After taking a tasteful break before addressing it, I finally responded to Helen Andrews’ piece in Compact regarding The Great Feminization. I argue that the phenomenon is part and parcel of Nate Silver’s Blueskyism, which is to say that both authors are bumping up along the contours of office culture and civil society at large as shaped by Richard Hanania’s favorite group: Elite Human Capital.
Silver finds Bluesky annoying and therefore writes about it from that angle. Andrews finds women annoying and writes about it from that angle. And I find Richard Hanania annoying so I write about it from that angle, claiming that what seems like neuroses + coercion to Silver and what seems like feminization to Andrews is actually just the enforcement of striver values, in these specific cases: androgyny and conformity.
Coincidentally, Walt Bismarck recently published a handful of pieces dispassionately diagramming and addressing differences in how men and women parse conflict and react game-theoretically, which I’ve bolded and linked below. He also explains why institutions (controlled by EHC btw) have a rational interest in suppressing these differences and discussion of how institutions adjudicate them.
Topics discussed:
Blueskyism
Fauda (2015--not 2018)
Upper middle class Latina and Jewish women
Getting chongafied
Blank Slatism
Motte and Bailey argumentation
Making your message palatable to women
Deontology vs. consequentialism
Do women feel put upon when you give them a seat at the negotiation table?
Knowing when a question is true/false vs. multiple choice
Are women supposed to hide how much agency they have and how strategic they can be?
Does the public require women to launder their self-interest through moral language?
Is AP playing both sides on the Kryptogal (Kate, if you like) vs. Rohan Ghostwind + Walt Bismarck incel debate?
Do guys resent women using language to manage them rather than responding to them as equals?
What are different ways in which men and women parse disagreement?
Having your moral self-concept threatened
6’5” finance bros with washboard abs
Do men have more leeway for perfidy than women do?
Do people view dastardly women more harshly than dastardly men?
Was Hillary Clinton’s presidency stolen from her due to sexism?
Are women unduly pessimistic now for having bought into overly optimistic lies from the past?
Generational differences between women
Feminism’s legacy of never being satisfied
AP’s bar mitzvah
Do women favor flexibility more than men?
Do men favor rigor more than women?
AP’s mortal enemy work boss
How WASPs cloak their power
Why AP doesn’t read WBE
One-night stands
Sleeping on a mattress
