I think what your saying is that the way women speak, and thus "think publicly," is based on emotional safety rather than direct confrontation. Women avoid a more combative style of debate that serves the pursuit of truth and understanding (and I will add decision making). Am I hearing you correctly?
It takes courage to say what you're saying. I see the problems you raise.
I can add that for my own experience of 30 plus years in the software business, and most specifically coming up through software engineering, that this culture you're talking about doesn't really exist. It's the kind of work where you can either do it well or you can't, and the ones that can do it stand out, and the ones that cannot can't hide. It can be a pressure cooker.
The idea of a “tech bro” is a silly cartoon.
And the women that are in it tend to be the ones who thrive in that kind of environment.
I've also had enough experience running sales and a similar culture exists there. You can either close deals or you can't. And once again, there's really nowhere to hide if you can't close deals.
So perhaps my point is that these behaviors may depend on the kind of work environment that is in question. If you can survive by climbing the status ladder, not having to perform the underlying difficult task at hand, then perhaps it can become purely bureaucratic and distorted in the ways that you are exploring. I'm simplifying here, but I'm not making this up. I've been through too much at this point.
You are correct, it’s not the case in that industry. I, too, am in enterprise software consulting in a technical leadership function. Since I came into this context, my life is better. What I’m saying in this piece is relevant only to female dominated environments. Technical women are not like this.
Long ago , I had an excellent teacher who deserved the name of philosopher. I'll dare to call you the same. Your way to find Truth is the good one.
Feminization is a setback of civilization,
Women are not culprits : it's a political mecanism, I call "victimism" which is the root of the matter.
Everything is moved by greedyness, since 1971.
History showed me "victimisms" are quite common: all revolutions opposed "victims" and "predators" as well as Nazism or Peronism. Feminism is but the last victimism.
ALL were disasters for the countries concerned because without truth a society living in falsehood, will implode, any innovation is bannished and greedyness will triumph, for victms, for politicians, for some lobbies, for abuses, for a time.
So called "progressive" people, but true predators get rich while infected societies crumble and a next round begins with dare devils bulls leaders (Trump, Milei, Melloni, ...)
I am just an ordinary philosopher, not looking for profit.
Just wanting to help.
If anybody wants I can explain every feminist step since 1971, and hominous dangers lurking in future.
This is an interesting conversation, but I always feel like it needs to be discussed as toxic behavior. And especially in the climate for today, has to be discussed in comparison with another toxic behavior. There are toxic masculine and toxic feminine behaviors. People can engage in both feminine and masculine behaviors. You don’t only engage in masculine behaviors if you’re a male and you don’t only engage in feminine behaviors when you’re a female. The playground bully is a good example of toxic masculine behavior. It can be a boy or a girl doing it, but either case they are threatening the person if they don’t give them their lunch money or play with them or whatever. Toxic toxic feminine bullying would be more geared towards judgment. They don’t threaten with physical harm, but there is a subtle and implied threat of being seen as a bad person or being left out of the group. I don’t think most men or women engage in either one of those toxic behaviors. But the people who do, like your article states, controls the framing of how things work. So if you have 100 women in a group and 90 of them do not think that way the 10 who do can often create an atmosphere of which there is a lot of judgment and people feel pressured to go along.
The power dynamics within speech, although clearly understood within hierarchies and genders, aren’t necessarily acknowledged within genders. This is such an excellent piece.
I think there’s a real jarring effect within how women speak and communicate with each other, when this kind of linguistic capital imbalance happens. The “we lift each other up” comes at the implicit “as long as it’s not higher than me” condition. Linguistic capital is capital like currency, women act from a place of scarcity.
The speech norms of women to hedge and placate are a great place to examine this language, and the duplicity of some of these relationships.
I appreciate the linguistic perspective here because that field, too, is captured ideologically I hear. The thing about linguistic capital I’ve noticed - it’s directly influenced by how much you read and how difficult the material is. Many women either don’t read at all or read incredibly easy fiction (YA), so while they’re consuming books they’re not challenging themselves. There’s a sort of structural allergy to intellectual challenge among women in general because of our social incentives from the female social world.
I'm reading that linguistics is ideological (let me know if I've misinterpreted that) - linguistics is often thought of as in the Humanities discipline but it is the scientific study of language with many studies within discourse analysis to analyse language.
Linguistic capital is gained in many ways, and aligns to social structures both within and without, so reading can contribute to linguistic capital because it can expand vocabulary and exposure to different styles but linguistic capital also depends on social context, cultural values, and how society views your way of speaking.
Speak what is pleasant, but never what is untrue.”
Truth matters—but sharing it with someone who is not ready to receive it rarely brings clarity. Instead, it often creates conflict without offering a solution. The real aim is not to assert truth, but to hold it while finding a path that leads toward harmony.
In my experience, patience and persistence—while staying anchored in truth—bring far more transformation than blunt expression ever can. This is where the balance of the masculine and feminine emerges: firmness without aggression, softness without avoidance. That balance is the key to sustenance.
This is beautiful, and I love that you connected it back to our philosophical system. I have often sympathized with Vidura because no one ever listened to his bitter truths. The thing is, the truth is often harsh...so I don't know that it matters whether the person is ready to hear it or not. The characterization of truth as harsh is in the ear of the listener, not a quality of the truth itself.
Truth is truth. It has no character. But it can have implications which determines its nature….What matters is the intention. If you feel that the truth must come out because there is a need to assert, not because it can offer a solution or bring the desired change then it’s pointless. I feel being solution orientated is much more effective than mere driven by ego or a desire to speak up the truth.especially at a space, not prepared to handle it.
This is a great clarification on the problem in institutions where truth-seeking should be priority number 1. In software engineering teams, teams that prioritize direct feedback and personal responsibility+accountability do best, but that's not a typical speech norm.
As someone with a Judeo-Christian background, the idea of the female and male both having an identical moral ideal form of conduct and behavior, on which they will be divinely judged - has been liberating. Believing (for whatever reason) that there is MORE - a greater standard for female conduct that women can own as their own (not an "imitation" of men), has led me to seek out a vision for it, and (try my best to) embody one. So, what's your reason? GO
"Women’s speech norms are the root cause of the erosion of truth in public life. What seems harmless is corrosive, and we can’t name it because we can’t name women as agents of their lives."
"These speech norms require passive voice, conflict avoidance, opacity, emotion, and safety to produce the harmony and consensus on which female friendships are usually based. Accountability in such a scenario becomes impossible because it requires clarity."
It's a shame that some people so disingenuously dismiss these ideas as unfair to women or blaming all women. That's clearly not what you're doing. We just have to have words that mean things.
And I think you've chosen the right words to explain what's happening. I think feminisation is the correct word, simply because it contains all of the definitionally useful information for emotion and consensus versus truth and clarity.
Wow, I only recently discovered your SubStack articles and it is pure amazement that such insights are placed in words, but also that such rational arguments are generated from a woman's perspective. I was doubtful that such was possible anymore with the insanity-acceptance so widespread throughout the West and most of the rest of the world.
".. Intellectual display, in fact, is unwelcome in the female social space. This isn’t because every woman is individually opposed to it, but because of social incentives and enforcement by a minority of women who can’t compete but want power anyway. .."
Those women "who can’t compete but want power anyway." is gold, and women filled HR department and their hiring policies have placed such women throughout once highly productive competence hierarchies, meritless quota hires that are worse than useless, but motivated by resentment or to distract from their incompetence and often motivated in hostility toward hard-working intelligent creative productive men from sexism, they attack in slimy backstabbing unjust false-witnessing ways directed at the most productive 20% that is responsible for over 50% of the production. They are poison to work-environments and the most harmed are the men that are confused and helpless in their delusional-psychopathy behavior and the change into toxic to men environment change over a short time.
The environmental workplace change from the universal masculine goal of being the most competent, down-to any competence above the least performer risks that co-worker [man] becoming a target that may cost him his un-persecuted workplace environment, his good employment record, his job, career, and even his Liberty since false-accusations against a man will often instigate anti-man inspired similar accusations.
I've been grappling with this and I have to ask. Do women like these speech patterns? I know many who hate it. So is it so genetically coded?
We also have the perversion that "to be a successful woman you must be indistinguishable from a successful man". Where male styles and structures are considered more valuable.
It's socially incentivized for women to talk like this, and we keep each other down rather than our innate dislike of a higher register of speech. It's that we know, deep down, we can't openly compete (evolution), so we never develop the specific cognitive muscle of abstract thinking. They also have this wrong: "to be a successful woman you must be indistinguishable from a successful man". My experience has shown me that to be a successful woman, I need to exercise a specific cognitive and relational style. This is a bullshit narrative women have imbibed. I don't somehow act like a man to get ahead; I just am analytical and have social skills, so I am ahead by virtue of that combo. It's that many women have confused actual skills with perception as the source of status. It turns out that women skilled in perception management rise to the top, rather than based on skill. You and I have discussed this topic a lot, so I think you know where I'm coming from if you consider the women you've worked with who are successful. I have never been as successful as I am right now....But I am just being myself. It just so happens that my personality is rewarded in this particular climate, and that this personality developed in spite of all the women around me trying to drag me down. Women discourage the very traits in each other that would lead to success among men.
Right, the "to be a successful woman you must be indistinguishable from a successful man" isn't a success factor per se but an expectation. So a woman who wants to be a mom is a 'failure' whereas the one who wants to be a boss-bitch is 'yaas girl!'
However, you point out a great observation...... their attemps as a 'successful man' is hamstrung by what you just described. There's a MASSIVE dischordance. They are mimicking what they thing a successful man looks like (boss-bitch) and can't do it. They hate they can't do it. So when they see you, using your analytical mind and (more masculine coded?) social skills and see you get ahead..... they hate you and try to drag you down.
So they've emboddied that the feminine is worth less and yet can't actuall execute in the masculine sphere and that might explain why it turns into cluster b?
And because I've written more thoughts on the comment of "to be a successful woman you must be indistinguishable from a successful man", I'm going to share that here to fully do it justice: https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/rediscovering-the-goddess
I will read this one, and it reminds me of an issue someone else took with my use of archetypes to explain feminization to remove the sex issue -- we have both energies within us, and the women we're talking about are out of balance toward the hyperfeminine without any structure, which many expect a man to provide. Structure is ontologically masculine. That person said there's no empirical evidence for this metaphysical conception; therefore, it doesn't apply. I find that to be myopic thinking; reality shows masculine and feminine principles everywhere.
I think the missing piece is a lack of awareness of the rise in Cluster B personality/character disorders. They've exploded.
People with them are often attention-seeking and charismatic, and they easily sweep entire groups into their distorted framework. That's happened at societal scale, and it has wholly captured what the author calls "female society."
It wasn't always this way. It doesn't have to stay this way.
But we have to recognize, and name, publicly, what it is, if we're to change it.
I agree. But there's something I've been struggling with. Cluster B is a DSM diagnoses isn't it? But this explosion seems to mirror the behavior but is it cultural and not an illness? Or is it deep seated and is being unlocked as cultural layers are stripped off?
I think I can help, if you’re able to clear your mind of the “medical” associations that the DSM brings. I’m with you-I don’t see this as “medical.” So, even though I’m going to use the term “Cluster B,” I’m asking you to make a conscious effort to stop yourself from hearing “this guy’s making a medical argument.” I say this so didactically because people have great, great trouble doing this. The emotional connotations cloud it.
There is nothing at all “medical” or “disability” about the nature of Cluster B disorders. Again, I’m using the term, but I’m NOT acceding to the “medical” view.
Cluster B personality disorders are also, and more correctly, called “character” disorders. They are moral, not “medical.” The medical model is wrong and I reject it entirely. The thing we’re talking about—the derangement—is utterly real. But it’s moral, not medical.
That’s why, yes, it follows cultural patterns. But those patterns begin in the home. Cluster B disorders are not biological brain anomalies. They’re not diabetes. They’re moral and ethical perversions. Usually, childhood abuse and neglect largely form them.
That's where I was leaning as well. You can't just 'suddenly' have such a massive explosion of medical issues without a cause. This is where I think the cultural layers that get stripped off uncover a baseline behavior.
Like the addage "Traditions are solutions to problems we don't know exist. Get rid of the solution, and the problems return." It's kind of like when they started attacking the patriarchy and unlocked the manosphere as the worst characters were unleashed and the 'nice men' got sick of being attacked and didn't reign them back in. When you attack the matriarchical structures and unleash the chaos, you get cluster B.
Actually, I really like how you phrased that as I'm been musing because if the classic archetype of female is chaos, and masculine is order. Then when you strip off the stuctures, the Cluster B emerges because it's their attempt to structure their chaos but it becomes fragile because they don't do it well.
Is Cluster B a weak mimicry of how they see the patriarchy?
This is a super interesting thread to pull on and I appreciate your insights.
As with everyone - it depends on women. I personally hate it (working on rectifying it). For me it is more of a survival mechanism, which can be socially transfered through generations. Like, my father has a short fuse and can start bellowing from ant seemingly tiny thing (like, not finding the screwdriver that he himslef put away and still blaming mom for it, even though she didn't touch it, even though the screwdriver was on the floor in the middle of the living room for years).
So women might try to put down other women who try to stand out as a sort if a way to protect them as they have learned that you will be beaten back if you stand out.
I also had men in my life who got agressive if i disagreed with them.
So, the situation is complicated and might need a few generations to remove the separation of communication styles being percieved as feminine/masculine. And to find a style that encompases both.
I agree, and I've written about how we have archetypal feminine and masculine traits inside, regardless of which sex we are. However, you are skirting my structural theory about women's competitive modes, disincentivizing analytical cognition and abstract thinking. You are doing this thing that a lot of women do when they comment, which is bringing in examples of men doing the thing, even though the thing you're saying they do isn't equivalent to the infantilization I'm describing. Men simply don't speak with each other this way that women do, nor do they speak with women as infants. Sure, you can find the odd man who does, but that doesn't negate the pattern among women that I am describing. They're two different things, and I would encourage you to consider why you feel the need to bring up men when someone critiques the incentives for female behavior.
The need to bring up men seems simply to make the very valid point that we form our speech patterns inter-relationally with men. Not simply among women.
She is not disagreeing with you that women engage in this conflict- avoidance speech pattern.
The example of the angry father aptly illustrates that it can de developed because it is useful in deflecting the wrath of volatile men in one’s life.
I am someone who thinks often about our pattern of favoring social harmony over truth seeking, so I find this conversation valuable.
Still- Ieva brings a crucial point I hadn’t considered. Men are physically stronger than women, and conflict- avoidance speech is a useful tool to have when your formative years are spent with volatile men.
I think what your saying is that the way women speak, and thus "think publicly," is based on emotional safety rather than direct confrontation. Women avoid a more combative style of debate that serves the pursuit of truth and understanding (and I will add decision making). Am I hearing you correctly?
Yes that’s what I’m saying
It takes courage to say what you're saying. I see the problems you raise.
I can add that for my own experience of 30 plus years in the software business, and most specifically coming up through software engineering, that this culture you're talking about doesn't really exist. It's the kind of work where you can either do it well or you can't, and the ones that can do it stand out, and the ones that cannot can't hide. It can be a pressure cooker.
The idea of a “tech bro” is a silly cartoon.
And the women that are in it tend to be the ones who thrive in that kind of environment.
I've also had enough experience running sales and a similar culture exists there. You can either close deals or you can't. And once again, there's really nowhere to hide if you can't close deals.
So perhaps my point is that these behaviors may depend on the kind of work environment that is in question. If you can survive by climbing the status ladder, not having to perform the underlying difficult task at hand, then perhaps it can become purely bureaucratic and distorted in the ways that you are exploring. I'm simplifying here, but I'm not making this up. I've been through too much at this point.
You are correct, it’s not the case in that industry. I, too, am in enterprise software consulting in a technical leadership function. Since I came into this context, my life is better. What I’m saying in this piece is relevant only to female dominated environments. Technical women are not like this.
💯
Julock39
Mrs Pandey
Long ago , I had an excellent teacher who deserved the name of philosopher. I'll dare to call you the same. Your way to find Truth is the good one.
Feminization is a setback of civilization,
Women are not culprits : it's a political mecanism, I call "victimism" which is the root of the matter.
Everything is moved by greedyness, since 1971.
History showed me "victimisms" are quite common: all revolutions opposed "victims" and "predators" as well as Nazism or Peronism. Feminism is but the last victimism.
ALL were disasters for the countries concerned because without truth a society living in falsehood, will implode, any innovation is bannished and greedyness will triumph, for victms, for politicians, for some lobbies, for abuses, for a time.
So called "progressive" people, but true predators get rich while infected societies crumble and a next round begins with dare devils bulls leaders (Trump, Milei, Melloni, ...)
I am just an ordinary philosopher, not looking for profit.
Just wanting to help.
If anybody wants I can explain every feminist step since 1971, and hominous dangers lurking in future.
Julock39
This is an interesting conversation, but I always feel like it needs to be discussed as toxic behavior. And especially in the climate for today, has to be discussed in comparison with another toxic behavior. There are toxic masculine and toxic feminine behaviors. People can engage in both feminine and masculine behaviors. You don’t only engage in masculine behaviors if you’re a male and you don’t only engage in feminine behaviors when you’re a female. The playground bully is a good example of toxic masculine behavior. It can be a boy or a girl doing it, but either case they are threatening the person if they don’t give them their lunch money or play with them or whatever. Toxic toxic feminine bullying would be more geared towards judgment. They don’t threaten with physical harm, but there is a subtle and implied threat of being seen as a bad person or being left out of the group. I don’t think most men or women engage in either one of those toxic behaviors. But the people who do, like your article states, controls the framing of how things work. So if you have 100 women in a group and 90 of them do not think that way the 10 who do can often create an atmosphere of which there is a lot of judgment and people feel pressured to go along.
The power dynamics within speech, although clearly understood within hierarchies and genders, aren’t necessarily acknowledged within genders. This is such an excellent piece.
I think there’s a real jarring effect within how women speak and communicate with each other, when this kind of linguistic capital imbalance happens. The “we lift each other up” comes at the implicit “as long as it’s not higher than me” condition. Linguistic capital is capital like currency, women act from a place of scarcity.
The speech norms of women to hedge and placate are a great place to examine this language, and the duplicity of some of these relationships.
I appreciate the linguistic perspective here because that field, too, is captured ideologically I hear. The thing about linguistic capital I’ve noticed - it’s directly influenced by how much you read and how difficult the material is. Many women either don’t read at all or read incredibly easy fiction (YA), so while they’re consuming books they’re not challenging themselves. There’s a sort of structural allergy to intellectual challenge among women in general because of our social incentives from the female social world.
I'm reading that linguistics is ideological (let me know if I've misinterpreted that) - linguistics is often thought of as in the Humanities discipline but it is the scientific study of language with many studies within discourse analysis to analyse language.
Linguistic capital is gained in many ways, and aligns to social structures both within and without, so reading can contribute to linguistic capital because it can expand vocabulary and exposure to different styles but linguistic capital also depends on social context, cultural values, and how society views your way of speaking.
Beautifully expressed viewpoint!
It reminds me of a shlok from the Manusmriti:
satyaṁ brūyāt priyaṁ brūyāt
na brūyāt satyam apriyam |
priyaṁ ca nānṛtaṁ brūyāt
eṣa dharmaḥ sanātanaḥ ||
“Speak the truth, speak what is pleasant.
Do not speak a truth that is harsh.
Speak what is pleasant, but never what is untrue.”
Truth matters—but sharing it with someone who is not ready to receive it rarely brings clarity. Instead, it often creates conflict without offering a solution. The real aim is not to assert truth, but to hold it while finding a path that leads toward harmony.
In my experience, patience and persistence—while staying anchored in truth—bring far more transformation than blunt expression ever can. This is where the balance of the masculine and feminine emerges: firmness without aggression, softness without avoidance. That balance is the key to sustenance.
What a beautiful reminder that truth seeking and truth asserting can turn ugly without a moral and philosophical frame to guide it.
We have to do better than offering people a choice between ugly truth and beautiful lies.
This is beautiful, and I love that you connected it back to our philosophical system. I have often sympathized with Vidura because no one ever listened to his bitter truths. The thing is, the truth is often harsh...so I don't know that it matters whether the person is ready to hear it or not. The characterization of truth as harsh is in the ear of the listener, not a quality of the truth itself.
Truth is truth. It has no character. But it can have implications which determines its nature….What matters is the intention. If you feel that the truth must come out because there is a need to assert, not because it can offer a solution or bring the desired change then it’s pointless. I feel being solution orientated is much more effective than mere driven by ego or a desire to speak up the truth.especially at a space, not prepared to handle it.
This is a great clarification on the problem in institutions where truth-seeking should be priority number 1. In software engineering teams, teams that prioritize direct feedback and personal responsibility+accountability do best, but that's not a typical speech norm.
As someone with a Judeo-Christian background, the idea of the female and male both having an identical moral ideal form of conduct and behavior, on which they will be divinely judged - has been liberating. Believing (for whatever reason) that there is MORE - a greater standard for female conduct that women can own as their own (not an "imitation" of men), has led me to seek out a vision for it, and (try my best to) embody one. So, what's your reason? GO
I think there are 2 great quotes here:
"Women’s speech norms are the root cause of the erosion of truth in public life. What seems harmless is corrosive, and we can’t name it because we can’t name women as agents of their lives."
"These speech norms require passive voice, conflict avoidance, opacity, emotion, and safety to produce the harmony and consensus on which female friendships are usually based. Accountability in such a scenario becomes impossible because it requires clarity."
It's a shame that some people so disingenuously dismiss these ideas as unfair to women or blaming all women. That's clearly not what you're doing. We just have to have words that mean things.
And I think you've chosen the right words to explain what's happening. I think feminisation is the correct word, simply because it contains all of the definitionally useful information for emotion and consensus versus truth and clarity.
Wow, I only recently discovered your SubStack articles and it is pure amazement that such insights are placed in words, but also that such rational arguments are generated from a woman's perspective. I was doubtful that such was possible anymore with the insanity-acceptance so widespread throughout the West and most of the rest of the world.
I have helped document this change to mankind;
"Multiverse Journal - Index Number 2227:, 27th September 2025, The Ongoing Worldwide Rape of Mind and Soul to fully realize Homo Umbrans" https://stevenwork.substack.com/p/multiverse-journal-index-number-2227 https://archive.ph/iZIxg
---
".. Intellectual display, in fact, is unwelcome in the female social space. This isn’t because every woman is individually opposed to it, but because of social incentives and enforcement by a minority of women who can’t compete but want power anyway. .."
Those women "who can’t compete but want power anyway." is gold, and women filled HR department and their hiring policies have placed such women throughout once highly productive competence hierarchies, meritless quota hires that are worse than useless, but motivated by resentment or to distract from their incompetence and often motivated in hostility toward hard-working intelligent creative productive men from sexism, they attack in slimy backstabbing unjust false-witnessing ways directed at the most productive 20% that is responsible for over 50% of the production. They are poison to work-environments and the most harmed are the men that are confused and helpless in their delusional-psychopathy behavior and the change into toxic to men environment change over a short time.
The environmental workplace change from the universal masculine goal of being the most competent, down-to any competence above the least performer risks that co-worker [man] becoming a target that may cost him his un-persecuted workplace environment, his good employment record, his job, career, and even his Liberty since false-accusations against a man will often instigate anti-man inspired similar accusations.
I've been grappling with this and I have to ask. Do women like these speech patterns? I know many who hate it. So is it so genetically coded?
We also have the perversion that "to be a successful woman you must be indistinguishable from a successful man". Where male styles and structures are considered more valuable.
I can't quite square the situation.
It's socially incentivized for women to talk like this, and we keep each other down rather than our innate dislike of a higher register of speech. It's that we know, deep down, we can't openly compete (evolution), so we never develop the specific cognitive muscle of abstract thinking. They also have this wrong: "to be a successful woman you must be indistinguishable from a successful man". My experience has shown me that to be a successful woman, I need to exercise a specific cognitive and relational style. This is a bullshit narrative women have imbibed. I don't somehow act like a man to get ahead; I just am analytical and have social skills, so I am ahead by virtue of that combo. It's that many women have confused actual skills with perception as the source of status. It turns out that women skilled in perception management rise to the top, rather than based on skill. You and I have discussed this topic a lot, so I think you know where I'm coming from if you consider the women you've worked with who are successful. I have never been as successful as I am right now....But I am just being myself. It just so happens that my personality is rewarded in this particular climate, and that this personality developed in spite of all the women around me trying to drag me down. Women discourage the very traits in each other that would lead to success among men.
Right, the "to be a successful woman you must be indistinguishable from a successful man" isn't a success factor per se but an expectation. So a woman who wants to be a mom is a 'failure' whereas the one who wants to be a boss-bitch is 'yaas girl!'
However, you point out a great observation...... their attemps as a 'successful man' is hamstrung by what you just described. There's a MASSIVE dischordance. They are mimicking what they thing a successful man looks like (boss-bitch) and can't do it. They hate they can't do it. So when they see you, using your analytical mind and (more masculine coded?) social skills and see you get ahead..... they hate you and try to drag you down.
So they've emboddied that the feminine is worth less and yet can't actuall execute in the masculine sphere and that might explain why it turns into cluster b?
And because I've written more thoughts on the comment of "to be a successful woman you must be indistinguishable from a successful man", I'm going to share that here to fully do it justice: https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/rediscovering-the-goddess
I will read this one, and it reminds me of an issue someone else took with my use of archetypes to explain feminization to remove the sex issue -- we have both energies within us, and the women we're talking about are out of balance toward the hyperfeminine without any structure, which many expect a man to provide. Structure is ontologically masculine. That person said there's no empirical evidence for this metaphysical conception; therefore, it doesn't apply. I find that to be myopic thinking; reality shows masculine and feminine principles everywhere.
I think the missing piece is a lack of awareness of the rise in Cluster B personality/character disorders. They've exploded.
People with them are often attention-seeking and charismatic, and they easily sweep entire groups into their distorted framework. That's happened at societal scale, and it has wholly captured what the author calls "female society."
It wasn't always this way. It doesn't have to stay this way.
But we have to recognize, and name, publicly, what it is, if we're to change it.
I agree. But there's something I've been struggling with. Cluster B is a DSM diagnoses isn't it? But this explosion seems to mirror the behavior but is it cultural and not an illness? Or is it deep seated and is being unlocked as cultural layers are stripped off?
I think I can help, if you’re able to clear your mind of the “medical” associations that the DSM brings. I’m with you-I don’t see this as “medical.” So, even though I’m going to use the term “Cluster B,” I’m asking you to make a conscious effort to stop yourself from hearing “this guy’s making a medical argument.” I say this so didactically because people have great, great trouble doing this. The emotional connotations cloud it.
There is nothing at all “medical” or “disability” about the nature of Cluster B disorders. Again, I’m using the term, but I’m NOT acceding to the “medical” view.
Cluster B personality disorders are also, and more correctly, called “character” disorders. They are moral, not “medical.” The medical model is wrong and I reject it entirely. The thing we’re talking about—the derangement—is utterly real. But it’s moral, not medical.
That’s why, yes, it follows cultural patterns. But those patterns begin in the home. Cluster B disorders are not biological brain anomalies. They’re not diabetes. They’re moral and ethical perversions. Usually, childhood abuse and neglect largely form them.
That's where I was leaning as well. You can't just 'suddenly' have such a massive explosion of medical issues without a cause. This is where I think the cultural layers that get stripped off uncover a baseline behavior.
Like the addage "Traditions are solutions to problems we don't know exist. Get rid of the solution, and the problems return." It's kind of like when they started attacking the patriarchy and unlocked the manosphere as the worst characters were unleashed and the 'nice men' got sick of being attacked and didn't reign them back in. When you attack the matriarchical structures and unleash the chaos, you get cluster B.
Actually, I really like how you phrased that as I'm been musing because if the classic archetype of female is chaos, and masculine is order. Then when you strip off the stuctures, the Cluster B emerges because it's their attempt to structure their chaos but it becomes fragile because they don't do it well.
Is Cluster B a weak mimicry of how they see the patriarchy?
This is a super interesting thread to pull on and I appreciate your insights.
Have you considered whether Cluster B is a manifestation of the feminine chaos? (More on that topic here for background: https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/chaos-and-order)
As with everyone - it depends on women. I personally hate it (working on rectifying it). For me it is more of a survival mechanism, which can be socially transfered through generations. Like, my father has a short fuse and can start bellowing from ant seemingly tiny thing (like, not finding the screwdriver that he himslef put away and still blaming mom for it, even though she didn't touch it, even though the screwdriver was on the floor in the middle of the living room for years).
So women might try to put down other women who try to stand out as a sort if a way to protect them as they have learned that you will be beaten back if you stand out.
I also had men in my life who got agressive if i disagreed with them.
So, the situation is complicated and might need a few generations to remove the separation of communication styles being percieved as feminine/masculine. And to find a style that encompases both.
I agree, and I've written about how we have archetypal feminine and masculine traits inside, regardless of which sex we are. However, you are skirting my structural theory about women's competitive modes, disincentivizing analytical cognition and abstract thinking. You are doing this thing that a lot of women do when they comment, which is bringing in examples of men doing the thing, even though the thing you're saying they do isn't equivalent to the infantilization I'm describing. Men simply don't speak with each other this way that women do, nor do they speak with women as infants. Sure, you can find the odd man who does, but that doesn't negate the pattern among women that I am describing. They're two different things, and I would encourage you to consider why you feel the need to bring up men when someone critiques the incentives for female behavior.
Unduly uncharitable reading of Ieva’s comment.
The need to bring up men seems simply to make the very valid point that we form our speech patterns inter-relationally with men. Not simply among women.
She is not disagreeing with you that women engage in this conflict- avoidance speech pattern.
The example of the angry father aptly illustrates that it can de developed because it is useful in deflecting the wrath of volatile men in one’s life.
I am someone who thinks often about our pattern of favoring social harmony over truth seeking, so I find this conversation valuable.
Still- Ieva brings a crucial point I hadn’t considered. Men are physically stronger than women, and conflict- avoidance speech is a useful tool to have when your formative years are spent with volatile men.
Brava! I will know society has turned a corner when I'm watching your first appearance on The View 😎
You have neatly summarized the thoughts behind: PROFESSING FEMINISM, Cautionary Tales from Inside the Strange World of Women's Studies.
by Daphne Patai & Noretta Koertge