Why did you not speak up, because the woman was the only other woman of colour? I'm curious. I think when we stop deferring to identity based considerations, we might be more ready to have honest and intellectual conversations.
I've given up with my female friends, mostly. Over a decade ago, I was trying to speak to them about Pakistani rape gangs and why our local and national politicians, police, social workers and communities, let it happen. The worst women on this issue around me were the feminist activists, communists and marxists. The ones that march for full term abortion rights but disgraced other women for wanting a proper fact based conversation.
Then came trans madness. One female friend as if she was staging an intervention, told me I had turned into a hateful person. Because i was campaigning for the rights of women in prisons not to be housed with men. Especially rapists.
I've given up on these conversations and to me, it's a fine price to pay for being able to be honest.
The men in my circles are seriously not much better. The old boys who voted Trump now snigger along with those who assume everyone agrees with them in their low hanging fruit trump jokes.
females have little to no intellect on average so there is nothing of value lost. females that recognize their limitation should help men remove them from politics around the globe.
I appreciate your clarity and your courage in being willing to risk social and professional ostracization to raise important points. Just like Tumblr feminists popularized the use of #notallmen when they wanted to make generalizations about men without being called out on exceptions, perhaps you should just summarize your introductory apologia with #notallwomen so you don’t have to reiterate it all the time.
While acknowledging that this is well -written and precedes some of the recent discussion precipitated by Helen Andrew’s essay in Compact, I do want to push a bit on the claim made in this post’s sub-header.
Dialectical truth-seeking always occurs in a relational and emotional context. Sensitivity to these contexts makes debate better, because it helps to ensure people feel appropriately recognized while their beliefs are being challenged. Good debates often need good mediators, or need people to be able to play that role themselves, stepping back and forth between mediating and advocating for their position. Mediators do things like identify where people are talking past each other, or acknowledge the legitimacy of someone’s feelings even if they’ve e.g. elided some important distinction. Participants should say things to the mediator like “yes, thank you” or “ok fair” or “you put it better than I could.” They should also uphold and enforce discussion norms like taking turns, non-interruption, eye-contact, sincerity between interlocutors, non-domination, etc. They should not just be tracking the logical course of an argument, but how participants FEEL about it. Often the most epistemically impactful moments in discussion precede or follow a significant emotional outburst. People either open up, or shut down.
I’ve been in many mixed-gender discussions where women were able to pick up on subtle cues for disagreement before anyone had voiced them explicitly. Attention to these cues can redirect discourse before it becomes explicitly confrontational. Confrontation is fine, and necessary in disagreement — but managing relationships around this is KEY to ensuring better epistemic outcomes, because epistemic outcomes are always going to be buoyed by the emotional states of truth-seekers. You know the old expression, people don’t remember what you said, they remember how you made them feel? If you can disagree—or facilitate disagreement—in a way that preserves the dignity of the participants, minds will be much more likely to bend towards the truth.
I can personally attest to this in my grad school experience. Female faculty and grad students were keenly interested in rigorous debate, but also often outperformed their male colleagues in managing the affective experience of e.g. the seminar or discussion section such that it didn’t feel like a boxing ring where students would often leave in tears.
In no way do I doubt the phenomena you’ve described in this essay. I’ve done my time on the PMC brunch circuit. But I do think there’s an under-explored middle-way here for you and others to explore.
So I’m curious — how have you found it playing the mediator role in all-female or mixed-gender discourse? Do you agree with the value of this affective work that mediates disagreement?
Second, your assertion that truth-seeking occurs in a relational context is true, but the problem is that the relational context almost always subordinates truth-seeking, especially for women. I can grant that you, as a man, won't see this as clearly because you're not privy to what happens in female groups, and how asserting the unpopular truth is a threat to belonging to women like me. I disagree that we should somehow validate people's feelings when discussing, for example, things like sex differences.
There is empirical reality, and then there are women's feelings about it, and they very often punish women for asserting things like sex differences being real by taking offense to what is true, forcing someone like me to back down to spare their feelings about what is plain, which they think says something negative about them. So their feelings about it end up coddled rather than their accepting what is true. Thus, feelings absolutely cannot be the primary concern in a debate.
I also don't disagree that we need to understand people's cues indicating disagreement. The problem is that those who disagree make the truth itself the secondary concern. The woman I describe in this post is an archetype. Truth-seeking will always be a secondary concern for a group if feelings are more important, and I read your statement as about people's feelings toward the truth. I also don't disagree that we should have norms of argumentation, as you state, but those are separate from the assertion of the actual truth. I don't care, nor will I ever, how people feel about it. Caring more about how people feel about it is why we're here in the first place.
I really appreciate hearing from women who’ve experienced what I have and don’t think I’m crazy, so this means a lot. And, I would encourage you strongly to do so because the definition of empowerment can’t be left up to simpletons who mistake ideology for depth.
Thank you for writing this bold piece. I share your frustration with the way women’s discourse so often devolves into status management, consensus, and emotional reports rather than debate, or at minimum, dialogue. I’ve judged women harshly for it too.
And, I also know that my contempt/resentment isn't only about them. It reflects my own experience of being shunned, shut down, and unseen in groups dominated by women, especially in spiritual circles. The residue of shame for not being seen/accepted expresses as a superiority shame response, where I place myself above the very women I feel excluded by.
At the same time, I don’t see this as only a women’s problem. Men benefit from and participate in these dynamics too, sometimes by withdrawing into silence, sometimes by colluding with the rules of feminised discourse when it serves their interests, and sometimes by weaponising women’s relational style against them. The structural pattern belongs to all of us, even if women carry it more visibly.
For me, the challenge is to hold both truths: the structure is real, and so is my residue, and the responsibility is shared, not one-sided.
Your piece brought that tension into focus again. I appreciate you for describing what most people avoid discussing and for extracting patterns worth paying attention to.
Context is relevant to how men should behave in mixed groups. If it’s a book club, that’s one thing, and I suppose men should say something. If it is an employment related workgroup a man would be a fool to speak up if the dynamic you describe (which I have experienced) is operating. When a man finds himself suddenly living in this environment he’s highly likely to leave the book club and that workplace (if he can get out.) I myself experienced the glassy-eyed smile and know whereof I speak.
“The residue of shame for not being seen/accepted expresses as a superiority shame response, where I place myself above the very women I feel excluded by.”
You just perfectly described my emotional response in these situations. I’ve had women circles where introducing a more intellectual topic of conversation was seen as an attack.
Totally agree that the responsibility is two fold. Men could speak up but don’t, and plenty also enforce this sort of thing themselves. At the same time, I see it as a feminized problem even if not a problem solely that women perpetuate. That’s because of women’s inclination toward social harmony and consensus, where men don’t have that inclination.
I'm a man who, I suspect, sometimes supports the dynamics you describe, though I certainly share your desire to create social spaces that are otherwise. Whatever combination of innate sex-linked traits, individual differences, and socialization explain it, it's not an easy trap to escape from!
Why did you not speak up, because the woman was the only other woman of colour? I'm curious. I think when we stop deferring to identity based considerations, we might be more ready to have honest and intellectual conversations.
I've given up with my female friends, mostly. Over a decade ago, I was trying to speak to them about Pakistani rape gangs and why our local and national politicians, police, social workers and communities, let it happen. The worst women on this issue around me were the feminist activists, communists and marxists. The ones that march for full term abortion rights but disgraced other women for wanting a proper fact based conversation.
Then came trans madness. One female friend as if she was staging an intervention, told me I had turned into a hateful person. Because i was campaigning for the rights of women in prisons not to be housed with men. Especially rapists.
I've given up on these conversations and to me, it's a fine price to pay for being able to be honest.
The men in my circles are seriously not much better. The old boys who voted Trump now snigger along with those who assume everyone agrees with them in their low hanging fruit trump jokes.
females have little to no intellect on average so there is nothing of value lost. females that recognize their limitation should help men remove them from politics around the globe.
I appreciate your clarity and your courage in being willing to risk social and professional ostracization to raise important points. Just like Tumblr feminists popularized the use of #notallmen when they wanted to make generalizations about men without being called out on exceptions, perhaps you should just summarize your introductory apologia with #notallwomen so you don’t have to reiterate it all the time.
While acknowledging that this is well -written and precedes some of the recent discussion precipitated by Helen Andrew’s essay in Compact, I do want to push a bit on the claim made in this post’s sub-header.
Dialectical truth-seeking always occurs in a relational and emotional context. Sensitivity to these contexts makes debate better, because it helps to ensure people feel appropriately recognized while their beliefs are being challenged. Good debates often need good mediators, or need people to be able to play that role themselves, stepping back and forth between mediating and advocating for their position. Mediators do things like identify where people are talking past each other, or acknowledge the legitimacy of someone’s feelings even if they’ve e.g. elided some important distinction. Participants should say things to the mediator like “yes, thank you” or “ok fair” or “you put it better than I could.” They should also uphold and enforce discussion norms like taking turns, non-interruption, eye-contact, sincerity between interlocutors, non-domination, etc. They should not just be tracking the logical course of an argument, but how participants FEEL about it. Often the most epistemically impactful moments in discussion precede or follow a significant emotional outburst. People either open up, or shut down.
I’ve been in many mixed-gender discussions where women were able to pick up on subtle cues for disagreement before anyone had voiced them explicitly. Attention to these cues can redirect discourse before it becomes explicitly confrontational. Confrontation is fine, and necessary in disagreement — but managing relationships around this is KEY to ensuring better epistemic outcomes, because epistemic outcomes are always going to be buoyed by the emotional states of truth-seekers. You know the old expression, people don’t remember what you said, they remember how you made them feel? If you can disagree—or facilitate disagreement—in a way that preserves the dignity of the participants, minds will be much more likely to bend towards the truth.
I can personally attest to this in my grad school experience. Female faculty and grad students were keenly interested in rigorous debate, but also often outperformed their male colleagues in managing the affective experience of e.g. the seminar or discussion section such that it didn’t feel like a boxing ring where students would often leave in tears.
In no way do I doubt the phenomena you’ve described in this essay. I’ve done my time on the PMC brunch circuit. But I do think there’s an under-explored middle-way here for you and others to explore.
So I’m curious — how have you found it playing the mediator role in all-female or mixed-gender discourse? Do you agree with the value of this affective work that mediates disagreement?
I will return to this, just wanted to acknowledge that I read it.
sweet, thanks. In the meantime, Helen Pluckrose has written one of the better reactions I’ve seen. Give it a read here! https://www.hpluckrose.com/p/the-west-doesnt-need-re-masculinising-2a2
First, here's my response to Pluckrose: https://www.hpluckrose.com/p/the-west-doesnt-need-re-masculinising-2a2/comment/172793195
Second, your assertion that truth-seeking occurs in a relational context is true, but the problem is that the relational context almost always subordinates truth-seeking, especially for women. I can grant that you, as a man, won't see this as clearly because you're not privy to what happens in female groups, and how asserting the unpopular truth is a threat to belonging to women like me. I disagree that we should somehow validate people's feelings when discussing, for example, things like sex differences.
There is empirical reality, and then there are women's feelings about it, and they very often punish women for asserting things like sex differences being real by taking offense to what is true, forcing someone like me to back down to spare their feelings about what is plain, which they think says something negative about them. So their feelings about it end up coddled rather than their accepting what is true. Thus, feelings absolutely cannot be the primary concern in a debate.
I also don't disagree that we need to understand people's cues indicating disagreement. The problem is that those who disagree make the truth itself the secondary concern. The woman I describe in this post is an archetype. Truth-seeking will always be a secondary concern for a group if feelings are more important, and I read your statement as about people's feelings toward the truth. I also don't disagree that we should have norms of argumentation, as you state, but those are separate from the assertion of the actual truth. I don't care, nor will I ever, how people feel about it. Caring more about how people feel about it is why we're here in the first place.
This, along with some other things I've read and experienced recently, is inspiring me to write an article.
I really appreciate hearing from women who’ve experienced what I have and don’t think I’m crazy, so this means a lot. And, I would encourage you strongly to do so because the definition of empowerment can’t be left up to simpletons who mistake ideology for depth.
Thank you for writing this bold piece. I share your frustration with the way women’s discourse so often devolves into status management, consensus, and emotional reports rather than debate, or at minimum, dialogue. I’ve judged women harshly for it too.
And, I also know that my contempt/resentment isn't only about them. It reflects my own experience of being shunned, shut down, and unseen in groups dominated by women, especially in spiritual circles. The residue of shame for not being seen/accepted expresses as a superiority shame response, where I place myself above the very women I feel excluded by.
At the same time, I don’t see this as only a women’s problem. Men benefit from and participate in these dynamics too, sometimes by withdrawing into silence, sometimes by colluding with the rules of feminised discourse when it serves their interests, and sometimes by weaponising women’s relational style against them. The structural pattern belongs to all of us, even if women carry it more visibly.
For me, the challenge is to hold both truths: the structure is real, and so is my residue, and the responsibility is shared, not one-sided.
Your piece brought that tension into focus again. I appreciate you for describing what most people avoid discussing and for extracting patterns worth paying attention to.
Context is relevant to how men should behave in mixed groups. If it’s a book club, that’s one thing, and I suppose men should say something. If it is an employment related workgroup a man would be a fool to speak up if the dynamic you describe (which I have experienced) is operating. When a man finds himself suddenly living in this environment he’s highly likely to leave the book club and that workplace (if he can get out.) I myself experienced the glassy-eyed smile and know whereof I speak.
“The residue of shame for not being seen/accepted expresses as a superiority shame response, where I place myself above the very women I feel excluded by.”
You just perfectly described my emotional response in these situations. I’ve had women circles where introducing a more intellectual topic of conversation was seen as an attack.
always an attack and the air immediately shifts to discomfort
Totally agree that the responsibility is two fold. Men could speak up but don’t, and plenty also enforce this sort of thing themselves. At the same time, I see it as a feminized problem even if not a problem solely that women perpetuate. That’s because of women’s inclination toward social harmony and consensus, where men don’t have that inclination.
I'm a man who, I suspect, sometimes supports the dynamics you describe, though I certainly share your desire to create social spaces that are otherwise. Whatever combination of innate sex-linked traits, individual differences, and socialization explain it, it's not an easy trap to escape from!
they should be removed from politics as their instincts cannot manage it.
Well since nobody has commented yet I just want to say that I always enjoy reading your work :)
I learned that you can’t turn them off and on again and thank you