This is an excellent 2014 book on how men differ from women: In Warriors and Worriers, psychologist Joyce Benenson presents a new theory of sex differences, based on thirty years of research with young children and primates around the world. … boys and men deter their enemies, while girls and women find assistants to aid them in coping with vulnerable children and elders. … Human males form cooperative groups that compete against out-groups, while human females exclude other females in their quest to find mates, female family members to invest in their children, and keep their own hearts ticking. In the process, Benenson turns upside down the familiar wisdom that women are more sociable than men and that men are more competitive than women.
James Thompson had a piece about similar — in short, female entryism tends to ruin male institutions, such as science, art, etc., since female worry and equalitarianism, while felicitous in the domestic sphere, is anathema to greatness, or even, in the end, mere competence.
Some relevant discussion of how bad the feeling of exclusion can be compared to other bad experiences:
"what I saw on playgrounds and in classrooms was nice, normal, popular children hurting vulnerable children by making them feel ugly, inferior, shut out of the world of goodness and normalcy, and doing it routinely for years. At the same time I was learning about the far worse cruelty of groups in the adult world, race-hate and anti-semitism (also deployed to shut people out of “goodness”), lynch mobs made up of “normal” people who seemed to me larger versions of those nice, normal kids, normally looking to discharge their normal aggression on someone.
What the rapist had done was an acknowledged wrong; it would’ve been different if he’d been a normal member of my community—whatever that might’ve been for a runaway teen—but he wasn’t, he was an obviously mentally sick criminal destined for a world of shit. He was bad officially and as such he could terrify me and hurt me physically. But he could never make me feel as worthless and humiliated as my officially nice peers—along with some nice teachers, more or less decent close relatives and child psychiatrists—had made me feel, in many different contexts previous to my unfortunate run-in with him. Nor for that matter could he make me feel as bad as some officially nice men I voluntarily dated long after.
It bears repeating: A physical attack on what I called female life force is a serious thing but so are psychic attacks on an unformed child by essentially the child’s entire community; so are many forms of cruelty. By the time I was raped at age 17 I knew something about it, personally and generally—enough that I was not shocked by the fact of this violent assault. Given what I knew, I could not understand why I had been brought up to see rape as the ultimate evil. And I was sick of hearing that women are destroyed by rape, sick of it. The idea was profoundly offensive to my pride. Yes the experience was terrible, yes it caused me to carry fear in my body that could unexpectedly surface. But it did not come close to destroying me. It hurt me. But not as much as other things. "
For a blog titled 'overcoming bias', I would have expected a bit less of the 'availability heuristics' and 'appeal to authority'.
"excellent 2014 book on how men differ from women" - or one confirming a prejudice, I like and written by a woman, so OK to cite?
"Social exclusion is primarily a female strategy" - I don't think this actually describes the evidence as presented. Should we trust the hugely replication-scarce social psych research, it still only focuses on a very narrow sliver of 'gendered lives'. I'd certainly want some more investigation here than 'it rings true'. Also, could we not find any alternative explanations?
Because of the threat of sexual assault women are much more in need of emotionally and physically safe spaces in same-gender environments - thus the fear of exclusion. And once you have a close relationship in a tight-knit group - all the stress and drama ensues. Look at monasteries, prisons, sports teams, families, etc. Nothing to do with gender - just social organisation.
"This all suggests to me that “cancel culture” can be seen as a straightforward extension of a common relatively-female strategy" - really? was the cancel culture that was the red scare a bunch of men just being women, the apartheid that was South Africa and Southern US a female invention, was the word 'ostracism' (look up the etymology) invented based on female proclivities? Read Kundera's Joke, or anything about the Cultural Revolution - was all of that their version of feminisation of culture?
Let me propose an alternative theory: "every culture is cancel culture". That is almost the definition of culture. Men and women are socialised differently both because of tradition and explicable 'logistics of life' reasons with a bit of biology thrown in.
You don't have to be a feminist (I am) or a conformist to the current moment (I am not) to find this offensive to the very notion of unbiased reason. Surely you can do better.
Women apparently do this, more women are in the workforce now, and cancel culture has recently seemed to go wild ~ 2020 on. But why the sudden increase in cancel culture then? Did female participation dramatically increase suddenly at that time (don’t think so), or did they simply cross some critical threshold influence at that time?
Certainly seems plausible that some critical threshold might be needed for an embargo of an individual to work.
Is cancel culture more prevalent in fields with more women in them?
I heard a story (from someone who claimed to know) about when Barbara Walters went down to Plains, GA to interview Jimmy Carter's mother.
At the end of the interview the following dialog took place:
Barbara Walters: "Does Jimmy always tell the truth"
Mrs. Carter: "Well, yes, except for the occasional white lie."|
Barbara Walters: "What's an example of a white lie?"
Mrs. Carter: "Well, remember when I told you how happy I was to see you and how good you look?"
I think we are seeing Mrs. Carter moving from Strategy 1 to Strategy 2, even though there aren't any other women around. She goes from from palsy-walsy-yes-dearie to aggressive rejection in one line.
The review you posted also reminds me of one of H. L. Mencken's pithy sayings: "When I see women kissing, I am always reminded of prize fighters touching gloves."
I just started reading this substack, I respect Robin Hanson as a very smart, slightly edge-lordy but generally responsible public intellectual. It's depressing that the comments veer immediately into this ugly territory. I mean, promoting unz.com?
"though it must also have other causes. (What?)"--> certain individuals not being able to come to terms with their own awfulness and inadequacy,going to great lengths to play a blame game of "why its not their fault and in fact everyone else is wrong" and "its so unfair that they excluded me for being an insufferable shitbird"😆which is very typical narcissistic behaviour but we cant talk about that now can we?
It doesn't make sense to me to one the one hand say, women form cooperative groups less, while on the other hand saying, look how they form cooperating groups to exclude others! How are we meant to reconcile this?
Alas, this rings true. When trolls on the internet shout "Repeal the 19th amendment!" they're of course not addressing the root problem, but they're not wrong either.
The seeming similarity to cancel culture could be explained if there was a parallel to whatever *reasons* women are supposedly [evolutionarily or not] motivated to this set of strategies. I don't see the explanation above but there are hints that "competition" there means (to both men and women) fighting for parts of a fixed pie. Maybe part of it is that women need to avoid seeming hurtful, or need to avoid risks of retaliation more. The fixed pie could mean a non-expanding economy? Retaliation-avoidance because modern communication has fewer filters for unfair accusations, or fewer ways to make money by being fair?
Seems to match my own experience observing various friendship dynamics, I wonder what would happen if people became more self aware of stuff such as this, would they abandon their own evolutionary predispositions, maybe even double down, seems interesting.
Sounds like you finally watched Mean Girls (from 2004) & thought "Surely I can find a way to link this plot to something I don't like & blame women for it. AHA...Me Too & cancel culture...perfect!"
James Thompson had a piece about similar — in short, female entryism tends to ruin male institutions, such as science, art, etc., since female worry and equalitarianism, while felicitous in the domestic sphere, is anathema to greatness, or even, in the end, mere competence.
By coincidence, Slate recently published an interview with Mary Gaitskill, which led me to this:
https://marygaitskill.substack.com/p/writing-about-rape
Some relevant discussion of how bad the feeling of exclusion can be compared to other bad experiences:
"what I saw on playgrounds and in classrooms was nice, normal, popular children hurting vulnerable children by making them feel ugly, inferior, shut out of the world of goodness and normalcy, and doing it routinely for years. At the same time I was learning about the far worse cruelty of groups in the adult world, race-hate and anti-semitism (also deployed to shut people out of “goodness”), lynch mobs made up of “normal” people who seemed to me larger versions of those nice, normal kids, normally looking to discharge their normal aggression on someone.
What the rapist had done was an acknowledged wrong; it would’ve been different if he’d been a normal member of my community—whatever that might’ve been for a runaway teen—but he wasn’t, he was an obviously mentally sick criminal destined for a world of shit. He was bad officially and as such he could terrify me and hurt me physically. But he could never make me feel as worthless and humiliated as my officially nice peers—along with some nice teachers, more or less decent close relatives and child psychiatrists—had made me feel, in many different contexts previous to my unfortunate run-in with him. Nor for that matter could he make me feel as bad as some officially nice men I voluntarily dated long after.
It bears repeating: A physical attack on what I called female life force is a serious thing but so are psychic attacks on an unformed child by essentially the child’s entire community; so are many forms of cruelty. By the time I was raped at age 17 I knew something about it, personally and generally—enough that I was not shocked by the fact of this violent assault. Given what I knew, I could not understand why I had been brought up to see rape as the ultimate evil. And I was sick of hearing that women are destroyed by rape, sick of it. The idea was profoundly offensive to my pride. Yes the experience was terrible, yes it caused me to carry fear in my body that could unexpectedly surface. But it did not come close to destroying me. It hurt me. But not as much as other things. "
For a blog titled 'overcoming bias', I would have expected a bit less of the 'availability heuristics' and 'appeal to authority'.
"excellent 2014 book on how men differ from women" - or one confirming a prejudice, I like and written by a woman, so OK to cite?
"Social exclusion is primarily a female strategy" - I don't think this actually describes the evidence as presented. Should we trust the hugely replication-scarce social psych research, it still only focuses on a very narrow sliver of 'gendered lives'. I'd certainly want some more investigation here than 'it rings true'. Also, could we not find any alternative explanations?
Because of the threat of sexual assault women are much more in need of emotionally and physically safe spaces in same-gender environments - thus the fear of exclusion. And once you have a close relationship in a tight-knit group - all the stress and drama ensues. Look at monasteries, prisons, sports teams, families, etc. Nothing to do with gender - just social organisation.
"This all suggests to me that “cancel culture” can be seen as a straightforward extension of a common relatively-female strategy" - really? was the cancel culture that was the red scare a bunch of men just being women, the apartheid that was South Africa and Southern US a female invention, was the word 'ostracism' (look up the etymology) invented based on female proclivities? Read Kundera's Joke, or anything about the Cultural Revolution - was all of that their version of feminisation of culture?
Let me propose an alternative theory: "every culture is cancel culture". That is almost the definition of culture. Men and women are socialised differently both because of tradition and explicable 'logistics of life' reasons with a bit of biology thrown in.
You don't have to be a feminist (I am) or a conformist to the current moment (I am not) to find this offensive to the very notion of unbiased reason. Surely you can do better.
Women apparently do this, more women are in the workforce now, and cancel culture has recently seemed to go wild ~ 2020 on. But why the sudden increase in cancel culture then? Did female participation dramatically increase suddenly at that time (don’t think so), or did they simply cross some critical threshold influence at that time?
Certainly seems plausible that some critical threshold might be needed for an embargo of an individual to work.
Is cancel culture more prevalent in fields with more women in them?
I heard a story (from someone who claimed to know) about when Barbara Walters went down to Plains, GA to interview Jimmy Carter's mother.
At the end of the interview the following dialog took place:
Barbara Walters: "Does Jimmy always tell the truth"
Mrs. Carter: "Well, yes, except for the occasional white lie."|
Barbara Walters: "What's an example of a white lie?"
Mrs. Carter: "Well, remember when I told you how happy I was to see you and how good you look?"
I think we are seeing Mrs. Carter moving from Strategy 1 to Strategy 2, even though there aren't any other women around. She goes from from palsy-walsy-yes-dearie to aggressive rejection in one line.
The review you posted also reminds me of one of H. L. Mencken's pithy sayings: "When I see women kissing, I am always reminded of prize fighters touching gloves."
The comments here are great examples of the dynamics described.
I just started reading this substack, I respect Robin Hanson as a very smart, slightly edge-lordy but generally responsible public intellectual. It's depressing that the comments veer immediately into this ugly territory. I mean, promoting unz.com?
"though it must also have other causes. (What?)"--> certain individuals not being able to come to terms with their own awfulness and inadequacy,going to great lengths to play a blame game of "why its not their fault and in fact everyone else is wrong" and "its so unfair that they excluded me for being an insufferable shitbird"😆which is very typical narcissistic behaviour but we cant talk about that now can we?
It doesn't make sense to me to one the one hand say, women form cooperative groups less, while on the other hand saying, look how they form cooperating groups to exclude others! How are we meant to reconcile this?
Alas, this rings true. When trolls on the internet shout "Repeal the 19th amendment!" they're of course not addressing the root problem, but they're not wrong either.
The seeming similarity to cancel culture could be explained if there was a parallel to whatever *reasons* women are supposedly [evolutionarily or not] motivated to this set of strategies. I don't see the explanation above but there are hints that "competition" there means (to both men and women) fighting for parts of a fixed pie. Maybe part of it is that women need to avoid seeming hurtful, or need to avoid risks of retaliation more. The fixed pie could mean a non-expanding economy? Retaliation-avoidance because modern communication has fewer filters for unfair accusations, or fewer ways to make money by being fair?
There really wouldn’t be too much argument with this view if you asked middle school girls where “mean girls” reign supreme. Puberty?
Seems to match my own experience observing various friendship dynamics, I wonder what would happen if people became more self aware of stuff such as this, would they abandon their own evolutionary predispositions, maybe even double down, seems interesting.
OKIncel lol. Watch out for those female KOODIES. Eve is responsible for ALL your and the world's problems, we get it.
Wow, I just discovered this, a year later. Excellent! It confirms everything I always knew instinctively.
Sounds like you finally watched Mean Girls (from 2004) & thought "Surely I can find a way to link this plot to something I don't like & blame women for it. AHA...Me Too & cancel culture...perfect!"