Their politics was male only. Their law was quite gender-egalitarian. You can see this in property, inheritance, finance, commerce. Senators would not only leave their estates to be managed by their wives when they were otherwise occupied, we even have Senatorial speeches boasting how good a manager their wife was.
In the late Republic there was a proposal to tax a female-dominated area of finance. Hortensia made a famous speech to the effect of, if you are going to tax us, give us the vote. The Senate backed down because, as you say, politics was male only.
Good question. Duck Duck Go can be a definite improvement over Google. https://duckduckgo.com/
Google Scholar is notably better than Google proper, but is specific in its coverage.
I doubt there is a simple answer. A lot of the time, I am reliant on finding references and links by building up a series of folk I read and watch, so that even the YouTube (for instance) algorithm begins to reflect that.
I like his presentations. I don’t always agree, but I find them thought-provoking. He gets bursts of enthusiasm for particular scholars, and his talks have alerted me to useful scholars I wasn’t previously aware of.
The role of Tumblr is under-appreciated. A lot of the online techniques and patterns come out of fandom.
But the ideological content has a much longer history, going back to the evolution of Critical Theory in the 1920s and 1930s, the postmodern/post-structuralist turn in the late 1960s, the progressive conquest of Teacher education: particularly the adoption of Freirian Critical Pedagogy. “Wokery” can be reasonably described as Critical Constructivism (James Lindsay says this) or the popularisation of Critical Theory (Bishop Barron).
Yes, you have to be careful about that. The views of French postmodern/post-structuralist thinkers were definitely adapted, but the adaptations do not necessarily directly reflect what the thinker said. But such adaptations are definitely an important part of the story.
Long and commendable. I was a soldier once and served with women. They were all great troops. But then we were all still in a masculinized Army. The American corporate world has long been feminized, but even that is being challenged by offending sensibilities thought to have triumphed. One begeat the other.
I should add the parallels to France are striking: Girondins are killed by Montagnards who kill each other and become Jacobins... Ad nauseam. Pray there is no Bonaparte.
Bonaparte was in essence the masculine alpha male teams reasserting themselves through military power. The battlefield Victor sweeping away the political cliques and restoring proper order. The days of tyranny ended with bonaparte and for most, good order was restored.
That is for the domestic situation. For the foreign policy, bonaparte did try to make a compromise between the revolutionary ideals and aristocratic rule, but the British could not allow a continental power and thus fermented more wars, just like they did versus Germany a century later. Perfidious Albion not being an empty moniker.
Why does China not dominate the world? Because civilisations that eliminate competitive jurisdictions stagnate. Rome, for instance, was where Classical civilisation went to die. The impossibility of uniting Europe was good for the development of Western civilisation.
Yes. Both articles have been a great read. As a woman and veteran, I’ve never had much patience with the mean girl ethos. You could say I lean toward the masculine in terms of prioritizing merit (prestige) over propriety. I like to get sh*t done.
I’ve also realized recently that I prefer working with male clients because they waste fewer cycles on projects (and they tend to respect budgets and results).
This is not to say that women should be pushed back into domestic roles and I don’t believe this article is suggesting this (although I have read some pieces that lean in that direction). It just means that we need to evolve our emotional intelligence so we can be more effective leaders.
Effective leadership outside of family and community groups will require us to become more results oriented and less propriety focused. I welcome this evolution. I suppose being a creative (designer/web developer) drives this pragmatic streak. From the Hoel article:
“All cognitive resources go to reputation management in the group, to being popular, leaving nothing left in the tank for invention or creativity or art or engineering.”
"This is not to say that women should be pushed back into domestic roles"
Thanks for your service. Women shouldn't be pushed anywhere, especially women like you. But the majority of women today realize (even if only subconsciously) they'd be happier and better off in a domestic role. Cubicle or cashier life is inferior to child-rearing and homemaking life. For the minority of women who truly desire and are capable of roles as soldiers or surgeons, let nobody stand in their way. But let's stop pretending this is appropriate for an women.
As long as it’s the woman’s choice and no one else’s, I’m fine with whatever role they choose. Not all women are cut out to be domestic or to have kids.
"replacing a robust culture of free speech and thought (captured by the schoolyard ditty “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me”) with a far more intolerant and controlling public culture of words are violence and that’s offensive"....see this piece on Honor, Dignity, and Victim Cultures:
How sad is it that I agree with nearly everything in this piece and still have the thought that this is misogynist.
I always thought of the woke takeover of geek spaces as due to an inability + unwillingness to push back making these spaces easy targets. The framework of feminine mindsets, compassion over teamwork specifically, aligns with my experience. I don't know this, but I'd guess that lower status men adopt feminized strategies when they don't think they can compete on the typical playing field.
Insightful as always Lorenzo, thanks for your writing!
"Faced with the corrosive effects of feminisation, there are three possible outcomes."
There is a fourth outcome. Failure in war. Either failure to fight a necessary war or failure to win a war. This is the ultimate test of one society versus another.
Hence my comment about (2) being often followed by (3), in the form of conquering outsiders. It is an open question how corrosive all this has been on Western military capacities. The failure in Afghanistan I would put down to bad incentives within the US State and American inability to think through societies with very different social logics.
Now that you describe what you said you clearly made this point. My apologies for skim reading :)
The ability to win modern wars is related strongly to productive capacity and innovation. My guess is that China has the investment and subversive clout to undermine the West at home. The Rand Corporation predicts that "China probably will be able to contest all domains of conflict across the broad swath of the region by the mid-2030s". https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2798.html
There are many possible outcomes from this development but feminisation of the West will not increase the likelihood of any of the good outcomes. It will not cause us to emphasise our difference from China (free speech, individual openness and independence) and hence prepare us to fight.
I am sorry to say this but either war is coming or the world will submit to tyranny for a millennium or more. Tyranny has always been the natural state of humanity except for brief moments such as those due to the English Civil War or the Athenians. Unfortunately National Socialism such as in China/Russia/Nazis etc. is as capable of delivering wealth as freedom.
"Unfortunately National Socialism such as in China/Russia/Nazis etc. is as capable of delivering wealth as freedom." - I might disagree. China's wealth comes from an ability to exploit workers where human labor is in excess. But the Chinese seem to have cultural barriers to innovate. The Nazis were able to innovate, but were resource bound. Wealth creation requires innovation and resources, the cheaper the better. Innovation requires considerable risk taking which is less likely in a feminized society. Lucky we aren't quite there yet. Socialist systems rarely innovate because the rewards are minimized via distribution.
I agree with you about socialist societies. China ceased being socialist in the 1990's. Russia moved to National Socialism through being a vaguely democratic state in the late 1990s but China moved straight from communism to National Socialism.
National Socialist states allow capitalism to dominate the economy but the ruling elite keep the reins of power firmly in their own hands. Xi is one of the minor oligarchs ( only worth about $400m) - see this Bloomberg article: https://archive.vn/1FIxo
I think that centrally planned economies are destined to be less prosperous than open competition. Seems even Xi is backing away from state-owned businesses because they haven't done as well as planned. Those Chinese billionaires arrived as a result of individual built business but Xi became worried about their power and reigned them in. I seriously doubt anyone knows the personal wealth of Xi or Putin.
But the fact that China has few women in charge may be helpful in them in their pursuit of greatness (Japan and Korea are similar). Seems women can be toxic to business progress in line with the essay.
The "feminisation trilogy" has been an incredible add to this series. Although Part II noted the common sense observation that simply flipping from male to female "modes" only traded one set of strengths and weaknesses for another, Part III explains the dysfunction of the "female mode" and why its contrary to civilizational success, based on historical examples/parallels.
One of the reasons is that one of the most prominent features of this mode - conformity via shame and social pressure - is also its self-defense. Once feminization hits "critical mass" and takes the reins, attempts to walk it back, improve the feminized society, etc. back to either the male mode or towards something new are deflected by the "words are violence" type rhetoric. *Who are you to hurt our feelings and criticize our prescriptions and attitudes?*
If there's to be a way out of this spiral, then I think it has to be (like many have asked of "wokery"): how do you reason with folks who reject reason? Or what kind of argument can be made against people led by personal emotions? Do men and the more male-modal need to use the language of "oppression" to get their even share back? So far, this approach has been met with scoffs and derision. Perhaps because its not our native tongue.
Well given the rate and pace of technological progress gender issues will be moot in the world where AGI rule. and if not the transhumanists will use genetic engineering and embryopods to procreate .
Wonderful essay. Explained a lot of this tendency towards wokery. But the extremes of woke seem to become self-defeating in the end. I do hope it's a phase.
It seems to me that for some women, those weaker or lower status than them do not fall into the category of "every general needs an army, and no man gets left behind", but rather they are either objects of pity and coddling (children), derision, or are flat out ignored. There is not enough of a sense that vulnerable women both deserve dignity and have agency. And not enough of a sense that people in general can need a hand up to become someone who can stand shoulder to shoulder to you and face the world together, and that you do them an injustice by cursing them the moment they cease to be perpetual children.
This reminds me of another topic actually: the way the progressive left curse minorities in their coalition of being traitors the moment they disagree with the (overwhelmingly posh, female, and - amusingly enough - white) radical wing implies that they don't think of this as a coalition of equals where new problems and interests are constantly negotiated, but as a lord-and-serf arrangement.
This is another substack I enjoy following which has commented on feminism and also China. There was one entry regarding the feminization of China and how Xi was cracking down on feminized males but I couldn’t find it off hand. Thank you for your work. Such interesting times we live in.
Their politics was male only. Their law was quite gender-egalitarian. You can see this in property, inheritance, finance, commerce. Senators would not only leave their estates to be managed by their wives when they were otherwise occupied, we even have Senatorial speeches boasting how good a manager their wife was.
In the late Republic there was a proposal to tax a female-dominated area of finance. Hortensia made a famous speech to the effect of, if you are going to tax us, give us the vote. The Senate backed down because, as you say, politics was male only.
Having somewhat grown up in Saudi Arabia, albeit in an ex-pat enclave, has clearly fed into Zuby’s perspective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuby
Good question. Duck Duck Go can be a definite improvement over Google. https://duckduckgo.com/
Google Scholar is notably better than Google proper, but is specific in its coverage.
I doubt there is a simple answer. A lot of the time, I am reliant on finding references and links by building up a series of folk I read and watch, so that even the YouTube (for instance) algorithm begins to reflect that.
In the news field, Ground News can be helpful. https://ground.news/.
I do think having male and female realms is healthy. Creating them forcibly, less so. On the other hand, forced association has significant costs.
I like his presentations. I don’t always agree, but I find them thought-provoking. He gets bursts of enthusiasm for particular scholars, and his talks have alerted me to useful scholars I wasn’t previously aware of.
The role of Tumblr is under-appreciated. A lot of the online techniques and patterns come out of fandom.
But the ideological content has a much longer history, going back to the evolution of Critical Theory in the 1920s and 1930s, the postmodern/post-structuralist turn in the late 1960s, the progressive conquest of Teacher education: particularly the adoption of Freirian Critical Pedagogy. “Wokery” can be reasonably described as Critical Constructivism (James Lindsay says this) or the popularisation of Critical Theory (Bishop Barron).
Yes, you have to be careful about that. The views of French postmodern/post-structuralist thinkers were definitely adapted, but the adaptations do not necessarily directly reflect what the thinker said. But such adaptations are definitely an important part of the story.
Long and commendable. I was a soldier once and served with women. They were all great troops. But then we were all still in a masculinized Army. The American corporate world has long been feminized, but even that is being challenged by offending sensibilities thought to have triumphed. One begeat the other.
I should add the parallels to France are striking: Girondins are killed by Montagnards who kill each other and become Jacobins... Ad nauseam. Pray there is no Bonaparte.
Bonaparte was in essence the masculine alpha male teams reasserting themselves through military power. The battlefield Victor sweeping away the political cliques and restoring proper order. The days of tyranny ended with bonaparte and for most, good order was restored.
That is for the domestic situation. For the foreign policy, bonaparte did try to make a compromise between the revolutionary ideals and aristocratic rule, but the British could not allow a continental power and thus fermented more wars, just like they did versus Germany a century later. Perfidious Albion not being an empty moniker.
Why does China not dominate the world? Because civilisations that eliminate competitive jurisdictions stagnate. Rome, for instance, was where Classical civilisation went to die. The impossibility of uniting Europe was good for the development of Western civilisation.
Wow! You gave me many leads to improved maps! Especially grateful for The Gossip Trap hypothesis. https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/the-gossip-trap
Yes. Both articles have been a great read. As a woman and veteran, I’ve never had much patience with the mean girl ethos. You could say I lean toward the masculine in terms of prioritizing merit (prestige) over propriety. I like to get sh*t done.
I’ve also realized recently that I prefer working with male clients because they waste fewer cycles on projects (and they tend to respect budgets and results).
This is not to say that women should be pushed back into domestic roles and I don’t believe this article is suggesting this (although I have read some pieces that lean in that direction). It just means that we need to evolve our emotional intelligence so we can be more effective leaders.
Effective leadership outside of family and community groups will require us to become more results oriented and less propriety focused. I welcome this evolution. I suppose being a creative (designer/web developer) drives this pragmatic streak. From the Hoel article:
“All cognitive resources go to reputation management in the group, to being popular, leaving nothing left in the tank for invention or creativity or art or engineering.”
This strongly resonated with me.
"This is not to say that women should be pushed back into domestic roles"
Thanks for your service. Women shouldn't be pushed anywhere, especially women like you. But the majority of women today realize (even if only subconsciously) they'd be happier and better off in a domestic role. Cubicle or cashier life is inferior to child-rearing and homemaking life. For the minority of women who truly desire and are capable of roles as soldiers or surgeons, let nobody stand in their way. But let's stop pretending this is appropriate for an women.
As long as it’s the woman’s choice and no one else’s, I’m fine with whatever role they choose. Not all women are cut out to be domestic or to have kids.
"replacing a robust culture of free speech and thought (captured by the schoolyard ditty “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me”) with a far more intolerant and controlling public culture of words are violence and that’s offensive"....see this piece on Honor, Dignity, and Victim Cultures:
https://www.overcurious.org/blog/honor-dignity-and-victim-cultures-explained
How sad is it that I agree with nearly everything in this piece and still have the thought that this is misogynist.
I always thought of the woke takeover of geek spaces as due to an inability + unwillingness to push back making these spaces easy targets. The framework of feminine mindsets, compassion over teamwork specifically, aligns with my experience. I don't know this, but I'd guess that lower status men adopt feminized strategies when they don't think they can compete on the typical playing field.
Insightful as always Lorenzo, thanks for your writing!
"Faced with the corrosive effects of feminisation, there are three possible outcomes."
There is a fourth outcome. Failure in war. Either failure to fight a necessary war or failure to win a war. This is the ultimate test of one society versus another.
Hence my comment about (2) being often followed by (3), in the form of conquering outsiders. It is an open question how corrosive all this has been on Western military capacities. The failure in Afghanistan I would put down to bad incentives within the US State and American inability to think through societies with very different social logics.
Now that you describe what you said you clearly made this point. My apologies for skim reading :)
The ability to win modern wars is related strongly to productive capacity and innovation. My guess is that China has the investment and subversive clout to undermine the West at home. The Rand Corporation predicts that "China probably will be able to contest all domains of conflict across the broad swath of the region by the mid-2030s". https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2798.html
There are many possible outcomes from this development but feminisation of the West will not increase the likelihood of any of the good outcomes. It will not cause us to emphasise our difference from China (free speech, individual openness and independence) and hence prepare us to fight.
I am sorry to say this but either war is coming or the world will submit to tyranny for a millennium or more. Tyranny has always been the natural state of humanity except for brief moments such as those due to the English Civil War or the Athenians. Unfortunately National Socialism such as in China/Russia/Nazis etc. is as capable of delivering wealth as freedom.
"Unfortunately National Socialism such as in China/Russia/Nazis etc. is as capable of delivering wealth as freedom." - I might disagree. China's wealth comes from an ability to exploit workers where human labor is in excess. But the Chinese seem to have cultural barriers to innovate. The Nazis were able to innovate, but were resource bound. Wealth creation requires innovation and resources, the cheaper the better. Innovation requires considerable risk taking which is less likely in a feminized society. Lucky we aren't quite there yet. Socialist systems rarely innovate because the rewards are minimized via distribution.
I agree with you about socialist societies. China ceased being socialist in the 1990's. Russia moved to National Socialism through being a vaguely democratic state in the late 1990s but China moved straight from communism to National Socialism.
National Socialist states allow capitalism to dominate the economy but the ruling elite keep the reins of power firmly in their own hands. Xi is one of the minor oligarchs ( only worth about $400m) - see this Bloomberg article: https://archive.vn/1FIxo
There are hundreds of billionaires in China - see https://www.forbes.com/lists/china-billionaires/
I can only conclude that the lack of knowledge about China is due to the control that it exerts over Western Media through indirect ownership.
There are no women in China's 24 man politburo - https://www.cfr.org/blog/women-week-female-representation-regresses-china.
I think that centrally planned economies are destined to be less prosperous than open competition. Seems even Xi is backing away from state-owned businesses because they haven't done as well as planned. Those Chinese billionaires arrived as a result of individual built business but Xi became worried about their power and reigned them in. I seriously doubt anyone knows the personal wealth of Xi or Putin.
But the fact that China has few women in charge may be helpful in them in their pursuit of greatness (Japan and Korea are similar). Seems women can be toxic to business progress in line with the essay.
The "feminisation trilogy" has been an incredible add to this series. Although Part II noted the common sense observation that simply flipping from male to female "modes" only traded one set of strengths and weaknesses for another, Part III explains the dysfunction of the "female mode" and why its contrary to civilizational success, based on historical examples/parallels.
One of the reasons is that one of the most prominent features of this mode - conformity via shame and social pressure - is also its self-defense. Once feminization hits "critical mass" and takes the reins, attempts to walk it back, improve the feminized society, etc. back to either the male mode or towards something new are deflected by the "words are violence" type rhetoric. *Who are you to hurt our feelings and criticize our prescriptions and attitudes?*
If there's to be a way out of this spiral, then I think it has to be (like many have asked of "wokery"): how do you reason with folks who reject reason? Or what kind of argument can be made against people led by personal emotions? Do men and the more male-modal need to use the language of "oppression" to get their even share back? So far, this approach has been met with scoffs and derision. Perhaps because its not our native tongue.
"Perhaps because it's not our native tongue".
Very perceptive observation.
"Do men and the more male-modal need to use the language of "oppression" to get their even share back?"
Nope. Just gain complete control over plumbing.
Well given the rate and pace of technological progress gender issues will be moot in the world where AGI rule. and if not the transhumanists will use genetic engineering and embryopods to procreate .
Wonderful essay. Explained a lot of this tendency towards wokery. But the extremes of woke seem to become self-defeating in the end. I do hope it's a phase.
It seems to me that for some women, those weaker or lower status than them do not fall into the category of "every general needs an army, and no man gets left behind", but rather they are either objects of pity and coddling (children), derision, or are flat out ignored. There is not enough of a sense that vulnerable women both deserve dignity and have agency. And not enough of a sense that people in general can need a hand up to become someone who can stand shoulder to shoulder to you and face the world together, and that you do them an injustice by cursing them the moment they cease to be perpetual children.
This reminds me of another topic actually: the way the progressive left curse minorities in their coalition of being traitors the moment they disagree with the (overwhelmingly posh, female, and - amusingly enough - white) radical wing implies that they don't think of this as a coalition of equals where new problems and interests are constantly negotiated, but as a lord-and-serf arrangement.
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-change-merchants
This is another substack I enjoy following which has commented on feminism and also China. There was one entry regarding the feminization of China and how Xi was cracking down on feminized males but I couldn’t find it off hand. Thank you for your work. Such interesting times we live in.
@Lorenzo, just a heads up the ‘pyramid of skulls’ article you linked to in this essay (https://indictales.com/2022/05/17/mughal-minars-of-hindu-heads-sign-of-victory-of-islam/) has been censored at the site.
I lol’d as I read their reasoning. You will too.
Best,
Michael
⚜️
*eye roll*. Selective delicacy.
Sikhs are not reticent.
https://www.sikhnet.com/news/islamic-india-biggest-holocaust-world-history
Others are also direct on the matter.
http://delhimagic.blogspot.com/2008/08/of-towers-and-skulls.html
https://twitter.com/MumukshuSavitri/status/1524617123623972864
Absolutely brilliant. Should be required reading.