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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.
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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