site banner
PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   27428 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

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.

Ironically the one civil institution that is becoming less 'female' is The church.

It does make sense, in that any churches that take doctrine seriously are going to have certain advice like "wives submit to your husband" and "be modest and demure" and "it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in church" (1 Corinthians 14:34-35).

And so the Church is like the one place where "minimal restraint on females' decision-making" is NOT a core ideal baked into every other rule they follow. And where the idea that men and women are different (and that's just fine) is part of the very founding text from Book 1. "Male and female he created them." (Genesis 1:27). Its like page 2 of the freakin' book.

Related note, it seems like women are less comfortable using AI in general, and particularly in the business context.

THAT is going to have massive downstream effects if AIs do become half as ubiquitous as the boosters (and the investment levels) suggest. Not only are female-dominated jobs probably more prone to AI takeover, they're less likely to use the AI to augment their performance in the meantime.

And then, other recent studies find that women find leadership roles in business emotionally depleting, anxiety-inducing. Even when painted over with the language of "gender norms," the raw conclusion of the study is that women in leadership don't handle pressure well on a personal level.

Deviating from gender norms made the women feel incompetent or anxious, they reported.

As a result, the women who engaged in more assertive behaviors often felt depleted, overwhelmed by their workload and more withdrawn as a whole.

Interestingly, men in the study did not experience any stress over these gender expectations.

Basically, if you take the gender studies approach seriously, then you have to suggest that we upend the entirety of society's notion of gender roles in order to make some small subset of women who become business leaders more comfortable with their jobs, rather than suggesting that these women could find positions that don't actively degrade their mental health, as an easy solution.

Huge contortions to avoid the conclusion that males tend to have psychological traits better suited for leadership roles, in line with the entirety of human history.

I kind of hate that the bulk of research is showing that the presence of women in the professional workspace immediately makes the environment feel more hostile for men, in the sense that they now have to navigate the minefield of HR rules and avoid offending the most easily offended demographics on earth... meanwhile these women are becoming emotionally unglued with the expectations and the deadlines and the constant stress of comparing themselves to other high performers while also navigating the social dynamics they themselves impose on any group context. Basically we've given ourselves the worst of all possible worlds where neither gender is allowed to have anything close to their ideal working conditions.

I daresay this is a worse equilibrium for everyone involved than one where women were effectively banned from working in the same departments as men.

I further, and more daringly, say that the only fix is re-asserting masculine norms and refusing to coddle feminine feelings simply to keep women on staff.

Simply, I don't see any feasible way to make the business environment, with its heavy competition, hard decisions, constant demands on your time and your sanity more comfortable for the fairer sex without destroying the actual mechanisms which make it function at all. No more bonuses for good performance, no more unpaid overtime, no more crunch, no more strict hierarchy and constantly shifting expectations and demands... how can commerce occur in such conditions?

If you want to escape all that, well, can I suggest starting a family?

So in short, I would agree with and Amplify Ms. Andrews up there.

the presence of women in the professional workspace immediately makes the environment feel more hostile for men, in the sense that they now have to navigate the minefield of HR rules and avoid offending the most easily offended demographics on earth

Okay, I may be a minority here, but I can tell you that this is not reaction to women in the workplace at all.

If I am in a conversation with some other guys at work and a female colleague enters the room, I that does not make me feel hostility. No, "oh, now I have to watch my mouth, no more sexual innuendo, no more discussion of how fuckable common acquaintances are, no more innocent showing of nudes of my sex partners."

Because I do not engage in this kind of talk even when I am in an all-male setting. Not even when I hang out with my friends, actually. Now, perhaps I simply give off vibes which tell other men that I do not want to discuss tits with them during work hours, and every other man is suffering in silence every time I or a woman enter the room, but I think that is unlikely.

Regarding HR minefields, at least here in Europe the minefield seems easily navigable even for a spectrum-dweller like myself. Don't ask women for sexual favors at work, avoid touching your colleagues without their consent, don't send unsolicited dick pics.

Now I am sure that there are some women who would be offended by my workplace behavior ("he called that connector 'female' instead of 'socket-type', and he has not renamed his dev branch from master to main yet"), but thankfully, I have not encountered any at work yet.

If I am in a conversation with some other guys at work and a female colleague enters the room, I that does not make me feel hostility.

Never said it did. Its not the occasional encounter with a female in the workspace that is the real issue. Its the tipping point when you are basically unable to avoid interacting with the female colleagues daily and the norms around 'professionalism' change with this reality.

If the work environment, the boundaries of 'professional' conduct are pretty much defined what the most easily offended coworker will tolerate. And the company will usually craft all of its personnel policies around mitigating the risk of offending said coworker.

What it actually means in practice is that you have to be careful about leveling critiques at female coworkers or suggesting they aren't performing adequately or even making jokes at their expense, since at any given time they can take offense to it and claim, e.g. 'discrimination' based on their gender, or hostile work environment, or claim your workplace has a general 'bro' culture.

And, of course, if you do end up finding one of your single female colleagues attractive, your options are:

A) Either stifle that feeling as hard as possible and hope that you can stay in contact if one or both of you leave the company; or

B) Put it all on the line to actually ask her out, which in the best case she reciprocates (although let's not talk about what happens if that situation sours) and in the worst she rejects and then interprets almost everything you do later as vindictive retaliation for the rejection until it becomes an HR complaint regardless of how you conduct yourself afterwards.

And the complications if you have a higher position than she does.

And being as polite as possible, do you spend much time in male-dominated group settings at all? Outside of work?

One of the key social dynamics for men (not universally, but almost) is 'line treading' by bringing up ever-more-controversial topics or making ever-more-edgy jokes until someone finally calls them out and says "whoah dude, too far." Then he apologizes, walks it back, and everyone going forward forgives them as long as they don't habitually step over that line in the future.

And the very instant an unvetted female enters the group, that line gets WAY more constrained, and the possible consequences for crossing it get way sharper. The men are no longer 'comfortable' pushing that boundary and it puts a strain on camaraderie.

"oh, now I have to watch my mouth, no more sexual innuendo, no more discussion of how fuckable common acquaintances are, no more innocent showing of nudes of my sex partners."

This is the thin edge of the wedge. The harmful stuff is where male normal aggressive communication is dispensed with because women don't really reciprocate it as well as men and this gradually escalates until you can't call ideas bad directly in meetings and need to catch up with the person pushing forward the bad idea in a one on one ect ect.

Don't ask women for sexual favors at work, avoid touching your colleagues without their consent, don't send unsolicited dick pics.

A guy got fired after being overheard joking about his big dongle at a conference.

Okay, I may be a minority here, but I can tell you that this is not reaction to women in the workplace at all.

And I can tell you it is, because the people making those rules outright said it is.

And not just the stuff you're referring to, that's just the motte. Also anything vaguely adjacent; the banning of Lena as a test image. Or objecting to certain memes ("Hide your kids, hide your wife"). And things not adjacent at all; objecting to talk of videogames and Star Trek. And also objecting to and banning communication styles common among men in the industry .

I am not saying that "predominantly female SJ employees take over a company, establish a woke regime of terror where lunch conversations about video games are banned" never happens.

But I do not think that this is the inevitable consequence of letting women enter the workforce.

Generally, I think that there is some optimal fraction of costs dedicated to workplace culture. In the zeroth approximation, that fraction is zero, because employees should just get their job done. But in higher orders, one would consider that the productivity of employees is a function of workspace culture, so there are gains to be had by investing in workplace culture (e.g. have a HR department to intervene on alleged assaults, make sure that employees are willing to talk to each other, etc).

Naturally, the gains of having a great workplace culture are finite: you can't solve P=NP by taking a few grad students and placing them in an extremely motivating environment.

Another consideration might be if things get more extreme in bullshit jobs than in non-bullshit jobs. After all, if the main purpose of your job is to be another person of the payroll of your department so that your head of department can maintain their political power against other departments, nobody will care much if you waste time playing stupid status games. If your job is actually contributing to the bottom line, then finding grievances to whine about will not improve your KPIs. Obviously one limit to that is anti-discrimination law which the company might run afoul of.

Still, managers who genuinely takes the concern of their employee about others talking about video games during lunch seriously, rather than mentally earmarking her as "going out of her way to find things to be offended by, downsize at earliest opportunity" are already not aligned to the corporate bottom line.

Generally, I think that there is some optimal fraction of costs dedicated to workplace culture. In the zeroth approximation, that fraction is zero, because employees should just get their job done. But in higher orders, one would consider that the productivity of employees is a function of workspace culture, so there are gains to be had by investing in workplace culture (e.g. have a HR department to intervene on alleged assaults, make sure that employees are willing to talk to each other, etc).

This is avoiding the question of what a good workplace culture is. Is it one where guys can wear T-shirts with Star Trek characters on them and talk about videogames, or is it one where this is disallowed because it makes women uncomfortable? Is it one where guys can get into a heated discussion on some technical manner, arguing and interrupting each other, or is it one where this is disallowed because women find it difficult to participate in such a free-for-all? Is it one where someone who says something ignorant or stupid can be called out, or one where their ignorance or stupidity is treated with kindness? Is it one where guys must constantly examining their language for "sexist" expressions (like the default male pronoun, or popular memes which reference rape) and making sure no technical matters are incidentally sexist (e.g. talking about male and female connectors, or a gender bender, or using a test image of an attractive woman)?

Because we've seen for decades -- and turned up to 11 in the last 15 years -- that this is what you get. It follows directly from having women in the workplace and specially protected from offense or anything that could be considered to make them uncomfortable.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats