Women's moral superiority: a noble lie
The myth enables control and suppresses merit.
Welcome to my newest subscribers. I write about many things, but lately the logic of feminism has been on my mind. If this struck a chord, the highest compliment I can get is sharing it. I have a subscriber chat in which we discuss these and other thorny topics.
It is often claimed that women are more emotionally intelligent and empathetic than men. But I’ve found that while women aren’t necessarily worse than men, they’re not better, either.
To say that they are is to place women on a pedestal and absolve us for hurting others and enforcing groupthink.
The claim of superior empathy is often used to escape accountability for bad behavior; I will return to this. Girls and women use indirect aggression — exclusion, gossip, reputational damage—as a primary mode of conflict.12 This has been shown across cultures.3
Some of you will demand a footnote for every claim I make here. But let’s be honest: no number of citations will satisfy you, because I’m challenging your ideological priors. To demand institutionally-approved studies for every pattern I name is to outsource thinking to people already captured by the ideology in question. Academia no longer uncovers truth but polices it. Open your eyes. Recognize the patterns. Trust your reason.
I argue that women controlling other women is immoral and cannot be virtue-washed, no matter how much feminists blame the patriarchy. We can push past our evolved behaviors. I’m asking us to stop this perennial race to the bottom. If feminism is about empowerment, why do we constantly deny our own agency and blame others for our actions?
I take issue with the belief that women are better than men, paired with the refusal to hold ourselves to higher standards and take responsibility when we fall short. The “women are wonderful” effect has been well-documented in psychological research.4
i. The myth of female cooperation
If women are morally superior, why do our friendships often lack moral integrity? My dharma requires me to take accountability when I hurt someone, yet many women who hurt or sabotaged me have never acknowledged it and even justified it to themselves. In pre-modern times, exile meant death, and I’d surely have died. But as a woman said in a heterodox women’s forum to me recently, maybe I’m the asshole.
If women are relationally superior, then you’d expect us to be able to metabolize conflict better. However, as Joyce Benenson details in Warriors and Worriers, men, particularly boys, are more likely to reconcile to preserve group cohesion, while women and girls tend to sever relationships entirely when offended.5 Therefore, men's group cohesion is stronger than women's, despite our claim to being more cooperative. Men had to protect women and children from the enemy to ensure their genetic material is passed on.6
Men are externally oriented toward protecting against a common enemy, while women are internally oriented toward protecting their clan. Open conflict between women can destabilize groups because we haven’t evolved to handle it directly for good reason. In particular, we lack the tools for healthy conflict in the modern age because social media creates the impression that we don’t need each other. Before this era, there was a social contract and recognition that we need each other to survive. Now, you can retreat to your follower count.
ii. Are women more empathetic?
I find it endlessly amusing that people will sometimes say that women are far more empathetic and compassionate than men as a blanket statement, but then turn around and deny the evolutionary and psychological evidence of female behavioral patterns.
In more gender-equal societies, women are indeed more likely than men to emphasize benevolence and universalism, widening the gap with men in those values.7 But this benevolence functions as a smokescreen to silence dissent among women. When women are presumed to be more compassionate, any critique of female behavior is deemed heretical. The myth allows us to change the subject.
Further, critiques of women’s relational cruelty are routinely derailed by pathologizing men, a rhetorical sleight that evades standards.
Research shows women have genetically evolved socially coercive behaviors to manage unique reproductive and social pressures. Because child rearing was done in groups in hunter-gatherer tribes, all conflict between women had to be indirect, and we evolved to care about social status more than men because we needed resources for child rearing.8
iii. Suppression of merit & denial of hierarchy
Women have also evolved to deny any hierarchy among ourselves. This may seem like a feminist innovation, but it’s an ancient behavior that feminism justified as morally superior to recognizing natural differences between women.
How does a woman compete while minimizing the risk of retaliation? I suggest that women use a few simple strategies. Strategy 1 is that a woman does not ever let anyone else know that she is competing with them. This is an ideal strategy, since if she can disguise her intentions, the risk of retaliation is reduced. She preaches the mantra of equality for all, and sincerely believes it. This sincerity allows her to be maximally convincing to other women. Unaware of her own competitive instincts, she tries to get as much as she can for herself, while insisting that everyone else share equally.9
Girls also learn early that outshining their friends can lead to ostracism:
…girls and women replied that they thought their closest friends would think poorly of them if they became more successful than their friends. They also added that any greater achievement by one friend might destroy the friendship. Even businesswomen know that they must present themselves as “dead even” to their female coworkers or else risk the end of the friendship.10
Women are, therefore, often hostile to meritorious competition. If one starts to outshine others, rumor mill justice will promptly begin, and her position will become untenable. A high-performing woman will be cut down before she can even compete with men at the highest levels.
I experienced this firsthand in multiple jobs, most recently as a technical architect. Four (non-technical) women made my position untenable even as all my male team members supported me. I was never said to perform badly, just made the scapegoat of a dysfunctional organization. The denial of hierarchy among women only hurts high-performing ones who are trying to climb, thereby reinforcing class stratification. Managerial feminism is about hoarding status in the name of equity.
has written about soft female control mechanisms and narcissism with great explanatory power. This is crazy-making stuff.What makes these tactics so frustrating is that if you don’t notice them, you can end up subtly controlled. But if you do notice them and push back, the person using them will claim you are overreacting, being aggressive, or even being misogynistic. This is part of the trap: they appear non-threatening while still exerting force. […] When people use soft control successfully, they subtly dictate who gets to have a voice, what is acceptable to say, and who is seen as reasonable or unreasonable.
This all feeds the myth of female sameness, which we see in the culture as denigrating feminine beauty itself as a patriarchal construct.
That is akin to denying that the divine feminine exists, because what is she without innate beauty? I also think that differences in beauty are mitigated through effort. I know where I fall in the hierarchy of beauty, but I’ve also worked hard not to be attached to my human body as the true self. The body is clothing that my soul will shed when I die.
Because we must deny that competition exists among us, we must also exile the woman who makes it too obvious. The woman who is excellent in a context governed by the lie of sameness is always the problem.
iv. How I escaped
I will not give up on the idea that women can collectively be better people than we are, but it requires giving up the lie of sisterhood. Because anyone reaching for something more beyond the standard deviation is a mirror to those women who don’t chase their own higher selves. For example, I’ve learned not to mention how much I read because it makes others feel inadequate. But that isn’t my problem, so I no longer care who I make uncomfortable by not shrinking.
Every aspect of my life improved when I stopped conforming and caring about what women think. Instagram feminism tells us not to compare, but most women can’t stop. I believe we can, but it requires accountability for our life outcomes, developing a high level of agency, and integrating reason with emotion.
The woman I am today required embracing dharma, by which I don’t mean theism or ancient Vedic rituals. Dharma in the Age of Kali11 is contextual and role-based - it governs every relationship and my place in the world. Above all, dharma requires a commitment to truth, especially when inconvenient. I can apologize when I’ve been wrong and I accept my flaws. I strive to act in accordance with universal principles:
Truth must always come before comfort
Discipline and rigor over maximum personal freedom
If I hurt others, I have to make it right
I have power to shape my life outcomes
So, do I expect women to be better than men? No, but I do expect us to live up to the self-image we project. Claims must be backed up by action. We must let go of this convenient fiction of moral superiority to actually become the virtuous and empathetic people we claim to be.
A powerful woman asked me if I expect women to be better than men, out of which came this post. I appreciate her and other women in my life who constantly challenge me to be better by being shining examples themselves.
If you’re a free subscriber and consider this to be quality writing, please consider upgrading for a lower price than most of the topical stuff you see. I don’t do this for money, but my reach is naturally limited because, let’s be real, my conclusions are socially radioactive. I deeply appreciate your support.
Campbell A. The evolutionary psychology of women's aggression. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2013 Oct 28; 368.
Stockley P, Campbell A.2013 Female competition and aggression: interdisciplinary perspectives. Phil Trans R SocB 368: 20130073.
Hess, N. H., & Hagen, E. H. (2006). Sex differences in indirect aggression: Psychological evidence from young adults. Evolution and Human Behavior, 27(3), 231–245.
Glick, P. (2008). Warmth and Competence as Universal Dimensions of Social Perception: The Stereotype Content Model and the BIAS Map. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology.
Benenson, J. F. (2014). Warriors and worriers: The survival of the sexes. Oxford University Press. p. 6-10.
Ibid., 56.
Christov-Moore L, Simpson EA, Coudé G, Grigaityte K, Iacoboni M, Ferrari PF. Empathy: gender effects in brain and behavior. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2014 Oct;46 Pt 4(Pt 4):604-27. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2014.09.001. Epub 2014 Sep 16. PMID: 25236781; PMCID: PMC5110041.
Benenson, ix.
Ibid., 173.
Ibid., 151.
Not the goddess Kālī.
I work as a Chaplain in a women's prison. I think it is very telling that at one point, they had a knitting circle. The women knit hats, mittens, and blankets for sick children. No one ever used the knitting needles as weapons and everyone sat in a circle talking and sharing their emotions.
The problem?
They kept writing complaints to the warden about each other. It got so excessive that the warden took away the program because she got sick of the back-biting, reputational assassinations, and pot-stirring gossip.
Yes, women are more emotionally intelligent--and they use it to attack one another. Yes, they are more egalitarian, and they are happy to exclude another woman for breaking various social norms.
We are all Greek tragedies. Our best traits can become our downfall.
Great piece. Gonna read it again cos there is a lot to consider.
I used to hold the view of women being more compassionate than men but don't anymore. I dont blame "feminism" for it, but feminism opened enough doors for women to show how female competition styles look at scale and in power. It ain't pretty. Or, it is pretty...disappointing.
I can see why people are angry at ineffectual women leaders who keep other women down, who cave in to bad ideas and who are vicious under the veneer of altruism. The view of women as the kinder sex needs to be debunked.