{"id":331,"date":"2021-12-13T10:20:02","date_gmt":"2021-12-13T10:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5257.temp.domains\/~houghty5\/?p=331"},"modified":"2022-10-22T16:34:23","modified_gmt":"2022-10-22T21:34:23","slug":"we-need-to-talk-about-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thoughtsofstone.com\/we-need-to-talk-about-women\/","title":{"rendered":"WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT WOMEN"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once more unto the breach, dear friends.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written about women and their cultural\/political ascendancy so much in recent years, especially the last three, that I worry about sounding like the proverbial broken record if I write any more. But it seems to me that as this idea is accepted more widely\u2014including by commentators who see it as their own idea . . .<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

. . . there is a tendency to narrow the focus (e.g., \u201cfemale graduates,\u201d \u201cHR ladies,\u201d or \u201cwomen explain wokeness\u201d) so that the true extent of the West\u2019s feminization is obscured.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the case can be made that feminization is having not only an enormous but also a potentially fatal impact on Western civilization as we have known it. Thus, thumping the tub about this subject may be a good and necessary thing to do now.<\/p>\n

To that end, I think at least several key points within this overall hypothesis bear repeating:<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s broad cultural\/political ascendancy has been reshaping the West for decades<\/strong><\/p>\n

The big idea here is that women have been the principal drivers not only of the creeping wokeism post 2015 or so, and of the ongoing semi-spiritual movement known as the Great Awokening, but also of the general \u201cleftward\u201d (in fact, \u201cfeminine\u201d<\/a>) trends in Western culture and politics over the last six-plus decades. This is the period in which women moved en masse<\/em> into, and achieved parity or dominance within, culturally and politically influential professions such as journalism, publishing, entertainment, law, academia, politics, even blogging.<\/p>\n

It is not just from one or two of those professions but from all of them, and in every circumstance along the way (e.g., university life, engagement with social media, office politics, voting, protest marches), that women have been causing cultural and political change, effectively feminizing the West to a degree never seen before in any large civilization.<\/p>\n

Activist women\u2014mostly single, university-educated, and\/or young\u2014may be the \u201cshock troops\u201d of feminization, and the most dedicated and effective practitioners of wokeism and cancel culture. But women in general<\/em> have been driving this social transformation.<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s ascension to cultural and political power has had cultural and political consequences because women on average are different than men across a wide range of attitudes and behaviors<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gender differences in attitudes and behaviors were presumably shaped\u2014at a biological level with changes that cannot easily be undone\u2014by men\u2019s and women\u2019s distinct roles during the long period of hominid evolution, roles that for women centered on maternity. Women even now in modern times appear to be markedly more emotionally sensitive than men on average, quicker to form social networks, less interested in abstract and inanimate things, less interested in systems, more personal (including ad hominem<\/em>) in their thinking, and more fearful\u2014not just of ideas and people they dislike but also of toxins and other putative environmental threats. All these differences have had cultural and policy consequences as women\u2019s power has increased in societies designed and traditionally run by men. One could say that women effectively have been using their new cultural and political power to renovate and redecorate their civilization according to their distinctive tastes. As Virginia Woolf put it in her 1938 essay, \u201cThree Guineas\u201d:<\/p>\n

Let us never cease from thinking\u2014what is this \u201ccivilization\u201d in which we find ourselves?<\/p>\n

Cultural\/political feminization therefore involves a multitude of changes<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cultural and political changes that have plausibly been driven by the ascendancy of women in Western societies are not limited to the extreme changes associated with \u201cwokeism.\u201d They include also relatively mild and gradual, long-term trends:<\/p>\n