The Great Feminization
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The Great Feminization
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Re: The Great Feminization
#2The idea that there are straightforward “female” and “male” traits should seem quite shaky to anyone who is even a little bit into humanities. The problem is that both sides of the equation are constructs of the mind, both the thing we would like to measure, and the measure itself. Fighting journalistic simplification with journalistic simplification is not the mentioned “pursuit of truth”. So before arguing whether pink is “for silly girls”, or “proud female colour”, it would be great to remember that its association with gender basically only started yesterday.
Even if we assume that there are “standard men” and “standard women”, there's another problem: office politics occurring in country M in century N is most certainly the product of specific culture, and not some cavemen rituals. Problems of Patrick or Patricia Bateman are probably quite alien to a lot of people in the world.
The irony is that the image of “good old days” is itself based on modern day stereotypes. So-called progressive propaganda was quite focused on the caricature of concentrated Bad Masculine Man, and now, freshly painted, it is presented as a positive example (because public is familiar with it, and making public think is too hard).
Re: The Great Feminization
#3I can’t take this author seriously for a number of reasons, but the main one being that she assumes groups of men are more likely to behave rationally. Anyone who has experience with teenage boys should know better than to say that, but even if you take that out of consideration life is just not that simple. Similarly for truth-seeking, men and women lie the same amount if their incentives are the same. Most people default to lying to achieve political aims because they assume moral superiority in positive outcomes for their group.
A majority women group may be more rational, competitive, or risk-seeking (all values she attributes as more likely to appear in groups of men), but it depends on the women in the group. She already admits that individual characteristics are variable across sexes or genders.
There’s also an implicit assumption that masculine traits are de facto optimal for making an organization fit or successful. They can be, but so are the feminine traits which she would like to see less of. Feminine traits evolved in the first place to provide a necessary counterbalance to problem-solving without a myopic and invariable approach. If a team member is sick, you take care of them so they can contribute again (their domain knowledge and inherent capabilities are their main contributions), instead of chucking them over the side of a hill.
Successful populations in nature have thrived because of adaption, flexibility, and variability. It doesn’t make sense to say that any aspect of society achieved the success that it did because of the presence of masculine traits alone. I think masculine traits are important, but a monoculture approach has almost always lead to the downfall of an empire. Great ideas have come from all sorts of people (and cultures), and we do humanity a disservice by reducing ourselves down to what may essentially be skin deep (literally). The goal should be to enable individuals to reach whatever level of excellence that they’re capable of achieving, regardless of sex or gender. That’s feminism as I remember it, that’s the core of egalitarianism.
There are a lot of factors which are polarizing American society, and other places, but it’s more geopolitical than sociocultural, due to the connected nature of the world now. I could be wrong, but the main thrust of wokeness is restorative justice, and it’s not centered around feminization, necessarily. I think people who advocate for restorative justice need to exercise some caution because I don’t think they fully appreciate the constancy of human nature across different dimensions of being human. If you change the positions of a mean rich person and meek poor person, don’t expect that only the rich/poor parts of those labels will change. People will make the same terrible decisions that you hate the current dominant groups for, that’s just who we are. It’s better to create systems which enable egalitarian self-actualization of individuals than ones which optimize for tribal success.
Last point on the counterbalance of feminine and masculine traits—I like this metaphor from a Samurai film (I forget which): a sword dulls faster if it is never sheathed. Taking Joan of Arc as an example, her literal sword was sheathed by her faith, in many ways.
Re: The Great Feminization
#4The idea that there are straightforward “female” and “male” traits should seem quite shaky to anyone who is even a little bit into humanities. The problem is that both sides of the equation are constructs of the mind, both the thing we would like to measure, and the measure itself. Fighting journalistic simplification with journalistic simplification is not the mentioned “pursuit of truth”. So before arguing whether…
thank you. I almost posted earlier but stopped myself, thinking, this discussion could be very divisive, you did it better.
I just read a book about civic action, where a comment was made that suggested not thinking about left and right, but of top and bottom... but even that is dualistic.
Re: The Great Feminization
#5The idea that there are straightforward “female” and “male” traits should seem quite shaky to anyone who is even a little bit into humanities. The problem is that both sides of the equation are constructs of the mind, both the thing we would like to measure, and the measure itself. Fighting journalistic simplification with journalistic simplification is not the mentioned “pursuit of truth”. So before arguing whether…
thank you. I almost posted earlier but stopped myself, thinking, this discussion could be very divisive, you did it better. I just read a book about civic action, where a comment was made that suggested not thinking about left and right, but of top and bottom... but even that is dualistic.
>both sides of the equation are constructs of the mind,
More than dualistic when so much of the time it is constructs of other peoples' minds on top of that.
Re: The Great Feminization
#6I was hoping that this article would be about a hypothetical future where people have evolved to have a lower amount of bravery and a lower "fighting spirit", so that they're simply to afraid to fly fighter jets or be nuclear submarine captains.
Re: The Great Feminization
#7I can’t take this author seriously for a number of reasons, but the main one being that she assumes groups of men are more likely to behave rationally. Anyone who has experience with teenage boys should know better than to say that, but even if you take that out of consideration life is just not that simple. Similarly for truth-seeking, men and women lie the same amount if their incentives are the same. Most people d…
From Sanjuro, as quoted here?
https://ameblo.jp/fighting-toma/entry-12251883996.html
Eg: "masculine" (relentlessly) open debate+unfettered pursuit of truth as advocated in TFA never sheathing the sword
Re: The Great Feminization
#8The idea that there are straightforward “female” and “male” traits should seem quite shaky to anyone who is even a little bit into humanities. The problem is that both sides of the equation are constructs of the mind, both the thing we would like to measure, and the measure itself. Fighting journalistic simplification with journalistic simplification is not the mentioned “pursuit of truth”. So before arguing whether…
> The problem is that both sides of the equation are constructs of the mind
No, they are not. And when we take into account that they are not, the whole argument breaks down.
Re: The Great Feminization
#9This is an actually interesting take on the societal problem (ie, some people hate woke, some people absolutely embrace it), and based on my understanding of human behavior, this isn't actually that wrong: men and women do have different behavior inside the tribe, and these behaviors, both good and bad, keep modern society from optimally functioning.
Everything in society is colored by this, good or bad. Everything. Even politics, even dynamics in families, even your work place, even your school.
Not every individual is 100% male behavior or 100% female behavior (something the alt-right podcasters keep bringing up to drive a wedge between their victims and society at large), but generally your average male is going to, on average, have male behavior and it will come naturally to them; vice versa, average female is going to, on average, have female behavior, and it will come natural to them. Conflict resolution is one of those things that differ between the two.
This article would probably benefit greatly from citing works on psychology and neurobiology, because it has been noted by science over the decades that testosterone and estrogen levels mediate many things in human behavior, including which conflict resolution camp you belong to. The article paints this entirely too black and white, because nobody is firmly in either camp.
The article also fails to actually state the correct solution: you're gonna be who you are, and you shouldn't be shamed for it, but you're gonna have to learn how to deal with both kinds of conflicts, and realize when a conflict doesn't actually exist and its just a mismatch between the two camps. Sometimes you need to negotiate the "conflict resolution even if it compromises the truth/logic" side, sometimes you need to negotiate the "logic even if it steps on people's feelings" side, and sometimes the logic side does actually need to win out and you have to pay the toll on that, and sometimes the feelings side needs to win out because it isn't worth the cost.
Also, a woman wrote that article, and I think the people here on HN missed that.
Re: The Great Feminization
#10The idea that there are straightforward “female” and “male” traits should seem quite shaky to anyone who is even a little bit into humanities. The problem is that both sides of the equation are constructs of the mind, both the thing we would like to measure, and the measure itself. Fighting journalistic simplification with journalistic simplification is not the mentioned “pursuit of truth”. So before arguing whether…
Yeah, it’s very strange to me that the starting premise of some of these articles seems to be masculinity is UFC and femininity is The Real Housewives. Most men I know, and certainly over a certain age don’t want to work for a frat boy culture. I’ve worked for plenty of men who exhibit ruinous empathy and plenty of women with excess ambition, and I’d say the dichotomy of ambition - empathy is wrong. The best leaders of either gender have both.
I do also love how she glossed over her example of how men were better at reconciliation and less likely to cancel culture because men were conditioned for war in which “ The point of war is to settle disputes between two tribes, but it works only if peace is restored after the dispute is settled. Men therefore developed methods for reconciling with opponents and learning to live in peace with people they were fighting yesterday.” Like completely glossing over the fact that first they felt they had to kill thousands of people? And do you think it was the people who fundamentally differed in ideology that reconciled with?
Then like: “Men order each other around, but women can only suggest and persuade”
Almost every leader eventually learns that leading through influence is much more powerful than leading through authority, gender be damned.
But it’s also just got more holes than Swiss cheese. Sure I love classical liberalism and the ideas of rationality, but per some of her own arguments, this isn’t the natural state of things. Most men in most cultures just wanted to club people over the head to win arguments, not engage in rationality. Most kings just wanted their way, not to deal with an objective legal system. And per her own arguments, are men Socrates or Bluto?