A strange phenomenon in postmodern life is the schizophrenic attitude towards differences between men and women. On the one hand, our culture denies that there are any significant psychological differences between men and women which might explain the radically different preferences of the sexes in many sectors.
If virtually all UberEats food delivery bikers are men and virtually all nursery caregivers are women, this is certainly not the product of differing psychology and physiology (indeed, such notions are oppressive stereotypes), but purely because men and women have been socialized differently since infancy. More to the point, any under-representation of women in some prestigious and influential sector – politics, tech, universities – cannot be justified on this basis.
Conversely, feminists will sometimes argue that women bring unique added value because of their differences from men. We have often heard the argument, well-grounded or not, that women-led nations did better during the COVID crisis. This is a socially acceptable argument to make, while naturally any claim that men might be better suited to any prestigious role will lead to immediate professional termination.
Personally, I believe such double standards themselves stem from the differences of male and female psychology in humans. Two studies found that girls are more egalitarian than boys as early as four years old:
In Study 1 we compared the egalitarian behavior and attitudes of American girls versus boys by tabulating the extent to which each gender awarded the same number of stickers to, and liked to the same degree, two puppets. One puppet followed the child’s instructions or actions while the other did not during a drawing task in which the child played the roles of leader and peer. In the peer role, girls exhibited more egalitarian behavior than boys. In Study 2, French‐Canadian children were shown two drawings by unknown peers—one messily and one neatly colored—, then asked to distribute stickers to each peer’s drawing. Again, girls exhibited more egalitarian behavior than boys. Results suggest the origins of gender differences in egalitarian behavior occur early in life and merit further investigation.
As young as age ~4, girls are more egalitarian.
When evaluating drawings, boys were more likely than girls to award more stickers to more skilled drawings, whereas girls were more likely than boys to award the same number of stickers to both.https://t.co/ll6ZxXfe28 pic.twitter.com/L61tA6mx0z
— Cory Clark (@ImHardcory) February 26, 2021
This basic egalitarian tendency – to favor equal outcomes regardless of objective performance – seems to me to underpin a tremendous amount of today’s political correctness. Our societies are being simultaneously feminized, demasculinized (witness the declining sperm counts, testosterone, and muscle mass of today’s males), and infantilized. This appears to be the product of the combination of soft living enabled by the postwar Affluent Society and the steady ratcheting up of egalitarian ideology in the media and academia (a significantly self-reinforcing dynamic).
The now firmly-entrenched West-European Nanny State reproduces in many respects the matriarchal psychology and totalitarian ethics of Kindergarten: one must submit completely, one must say or do nothing that would hurt the feelings (let alone harm the interests) of any child, and everyone will be taken care of. In this scenario however, the helpless “children” to be protected come to encompass every real or imagined victim group: people of color, sexual minorities, migrants, and, of course, women. In this context, frankness of speech is completely devalued and indeed subject to extreme social ostracism.
Hence a spectacular self-reinforcing dynamic: the more power women acquire, the more our societies emphatically affirm that women are oppressed. Government and private institutions across the Western world are adopting ever-more systematic “positive discrimination” in favor of women: women-only training programs (especially in STEM) and, especially, quotas for female management. Actually, we no longer live in times virile enough to even recognize the discriminatory nature (“positive” or otherwise) of these programs.
In all this, the objective facts of biology are of no import. It matters not that sex differences in brain structure are well documented, as are massive sex differences in preferences (e.g. David Buss), largely in accord with what we expect for men and women’s vastly different reproductive incentives over our evolutionary history. Men would thrive or die according to their fighting ability in coalitions with other men. A particularly successful man might have dozens of children, while many would have none at all. Reproductively successful women by contrast would spend much of their life pregnant or caring for children, with absolutely no reason for her to have any particular appetite for risk.
Today, this evolutionary history would naturally explain why men are more violent than women by an order of magnitude, why men are far more prone to risky behavior (dangerous driving, stunts, heavy drinking . . . take your pick), but also why men are far more likely to engage in the risky business of becoming entrepreneurs and founders of start-ups. Most men are not particularly successful, but a few have the talent, drive, and luck to break through with a Star Wars, an Apple, or a SpaceX. Once the business is well established, the assorted naggers line up to redistribute the wealth. The dynamic is identical to a wife’s nagging her breadwinning husband to redistribute resources in the form of a family vacation (documented in photos to demonstrate social status to peers) or expensive private education for the children. The only difference is that the latter is comparatively legitimate.
Naturally there will be both cultural and biological components to observed sex differences – and, pointedly, the biological component will inevitably to some extent also produce cultural tendencies towards such differences – but the idea that these differences are purely cultural is absurd.
The City of Paris offers a unique perspective on France’s feminist future. Paris proper represents the urban core of 2.15 million inhabitants. That’s the famously gentrified and exorbitantly overpriced Disney Land familiar to numberless tourists from across the world. If President Emmanuel Macron represents mildly autistic entrepreneurial pure globalism, Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo represents the trend of multicultural matriarchal social-democracy.
In a telling manifestation of the schizophrenia at the heart of moneyed globalism, Paris – a city unaffordable to working people, not least because of mass property investment by moneyed interests the world over from Emirati princelings to Russian oligarchs and African dictators – is governed by a Socialist-Green-Communist coalition.
Hidalgo’s deputy, the “ecofeminist” black former journalist Audrey Pulvar, hailed the hundredth anniversary of the French Communist Party saying: “This great party has counted for so much in the history of emancipation and the conquest of workers’ rights… the caricature which it sometimes subjected to does not resist to an examination of the facts.” Thus was celebrated a century of sterile totalitarian tyranny and mass-murder.
Le @PCF aura bientôt 100 ans. Ce grand parti a tant compté dans l’histoire de l’émancipation et celle de la conquête des droits des travailleuses et travailleurs… La caricature dont il fait parfois l’objet résiste peu à l’examen des faits. Bon anniversaire cher.e.s camarades ! pic.twitter.com/UjNQfpPYXg
— Audrey PULVAR (@AudreyPulvar) December 17, 2020
This is indicative of the structural left-wing bias of the French democratic system. While Communists co-rule in Paris, any conservative politicians suggesting alliances with nationalists will be marginalized, demonized, and effectively eliminated. And this is despite the fact that the Front/Rassemblement National has no clear relationship, let alone a filiation, with the authoritarian right-wing régimes of the 1930s and 1940s.