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As I mentioned back in July, every month in our office canteen, a member of the HR team hangs up posters on the noticeboard of notable days or commemorations which fall within that calendar month. A lot of these are harmless days and observations that no one could take exception to (World Friendship Day, World Chocolate Day etc.), but a significant number this month were of a more... strident nature. In descending order from the top of the notice board:
Numbers 1, 2, 4 and 5 are unobjectionable (curious if I'll hear the "ugh, every day is International Men's Day!" joke two weeks from today). With regard to #3, my immediate thought was "for God's sake, how many days do you people need?" But my primary reaction was a feeling that 3, 5 and 6 are all in tension with one another, and that anyone who thinks about this for long enough would realise how unstable the coalition is.
More than anything I'm reminded of Scott's evergreen post "Neutral vs. Conservative: The Eternal Struggle":
Were I to argue that male rapists with intact penises don't belong in women's prisons, I'd doubtless be accused of bringing politics into the workplace, but observing Trans Awareness Week is just being a decent person. Were I to point out the shockingly brutal acts of violence against women Hamas committed on October 7th, I'd doubtless be accused of bringing politics into the workplace*; but announcing that you "stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people" is just being a decent person.
I don't know. I'm frustrated. I'd have no problem with a "don't talk about politics in work" rule, provided it was applied consistently.
*Even if I prefaced it by saying that Israel's response was disproportionate, and acknowledging that Israel has also committed crimes against humanity.
I think this ties into the argument from that Helen Andrews essay about how American society is becoming more feminized. And the office/workplace culture is maybe the biggest shift. All of the political views that are allowed to be expressed are the feminist positions, all the ones banned are the anti-feminist ones.
To be fair, you'd have a very different experience in other places. If you put up those posters in, like, an army barracks, or a gaming discord, or uh... here... most people would make fun of them and maybe attack you personally. You'd have a lot more slack to put up the opposite views.
Bottom line: people are political animals, we're not neutral, everyone just favors their own side.
I forget exactly where I read it, but I believe it was in Ed Dutton’s book on the conservative demographic revolution where he pointed out in Islamic medieval society (this was back when the Mongols were rampaging throughout the continent), women had an increasingly considerable influence in political society. You had female imam’s, elites and you even had them influencing military affairs; but his point was that on some level, all of these ended up getting turned in pet projects of sorts and ceased to serve the original function for which they were intended. That was one of the reasons they became so internally weak and were later pushed over by Genghis Khan so easily. There definitely are consequences to an overly feminized or masculinized society.
The stakes for female status games is who seizes the pie and distributes it thusly, the stakes for male status games is getting more pies or defending pies from raiders, or failing which destroying the pies so no one gets to eat. The reign of Ottoman Sultanas consolidated and preserved Suleimans expansions for nearly a century, an unheard of territorial expansion when succession crises were the literal order of the day. Women have a role in societies, and can perform them better than men precisely because they are not men. Unsurprisingly societies that had long term continual civic stability without women in charge had un-men running the show: eunuchs and celibate clergy. The value in having the authoritatively incapable administer the machine prevents claimants from fearing what is effectively management buyouts and what keeps the machine going in lull or transition periods.
The tradeoff is when the administration thinks it is the authority and parasites itself into power. The trappings of authority are not the muscle inside the fist, and when push comes to shove the kinetic authority must assert itself. Ironically the women who know the game therefore are incentivized to accumulate and wield authority rather than administrative alliances because their authority is more likely to be directly challenged. Theres a point here somewhere about Merkels weakness being indulged by the German public lead to the wif schiffen das death knell, but I can't be bothered to spell it out.
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