Thank you. Explains so much. I notice on Substack Notes now that it is a few women who are leading the charge to extend this pattern of whining and self-victimisation to Notes as well. Then, as a woman in a workplace, but one who sees herself as a bit masculine minded, rational, I know how stupid and embarrassed I have felt when I have let my emotions out.
I’d love to hear a deeper dive into examples of how social media crusades and feminized progressive politics symbiotically work together to further the feminization process.
The process has its own incentive to swallow the whole world in its destructive game.
Excellent synthesis of the present situation. I wonder though if the easiest answer isn't simply to return to sex-segregated education and work spaces. The experiment in having men and women work alongside one another in identical roles has been run for a couple generations now and the results are awful. Asking women to sit on their emotions is a logical thing to do but such solutions are swimming upstream against millions of years of evolved instincts ... made doubly difficult by the fact that, as you note, women are very good at masking their aggression even from themselves.
This need not mean that women are formally consigned to certain specific roles, although self selection via innate preference will lead to a degree of that. Instead, universities could for instance be organized along men's and women's lines, much as sports or Christian monasteries/convents are.
In one’s headspace—why, it sure is 🙂 Logical & neat. In current sociopolitcultural milieu? Not a slimmest chance. Unless we find a miracle way to heed Murray Rothbard’s admonition and ‘break the clock of social democracy’ & ‘repeal the 20th century’ 😇
On the other hand, the current sociopolitical milieu would have seemed utterly inconceivable a couple of generations ago. And we need not repeal the twentieth century ... merely regard its latter half the way we might look at a particularly embarrassing phase of our teenage years ;)
Almost nowhere ever regulated to have segregated workplaces. Any such segragation was almost always a natural effect of having presumptive sex roles. There were sometimes bars on which sex could undertake what professions or occupations, which had segregating consequences, but again were about the sex roles.
Plenty of counter-examples: the military, for example, combat arms especially, was once male-only; convents vs monasteries; boy's vs girl's schools. For the most part however formal and explicit sex segregation has been unnecessary, as the implicit segregation that emerges from the different inclinations of the sexes leads to the de facto same outcome. Much of our current problem is a result of women being artificially pushed into professional roles they would not otherwise choose, e.g. Ranger school or STEM. Remove such programs and simply accept that stable social equilibria will mean most occupations are either predominantly male or female, and water would find its own level again, so to speak.
I associate segregation with different spaces for the same activities. Adult men and women were usually only allowed to live together if married: hence monasteries and convents. And yes, some occupations have been sex-restricted, as I pointed out. So, militaries were not counter-examples.
This assumes neither men nor women can, on average, manage themselves. Yet we know that it’s possible to drag rates of male sex offending right down (see the entire developed world) and possible to make a plurality of women emotionally restrained (see the entirety of pagan Roman history).
The Romans are a good example of a long-lived civilisation with high-status women - including some in the professions - where high status was coupled with very effective “don’t blub, don’t whinge, don’t gossip” norms.
Yes there will be women who fail in this. Public life or the professions are not for them.
Always remember that their male equivalents are in gaol, unemployed, or in really shit jobs.
Perhaps I'm simply too cynical. I've never seen the sisterhood take criticism well, and propagating social norms for professional life that explicitly recognize that there are downsides to female social aggression that can be quite catastrophic to organizational function seems like it would be met with shrieks of denial and outrage. Particularly if it came from men. So, women - and in particular high status women in the professions - would need to be the ones doing this work. Could we see such a change? One can hope....
Rome never gave women the vote though and most Roman women, like women generally before the modern age were dependent on resources best obtained by the physical strength of their husbands.
@Helen Dale, how can we imagine that we'll establish any norms of propriety in a world in which women, most of which lack your integrity, have near equal political power? You may have a different perspective, but from what I can tell even your average highly competent woman tends to side with her non- 'emotionally restrained' counterparts when these have their outbursts. Do you have any intuitive estimates on what percentage of women might be susceptible to any appeal to break ranks?
Fantasic essay! The "future is female" girlboss crowd are just as socially harmful as the stereotypically aggressive and narcissistic toxic masculinity they present themselves in opposition to; the female narcissists just cover their aggression with a veneer of polite and smiling aggreeableness, punctuated with the calculated gossip and concerned whisper. The problem is neither masculinity nor femininity, per se, but rather narcissism (and even psychopathy).
Brilliant essay. I hate "bring your whole self to work". No, if I did that, I'd spend the day talking loudly to myself and breaking off to swear every time someone says "lived experience" or "let's talk about inclusion". It's not about bringing your whole self, it's only about bringing your most ego-rubbing, edi-loving, Twitter progressivist wanker-self to work to engage in dreary three hour daisy chains masquerading as the latest EDI Forum. And that's why I can't bring my whole self to work. I just have to unleash it on Substack (and my husband, poor man).
I've had a thought about it becoming increasingly common for homosexuals to have children biologically (with surrogate mothers/donor sperm). Modern technologies somewhat circumvent that natural stopper put on breeding by having no desire to play sexual hoopla. I do wonder how much of an impact it will have on children to be brought up by parents of the same sex and also to have at least one biological parent who is gay.
For one thing: how much does the kid miss out on not having both a female and male influence? Wiill that impact be lessened if one or both has more cross-sex behaviours? Whatever the case, if we carry on in the current (feminised) fashion of Don't You Dare Ask That, Wave The Flag and Conform, it will be bloody hard to know what the real outcome is.
May 2, 2023·edited May 2, 2023Liked by Lorenzo Warby
Hardly any sociologist dares to present data on single sex families. There are few reviews. This review in Science by Loren Marks (2012) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X12000580 shows that children of same sex couples scored lowest on almost every variable.
However, the impetus for same sex marriage was not about children and families. It was about the gay partners - as Mitchell et al (2009) put it: "It was hoped that one of the results of the Civil Partnership Act – alongside the EERs and the Adoption and Children Act – would be to produce a shift in social-cultural attitudes to lesbian, gay and bisexual people and to same-sex relationships " https://sp.ukdataservice.ac.uk/doc/6929/mrdoc/pdf/6929uguide.pdf This in itself is vaguely shocking, should the well being of children be ignored in the interests of a pressure group?
That doesn't surprise me. I'm still in favour of same sex unions, but that should be about the adults and their legal contract. I'm not at all convinced same sex parenting should be viewed the same as a mother-father pair, and I don't think children's interests are being prioritised (in this area or in many others too the priority is usually individual adult desire).
The problem isn't with same-sex parents (two women + a male sperm donor was common in pagan classical antiquity, as was the gay uncle Lorenzo describes in his piece).
However, with the male sperm donor in Roman times, the pairing was straight + gay, which still produces vastly more straight than gay children.
The problem now is gay men acting as sperm donors to their lesbian friends. If a gay man and a gay woman use IVF or surrogacy to have kids their kids turn out to be massively gay. This defeats the purpose for which homosexuals evolved in the first place (to prevent cognitive convergence between the sexes).
I know a pair of gay couples where the gay men donated sperm to their lesbian friends. Lesbian couple have three kids (two boys, one girl). All gay. That does not arise naturally and is wildly statistically improbable. We gayers are not supposed to breed with each other. Yes you get the odd crossover - gay man who fathers a child, lesbian woman who marries, has one, then divorces. But in both those cases it’s a gay + a straight. Not gay + gay.
I did not know that, thank you. I wonder how many gay/lesbian couples are aware of the gay+gay= more gay issue. I don't call it an issue because I think it's wrong to be gay, but I do think it's easier in a lot of ways to be straight (or bi). Bigger dating pool, easier to have kids, and easier to make a family without bumping into any real ethical quandary such as the kind you might have with donor sperm or surrogacy.
I wonder if over time you will see an increase in live cover in that community. To mangle an Arthur C. Clarke quote, “Insemination will always be cheaper with unskilled labor.”
May 2, 2023·edited May 2, 2023Liked by Lorenzo Warby
It is a breath of fresh air to see these issues discussed openly.
Although I agree with your analysis of feminisation in our current society I see this as a reflection of the way Western society is well fed and fairly stable. What amazes me is that blokes have not realized that they can just let the women do it all. They still keep entering contractual relationships with women. However, in some working class districts the men have understood that it is more fun not to work.
Barring Black Swan events, over the next 50 years the competition between the West and other global power bases such as Islam, China, Russia, the non-aligned (India/Brasil/South Africa) will resolve the issue of feminisation. Which culture will become dominant?
Of course we cannot bar Black Swans. Three "Black Swans" look almost inevitable: climate change may cause famine and turmoil, WWIII may happen, AI's will develop the ability to write themselves. Other Black Swans such as the social collapse of the USA, the rise of National Socialism in the EU, a truly serious pandemic etc. are distinctly possible.
If the Black Swans determine the "50 year future" then the family will come under huge stress and we may see the sort of social changes that affected 6th century Rome. Women may need men to add security for themselves and the family.
Another excellent piece - might be my favorite yet.
The sentiment expressed in the subtitle is definitely out there, roaming about. This idea that, after years of doing things "the male way," and many finding it wanting, the answer is to simply flip to the female way which will solve all of society's problems, with the handy side effect (or miracle) of having no drawbacks, whatsoever.
Interestingly, I think our traditional gender roles have much to blame for this, tagging women as gentle, compassionate, empathetic - the "fairer sex" - and seeing the war, death, destruction that can result from men behaving badly and not getting along. But as is noted, women have a much more insidious, under-the-radar mode of conflict, and are equally capable of bad behavior, although it takes a different form. As you rightly note, swapping "male" for "female" modes introduces a new set of advantages and disadvantages instead of ushering in some sort of Paradise.
So far I've read a smattering of your work here on Substack, Lorenzo. Really well articulated and thought provoking stuff! Looking forward to digging deeper into your back catalog.
Thanks for hosting Lorenzo. I first found his work through your Substack and have since thrown a few subscription dollars his way. Keep up the good work as well, Helen!
Lorenzo has a really fascinating history that, one day, I'll tell on here. But to cut a long story short, he's finished up not as well known as he ought to be, while I've had a fairly easy ride to literary prominence (even allowing for the years when I was in very intense legal jobs and basically couldn't do much outside them).
Lorenzo’s belief is that women’s ‘distructive emotionally incontintence’ needed to be managed and that the scold’s bridle (a horrifying and humilating tool of oppression) and the ducking stool (which could prove fatal) were ‘relatively humane’ and better than ‘thumping’ ‘mean girls and nags’ in private. As if one precluded the other - wasn't it often family members that requested these punishments! We know similar bridles were used on slaves was that too a sign of their relatively high status.
Medieval and slave punishment had the same imperative: punish with minimum interruption to labour service. Saying such punishments were also inflicted on slaves is not the point you seem to think it is. Thus, physical coercion was a feature of master-servant relations, even if the servant was free.
The cucking/ducking stool was a relatively mild punishment compared to many inflicted on freeborn folk, including freeborn males.
Also, if private beating was OK, why would someone bother going through the effort of the public process? It was the lack of any presumptive male right to physical obedience that led family members to bring cases before the manorial or whatever court. Societies which operated on such a presumptive right had no need of a public procedure.
You seem to have missed my point that bridles were used on slaves and women suggest that both slaves and women were of low status. Do you have sources to show that punishment is with the intention was minimum interruption of labour service - it sounds very rational when we know that slaves lives were very dispensable? Isn't punishment often used (when not just used in rage or out of sadisitic pleasure) to keep other slaves compliant? Likewise the use of the scolds bridle was to keep that women - and other woman - in their place. It was an iron muzzle in an iron framework that enclosed the head, slid into the mouth and pressed down on top of the tongue, often with a spike on the tongue, as a compress. It functioned to silence the wearer from speaking entirely, and caused extreme pain and physiological trauma to scare and intimidate the wearer into submission. For extra humiliation, a bell could also be attached to draw in crowds. The wearer might then led around town by a leash.
No, I got your point, it is just that you are wrong. You are using a sadly typical trope: pick up some bad thing done to some women, completely ignore the even worse things done to some men, and try and make some general point about female oppression.
Common medieval and early modern punishments on freeborn folk (male and female) included various forms of public humiliation, extending to whippings, brandings, mutilations and maimings. Punishment of slaves would include various forms of public humiliation, extending to whippings, brandings, mutilations …
When you look at the patterns of punishments, it is very clear that punishments generally sought to avoid depriving folk of the labour of the punished. Since that would also punish the person to whom they owed labour service.
The difference between freeborn and slaves was not in the type of punishments. It was in who had the authority to impose such punishment. If you were freeborn (often even if you were a serf), punishment required a public legal procedure.
Slaves were property: their master, or the master’s agent, could punish them as they chose. No public legal procedure was required. Such authority was a manifestation of the domination of the slave by the slaveowner. Slavery being a form of “social death”, the slave (usually) did not have any such legal protections.
Requiring a public legal procedure to happen before punishment could be meted out was a sign of higher status, of not having suffered “social death”.
Also, slave’s lives were not “very dispensable”. They were expensive assets. This was more true in temperate zone slavery (e.g. the Antebellum South) than in tropical zone slavery (the Caribbean, Brazil) because of the high disease death rates in the latter.
African religions survived more strongly in tropical areas (due to the high death rate requiring constant influx of new slaves) than in temperate areas (due to the much higher inter-generational survival rate) where Christianity (though with African characteristics) became more firmly adopted among the slaves. There is a reason only about 8% of all slaves transported across the Atlantic went to what is now the US. (Though, with smuggling after the banning of the importing of slaves in 1808, the number is probably closer to 10%.)
I do find it disappointing when debating a subject that you use terms like 'you are wrong' and 'you are using a sadly typical trope', and claim that I am trying to 'make some general point about female oppression.' I actually was trying to react very politely to the offensive idea of calling a bridle (whether applied to male slaves or to females) as in any way humane. To me you misapplied the word humane and that was my general point. I don't really want to discuss further with someone who tries to put me in a box which does not fit.
The series represents many thoughts that I've posted and defended on some private lists. One of the problems that I found is that a lot of the arguments and reasoning is based on historical interpretations. I almost fully agree with them but it is impossible to deny that there is a level of subjectivity that makes them hard to defend against attacks due to lack of testable evidence.
Therefore, the most objective argument I found is about <i>conflict resolution</i>. As you make clear, a masculine group tends to be a competence hierarchy, feminine groups tend to organize by (perceived) empathy.
Competence is objective and men rarely even need to discuss it. It is always a miracle to me how quickly a male hierarchy is agreed upon and how fluid it is based on the task at hand. Group solidarity, agreed rules/laws, rational arguments, consistency, and reciprocity tend to be used to resolve conflicts, usually without animosity. I've had hundreds of very heated arguments but this never affected the mood.
Empathy is however a spotlight that obscures everything that is not in focus. In the private sphere this is not an issue because her resources are limited and this inherently regulates the toxicity. In the public sphere, however, there is no good way to resolve a conflict since the empathy spotlight obscures the opponent's victim. Opponents do therefore not share a common language, like logic or rules, to resolve conflicts. Worse, public resources are seen as infinite and do therefore not regulate the empathy of an individual anymore.
Eventually when life is squeezed out of every institution, Someone is just going to say, it's your fault for letting them burn things to the ground, why did the patriarchy not control, if they knew things were bad?.
Thank you. Explains so much. I notice on Substack Notes now that it is a few women who are leading the charge to extend this pattern of whining and self-victimisation to Notes as well. Then, as a woman in a workplace, but one who sees herself as a bit masculine minded, rational, I know how stupid and embarrassed I have felt when I have let my emotions out.
Simply superb!
I’d love to hear a deeper dive into examples of how social media crusades and feminized progressive politics symbiotically work together to further the feminization process.
The process has its own incentive to swallow the whole world in its destructive game.
A worthy project. However three essays on Feminisation and two following on Feminism is about my limit: there is so much more to move onto.
Toxic Femininity. It's real, it's out there, and it's making a real mess.
Excellent synthesis of the present situation. I wonder though if the easiest answer isn't simply to return to sex-segregated education and work spaces. The experiment in having men and women work alongside one another in identical roles has been run for a couple generations now and the results are awful. Asking women to sit on their emotions is a logical thing to do but such solutions are swimming upstream against millions of years of evolved instincts ... made doubly difficult by the fact that, as you note, women are very good at masking their aggression even from themselves.
This need not mean that women are formally consigned to certain specific roles, although self selection via innate preference will lead to a degree of that. Instead, universities could for instance be organized along men's and women's lines, much as sports or Christian monasteries/convents are.
💬 if the easiest answer isn't
In one’s headspace—why, it sure is 🙂 Logical & neat. In current sociopolitcultural milieu? Not a slimmest chance. Unless we find a miracle way to heed Murray Rothbard’s admonition and ‘break the clock of social democracy’ & ‘repeal the 20th century’ 😇
On the other hand, the current sociopolitical milieu would have seemed utterly inconceivable a couple of generations ago. And we need not repeal the twentieth century ... merely regard its latter half the way we might look at a particularly embarrassing phase of our teenage years ;)
You mean we need to look at the boomers with embarrassment?
Almost nowhere ever regulated to have segregated workplaces. Any such segragation was almost always a natural effect of having presumptive sex roles. There were sometimes bars on which sex could undertake what professions or occupations, which had segregating consequences, but again were about the sex roles.
Plenty of counter-examples: the military, for example, combat arms especially, was once male-only; convents vs monasteries; boy's vs girl's schools. For the most part however formal and explicit sex segregation has been unnecessary, as the implicit segregation that emerges from the different inclinations of the sexes leads to the de facto same outcome. Much of our current problem is a result of women being artificially pushed into professional roles they would not otherwise choose, e.g. Ranger school or STEM. Remove such programs and simply accept that stable social equilibria will mean most occupations are either predominantly male or female, and water would find its own level again, so to speak.
I associate segregation with different spaces for the same activities. Adult men and women were usually only allowed to live together if married: hence monasteries and convents. And yes, some occupations have been sex-restricted, as I pointed out. So, militaries were not counter-examples.
This assumes neither men nor women can, on average, manage themselves. Yet we know that it’s possible to drag rates of male sex offending right down (see the entire developed world) and possible to make a plurality of women emotionally restrained (see the entirety of pagan Roman history).
The Romans are a good example of a long-lived civilisation with high-status women - including some in the professions - where high status was coupled with very effective “don’t blub, don’t whinge, don’t gossip” norms.
Yes there will be women who fail in this. Public life or the professions are not for them.
Always remember that their male equivalents are in gaol, unemployed, or in really shit jobs.
Perhaps I'm simply too cynical. I've never seen the sisterhood take criticism well, and propagating social norms for professional life that explicitly recognize that there are downsides to female social aggression that can be quite catastrophic to organizational function seems like it would be met with shrieks of denial and outrage. Particularly if it came from men. So, women - and in particular high status women in the professions - would need to be the ones doing this work. Could we see such a change? One can hope....
Rome never gave women the vote though and most Roman women, like women generally before the modern age were dependent on resources best obtained by the physical strength of their husbands.
@Helen Dale, how can we imagine that we'll establish any norms of propriety in a world in which women, most of which lack your integrity, have near equal political power? You may have a different perspective, but from what I can tell even your average highly competent woman tends to side with her non- 'emotionally restrained' counterparts when these have their outbursts. Do you have any intuitive estimates on what percentage of women might be susceptible to any appeal to break ranks?
Fantasic essay! The "future is female" girlboss crowd are just as socially harmful as the stereotypically aggressive and narcissistic toxic masculinity they present themselves in opposition to; the female narcissists just cover their aggression with a veneer of polite and smiling aggreeableness, punctuated with the calculated gossip and concerned whisper. The problem is neither masculinity nor femininity, per se, but rather narcissism (and even psychopathy).
Brilliant essay. I hate "bring your whole self to work". No, if I did that, I'd spend the day talking loudly to myself and breaking off to swear every time someone says "lived experience" or "let's talk about inclusion". It's not about bringing your whole self, it's only about bringing your most ego-rubbing, edi-loving, Twitter progressivist wanker-self to work to engage in dreary three hour daisy chains masquerading as the latest EDI Forum. And that's why I can't bring my whole self to work. I just have to unleash it on Substack (and my husband, poor man).
I've had a thought about it becoming increasingly common for homosexuals to have children biologically (with surrogate mothers/donor sperm). Modern technologies somewhat circumvent that natural stopper put on breeding by having no desire to play sexual hoopla. I do wonder how much of an impact it will have on children to be brought up by parents of the same sex and also to have at least one biological parent who is gay.
For one thing: how much does the kid miss out on not having both a female and male influence? Wiill that impact be lessened if one or both has more cross-sex behaviours? Whatever the case, if we carry on in the current (feminised) fashion of Don't You Dare Ask That, Wave The Flag and Conform, it will be bloody hard to know what the real outcome is.
Apologies for the bloody long comment.
Hardly any sociologist dares to present data on single sex families. There are few reviews. This review in Science by Loren Marks (2012) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X12000580 shows that children of same sex couples scored lowest on almost every variable.
However, the impetus for same sex marriage was not about children and families. It was about the gay partners - as Mitchell et al (2009) put it: "It was hoped that one of the results of the Civil Partnership Act – alongside the EERs and the Adoption and Children Act – would be to produce a shift in social-cultural attitudes to lesbian, gay and bisexual people and to same-sex relationships " https://sp.ukdataservice.ac.uk/doc/6929/mrdoc/pdf/6929uguide.pdf This in itself is vaguely shocking, should the well being of children be ignored in the interests of a pressure group?
That doesn't surprise me. I'm still in favour of same sex unions, but that should be about the adults and their legal contract. I'm not at all convinced same sex parenting should be viewed the same as a mother-father pair, and I don't think children's interests are being prioritised (in this area or in many others too the priority is usually individual adult desire).
I actually did a detailed evidence review of the data on point for the Reason Foundation back in 2013: https://reason.org/wp-content/uploads/files/an_argument_for_equal_marriage.pdf
The problem isn't with same-sex parents (two women + a male sperm donor was common in pagan classical antiquity, as was the gay uncle Lorenzo describes in his piece).
However, with the male sperm donor in Roman times, the pairing was straight + gay, which still produces vastly more straight than gay children.
The problem now is gay men acting as sperm donors to their lesbian friends. If a gay man and a gay woman use IVF or surrogacy to have kids their kids turn out to be massively gay. This defeats the purpose for which homosexuals evolved in the first place (to prevent cognitive convergence between the sexes).
I know a pair of gay couples where the gay men donated sperm to their lesbian friends. Lesbian couple have three kids (two boys, one girl). All gay. That does not arise naturally and is wildly statistically improbable. We gayers are not supposed to breed with each other. Yes you get the odd crossover - gay man who fathers a child, lesbian woman who marries, has one, then divorces. But in both those cases it’s a gay + a straight. Not gay + gay.
It will conclude with an action plan.
I did not know that, thank you. I wonder how many gay/lesbian couples are aware of the gay+gay= more gay issue. I don't call it an issue because I think it's wrong to be gay, but I do think it's easier in a lot of ways to be straight (or bi). Bigger dating pool, easier to have kids, and easier to make a family without bumping into any real ethical quandary such as the kind you might have with donor sperm or surrogacy.
I wonder if over time you will see an increase in live cover in that community. To mangle an Arthur C. Clarke quote, “Insemination will always be cheaper with unskilled labor.”
I am not familiar with the usage “live cover”.
OMG, this is so unbelievably good. I hope Janice Fiamengo sees this.
Excellent, Janice is doing stellar work.
Absolutely fascinating. Thank you.
It is a breath of fresh air to see these issues discussed openly.
Although I agree with your analysis of feminisation in our current society I see this as a reflection of the way Western society is well fed and fairly stable. What amazes me is that blokes have not realized that they can just let the women do it all. They still keep entering contractual relationships with women. However, in some working class districts the men have understood that it is more fun not to work.
Barring Black Swan events, over the next 50 years the competition between the West and other global power bases such as Islam, China, Russia, the non-aligned (India/Brasil/South Africa) will resolve the issue of feminisation. Which culture will become dominant?
Of course we cannot bar Black Swans. Three "Black Swans" look almost inevitable: climate change may cause famine and turmoil, WWIII may happen, AI's will develop the ability to write themselves. Other Black Swans such as the social collapse of the USA, the rise of National Socialism in the EU, a truly serious pandemic etc. are distinctly possible.
If the Black Swans determine the "50 year future" then the family will come under huge stress and we may see the sort of social changes that affected 6th century Rome. Women may need men to add security for themselves and the family.
Another excellent piece - might be my favorite yet.
The sentiment expressed in the subtitle is definitely out there, roaming about. This idea that, after years of doing things "the male way," and many finding it wanting, the answer is to simply flip to the female way which will solve all of society's problems, with the handy side effect (or miracle) of having no drawbacks, whatsoever.
Interestingly, I think our traditional gender roles have much to blame for this, tagging women as gentle, compassionate, empathetic - the "fairer sex" - and seeing the war, death, destruction that can result from men behaving badly and not getting along. But as is noted, women have a much more insidious, under-the-radar mode of conflict, and are equally capable of bad behavior, although it takes a different form. As you rightly note, swapping "male" for "female" modes introduces a new set of advantages and disadvantages instead of ushering in some sort of Paradise.
Checking if comments work
Receiving you loud & clear.
So far I've read a smattering of your work here on Substack, Lorenzo. Really well articulated and thought provoking stuff! Looking forward to digging deeper into your back catalog.
All linked in the pinned post.
Thanks for hosting Lorenzo. I first found his work through your Substack and have since thrown a few subscription dollars his way. Keep up the good work as well, Helen!
Lorenzo has a really fascinating history that, one day, I'll tell on here. But to cut a long story short, he's finished up not as well known as he ought to be, while I've had a fairly easy ride to literary prominence (even allowing for the years when I was in very intense legal jobs and basically couldn't do much outside them).
So I decided to make use of that prominence.
Lorenzo’s belief is that women’s ‘distructive emotionally incontintence’ needed to be managed and that the scold’s bridle (a horrifying and humilating tool of oppression) and the ducking stool (which could prove fatal) were ‘relatively humane’ and better than ‘thumping’ ‘mean girls and nags’ in private. As if one precluded the other - wasn't it often family members that requested these punishments! We know similar bridles were used on slaves was that too a sign of their relatively high status.
Medieval and slave punishment had the same imperative: punish with minimum interruption to labour service. Saying such punishments were also inflicted on slaves is not the point you seem to think it is. Thus, physical coercion was a feature of master-servant relations, even if the servant was free.
The cucking/ducking stool was a relatively mild punishment compared to many inflicted on freeborn folk, including freeborn males.
Also, if private beating was OK, why would someone bother going through the effort of the public process? It was the lack of any presumptive male right to physical obedience that led family members to bring cases before the manorial or whatever court. Societies which operated on such a presumptive right had no need of a public procedure.
You seem to have missed my point that bridles were used on slaves and women suggest that both slaves and women were of low status. Do you have sources to show that punishment is with the intention was minimum interruption of labour service - it sounds very rational when we know that slaves lives were very dispensable? Isn't punishment often used (when not just used in rage or out of sadisitic pleasure) to keep other slaves compliant? Likewise the use of the scolds bridle was to keep that women - and other woman - in their place. It was an iron muzzle in an iron framework that enclosed the head, slid into the mouth and pressed down on top of the tongue, often with a spike on the tongue, as a compress. It functioned to silence the wearer from speaking entirely, and caused extreme pain and physiological trauma to scare and intimidate the wearer into submission. For extra humiliation, a bell could also be attached to draw in crowds. The wearer might then led around town by a leash.
No, I got your point, it is just that you are wrong. You are using a sadly typical trope: pick up some bad thing done to some women, completely ignore the even worse things done to some men, and try and make some general point about female oppression.
Common medieval and early modern punishments on freeborn folk (male and female) included various forms of public humiliation, extending to whippings, brandings, mutilations and maimings. Punishment of slaves would include various forms of public humiliation, extending to whippings, brandings, mutilations …
When you look at the patterns of punishments, it is very clear that punishments generally sought to avoid depriving folk of the labour of the punished. Since that would also punish the person to whom they owed labour service.
The difference between freeborn and slaves was not in the type of punishments. It was in who had the authority to impose such punishment. If you were freeborn (often even if you were a serf), punishment required a public legal procedure.
Slaves were property: their master, or the master’s agent, could punish them as they chose. No public legal procedure was required. Such authority was a manifestation of the domination of the slave by the slaveowner. Slavery being a form of “social death”, the slave (usually) did not have any such legal protections.
Requiring a public legal procedure to happen before punishment could be meted out was a sign of higher status, of not having suffered “social death”.
Also, slave’s lives were not “very dispensable”. They were expensive assets. This was more true in temperate zone slavery (e.g. the Antebellum South) than in tropical zone slavery (the Caribbean, Brazil) because of the high disease death rates in the latter.
African religions survived more strongly in tropical areas (due to the high death rate requiring constant influx of new slaves) than in temperate areas (due to the much higher inter-generational survival rate) where Christianity (though with African characteristics) became more firmly adopted among the slaves. There is a reason only about 8% of all slaves transported across the Atlantic went to what is now the US. (Though, with smuggling after the banning of the importing of slaves in 1808, the number is probably closer to 10%.)
I do find it disappointing when debating a subject that you use terms like 'you are wrong' and 'you are using a sadly typical trope', and claim that I am trying to 'make some general point about female oppression.' I actually was trying to react very politely to the offensive idea of calling a bridle (whether applied to male slaves or to females) as in any way humane. To me you misapplied the word humane and that was my general point. I don't really want to discuss further with someone who tries to put me in a box which does not fit.
The series represents many thoughts that I've posted and defended on some private lists. One of the problems that I found is that a lot of the arguments and reasoning is based on historical interpretations. I almost fully agree with them but it is impossible to deny that there is a level of subjectivity that makes them hard to defend against attacks due to lack of testable evidence.
Therefore, the most objective argument I found is about <i>conflict resolution</i>. As you make clear, a masculine group tends to be a competence hierarchy, feminine groups tend to organize by (perceived) empathy.
Competence is objective and men rarely even need to discuss it. It is always a miracle to me how quickly a male hierarchy is agreed upon and how fluid it is based on the task at hand. Group solidarity, agreed rules/laws, rational arguments, consistency, and reciprocity tend to be used to resolve conflicts, usually without animosity. I've had hundreds of very heated arguments but this never affected the mood.
Empathy is however a spotlight that obscures everything that is not in focus. In the private sphere this is not an issue because her resources are limited and this inherently regulates the toxicity. In the public sphere, however, there is no good way to resolve a conflict since the empathy spotlight obscures the opponent's victim. Opponents do therefore not share a common language, like logic or rules, to resolve conflicts. Worse, public resources are seen as infinite and do therefore not regulate the empathy of an individual anymore.
Eventually when life is squeezed out of every institution, Someone is just going to say, it's your fault for letting them burn things to the ground, why did the patriarchy not control, if they knew things were bad?.