{"id":842,"date":"2023-08-30T15:37:25","date_gmt":"2023-08-30T20:37:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thoughtsofstone.com\/?p=842"},"modified":"2023-09-18T17:45:25","modified_gmt":"2023-09-18T22:45:25","slug":"the-idea-that-got-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thoughtsofstone.com\/the-idea-that-got-away\/","title":{"rendered":"THE IDEA THAT GOT AWAY"},"content":{"rendered":"

A cautionary tale, and a plea for change<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cBut are you strong enough now for a truly big fish?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014The Old Man and the Sea<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Have you ever had a Big Idea\u2014an idea with the potential to transform the way people think about their society and culture?<\/p>\n

Imagine that you had such a Big Idea, but you weren\u2019t a professional opinionator and didn\u2019t have an easy way of getting your Big Idea \u201cout there\u201d in front of a lot of readers.<\/p>\n

Imagine too that your Big Idea was going to be controversial enough, in mainstream circles, that publication under your own name would almost certainly cost you your livelihood.<\/p>\n

What would you do?<\/p>\n

Here is what I did\u2014and, as they say, don\u2019t try this at home.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

THE BIG IDEA<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Before getting into the timeline of events, I want to emphasize that I have written this in part for the benefit of other, younger writers, who may read it someday and find it useful—as an account of a process that is relevant to their ambitions but seldom set forth in detail. More than that, though, I see this as a “case history” supporting an argument for changes in how we deal with new ideas (of the non-copyrightable, non-patentable variety) and incentivize their originators.<\/p>\n

Now to the what and when: It all started early in the new millennium, after I returned to the US following a decades-long sojourn abroad. As I settled in, certain differences in American culture, compared to what I\u2019d known as a young adult, started becoming apparent. Themes of \u201ctrauma\u201d and suffering seemed much more prominent in the culture, from media to medicine. Public policy debates were often competitive exercises in projecting compassion, or \u201cempathy,\u201d in regard to supposed victims. Political correctness, a hypersensitive projection of concern for the disadvantaged, seemed out of control. Even in my own somewhat technical line of work, I noticed similar changes in tone and emphasis.<\/p>\n

Eventually the proverbial lightbulb winked on. As I put it in an essay (\u201cThe Demise of Guythink<\/a>\u201d) in late 2011:<\/p>\n

\u2026 these empathy-related changes in public discourse are due in large part to the recent, unprecedented entry of women into public life in Western countries. Women have not only the right to vote but also a presence in key areas of society\u2014science, law, business, politics\u2014as never before, and it would be hard to believe that their influence has not changed the culture, bending it towards their own cognitive style. People now use the jokey phrase \u201cendangered white male\u201d . . . but what may be truly endangered here is the male cognitive style.<\/p>\n

That may not be a good thing, if the male cognitive style evolved to be optimal for managing societies, while the female cognitive style is tuned for the rearing of children. There is a tendency in our culture now to treat empathy as a trait to be simply maximized. But \u201cunderstanding and building systems,\u201d as [Simon] Baron-Cohen puts it, is useful, too\u2014and perhaps most if not all of our culture\u2019s greatest failings now come not from a lack of empathy but from a failure to see how complex systems fit together, and how they may fly apart.<\/p>\n

What also worries me is that too much empathy, or other related aspects of the female cognitive style, may be\u2014we don\u2019t know; probably no scientist would go near this question\u2014less compatible with the reasoned debate and calm analytical thinking that are presumably needed in a healthy democracy, or in any mature society. Several years ago, then-Harvard President Lawrence Summers (who was later a White House adviser) referred rather delicately to the possibility that male\/female cognitive differences partly explain the relative lack of female professors in math and science; he was, in effect, shouted down and forced from his post\u2026.<\/p>\n

An inflexible, authoritarian, shout-them-down tendency is often said to be a feature of PC-think generally. PC-driven marches and protests (on campuses for example) typically are meant not to broaden a discourse but, rather, to repel or suppress an unwanted speaker\u2014much as a mother, without any pretense of democracy or debate, would try to protect her children from an unwanted influence or their own innate waywardness. (\u201cBecause I said so!\u201d)<\/p>\n

There it was: the Big Idea! And it was<\/em> big! What other theory had the same power to explain the dramatic waves of change that have been sweeping through modern societies in the past few decades? What other theory combined such a simple and compelling framework of understanding with such dark implications for Western civilization?<\/p>\n

I posted \u201cThe Demise of Guythink\u201d on a website I had set up\u2014of very modest readership\u2014where for several years I had published various short essays on cultural and science-related topics (anonymously, though some readers knew who I was).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As time went on, though, and the novelty and importance of this idea grew in my estimation, I increasingly thought of getting it published more prominently.<\/p>\n

The problem was that I had no clear path for achieving that. I wasn\u2019t a complete nobody\u2014as a journalist, I had written a few books, and more than a few newspaper and magazine pieces, including op-eds. But that had been in the relatively distant past. Moreover, as the world had grown richer and the Internet had become a supremely powerful tool, the barriers to entry for becoming a \u201cwriter\u201d had collapsed to virtually nothing, creating more competition than ever and making the process of big-media publication, from a cold start, harder than it had ever been. I pitched a roughly 600-word version of my thesis to the Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u2019s op-ed people around that time . . . and, if memory serves, got the same result one would get from dropping a small stone into the darkness of a mile-deep well.<\/p>\n

I might have persevered with other newspapers or webzines, but I soon concluded that that could be an uphill, potentially very costly struggle. The standard line set down by feminist activists\u2014de facto<\/em> thought leaders for Western women\u2014was that the fairer sex was still hindered, harassed and victimized by all the things men did, and thus needed ever more power to achieve full emancipation and equality. Indeed, it seemed to me that women\u2019s ability to influence men had always<\/em> depended heavily on their claims to be relatively weak, needing special protection, etc. In other words, in the age-old power contest with males, females\u2019 claims of powerlessness and victimization were basically reflexive and relentless. Thus, my observation that women were already moving past parity and achieving real dominance in many key areas of public life, from teaching and publishing to psychiatry . . . was likely to be dismissed as a fantasy, or, worse, suppressed as a heresy.<\/p>\n

My further suggestion that women\u2019s new dominance in Western civilization was hazardous to that civilization, because maternal thinking was not suited to the public sphere, would make this a heresy to be suppressed with extreme prejudice. I imagined screams, shouts and ululations until I was well and truly cancelled and silenced\u2014to the extent that feminists and the Left had to take notice of me. So, publishing my Big Idea prominently under my own name didn\u2019t seem wise, at least not before my retirement, which was still a long way off.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t remember whether I received any direct feedback on the piece I posted on my website\u2014I didn\u2019t have the time or energy to maintain a comments section. But the site analytics suggested that it was read by at least thousands of people over the next year or so. A \u201cmanosphere<\/a>\u201d writer named Matt Forney linked to it in one of his own blog posts. That\u2019s pretty much all I remember about its impact.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SCRATCHING THE ITCH<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Years passed. Other events and interests held my attention. It was not until June of 2014 that the urge to write about cultural feminization rose up in me again.<\/p>\n

This time I pitched a piece on the subject to Takimag<\/em>, a small webzine that, although I didn\u2019t normally read it, struck me as suitably uninhibited. The editor, the daughter of Takimag<\/em>\u2019s proprietor, said she was potentially interested, but wanted it shortened in a few ways. I complied and re-sent it. She then replied simply that she couldn\u2019t use it after all. I was left with no clear idea of her reason, though naturally it occurred to me that pitching this idea to female editors was not an optimal strategy.<\/p>\n

Where else could I send it? I figured that if even Takimag<\/em>\u2014somewhat fringy, and typically framed by the mainstream media as \u201cfar right\u201d\u2014wouldn\u2019t touch this hot potato of an idea, and if female editors were problematic, then I\u2019d have to venture still further out onto the fringe. The obvious place was the manosphere.<\/p>\n

As a middle-aged family man, I didn\u2019t have much use for \u201cgame<\/a>,\u201d complaints about the contemporary dating scene, or other themes central to that subculture. But the urge to get my idea out there, somehow, anyhow, was strong now. Without much effort (though I again had to shorten my submission by quite a bit), and using a pseudonym as most of their contributors did, I got a new version of my thesis published on Roosh Valizadeh\u2019s Return of Kings<\/em><\/a> site. If you use the Wayback Machine and check the site as of late 2014, you\u2019ll see that the piece was posted in August of that year. (It has also been archived here<\/a>.) My title was \u201cNo Country for Men,\u201d but Roosh or one of his editors, probably for SEO reasons, changed it to \u201cThanks to Progressivism, America is No Country for Men.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It was much read and commented upon, within that circle of readers, and for some years it was easily googleable. However, as the mainstream media became more feminized and “because-I-said-so” inflexible, outlets like Roosh\u2019s became less permissible. Ultimately\u2014suppressed by search engines, and with most or all of his monetization routes blocked off\u2014he was forced to shut down. So, although I didn\u2019t see it right away, this was yet another dead-end in my quest.<\/p>\n

Posting on Return of Kings<\/em> did, however, scratch the \u201cget it out there\u201d itch, and another year or so passed before the itch recurred. Using my real name, I pitched a very softened version of my cultural feminization idea to the Washington Post<\/em>, and surprisingly, the response was not a blank refusal but an invitation to submit my piece for posting in their \u201cPostEverything\u201d section. Looking back, I think I probably should have done that. However, at the time I saw PostEverything as a glorified Letters to the Editor forum, and reasoned that publication there would bring little reward, while leaving me with the usual risk to my livelihood. I guess I also feared that the Post\u2019s editors would alter my thesis in ways I wouldn\u2019t like. So I declined the offer.<\/p>\n

I pitched a similar piece to one or two other places around then, and though my records and memories of those efforts have faded, the result was the same. Thus, early in 2017, I reverted once again to self-publication. Using the anti-Trump, pro-feminism Women\u2019s March<\/a> as a peg, I posted a short presentation of my idea to a blog page on my personal, non-pseudonymous, website where I had posted a few other short essays over the years.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t keep it up on that site for long. A few months after it was posted, a prospective client of my consulting business, a woman with a moderately high position at a prestigious institution, read it (as indicated by my site analytics info) and immediately ghosted me. I assumed that my thesis, even as softened as it was, was the causative factor in this loss of what could have been a lucrative relationship, and immediately took it down.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re nearing the fateful Twitter years, but not there yet. In the Spring of 2018, I submitted yet another softened version of my cultural feminization thesis to Quillette<\/em>, which was then just emerging as a new and interesting venue for non-woke thought. One of the editors, a fellow named Jamie (Palmer, I think), turned it down politely with the comment that: \u201cYour thesis is interesting but, in the end, unpersuasive and feels like a possible correlation\/causation confusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

A bit less than a year later, in March of 2019, I sent yet another version of the idea to an editor at the conservative public-policy magazine City Journal<\/em>, but received no reply.<\/p>\n

(As the reader may know already, both City Journal<\/em> and Quillette<\/em> have since published pieces offering versions of the cultural feminization hypothesis\u2014pieces that make no mention of me or my essays.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TWITTER AND \u201cJ. STONE\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Once again, failure to get published in other journals led me back to a more D.I.Y. mode of punditry. Later in that month of March 2019, I set up a new pseudonymous website as a home for my essays, and joined Twitter with the idea of using Twitter posts to publicize those essays.<\/p>\n

I think my general idea was to be a proponent of \u201ccold logic\u201d over the \u201chot emotion\u201d of a feminized world, so I used the domain absltzero.com. For my Twitter presence I invented the pseudonym \u201cJ. Stone,\u201d which had the merit that it didn\u2019t seem like a pseudonym.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Having posted a quick version of my thesis, titled \u201cThe Great Feminization<\/a>,\u201d on the new site, I joined Twitter and started using my tweets to advertise the essay.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

What happened next? Crickets.<\/p>\n

At the time, I didn\u2019t know much about the process of drawing attention and followers on Twitter, and anyway was unable to spend much time on it, given my day-to-day work and family responsibilities. But I did try, at least several times per week, to reply to tweets from prominent Tweeters with relevant quips followed by a link to \u201cThe Great Feminization\u201d\u2014in the hope that one, eventually, would read it and recommend it to his or her flock of followers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Great Feminization<\/a>,\u201d by the way\u2014though it was broadly similar to others I\u2019d written, going all the way back to \u201cThe Demise of Guythink\u201d in 2011\u2014did contain a fairly pithy summary of the situation:<\/p>\n

Feminists these days spend a lot of time worrying about male-dominated culture\u2014\u201cpatriarchal culture,\u201d \u201csexual harassment culture,\u201d \u201crape culture,\u201d \u201cthe culture of silence,\u201d and so on. But shouldn\u2019t they be acknowledging the influence that women now have on culture: on workplace culture, on media culture, on campus culture, on American culture, and on Western culture generally? That feminizing influence may be the greatest single driver of the rapid social changes seen in recent decades.<\/p>\n

Consider the following U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics chart of women\u2019s civilian labor force participation rate.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It shows that in 1950 only about 30 percent of working-age women were in the workforce, but by 2000 that figure had jumped to 60 percent and rivaled the participation rate for men, which had been in decline since the early 1950s.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In other words, by 2000 the U.S. workforce had been mostly gender-integrated. On average, workplaces by then had almost as many women as men.<\/p>\n

The historic significance of this migration on its own appears to have been underappreciated. Women never made such a move, to such a degree, in any large human society in the past. It significantly altered the structure of ordinary life.<\/p>\n

But women in the late 20th century didn\u2019t just move into the workforce. They moved into its upper ranks, to professions that strongly influence societal culture and policy. They became journalists, public relations specialists, lawyers, academics, novelists, publishers, filmmakers, TV producers, and politicians, all to an unprecedented extent. In some of these culture-making professions, by the 1990s and early 2000s, they had achieved parity or even dominance (e.g., writers, authors, and public relations specialists) with respect to men. Even where they fell short of full parity, they appeared to acquire considerable \u201cveto\u201d power over content. A 2017 report by the Women\u2019s Media Center noted evidence that at the vast majority of media companies, at least one woman is among the top three editors.<\/p>\n

Why is the greater presence of women in culture-making professions important? Because women, on average, think differently than men on a wide range of subjects\u2026.<\/p>\n

How would culture and policy have changed as a result of women\u2019s new influence? Presumably in ways that reflect feminine psychological traits.<\/p>\n

For example, women appear on average to be more empathetic and compassionate, more emotionally sensitive. Some of the most striking social changes of the last few decades appear to have been driven by a cultural shift in that direction:<\/p>\n