Why we must make peace with feminisation
Blame the government, not feminisation per se.
Feminisation, as defined by the immense gains in the socioeconomic, cultural, and political clout of women in public life and our institutions, has been provocatively blamed for many of the pathologies of modern life. Helen Andrews’ view is typical and widespread amongst the right. Richard Hanania has retorted that whilst wokeness1 is bad, the sustained assault to our freedoms and institutions from the right is much worse, and that they are no more truth seeking - contrary to Andrews' thesis. On a superficial level, this line of reasoning may strike one as engaging in whataboutism, yet it is directly relevant to the discourse here, as feminisation has been used to justify the victimhood narrative on the right that is enabling their authoritarianism. Whilst I argue that Andrews is in general correct, we should not attribute blame to feminisation per se.
In Part I of this essay (yes I hate essays too, so this will be more informal than what you may encounter in an academic paper, but I need an essay to defend my position), I summarise what we know regarding gender differences, and the implications of those in tandem with feminisation for wider society. In Part II, I argue that it is not feminisation per se that is the problem, but rather a particularly blank-slateist notion of feminity that forms the basis of our legal and regulatory system. The implication of this is that it is unnecessary to critique feminism, as one can just advocate for the legal changes they prescribe without the controversy. Therefore, the cause of liberty is more effectively served by making peace with feminism.
Part I: debunking the blank-slate
First of all, we must review the literature on the psychological differences between men and women, in order to establish how “feminisation” may influence public life. Indeed, it is clear that whilst intergender differences exist, women are not “from Venus” nor are men “from Mars”:
Both sexes engage in similar moral reasoning, with only subtle differences that fail to be robust once accounting for multiple contexts.
Men yield greater spatial awareness - an advantage in STEM.
The scientific consensus on gender differences in IQ is that mean IQ is similar for both sexes, as you can see from the links provided above, but the variance for males is larger than variance in female IQ. This means that men are more likely to have learning disabilities and to be geniuses. Hence, Larry Summers was not only right, but he was solely communicating the consensus.
Women tend to outperform men on memory and perception, and are more adept at body language (again from Halpern).
On average, women score higher in neuroticism. Indeed, this is where the conservative viewpoint on the threat to free speech from feminisation (because females are censoring speech and topics on the basis of their negative emotional reactions) is at its strongest.
Women are more interested in relationships, whilst men are more interested in the physical realm. Hence why (for example) women dominate the nursing and teaching professions, whilst men are disproportionately represented in STEM fields and sports. From division of labour and comparative advantage, this differential gender specialisation is a good thing, and is why I reject measures to eliminate group differences in outcomes between the sexes (conditional on individuals of both sexes having the same legal rights of course!). To the extent that feminisation attempts to enforce equality in outcomes, again I agree with conservatives on this. Females also yield much stronger preferences for intimate monogamous relationships relative to males; you see this on the demand-side for the markets in pornography and prostitution.
Men are much more likely to be diagnosed with autism (best exemplified by the famous work of Simon Baron Cohen), and although in recent years there have been efforts to diagnose more women, we see substantial diagnostic drift in how we define autism.
Men are also much more likely to be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder and more likely to score high in psychopathy. Of course, anyone who looks at prison populations knows that men tend to be more aggressive and crime-prone. If cancellation via fists or the old culture of honour is worse than current feminine nodes of cancellation, then this is perhaps where the conservative view on feminisation is at its weakest.
Men are more obsessed with status than women, and are less risk-averse. Given that dominant men enjoy more sexual partners, there is a strong evolutionary rationale for this. To the extent that feminisation leads to an obsessive focus on safety, this is bad for innovation and freedom. Yet, we no longer live in a world where dominance contests are solved via the fist, but instead via acquiring wealth and fame and professional status. Yes, feminisation, to the extent that it diminishes the relative status and payoff attached to pointless fights as a function of bruised ego, is unequivocally positive here. Just consider the fact that duelling was ubiquitous just over a century ago, over matters as innocuous as a man’s “honour” being insulted. How ridiculous was that?
As a sanity check on these empirical claims, let us see if the theory checks out and consider how we evolved. I want to emphasise that I am not defending these biological differences (that would be committing the naturalistic fallacy); merely that I am engaging in a solely positive, not normative, exercise here.
As with most mammals, women invest a lot more in the development of their offspring. This makes sense right? As women bear the pains and inconveniences of carrying their child to birth (not to mention the process itself - for most of human history the probability of the mother dying upon childbirth was high!), to have a strong incentive to do so, they must have a strong attachment to their offspring (hence a high payoff from childbirth). So natural selection selects for females to be high in empathy (facilitated by higher levels of oxytocin than males), which leads to a greater focus on relationships and emotional wellbeing. A greater attachment to offspring can also explain greater risk aversion.
For their offspring, it is natural to conclude that women want a reliable partner that protects and provides for their family. This is where men come in. We do not face the direct physical costs of childbirth, so natural selection has primed us into seeking to maximise our number of offspring via maximising our number of sexual partners. This explains our greater interest in sex. Moreover, we can maximise offspring via mating with multiple females, yet the reverse is not true (women can only carry one child at a time, notwithstanding twins!), so females are the scarcer resource. Hence, we compete with other males to fulfill female desires. Hence, our greater obsession with status, which for most of human history translated into physical dominance: explaining our higher levels of aggression, our physical makeup, and even our greater spatial abilities (good for foraging and fighting). Higher testosterone levels in males facilitates this.
This emphasis on status is vital, as it is falsely claimed on the manosphere that women care only for physical attractiveness (the “alpha” vs “beta distinction). That could not be further from the truth: status nowadays is measured professionally. They are either projecting the male desire (males care more about physical attractiveness relative to females, given their greater focus on sex) onto females, or are a few centuries out of date. Another false claim prevalent on the manosphere is that women are inherently mistrustful and prone to cheating. Again, it is males that have a greater proclivity towards polygamy. In most human societies where polygamy is common, polygyny is the norm. I highlight the manosphere in particular as their misogynistic snake-oil is fostering (or at least reflective of) widespread resentment towards females amongst a growing subcategory of males. To counter this, we must counter their false beliefs. Likewise, the link between manosphere and rightist discourse runs deep, as any casual observer can attest. Based groyper terminology, the rhetoric that MAGA chuds use, and 4chan discourse is basically identical to that on MRA or MGTOW forums. The most prominent figures in the manosphere are all linked to MAGA or the alt-right. So a critique of manosphere culture can also be generalised as a critique of conservative culture in its attitudes to women, and hence this thesis on the harms of feminisation. To the extent that this resentment fosters a victimhood narrative amongst conservatives, this feminisation rhetoric could justify their looming authoritarianism, and so for this reason Hanania’s argument cannot be dismissed as whataboutism.
Overall, a reasonable observer will read this and conclude that psychological differences between the sexes are small2. Where they exist, the aggregate merits of feminisation are ambiguous, as we would expect as liberals if we judge individuals on their own merits, as opposed to representing a collective group identity. However, they do exist, so we must reject the blank-slate: the notion that we are all born equally so genetics do not matter. When feminisation is reflective of blank-slateist ideology driving public policy, yielding a downstream effect on all our institutions, then it becomes problematic, which leads on to my next claim.
Part II: how governments create the great feminisation
Feminism in the West today is no longer concerned with equal rights under the law, but rather (starting from the second-wave feminism of the 1960s-80s that arose after the American civil-rights movement) equality of outcomes in average group traits. All group differences between men and women are a function of social conditioning via patriarchal stereotypes that ultimately serve to systematically oppress women. By denying or ignoring any biological or psychological differences, this feminism is a subset of blank-slateism, and so contradicts mainstream science. Think of this as a left-wing equivalent of climate change denial or creationism. Although some on the extreme-right and in manosphere circles do indeed oppose equality in legal rights (particularly over the right to vote, divorce, or own property), when most people say they are against feminism, it is this version they are opposing. This is the case for Helen Andrews, with a particular emphasis on harassment law and the free-speech implications. Although she links the Great Awokening of the 2010s to a tipping point at which many institutions became majority-female for the first time, I will argue that selection pressures imply that this version of feminisation would be expected to exacerbate the tendency of institutions to be woke.
Harassment law, a subset of civil-rights law, assumes that a disparate impact on minorities is caused whenever they feel uncomfortable in the workplace3 . Yes that's right: disparate impact in effect enforces the woke blank-slateist viewpoint on group differences into law4. If espousing a belief in sex differences causes the slightest whiff of offence, then a company may fire you to hedge against being held liable to a costly (class action) lawsuit - explaining the firings of James Damore and Summers. In the context of sex, any sexually charged comments that make a woman uncomfortable can be grounds for a lawsuit, where employers can be held liable for the actions of their employees. The prospect of a lucrative payoff under this environment further incentivises thin skins and litigious employees, which interacts with the tendency for women to be higher in neuroticism.
However, a company does have a defence if it can demonstrate that it follows the “best practices” of the industry. Hence why the HR and DEI bureaucracies enforce these speech codes and implement training seminars on DEI and sexual harassment. In an attempt to signal to judges and regulators that they take all forms of discrimination seriously, they are engaged in an arms race to signal race and sex consciousness, hence the emergence of “woke capital”.
The non-retaliation principle prevents punishing the accuser, so if the employer seeks to separate the disputing parties, the accused will be punished, despite no evidence of guilt. Of course, this is dressed up in the far more romantic “believe all women” mantra. Better to think that you are waging a noble Manichean quest against patriarchal “rape culture” than defending corporate America being motivated by nothing more than covering its back. The Title IX kangaroo courts convicted based on a “preponderance of the evidence” standard, hence little due process. Then afterwards came the MeToo movement, which basically seeks to transpose the principles of sexual harassment law into the criminal realm. Are you noticing a pattern here? The ideological justification tends to follow the changes in the regulatory outlook. In this sense, Andrews is correct in that blank-slate feminisation does indeed threaten the rule of law, but is wrong if discussing feminisation per se.
Ultimately, the way we think about sex and intergender relations is shaped via this pervasive social engineering. Most individuals are apolitical and have no deep interest in the social sciences, so will not take the risk of questioning this dogma. As such, the overall result is the feminisation of public life, at a cost to our cherished freedoms of expression and association, and the free market as institutions can no longer set their internal working culture according to their own preferences. However, this was never an inevitable outcome of feminisation, but rather the outcome of government intervention. In this sense, Hanania is correct - ceteris paribus, this version of feminisation is negative, yet it is far more useful to attack government regulations directly as opposed to feminisation per se.
Where Andrews is correct is that, in this context, the greater prominence of women in the workplace and academia will tilt institutions further towards wokeness. To see why, consider the underlying blank-slateist assumptions of civil-rights law, as applied to sex discrimination. A worldview that neglects aggregate group disparities appeals to the more androgynous and career-focused females. Women with more traditionalist views on gender roles tend to opt-out of the labour force altogether5. Therefore, women's preferences are far from homogenous, yet our current feminisation prioritises only one vision of womanhood. However, this blank-slateist vision of feminity dominates the workforce, as it selects for those women that disproportionately subscribe to this ideology. Alongside this selection effect, the imperative to avoid any disparate impact in hiring gives way to an implicit quota system in the name of “diversity”, to boost female representation. Therefore, the total proportion of females in the workforce and public institutions is also higher as a result of civil-rights law. Any great feminisation is endogenous to shifts in public policy, so whilst it coincides with the madness of the Great Awokening, it fails the causal identification test as a cause of that phenomenon.
Moreover, changes in the relative ideological distribution of lawsuits also shifts outcomes independently of dramatic changes to the proportion of women in the workforce, as can be seen by the end of “peak woke”. The Trump administration, no longer deterred by liberal epithets of racism, is enforcing pressure in the other direction: to avoid explicit “reverse discrimination” against whites and males, which is what DEI effectively is. If anything, the assault on academic freedom is the worst yet since at least the “red scare”. This lends credence to Hanania's argument that feminisation per se is no threat to the pursuit of the truth, but rather shifts in the political and institutional climate.
Conclusion
Blank-slateism has been utterly discredited: the sexes do differ in key average traits, which in a free society would inevitably produce group disparities, yet less so than rightists may think. Left open is the question of whether increased political and economic clout of women does indeed harm civilisation, as Andrews argues. I think it is obvious that the predicted aggregate effects of feminisation are too ambiguous to make such a sweeping normative claim.
Nonetheless, to the extent that feminisation is reflective of state-sanctioned social engineering to enforce equality of outcomes in spite of the tradeoffs to meritocracy, and core freedoms of expression and association, then Andrews is correct. Nonetheless, correlation is not causation. This is where Hanania's emphasis contradicts, properly in my view, and assigns blame instead to political changes in the legal and regulatory environment, and their downstream effects on corporate life and public institutions.
Most importantly, if feminisation justifies resentment towards an out group, and a victimhood narrative within an in group, we yield a recipe for disaster regarding the functioning of our institutions and the safeguarding of our liberties. Democracy, academic freedom, and the rule of law, then faces a far worse assault in the opposite direction. Therefore, it is vital to be specific in our criticisms of cultural trends, and if we really do care about living in a free society, to counter any false narrative that could justify authoritarian ideas. Pin the blame on governments.
Ultimately, any narrative or thesis that refers to feminism as harmful in some manner to society would be better served without the use of such a loaded term. Whatever the issue is, you can always provide a more specific analysis that addresses the point directly, without charges of misogyny or “toxic masculinity” levied onto you. Therefore, I will no longer critique feminism, and rather will just get to the heart of what I want to say or solve. I guess I have become “black-pilled”, and inevitably many may accuse me of selling out to leftists. I prefer to think of this as intellectual and epistemic maturity on my part, which will serve me and society better in the long-run. To advance the cause of liberty, we must make peace with feminism.
Often taken as granted to be synonymous with feminisation, and the supposed feminine prioritisation of emotional harms relative to free speech and the rigorous pursuit of the truth under vigorous debate, as in Andrews’ essay.
This should not even be said, but we are talking about averages, not each and every individual within a group. Inevitably, discussion on gender differences will lead to the charge of sexism, so that must be countered. Whilst on a normative basis, these differences matter for our desired outcomes, I make no normative claim on these differences per se.
I will focus on American civil-rights law here, yet the legal framework is similar across Western countries. In fact, given that the EU enforces adherence to ESG via sustainability disclosures, and that Trump has rolled back civil-rights law via his executive orders, the situation is arguably worse outside the US. This does not even broach the crisis of free speech in Britain.
Many attribute this to the influence of postmodernist or “cultural Marxist” scholars; inspired by the Frankfurt School and philosophers such as Foucault, Gramsci, and Marcuse. Under this view, these radicals gained influence on the left during the countercultural movement of the 60s, which thereby translated into policy. Hanania provides an alternative historical account in his “Origins of Woke” (2023): emphasising the pressures amongst bureaucrats and judges interpreting the law to attain tangible results on civil-rights progress, congressional logrolling, and bipartisanship amongst Republicans (much of this expansion occured under their watch). Andrews implies that this is a byproduct of feminisation and its emphasis on minimising emotional damage. Whatever the cause, all agree that disparate impact institutionalises wokeness into law. Many critics of feminism neglect the sheer legal and regulatory pressures stemming from the expansion in civil-rights law via instead prioritising cultural explanations, yet this approach is deeply mistaken, as we have no observable counterfactual of the results without the expansion in civil-rights law.
Assuming that women are split approximately equally between progressives and conservatives, and that progressive females are overwhelmingly in the workforce, given that in the major Western economies only 50-60% of females participate in the labour market at any given time.