhibited an evolved primate behaviour that caused them to fly into a mass hysterical rage and commit regicide in response to perceived violations of the rules of their honor-based society. What part of that sounds like developing a moral compass?

Hmmm, rules of their society, a set of norms, we could almost call that a system of morality. And all this is moot because the Guard were far more concerned about naked power grabs than codes of honor. They literally auctioned off the throne after assassinating Pertinax.

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