My post ‘Did women in academia cause wokeness?’ argued that women's entry into academia contributed to its leftward shift and to the rise of woke activism in particular. The post was largely well-received – it’s my most-read Substack article by far. But I did get some critical feedback from Anatoly Karlin and Richard Hanania.
Something’s not adding up. Long before women entered academia in droves, Darwinism still (mostly) ruled the social sciences (or so I’ve heard). But Darwin was displaced by Boasians, who I assume were mostly male (but insert joke here about the disproportionate number of wimpy Jews). If women are conformists, would they have conformed to the Darwinian orthodoxy (again, assuming it existed)? In any event, it looks to me like men (and possibly gentiles) are to blame for opening the door to PC decades ago.
Noah. As always unlike your accusers and most dreary left wing academics you test your thinking to its limits. The interesting issue for me is how woke feminised organisations are, and how grievance plays a role in inviting men to adopt that culture. You do not have to think Dominic Raab is manager of the year to think that a lot of the complaints against him are groundless in a more rational workplace. However some of the men and winen crying on HR’s carpet could just be opportunistically channelling the culture. If a later career man was to be a signed up member of the LGBTetc or BLM ally racket well he could earn extra brownie empathy points while taking down his boss for routine robust behaviour at worst.
Convincing argument overall, congratulations. Yours comes off as the more powerful explanation.
(1) I was unaware of the strong female influence in creating Wokeness, never having deeply acquainted myself with the "literature".
(2) I lumped conflict & harm avoidance into conformism. They do have intersections - on reflection, it seems likely a significant part of "East Asian conformism" is actually conflict avoidance - making them easy to conflate, especially since their impact on behavior seems similar.
One thing I'll add is that there has been some values drift wrt racism. Racists were seen as very bad both in 1970s and today. However the benchmark for what constitutes racism is now obviously dramatically lower. So stable female aversion to letting racists speak (relative to male) might not actually mean that much? I think.
Another thought: women were historically more religious and often less socially progressive, so much so that leftist and workers' organizations sometimes ended up going misogynistic and opposing female suffrage on that basis (I know this was the case in Mexico after their Revolution, for instance). Does this qualify as female conformism?
One more thought: I recall a survey of a feminist conference that showed many have the male hand pattern. I assume there is tremendous overlap between woke womyn and feminists, so I wonder why these masculine womyn are conformist.
The harm avoidance theory presupposes that women are not smart enough to understand that basing public policy on lies will probably lead to more future harm than just hurt feelings . This could very well be true but shouldn’t this premise be made explicit ?
Something’s not adding up. Long before women entered academia in droves, Darwinism still (mostly) ruled the social sciences (or so I’ve heard). But Darwin was displaced by Boasians, who I assume were mostly male (but insert joke here about the disproportionate number of wimpy Jews). If women are conformists, would they have conformed to the Darwinian orthodoxy (again, assuming it existed)? In any event, it looks to me like men (and possibly gentiles) are to blame for opening the door to PC decades ago.
“Rather than wokeness being “overwhelmingly male-created”, women are well represented among its creators...”
Would be curious to see any data on woke men as far as how masculine/feminine they are.
Noah. As always unlike your accusers and most dreary left wing academics you test your thinking to its limits. The interesting issue for me is how woke feminised organisations are, and how grievance plays a role in inviting men to adopt that culture. You do not have to think Dominic Raab is manager of the year to think that a lot of the complaints against him are groundless in a more rational workplace. However some of the men and winen crying on HR’s carpet could just be opportunistically channelling the culture. If a later career man was to be a signed up member of the LGBTetc or BLM ally racket well he could earn extra brownie empathy points while taking down his boss for routine robust behaviour at worst.
Convincing argument overall, congratulations. Yours comes off as the more powerful explanation.
(1) I was unaware of the strong female influence in creating Wokeness, never having deeply acquainted myself with the "literature".
(2) I lumped conflict & harm avoidance into conformism. They do have intersections - on reflection, it seems likely a significant part of "East Asian conformism" is actually conflict avoidance - making them easy to conflate, especially since their impact on behavior seems similar.
One thing I'll add is that there has been some values drift wrt racism. Racists were seen as very bad both in 1970s and today. However the benchmark for what constitutes racism is now obviously dramatically lower. So stable female aversion to letting racists speak (relative to male) might not actually mean that much? I think.
Another thought: women were historically more religious and often less socially progressive, so much so that leftist and workers' organizations sometimes ended up going misogynistic and opposing female suffrage on that basis (I know this was the case in Mexico after their Revolution, for instance). Does this qualify as female conformism?
One more thought: I recall a survey of a feminist conference that showed many have the male hand pattern. I assume there is tremendous overlap between woke womyn and feminists, so I wonder why these masculine womyn are conformist.
The harm avoidance theory presupposes that women are not smart enough to understand that basing public policy on lies will probably lead to more future harm than just hurt feelings . This could very well be true but shouldn’t this premise be made explicit ?
Interesting post.
So women dislike Racists and Communists significantly more than men, and to the same degree?
Good. Communism needs violence to take and keep control, and democracy is scrapped.
PS didn’t mean to coin the clunking pun “winen” i meant “women” as in AHF’s