Helen Andrew’s article in Compact Magazine about The Great Feminization has caused a stir, particularly her observation about the rule of law. We covered it in “Wokeness is Feminization”:
The Great Feminization is truly unprecedented. Other civilizations have given women the vote, granted them property rights, or let them inherit the thrones of empires. No civilization in human history has ever experimented with letting women control so many vital institutions of our society, from political parties to universities to our largest businesses….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….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 tugs at your heartstrings or runs contrary to your gut sense of which party is more sympathetic….
Cathy Young at The Bulwark called Andrew’s arguments “a grotesquely misogynistic screed” even while admitting the core of Andrew’s argument, “there is certainly evidence that sex differences in human psychology and behavior, whether due to socialization, biology, or both, are real and affect social interactions.” Many other reactions are similarly hysterical.
But Megan McArdle at WaPo writes a more mild opposition which also concedes the basics of Andrew’s argument, assuring us that “I think civilization will survive all right.” From the WaPo column:
The social science literature on men and women suggests that on average we differ psychologically and physically. There are tall, disputatious women (I’m one of them) and short, empathic men, but on average women are still shorter than men. We’re also more empathetic, more averse to risk and conflict, and more likely to prioritize feelings and relationships over abstract rules….Cancel culture, for example, does feel like female-style aggression — one might even call it “toxic femininity.” (My phrase, not hers.) Since that phrase will probably raise some hackles, let me explain: an all-out reputational attack that seems to come from everywhere at once and nowhere in particular. It’s a dynamic that will be familiar to anyone who has attended an all-girls camp….These passive aggressive tactics aren’t the sole province of women, but they’re more common in groups of women than groups of men. Women lean more left than men, which might explain why they have proliferated in progressive spaces. Other explanations include the left’s growing insistence on the primacy of subjective feelings and “lived experience,” and its elevation of microaggressions into major causes of action.Put a group of boys together, writes [Joyce] Benenson, and you’ll see structured play with elaborate rules and hierarchies of skill that they spend time negotiating, while the girls “shake their heads at what seems to them a bizarre emphasis on enforcing the rules at the expense of other more important concerns, such as someone’s feelings.” That’s a pretty good description of much of the Great Awokening: defenders of abstract norms such as free speech squaring off against critics who argued those norms permitted too much exclusion, hurt and offense.That said, I think civilization will survive all right, though I concede that the progressive cancellations were in some ways more damaging than their current conservative counterpart, not because they were progressive, but because they were leaderless. The ability to fade into the mob lowers the personal risk of launching an attack, which means you get more of them. Also, when no one is in charge, there are no rules for targeting and no way to halt the attack….If you’re tempted to say that’s impossible, remember that men and women have been cooperating for a very long time. We managed to propagate the species for hundreds of thousands of years, under very difficult conditions. I’m quite confident that if we put our heads together, we can also build better institutions for the coming century.
Here’s a more complete version of Andrew’s argument:
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY