{"id":827,"date":"2023-06-22T18:34:30","date_gmt":"2023-06-22T23:34:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thoughtsofstone.com\/?p=827"},"modified":"2023-06-23T17:47:52","modified_gmt":"2023-06-23T22:47:52","slug":"mistresses-of-misrule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thoughtsofstone.com\/mistresses-of-misrule\/","title":{"rendered":"MISTRESSES OF MISRULE"},"content":{"rendered":"

Women and civilizational collapse<\/em><\/p>\n

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Complaints of \u201ctoxic\u201d workplaces. Mass hiring of diversity-equity-inclusion commissars. Open-borders immigration sold to the public with tear-jerking images of refugee children. Trans mania spreading everywhere from kindergarten classrooms to corporate C-suites. Personal pronouns in work email signatures. White women kneeling in prayerful mass protests after yet another African-heritage male with a mile-long rap sheet resists a cop and is shot. Removal of traditional due-process rules to favor women\u2019s sex claims. Talk of \u201creparations\u201d on a trillion-dollar scale, to remedy racial inequalities. Ever-stricter limits on acceptable speech, debate and scientific inquiry. Declining support for truth itself, if the truth might cause hurt feelings. A heavy emphasis on trauma and victimhood in news media, literature, law, and psychiatry. Open governmental discrimination against white males.<\/p>\n

All these are manifestations of a societal climate change that has been underway since the 1950s, with a sharply increased pace in recent years. The causes are many, but one is more important than all the rest put together. I am referring to the entry of women into public life<\/a>, which\u2014particularly in recent decades as women have ascended to the upper ranks of all important institutions\u2014has given them unprecedented cultural and political power.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been writing <\/a>about this for more than a decade<\/a>. During most of that time, my hypothesis was rejected or ignored, presumably because it was considered too heretical. In the past year and a half, other more prominent figures have started to write about some of the particular institutional effects of women\u2019s new power (e.g., on academia<\/a>), presumably in part because it has become just too obvious to ignore. What I think is still being missed\u2014or suppressed\u2014is the true extent of this process of cultural feminization, and, more importantly, the disastrous future towards which it is driving.<\/p>\n

The ubiquity of cultural feminization<\/strong><\/p>\n

Women\u2019s new power is being wielded, and felt, not just in the universities, not just in H.R. offices, not just among mainstream media corporations and big publishing houses, not just among millennials, but everywhere<\/em>, affecting everyone. It is what I have called a general \u201cpink shift<\/a>\u201d in the culture. The fact that even traditionally macho institutions such as the military and sports leagues have been affected<\/a> is a good indication of its power and breadth.<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s ascension to power in institutions, and in public life generally, has altered the culture for the simple reason that women, on average<\/em>, do not think and act as men do. They are more emotionally sensitive and compassionate, more tuned into people and direct relationships rather than abstract rules and systems and hierarchies. They are quicker to form and join social networks, and to spread social contagions. They are more risk-averse, less interested in conquest and exploration, and more sensitive to environmental threats. They have less tolerance for the stressful combat of free debate, less respect for scientific inquiry for its own sake, less patience with the idea of judicial due process. Probably as a result of being more emotionally sensitive, they seem more easily influenced by narratives that emphasize short-term, emotion-evoking consequences, and seem less interested in dry analyses of long-term outcomes. Perhaps especially when they are childless (or their children have \u201cleft the nest\u201d), they are more likely to embrace the \u201cdisadvantaged\u201d of the world as their virtual children, feeling emotional pain at persistent inequalities among them, and seeking to alleviate that pain by almost any means necessary.<\/p>\n

Of course, women differ among themselves in the strengths of their psychological traits, as do men. But the basic idea here is that the two sexes\u2019 overlapping \u201cbell curves\u201d of trait distributions have significantly different averages or means, which I think is evident even on small, organizational scales, but is seismically obvious on a civilization level.<\/p>\n

In short, women collectively have their own distinct perspective on the world, and, now that their power exceeds men’s, they are showing their disdain for the world men made, declaring: \u201cWe can do better.\u201d<\/p>\n

But can<\/em> they do better? And why is this important question missing from Western public discourse?<\/p>\n

Hiding their power<\/strong><\/p>\n

I had trouble getting my earlier essays on cultural feminization published even in smaller, decidedly conservative media. I can\u2019t be absolutely certain of the reasons, but, as everywhere else in media, there were always female editors in the decision chain\u2014often at the top\u2014and of course thousands of female subscribers who might be angered by anything frame-able as \u201canti-women.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea that women have unprecedented cultural power, and with it have been dramatically reshaping most of the world\u2019s societies, is, of course, not inherently anti-women. Why can\u2019t women just accept their triumph and take a victory lap? Why does there appear to be not just an overlooking of this historic social phenomenon but even (apart from a few opinion pieces) a sort of conspiracy of silence about it, especially among women?<\/p>\n

One explanation is obvious. Women as the physically weaker, more risk-averse sex have traditionally wielded power less openly and directly. As such, they tend not to want to reveal their power, let alone crow over it; they prefer to emphasize their weakness and chronic victimization\u2014which, among other effects, triggers a protective reflex among many men.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a complete explanation, though. I think that women like to hide their power not only because it\u2019s more effective when hidden, but also because they realize, deep down, that female supremacy is hard to defend as an optimal way of steering civilization.<\/p>\n

Even the feminist who openly seeks absolute female power\u2014the kind of woman who asks \u201cwhy do we need men?\u201d\u2014is well aware of (has \u201cinternalized\u201d) the traditional, disparaging view of the female mindset. This is the view (one might call it the Aristotelian view<\/a>, though it has been expressed by modern women as different as Ann Coulter and Camille Paglia) that women, relative to men, are irrational, flighty, suggestible, overly emotional, unstable, given to herd thinking, and prone to hysterias and other social contagions. And although this traditional view may seem crude and unfair, most women at least understand that there really is such a thing as the \u201cfemale mindset,\u201d that it does involve greater emotional sensitivity and people-centeredness in most situations, and that it makes women better mothers than they would be if they were more male-brained.<\/p>\n

But is this female mindset somehow superior to the traditional male mindset when it comes to shaping culture and policy? I have never seen or heard a woman make this claim explicitly, probably because the weakness of the claim is obvious. Why would a female, maternal mindset be superior in the public sphere, when it is an adaptation for a very different environment, i.e., actual maternity, which in fact has occurred traditionally within the protective bounds of male-managed society? By the same token, why would the male mindset be inferior<\/em> when it must be, at least in part, an adaptation for the public sphere\u2014where men have reigned from the dawn of hominids?<\/p>\n

It seems to me that women, having no solid argument to justify their cultural and political ascendancy (\u201cit\u2019s our turn\u201d \u201cmen are toxic\u201d), and knowing that debates in general play to male strengths, have decided simply to avoid the issue by pretending their ascendancy hasn\u2019t occurred.<\/p>\n

Female empowerment leads to social collapse<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not every social change driven by this \u201cGreat Feminization<\/a>\u201d process has been adverse, but it does seem that most have\u2014and that the net effect is increasingly dystopian.<\/p>\n

These bad consequences also seem very predictable, at least from a male perspective.<\/p>\n

Some examples:<\/p>\n

New, lenient policing and sentencing laws<\/u>.<\/p>\n

Short-term goal: Stop police oppression of African-Americans.<\/p>\n

Long-term effects: Incentivization of law-breaking, rampant crime, business flight.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Municipal laws that prevent removal of homeless and other street people, offer food etc.<\/u><\/p>\n

Short-term goal: Treat homeless people with compassion.<\/p>\n

Long-term effects: Incentivization of homelessness, filthy encampments that spoil large areas of the city, more crime, business flight.<\/p>\n

Generous welfare policies<\/u><\/p>\n

Short-term goal: Treat the disadvantaged with compassion, reduce hunger, etc.<\/p>\n

Long-term effects: Incentivization of indigency, spread of welfare dependency, impairment of family-formation (mothers lose incentive to marry), plus all the social pathologies that follow from these.<\/p>\n

Promotion of anti-traditional behaviors\/lifestyles (homosexuality, transsexualism)<\/u><\/p>\n

Short-term goal: Empower the marginalized.<\/p>\n

Long-term effects: Weakening of social norms, spread of what is effectively antisocial (anti-family) behavior, spread of associated mental illness in the most impressionable, i.e., children and young adults.<\/p>\n

Opposition to restrictions on immigration<\/u><\/p>\n

Short-term goal: Help the \u201chuddled masses\u201d (i.e., the same maternal sentiments expressed in Emma Lazarus\u2019s famous sonnet<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Long-term effects: Incentivization of mass\/illegal immigration. Destruction of national identity, lowering of trust, increase in despair, price inflation, brain-drain in origin countries, etc.<\/p>\n

Restriction of speech, debate, legal due-process, scientific inquiry<\/u><\/p>\n

Short-term goal: Prevent the emotional turmoil caused by \u201chateful\u201d arguments, concepts, or simple observations, e.g., of racial differences in cognitive and behavioral traits.<\/p>\n

Long-term effects: Destruction of liberal norms, a maternal \u201cbecause I said so!\u201d illiberalism, corruption of scientific culture, reversal of scientific progress.<\/p>\n

Promotion of equal outcomes vs. equality of opportunity<\/u><\/p>\n

Short-term goal: Reduce conflict and promote fairness by directly reducing financial inequality (resembling a classic maternal strategy for promoting harmony among children\u2014also probably the norm in family-based paleolithic groupings)<\/p>\n

Long-term effects: Destruction of normal, healthy incentives to succeed. Promotion of lazy, redistributive attitude (\u201cI\u2019m a victim of racism\u2014give me money\u201d). A centerpiece of communism\/socialism and a key reason for its failure.<\/p>\n

Promotion of \u201charm reduction\u201d strategies (e.g., free needles) against illicit drug use<\/u><\/p>\n

Short-term goal: Reduce mortality and hospitalizations due to drug overdoses.<\/p>\n

Long-term effects: Incentivization of drug use.<\/p>\n

The overall pattern should be clear: The feminine mindset, with its focus on short-term, feelgood outcomes in the culture and policy realm, tends to set up perverse incentives, thereby basically guaranteeing bad long-term<\/em> outcomes.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, the psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen has famously argued, with experimental evidence, that the \u201cfemale brain,\u201d compared to the \u201cmale brain,\u201d is less good at understanding and building systems. It is easy to see why this would be so, if the feminine mindset is relatively blind to the mechanisms that determine a system\u2019s long-run performance\u2014the system in question here being the system of humans called society.<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s greater focus on the emotional and the short-term has other adverse impacts on culture and policy. One is the \u201cwitch-hunt,\u201d social-contagion-prone atmosphere that now suffuses Western (esp. Anglo-American) culture\u2014and I think derives from the heightened feminine sensitivity to the stress of debate (including greater pain from the cognitive dissonance generated by opposing arguments), and the broader feminine need for emotional harmony in groups. The speed with which women, led by their woke high priestesses, have been dismantling Western traditions in favor of fads and frenzies such as \u201cgender-affirming care for children,\u201d is stunning and ominous.<\/p>\n

Even more ominous, though, is the weakness of public opposition, which, of course, is due largely to women\u2019s reluctance even to acknowledge their power, let alone restrain its excesses.<\/p>\n

Will the West continue to collapse by a slow process of social dissolution? It\u2019s easy to picture that happening simply as a continuation of trends our cultural matriarchy promotes: Third-World-ization via immigration, white self-hatred, discrimination against men, low Western fertility, diversity over merit, sanctioned lawlessness for protected racial groups, etc. It\u2019s also plausible that the collapse will be more sudden and catastrophic, via, say, lost wars, surrenders to invader-immigrants who are not so feminized (or so civilized), or even, one day, the sentimental granting of civil rights to “sentient” machines. Anyway, as far as I can see, all paths in our feminized civilization lead to the failure of that civilization. It\u2019s almost beside the point to note that that failure will bring this brief, strange period of female cultural hegemony to a close.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Women and civilizational collapse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":831,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25,3,5,26,9,6,14,11,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtsofstone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtsofstone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtsofstone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtsofstone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtsofstone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtsofstone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":840,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtsofstone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions\/840"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtsofstone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtsofstone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtsofstone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtsofstone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}