Have Women Ruined The World? Helen Andrews on The Great Feminization

And one of the biggest obstacles in having this conversation that I have personally encountered is a confusion between second-wave feminism as it was in the 70s or '80s and feminization as it exists today because these are just completely different things.

Welcome to the Unspeak Easy podcast. The podcast formerly known as the Unspeakable. I am your host Megan DM.

Last week, an article was published in Compact Magazine that got a lot of attention. It was called "The Great Feminization," and it was written by Helen Andrews, who argued that the phenomenon we often call wokeness is an extension of feminine social norms into institutions that were historically maledominated. In other words, as women become more represented and even overrepresented in the workplace and elsewhere, the agreeableness and "be kind" ethos that often comes along with them becomes the default mode. Helen thinks that amounts to a kind of socially engineered dysfunction that prioritizes emotional approaches over realistic, fact-based approaches and hinders productivity and slows innovation.

Do you agree? Do you hate this idea? Do you agree while also hating it? Wherever you are, I think you will find this a valuable and surprising discussion. I certainly did. So, here it is. Helen Andrews.

Helen Andrews, welcome to the podcast.

>> Thanks for having me. It's been barely 24 hours since your piece, "The Great Feminization," was published in Compact, and it's the talk of the internet, and even more so, I think, the talk of group texts everywhere. I had a couple that were blowing up yesterday. I read the piece with great interest because, as many of my listeners probably know, I've been talking about this phenomenon for many years. Um, I think I think many of us have, at least many in this kind of uh intellectual landscape, but it's it's it's kind of hard to to narrow it down to a sort of legible phenomenon. I mean, it always feels like a like a vibe thing. Um, but you've really thought it through and you've laid out a lot of detail. So, why don't we just start by give us give us the broad strokes. What is "The Great Feminization"?

Well, it started with the puzzle that faced a lot of us in the summer of 2020 of what is going on? Why where did the great awakening come from? And I think that's a question that's going to be studied by historians uh centuries hence. You know, the same way that we look back at the Salem witch trials and try and figure out what caused that eruption of mass insanity, people are going to be looking at the summer of Floyd and trying to figure out what went why did everybody go so crazy all at one time. And there are a lot of different theories that people have put out there for why wokeness arose when it did. Some people said it was a post-Obama hangover that we thought we were going to sort of solve identity politics and then we didn't. And so frustration with that caused everybody to go crazy and other people uh posited different theories uh social media, whatever. Uh and then in 2019 um I read an article that posited a much simpler theory, which is that wokeness equals feminization. That is the reason why institutions go woke. Um, it's simply wokeness reflects feminine patterns of group behavior. Uh, the way women tend to interact with each other uh using exclusion and ostracism as a tool of social control. So basically any aspect of wokeness you can identify or pick out, you can find reflected in differences between men and women. So don't you know, don't break your brain trying to figure out why did wokeness occur when it it's really very simple. Uh, it's just wherever there are enough women or a high enough share of women within an institution, you will get wokeness. It is as simple as that. And that seemed really elegant to me and seemed to reflect the fl the facts as far as I can see them.

Tellingly, this uh piece was published by an anonymous writer or at least somebody who only calls her or I suppose himself Jay Stone. What do you know about this piece and this author?

>> Absolutely nothing. I don't know. I I I think it's a man. He presents himself as a man uh on the internet, but you know, it's the internet. He could he could be a golden retriever for all I know.

>> I've been talking about this for a long time. I did a podcast for a couple of years with Sarah her, and the the premise of the podcast in a lot of ways was this question of, you know, it's all these all these platitudes, "the future's female," "the world would be better if it was run by women." Um, and then, you know, the the signature of our show, the name of our show was "A Special Place in Hell," which came from the Madeleine Albright quote, "There's a special place in hell for women who don't help other women." And so there's this kind of um moral high ground that women as a sort of collective body have been um presented with, and frankly, I always found it quite infantilizing. Um, on the other hand, I think that I posit a lot of these ideas and people will say, "Well, that's not true. You're you you just feel this way because you have been surrounded by women. You have been in workplaces with a lot of women. You went to particular kinds of uh educational institutions that had a lot of women." And so you don't really know what goes on. So before we kind of jump into this further, can you, Helen, talk about your background in terms of education and the workplace?

>> Sure. Um, as someone who's worked in journalism and think tanks, those tend to be very feminine institutions. On the other hand, I've also spent my career in the right or conservatism, which tends to be quite male. Um, so I've worked in in both. I've been in all-female or predominantly female offices and in predominantly male offices. And actually, one of the um incidents uh sort of personal anecdotes that set me off on this line of inquiry was not from me, but it was from my my late father. My my father was a lawyer in private practice for a very long time. But towards the end of his career, he decided to take a break from private practice and join an NGO for disability rights because my younger sister had disabilities and he felt passionate about that issue. Um, so that's what he did. He left private practice behind and joined this disability rights NGO as their legal director. And he loved that work. It was so beautiful seeing him find purpose at the end of his career towards what ended up being the end of his life. But once when I asked him, "How's work going? How's the new job?" He said, "You know, it's the funniest thing, Helen, at my old job, everybody just did their work and they left you alone and there wasn't a lot of management." And you know, I love all my new co-workers. They're wonderful and the work is so full of meaning. But I do spend an awful lot of my time managing everybody's feelings now. Like whenever we make a decision at work, I need to make sure that everybody feels like they participated in the decision-m uh, and that never used to come up at my old office and I don't know what it is. Maybe it's nonprofit work is like that." And I said, "Hang on a second, Dad. I got one question for you. What was the gender balance at your old office and what's the gender balance at the new one?" And it really was, you know, all male at the old place and predominantly female at the new place. Um, so that was his personal experience, but it was surprising to me that it wasn't instantly obvious to him why he had to spend so much time managing people's feelings at the new job. That it was obviously because they were ladies. Um, so I think for for a lot of us, we kind of tend to have blinders on and not see that gender dynamics are at the bottom of a lot of these differences between workplaces.

So you write that once women become a majority or um, you know, even more so, a a significant majority in institutions, those institutions begin to function um according to feminine rather than masculine modes of behavior. And so you talk about um, you know, women, I don't know if they are the majority in medical school and law school now, um, but certainly um, you know, 50% if not more. We have academia, certainly humanities departments are overwhelmingly female. Can you kind of like break down what are the types of workplaces that have gone like uh full female or or at least, you know, significantly female over the last 50 years or so?

A lot of different professions are at different stages of feminization. So in something like the law, we are at a stage now where law schools are notably majority female. I think the last cohort of law school uh students was 56% female. So that's that's not like 50/50. That's um well on the way to being predominantly female. But the lagging indicators, things like judges on the federal bench right now, still predominantly male because those are people who were appointed 20 years ago, 30 years ago. So it takes a long time to catch up. Medicine, I believe, is still at the lagging indicator stage. So medical schools are majority female, but doctors in America right now still majority male. Um, so each different profession is at a different stage. Academia is more advanced along the road to feminization, which is maybe another one reason why it's more advanced in the road to wokeness. Journalism is another one because journalism is an industry where women have always flourished. Even in the bad old days of patriarchy, there were female journalists. It was always a, you know, an industry where some women were welcome in certain roles. So,

>> Okay. So, one of the things that I've often pointed out is that a lot of these types of fields where you have a lot of women, they also tend to be the sort of glamour professions. They are the jobs that are prestigious but don't necessarily pay the most money. Um, that's certainly true in journalism, book publishing, the arts, um, some types of law. I would think unfortunately increasingly in medicine, you have a lot of, you know, certainly family, you know, general medicine, family practices, those are not jobs that make a lot of money as opposed to something like surgery, which um has, you know, you're less you have less control of your hours and so more men are going to go into that because they they're not trying to necessarily balance, you know, child child care with with their jobs. So, I mean, what what can you say about that?

The best example of that phenomenon, which is 100% true, is the nonprofit world. Nonprofits in general, uh, I believe the nonprofit workforce is 3/4 female. So overwhelmingly female because nonprofits is uh those are places you go to work if you're more interested in mission than money, if you're maybe not the breadwinner in your house. Um, so that it that does tend to attract women.

>> Okay. So, what is wrong with this? What What's the problem with a whole bunch of uh women at work or anywhere really?

>> Yeah. And and and to be clear, I I like women and that that Madeleine Albright quote is annoying and feminist, but I do try and live it in my own life. You know, I'm a I'm a journalist in conservatism, and there aren't a lot of women uh in that field. So, anytime there I I find them, I try and lift them up and and help them help them proceed. But for me, the number one or the the most relevant difference in group dynamics between men and women is how they deal with conflict. I'm a journalist and opinion journalist. That means I argue for a living. So if I'm arguing with you, trust me, it is a sign of respect. If I'm telling you that you're wrong, I'm trying to engage you in conversation because I think that you're a smart, rational human being capable of answering back and moving the dialogue forward. When when I approach discussion in that spirit with women, it is not always taken in the, you know, not always received in the in the spirit in which it was offered. Women tend to interpret uh direct conflict as an affront uh or or tend to respond not in a spirit of, "I'm going to, you know, you throw a punch and then I throw one and we'll see where we are at the end of the day." Um, and I recognize that both styles of conflict resolution have have merit. There are certainly contexts where I would prefer a more um a more feminine approach to conflict resolution, you know, to keep keep everybody's feelings in mind.

>> What would be an example?

>> Well, I'm a I'm a mom. I have I have three kids. So definitely within our household, if I'm telling the the the boys to um be nice to each other, certainly that I do I do put on my kindergarten teacher voice when I'm dealing with my own kids. That's for sure. Um, but if you argue for a living or if you are working in journalism, then I think it is your professional obligation to be willing to engage in debate and conflict. And if someone throws an argument your way, you you don't have permission to just stamp your feet and say, "How dare you talk back to me?" Um, and that's that's what wokeness was to me more than anything. It was one side trying to have a dialogue, bring facts to the table, and the other side stamping their feet and saying, "How dare you? You can't question me because of my lived experience." Or, "I'm not even going to deign to respond to what you're trying to present because of my identity or whatever." So, willingness to have an argument. I I never, you know, as a as a kid, I never would have dreamed that that was something masculine, but it seems from my observation of the world that it does tend to flourish only in spaces um that operate by masculine rules of engagement.

>> Do you think that there's an evolutionary component here? Because some might suggest, well, um women avoiding conflict, being agreeable, all of these things is a result of, you know, self self-preservation. It's not in a a woman's interest to get into an argument that might lead to a fist fight.

>> You know, it's it's funny. I used to be so impatient with evolutionary biology and its just-so explanations for human behavior. But the older I get, the more wisdom I see in them. Another funny personal anecdote. When I got right out of college, I taught preschool for a while just to make ends meet while I was writing at night. And for the first few months that I did that, the class where I was a teacher's assistant happened by the, you know, factors of randomness, happened to be all male. So these were all male preschoolers, just a group of of boys.

>> Wow.

>> And then a few months in, we got one female student who happened to be quite girly. She wore princessy skirts and everything. Um, and I was astonished to observe the differences in behavior in these kids, in these boys, just from the introduction of a female into that social group. Now, these are four-year-olds. They're not trying to hook up with anybody, but there is just something about the introduction of a female that makes the men stupider. They would, the boys had previously been quite cohesive, good, you know, good behavior, got along well with each other. They were brothers.

>> And then as soon as a woman was introduced into the picture, they started becoming competitive. They started um fighting with each other more, showing off for the girl to try and present themselves as the the king of the mountain, um to be the top dog in the eyes of this girl. And I thought I could understand those dynamics if I was dealing with teenagers, but these are four-year-olds. Where is this coming from? And it really was uh I I really did learn a lot. Wow, this must be quite deep-seated human behavior, cuz I don't think they've been socialized into wanting to show off for girls yet from some place really deep.

>> Bro podcasts yet at at age four.

>> Not listening to Andrew Tate. What a strange experience for that little girl to be um the only girl in a in an all-boys preschool. That would give her something to write her college essay about someday. I mean, I'm curious. I mean, it's hard to tell with a sample of one, but did you see her behaving in ways that would have been different if there had been other girls there? Was she more like a boy? Was she like what did you observe in terms of her behavior?

Hm. She seemed pretty ordinary and a little bit baffled, to be honest, by the behavior of these boys. Like uh, you know, "Why, Carlos, why did you think that hitting Edward was going to impress me?"

>> Oh, so she was tired of reasoning with them though. But so she was

>> Well, I This is me imputing sophisticated thoughts to a four-year-old that perhaps she did not actually have. But I remember seeing the boys fight with each other and then turn to her like, "Hey, look, I look what I just did." And her just kind of looking at them like, "Why would you think I would care or be impressed by that?"

>> Interesting. Interesting. I want to talk about this agreeableness trait. So, you know, as as my audience knows, um I started um an all-female sort of viewpoint diversity uh intellectual dissident kind of um community uh couple of years ago. It's called The Unspeak Easy. So the podcast, The Unspeakable, the I created this community around it called The Unspeak Easy because I was noticing that women were coming to me and saying, "I love your podcast. I love the conversations you have on here and I can't have these conversations with my friends and I feel alienated from my community, from certain family members, from my book club, from the parent group, whatever it is." And it's not only like, you know, intellectually disappointing, it's actually heartbreaking. And there was a there was a cohort of women that for whatever reason were just not able to sort of go along with this agreeableness that they were seeing with their friends who were then of course going along with the whole wokeness project, whatever you want to call it. And I really started to get the feeling that it was women who were not only controlling cancel culture but responsible for most of the thought policing. I mean, these are huge generalizations and obviously men do it, too. And every time I say this, I get people yelling at me, you know, and throwing, you know, a million counter-examples. But how how much of a of a hindrance do you think this agreeableness is with women, for women?

>> It's the root of the problem. Um, because you can't uh if you if you're too high in agreeableness and then you can't tolerate differences of opinion or conflict, and then if you if you can't do that, then you tend to ostracize people who are occasions for conflict. If there's somebody who has a little bit too many rough edges, you can't deal with that. So you have to exclude them from the group. Um, so yeah, but I'm, you know, I've been around on this planet for almost 40 years now, and I've come to understand that agreeableness is not a quality that I possess, but it's not a bad thing. You know, I'm I'm glad that there are people out there who are very high in agreeableness and they have a role to play and they're wonderful people and I'm not better than they are because I'm low agreeableness. Um, for a long time I thought that I was. And eventually I realized that nope, it's just we're we're just different. Everybody's got a different role to play in this wonderful world. Um, but the the place where the rubber hits the road for me is is agreeableness good or bad for your profession or for your institution, right? Like I'm I'm very happy for women to be out there having their high agreeableness, but don't do it in the academy. Don't be a professor and try and do your job from a position of agreeableness, right? So if the big, you know, the differences in personality are fine, but there are different combinations that are better or worse for specific purposes. And I think that one thing we lost sight of during wokeness was the purpose that these that these institutions serve, right? Like if you're if you're the academy, it's not your job to make sure everybody's having a good time or to watch over everybody's feelings. You know, it's your job to pursue the truth. If you're a lawyer, it's not your job to be nice and, you know, be therapeutic. If you're a lawyer, it's your job to resolve a case, represent your client to the best of your ability, and come to a conclusion consistent with justice, right? Like, so these things are not good or bad in the abstract. They are only, you know, suited or not well suited to specific purposes. And if I'm understanding your thesis correctly, you um you trace this back like 70 years really. Like you see this as a kind of and I know you wrote a whole book about the baby boomers, which is another uh topic I love, but you know, you see this as a sort of second-wave feminist out of the baby boom sexual revolution sort of um gestalt phenomenon. Like there was there's sort of like a whole bunch of moving pieces and probably around, you know, late '60s, early '70s that that the tenor of the culture started to change and there was all these, you know, kind of blank slate ideas and that, you know, boys and girls were the same and these were all all of these sex differences were were socially constructed and imposed upon us and it was our duty as enlightened, you know, modern people to to override that. And I I I think about this all the time. And it seems to me that like this was useful to a certain degree. Like I don't think anybody could really make the argument that it was a total disaster. Like this should never have even been embarked upon. But it does seem like there's been an overcorrection or or a naive really about some of these some of these realities. So can you kind of sort of go back and like where do you actually see this starting? Do you do you like, you know, point the finger at at Gloria Steinem and, you know, Phyllis Schlafly was actually on to something and we demonized her? Like how do you think this through?

>> Yeah and no. In in in this house we respect Phyllis, uh, we respect Phyllis Schlafly. Um, but I think the biggest problem and one of the biggest obstacles in having this conversation that I have personally encountered is a confusion between second-wave feminism as it was in the '70s or '80s and feminization as it exists today because these are just completely different things. And even though one obviously led to the other. In the '70s and '80s, feminists were advocating for women to be reporters at The New York Times, right? Like there was a lawsuit in the mid-1970s uh of women who wanted more roles as reporters at The New York Times. They said, you know, "Don't put me on the society desk. I want to be out there chasing stories." And, you know, respect for for women who wanted to do that. Um, and at that time, women were 10% of the reporters at the Times. And it was that way in a lot of uh feminist groundbreaking cases. You know, women wanted to be economics professors and for a long time, um she would be the only female economics professor in her department, um or she would be the only female lawyer at her law firm. And that was great because what that involved was male institutions operating by masculine rules, admitting the num a few women who could hit with the boys, you know, who could compete with the best of them. But then without anybody really intending for things to change so much, women joined these institutions in greater and greater numbers. And then eventually uh we went from having one woman in the English department to having majority women in the English department. And then once women were a numerical majority within an institution or a department, you know, again, without anybody really intending to, they just said, "Well, why don't we operate by our rules now? We're going to decide that conflict within the English department is going to be dealt with in a more feminine way. Conversation with your colleagues is going to be done in a more feminine way. We're going to pursue our our field of English literature in a more feminine way." And gradually the rules of these institutions changed to adapt to more feminine norms. So there is just a huge difference between women being 15% of the lawyers in America to women being 60% of the lawyers in America. Um, so this is this is why it is such a mistake for people to focus on individuals or to say, "How can you say women are not well-suited to the practice of law?" I know a ton of great female lawyers and judges. Be like, I do too. Lots of lots of women can, you know, like I said, hit with the boys. They can compete with the best of them. But when an institution tips over to becoming majority female, it becomes hostile to men and frankly becomes hostile to those women who flourished under the old rules because it becomes more averse to conflict, more kindergarteny. Um, and, you know, it's just it's just a night and day change.

>> Are you suggesting that there was some kind of systemic thumb on the scale for women? Because I mean, one of the narratives and and admittedly I have subscribed to this um for the most part is that, you know, for a long time women just simply were not let past these gates. I mean, you had men in the workplace, you had women at home, they could be nurses, they could be a teacher, they could be a nun, kind of thing. But for the most part, you know, if you were a a highly motivated, intelligent woman, it was unlikely that you were going to pursue something beyond the the expected course. Okay? And and as soon as those restrictions were were gone, women really soared. And the logic in some people's minds was like, well, look, women are better, you know, so to speak. Like they actually, you you take off the you take off the harness and boy, they can go. And it shows that actually on balance, women do better than men for all kinds of reasons that we talk talk about, especially in like a kind of white-collar, you know, highly educated atmosphere. They can sit still, they can focus, they can concentrate, they're less physical, all that kind of stuff. So how much of that how much of this do you think is because women are sort of naturally adept at the kinds of, you know, things that the ways that you need to be in order to thrive now, or that there was some kind of like, you know, push to give them advantages that may or may not have been fair?

This is a debate where I acknowledge there are good arguments on both sides. Uh, and I respect people who believe that the great feminization is a naturally occurring phenomenon, that it's just that we let women compete and it turns out that they're quite good at competing in white-collar work or or whatever it is. But my assessment of the facts and the evidence is that that is not true. My assessment is that the great feminization is artificial. It exists because, first of all, uh, anti-discrimination law makes it essentially illegal to have women underrepresented in your company. The reason why so many businesses, especially large firms uh that are more vulnerable to these kinds of lawsuits, have so many hiring programs. The reason why managers are assessed at the end of the year for bonuses and promotion and other other uh kinds of assessment on how many women they have hired and promoted, right? Like whether you're meeting your diversity targets in gender diversity, right? Managers, their careers rise and fall on these things. So, it's, you know, uh, the reason why these diversity hiring programs for gender exist is because, um, if your company employs too few women, then all it takes is one woman coming along saying, "I wasn't promoted as fast as I wanted. I think it's cuz my bosses are sexist. Oh, look, I did a statistical analysis of this firm. It turns out women are underrepresented. There we go. I got a lawsuit. Give me bring me a lawyer." Um, so yes, uh, this this may come as a surprise to people who do not work in corporate America, but yeah, corporate America aggressively targets women for hiring and promotion because they are trying to fend off um the threat of any lawsuit because, uh, I think Goldman Sachs holds the record for the largest settlement in a gender discrimination lawsuit, that is for not hiring and promoting women fast enough. And the size of that settlement, I think, was over $200 million. Now, Goldman Sachs is not a fly-by-night company. They have HR departments. Um, but the law is sufficiently ambiguous that it's not really clear how many women do you have to promote in order to be in compliance with the law. How many, you know, how women do you have to hire? It's really not clear. The law is ambiguous by design. So, um, many corporations are paranoid about getting hit with an unlucky lawsuit and ending up having to pay a nine-figure sum for not having enough women uh in their upper management. Um, so yes, women are promoted uh in these companies and these companies become therefore feminized because corporations are trying to hire and promote women because they are afraid of being caught with a lawsuit. So that's number one. Uh, and then number two, I'll just do very quickly is HR departments did not exist a hundred years ago. At the end of World War II, almost no firms had HR departments. Today, the HR lady at your company plays a really big role in what the day-to-day experience of your office life is like. That is the most the clear demonstration I can think of that today's office is so much more feminized than it was even 40 years ago. So yeah, women are flourishing in that context because men tend to um have more rough edges at work and tend to get in trouble with the HR lady more, just for being more eccentric or odd or uh aggressive or prickly or whatever. Uh, women tend to keep their head down and be quiet and not get in trouble with the HR lady. Unfortunately, the very personality types that tend to get in trouble with the HR lady most often are also the ones who tend to push innovation, be your biggest sellers, be the most dynamic creative thinkers. So, uh, businesses that um discourage those people or even eliminate those people. You know, if you get rid of everybody who annoys the HR lady and who doesn't fit into her clear idea of what an employee should be, you might exclude some scumbags, but you're also going to exclude a bunch of geniuses. So, yeah, uh, the great feminization is one from aggressive explicit targeting um businesses trying to feminize their office in order to be in compliance with the law, and two, the HR-ification of every workplace in America, which is in my opinion a total disaster.

>> Yeah, I don't know that HR was even prevalent like in the early '90s. I mean, was wasn't HR wasn't that kind of a something that started to rise up in the probably the 1980s? I I would imagine.

>> Uh yeah, there is a a scholar of this called Frank Dobbin. Uh, and if you go read his work, he actually has a lovely chart um showing the the share of businesses in America that have an HR department. And it's here in 1965 and here in 1985, and basically now it's everybody. Um, in the '90s it kind of hit the ceiling and everybody has them now. Um, and a lot of it was because of sexual harassment. The Anita Hill hearings really publicized the existence of this hostile environment law. Um, and to the point now where we think of sexual harassment law and hostile environment as governing um sexual harassment in kind of the the most obvious sense, like you can sue if your boss tries to sleep with you. Um, but actually hostile environment law encompasses a lot of behavior that isn't even remotely individually targeted or anything remotely uh close to a sexual proposition. Um, the a landmark case that I refer to in the article involved a shipyard in Florida that was obviously 98% male in its workforce, and these are blue-collar guys. So, some of them had pin-ups up on their office workspaces, you know, you know, scantily clad women because it's a blue collar, it's a shipyard, what do you want? Um, and there was a lady who worked there who said that she was offended by those that those kinds of things on the wall and also sexual jokes and banter, which were not targeted at her. They were just kind of in in general. This is how the guys at the shipyard were talking. And she said, "This made me feel very unwelcome and I thought this workplace was hostile to women." And the the judge agreed. It said that the an atmosphere that deters women from continuing in a job is exactly the same as a sign on the wall saying "Men Only." Um, so it's workplace anti-discrimination law and hostile environment law is very fuzzy, and a lot of times it's hard to say what is or is not legal or illegal under the law. There's a there are a lot of behaviors that are not in themselves illegal, but could be cited in a lawsuit by uh somebody who was suing your company as evidence of a workplace that was hostile to women. And so this is why employers are on edge because they never know if they're in compliance with the law or not. So they have to just err on the side of, well, anything that might make women uncomfortable or might seem sexist or fratty, we just got to we can't do it. Can't do it. Um, so there, you know, there are lots of companies that get sued just for having a toxic bro atmosphere, even though nobody was explicitly harassed or propositioned or anything like that.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is like Title N being implemented in such a way that if a if a woman feels uncomfortable for any reason, she is in the classroom, she's being denied her right to an education, right? I mean, this is the way these these things have been >> um put forth. But I mean, it's so it's it's it's a slippery slope. I hate to you know, invoke that, but I mean, because I'm listening to you and I I agree, like I can imagine there would be somebody who was, you know, kind of just not it's not really the best use of, you know, time and energy in a workplace to be obsessing about guys joking or having something on, you know, a pinup calendar on the wall. On the other hand, it's not professional. It's not professional to have like, you know, pin-ups in in the in the workplace. It's just this is this is a professional setting. That's not a professional thing to do. I can imagine I I think that there is some some logic there. I also can think of an example. So I I published this book, "The Problem with Everything" in 2019, actually the same year that I believe the uh original "Great Feminization" uh piece by the uh by Mr. or Miss J. Stone, whoever this is, came out. Um, and, you know, I was I was sort of making similar arguments that you're making that, you know, this is there's a lot of women in the workplace and that this is really dominating um just just there's a lot of wasted time with emoting and processing and frankly backstabbing and gossiping in a lot of these in a lot of these offices. I have certainly worked in a lot of these offices because I have been in publishing and media and that kind of thing. On the other hand, um I have a friend who I wrote um, you know, a very long section in the book on who was working in finance, was working on Wall Street in the in the early 1990s. And you had ridiculous and horrifying situations with sexual harassment. Um, you know, and when like she was the only woman in her in her department and this guy like literally, I mean, I write this in the book, like he he like somehow he had come in on the weekend to work and like jerked off on her desk. Like all the guys had been there just, I know, I mean, you know, they'd been like screwing around and probably on drugs or, you know, just intoxicated or just emotionally intoxicated. And she came in on Monday morning and there was like semen all over her desk. And she couldn't prove who had done it, but it was obvious that something had happened. And, you know, when I was interviewing her about this, I said, "Well, did you go to HR? Like, what did you do?" And she burst out laughing. She said, "HR? Like, no, we did not have HR. Like, that was not a thing back then." And there was really nothing I could do. And I didn't want to be, you know, she she what she did was she got there, she saw this and she called like the janitor to come and and clean up the desk. That was her only course of action. And she said, "I didn't want to be the person who threw a fit about this because then I'm not going to get the next job." So, I mean, I I think it it's it's wrong to deny that there's a whole bunch of stuff that happens if you become somebody who raises their hand. And if you don't have an HR department to go to, you have even fewer protections. So, I'm just not sure what's what to do with this. Like, what is there a happy medium here? Yeah. And I think if I if I were a boss running a shipyard, I would probably say, "Guys, let's cut it out with the nudity pictures." On the other hand, you know, I I have come to understand through my decades in this world that there are things about male behavior, especially male group behavior, that are baffling to me that I just got to shrug and say, "It's a guy thing." And I don't I don't get it. Like hazing, for example, is something that every frat in the world does. I don't get it. Why is being mean to your frat or pranking, you know, these this frat behavior seems really immature to me. And yet it seems to be an integral part of building bonds of brotherhood. And I just at some point got to throw up my hands and say, well, I think the fraternity guys know more about it than I do. Um, so I just got to understand that boys are that way. But I think a book that I would recommend to everyone is, it came out only a few years ago. It's called "Because of Sex: One Law, 10 Cases and 50 Years That Changed American Women's Lives at Work." And it's all about the various ways that the sort of b you know, quite simple text of the civil rights law, which is that you cannot be discriminated against because of sex at work, all the different ways that has been interpreted. And some of them are really, you know, just egregiously bad, like that. And there are so many aspects of anti-discrimination law that people don't understand. Like one of my favorites is in the 1980s, an Alabama law was invalidated because it the law was a height and weight requirement for prison guards, and it was really lenient. You had to be 5'2" and at least 120 lbs. I exceed both of those, and I would not feel comfortable being a prison guard. Right. Little old me in a trying to be a guard in a male prison. No. That that's a recipe for disaster. Um, so but there was somebody who was I think shorter than 5'2", a a woman who wanted to be a prison guard in Alabama, and um she sued to say that the this height and weight requirement had a disparate impact on women. Um, and the state of Alabama said, "Well, yeah, you know, the a height and weight requirement is going to invalid, you know, going to exclude more women than men, and so you're going to have a predominantly male prison guard workforce." But don't you think that might be kind of a good thing, knowing what prison guards have to do? There are also many lawsuits invalidating height and weight requirements at police departments and fire departments, and they were all knocked back by the courts because they had a disparate impact on women. Um, and the the chapter on these height and weight requirements in the book "Because of Sex" is great because every lawsuit went the same way. The police department or the prison department would defend their height and weight requirement saying, "Look, you got to be big and muscular to deal with criminals or deal with fires." And the women, the feminist people bringing the lawsuit would say, "Actually, we have a study that shows that policing is more about uh conflict resolution than it is about height and weight stuff." You have not sufficiently demonstrated that those height and weight requirements are job-related. Do you have a study? And this gruff police captain would say, "No, I don't have a study. I have 40 years on the job experience."

>> Right? But they would say, "Oh, the judge had to say, well, you haven't validated this height and weight requirement, so we don't think it's job-related." So, you know, at some point, making all of this a matter for litigation opens up so many possibilities for, it's just opens up a Pandora's box. Like, um, the the last case that I will mention as being particularly insane is a woman at Boston University who was an English professor who didn't get tenure, and she sued Boston University for denying her tenure on the grounds of sex. She said, "You didn't give me tenure cuz you're sexist. You don't you it's cuz I'm a woman." And one of the items of evidence that she brought in her lawsuit was the president of the university, a quite famous guy named John Silber, had given a speech at a conservative think tank in Washington where he said, "You know, I think the fact that so many women are in the workplace now has had a deleterious effect on child rearing and has led to an increase in juvenile delinquency." Just kind of a basic observation that um working mothers have to make sacrifices and it doesn't always work out the best for their kids. She said the fact that he has that opinion and gave that speech shows that he wants women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen and that's why he didn't give me tenure cuz he doesn't think I belong in the workplace.

>> What department was she in?

>> English.

>> Okay.

>> English.

>> She said barefoot and pregnant. She really reduced it.

>> I don't think she actually said barefoot and pregnant. She was not okay. That was the essence.

>> It was it.

>> Yeah. And the idea that his free speech expression of having an opinion on gender relations um that he gave this speech at a think tank, that that could be evidence that he was discriminating against her in her application for tenure. But, you know, if you think about it, that is kind of if once you start going down this road of litigating um anti-discrimination law in this way, stuff like a speech at a think tank does kind of have to be fair game. And that does have First Amendment implications. It's all it's all very very bad. Um, this is kind of Christopher Caldwell's thesis in his book, "Age of Entitlement." So my uh considered opinion is that there are masculine workplaces and feminine workplaces. There are toxically masculine workplaces and toxically feminine workplaces. They can be done well. It can be done badly. Let's make it a matter for managers. Um, you as a manager have a responsibility to have good morale in your office, have good conflict resolution in your office. And the a good manager for a shipyard might not be a good manager for a university department. Whatever it is, we're not going to send in a bunch of judges to second-guess you. Okay. All right. I have a lot of responses. I'm also thinking of poor Larry Summers back in 2005, the president of Harvard, who made a fairly anodyne and uh not incorrect point about um rates of uh women going into things like engineering. And, you know, he was the sort of a proto uh James Damore right uh from from the he was the the proto Google memo, and that was the end of of his uh academic career, anyway. Okay. So one of the part of the pushback that you've gotten on this piece is that there's no data. How do you quantify this? I mean

I know you have a lot of statistics and and you you do have data in the piece. I think it's unfair to say that that you don't. But part of the problem with this whole framing is that it's just it's it's really hard to prove like it's it's a feeling, you know, and um something like productivity in in a more balanced workplace.

If there was a manager who was able to kind of control the hyper emotionality of certain people and yet also control like the hyper masculinity, rambunctiousness of of the of of of the men and and really have a productive workplace. Is there any way of of measuring that? Like is there any way of measuring how uh unproductive or dysfunctional like in all female workplaces or or how bad in all male workplaces like how how do we even begin to quantify this? It's really hard and I tried to bring as much data as I could but at a certain point I have to say all right what kind of data would you be looking for? like how can I quantify whether a university department is tolerant or intolerant of conflict or eccentricity or difficult opinion but um it's always good to have more data than less data data is always good.

There is another anonymous writer you're right that a lot of people in this field tend to write anonymously and I think publishing >> that's right it will it will not redown to your benefit career-wise if you are found to be have dissident opinions on this. But an anonymous writer um who I quite like has a Substack um in which he puts forward the theory that feminization is specifically linked to a slowdown in innovation. And that's one where actually we do have quite a lot of data on male versus female attitudes to science and innovation.

Two of the most sort of surprising to me poll findings um there are kind of on unrelated topics. One is if you ask people would you go to the moon like would you take a trip in a rocket ship you know assume we could pay for it and you could get the training like is that something you would want to do is that something you'd be interested in >> huge sex differences in that basically all men say yeah I would love to go and be an ast be an astronaut yes please um whereas women have what is to be honest this is a place where I am definitely in line with the women which is like wh why would I do that you're in a tin can what what do you think you're going to see up there? Uh I I I have a rough idea of what that adventure would entail and I do not see the attraction. >> Um >> so that's a huge difference just like should you be an explorer or not? Is there >> that's an evolutionary trait, right? I mean that's risktaking. I would think it it would not benefit women in the aggregate especially if they're mothers to be interested in that kind of thing. >> Exactly.

And the other one quite similar uh is nuclear power. For whatever reason, women are very anti-nuclear. Even though all the science says it's great. Um, and even if you show them the evidence that it's safer than other forms of power, that you are not going to have mutant children, women are just like, "Nope, don't trust it. Nuclear seems like bad news to me." And it's so strange that there would be such a huge sex difference in a an energy issue that has nothing to do with gender. And yet, it's one of the biggest, most consistent findings that men are pro-nuclear and women are anti-nuclear. But if we put those together that women don't like nuclear power and don't want to go to space and men are the opposite that seems to correlate with just generally different attitudes to as you say risk and also science and innovation and technology.

Well, if women have this kind of why would you bother? I that does seems like bad news to me attitude to technology then more women in the workplace might naturally lead to a slowdown in uh technological development. So if that's something that we have seen and observed about the world and the pace of scientific development and we are looking for an explanation for why that slowdown occurred, I think feminization should be a candidate explanation even though it's, you know, might not be might not be the kind of thing that lends itself to a clear data demonstration in the sense of I'm pointing to this simple graph. Here it is. It's more of a general thing, but it that seems like a type of evidence to me.

>> I want to talk about initiatives to get women into things like STEM, engineering, coding. Um, we've had probably 25 years of uh initiatives to help girls, girls who code, all of these things. Um, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think they've been very successful. We still have way more men in these settings. Some will argue that the reason women don't go into engineering or coding is because it's a hostile environment for them. Why would they want to be around all these boys or the boys want to have their, you know, bro time and it's they don't want they don't want girls around. Others say, well, women are just naturally inclined to other things. Or even that women are actually better at more things in the aggregate than men. So they could be just as good a at languages as in math. And so therefore, they can choose and they might choose languages for a variety of reasons. How do you break down those kinds of arguments?

>> Yeah. on on the well just a my my sense of the explanation there is that women do have the cognitive capacity to succeed at hard STEM fields but it's more a matter of inclination and taste that women tend to be more interested in people rather than systems. Um so that's that's why it breaks down the way it does. But on the issue of the many, many, many initiatives that have been going on for decades now to get women into STEM, one of the other anecdotes that was kicking around in my head as I wrote this piece was I I forget who tweeted it, but it was some anon on Twitter said, "You know, it's so weird. I'm in STEM and all the men in STEM that I know have at least one female friend who has led a totally charmed career and who seems kind of puzzled by it. Like she doesn't really know why she seems to have floated to the top and get gotten promoted so fast. She's not against it. She doesn't resent it. She just thinks it's kind of weird. And she's just like like this figure, the woman in STEM who has led a charmed career, who is perfectly nice and competent, but seems kind of confused by why she has flourished so well, while the men who are well more talented than she is have not. And so many people chimed in in the comments like, "Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about." Um, and they said, "These women are lovely and nice and talented, but they have flourished beyond their talents, and they don't really know why." And it is obvious to all the men why that is. Um but so that that's just their observation and I neither uh endorse nor criticize it because I don't have a basis uh of my own because I don't work in STEM. But I will say is this going to get me in trouble? I'm in trouble.

>> Why start worrying about that now?

>> That's right. Why stop now? Um, the one type of woman in STEM who I do morally judge, who I do think is bad, is the woman in STEM who makes it her brand to be the feminist warrior waging battle against the horrible patriarchy of her workplace. And I personally think that in many cases what is going on there is that a woman went into a STEM field because she was caught up in one of these programs of you know girls can be programmers too. Come on in. It's a good career. There's a lot of money in it. Um so they went into research or Silicon Valley or wherever it is. And when they started their career and started moving up, they realized, you know what? I just I just do not love STEM. I do not love programming as much as the guys around me do. The guys around me would program. They program on their weekends. They program in their free time. They just love it. Um me, it's a job. I don't love it the way that they do.

>> Therefore, I will probably not surpass them professionally on the basis of talent or on the basis of my work. You know, I'm smart. I'm good, but I don't love it like they do. So, I'm not going to beat them in that field. So, how can I have a good career in this field that I have now landed in? I know I will make it my brand to be the women in STEM brand. Um, so that's how I am going to distinguish myself from the men around me in my workplace because it's not going to happen on the basis of um my work. And so that's that to me is it is clear to me at least that that is a product of these women in STEM programs that the more you get the women in STEM programs, the more you bring women into these fields that they probably would that they might not have been attracted to on their own that they never would have it never would have occurred to them to enter or pursue on their own. the more you are going to get women who realize midway through their careers that if they want to make it, they need a brand and their brand is going to be politicizing um their workforce. So, that's that's my personal theory. That's one that I think might get me into trouble, but you know what? Forget it. I've heard worse.

I mean, is that kind of um >> I mean, again, obviously, we're talking in generalizations and a huge caveat there. Uh, but like is that a kind of more typical female approach like to be very to be to be planning, you know, to be I don't want to say like she she's she's it's it's I don't want to use words like scheming or opportunistic, but she's seeing the big picture. She's she's manipulating the situation in a way that will benefit her, which is not that's a good thing. We all need to manipulate situations often sometimes. Um, but I mean what I'm curious about, Helen, is like if you have people in in a in a workplace that are operating that way and thinking that way, is it infectious? Because one of the things I get a lot of push back on is when I talk about kind of cancel culture and people lobbing accusations in the workplace for instance or or being manipulative or difficult or just making things impossible backstabbing um, you know, be being destructive sabotaging other people's career. If I start to say this is something you see more in women, um I mean for instance like I personally my uh my my my vibe sense is that like 80% of kind of cultural cancellation events are instigated by women. I I truly think they are. I mean, Me too, notwithstanding, obviously there's gender dynamics there, but but I think it's women who really care enough to go after somebody. Okay, if that's the case, I also get a lot of people saying, well, that's not true. There are workplaces where men have done the same thing. You get fields like, you know, public health for instance, where apparently there's a lot of there's there's men in those fields that are just as, you know, sort of feminine, quote unquote, in their approach as women. Is that because these fields have become female dominated enough that sort of everybody's acting like a woman?

You know, I think to start off right off the bat, I don't think there's any gender difference in ambition or careerism. Uh, I think men are just as likely to, you know, approach their career and their office and saying, "All right, that guy is a threat to me, therefore he's the one I need to take down." Right? Like that. Oh, man. That happens in male workforces all the time. The question is how they go about it. Um, my one thing that one incident that I mentioned in the article is Barry Weiss of the New York Times. You know that poor girl was well not a girl. Um, that poor lady was hounded out of that job mercilessly. It was egregious behavior. Absolutely horrible. >> But you know it was it's they went about it in a very feminine way. If you're a man and you're a reporter at the New York Times and there's another reporter across the newsroom who's a threat to you and you need to take him down, you need to outshine him or you might need to humiliate him by outar arguing him or like >> or getting the scoop. But but this was slack slack is is a is a feminine phenomenon. I mean, it was I I am sure there were men at the New York Times who were going after Barry as well, but it was h it was happening on it was back channels.

>> Yeah. and she said they they were targeting people in the newsroom who were friendly with her like they would go up and say I don't know why you're friends with her like oh my gosh that's so mean girls or one thing that Barry Weiss did which was so mature there was another lady reporter in who was being kind of one of the ring leaders of this anti-Barry Weiss movement and she said you know what let's just sit down you and me let's go get coffee let's talk about this like adults um and the woman said I refuse to meet with you. >> Like, I'm not even going to do it. >> And so that's that's the if it was two men, they would have been able to sit down and have a conversation.

>> Do you think that's might actually do you think that's Let's pause there because I mean I can imagine a guy going I mean he's not going to say, "Oh, I don't feel safe sitting down with you." He's going to be like, "Fuck you. I'm not sitting down with you, dude." I don't know. I my my sense is that it would it would be like a stain on your honor to not be willing to at least meet with the person. If if nothing else, it would be an opportunity to humiliate and demoralize them, right? Like, you know, I'm going to show up to the fight and I'm going to win. That's the male attitude. I'm going to show up and I'm going to win.

>> Is it still though? I'm thinking of um I not these days coats will not show up to debate Coleman Hughes for instance.

>> That's true.

>> So, you know, I that's why I wonder if this is an approach that has >> like bled over into into all of us.

>> Um, okay, there's I we need to wrap up, but there's so much here. I want to I want to hit on at least two more things before we go. I want to go back to this idea of of agreeableness and how that is often not conducive to innovation and you know just the the kind of conflict and debate that's necessary to actually solve problems. Um, I I totally buy that argument. I'm also thinking of situations though that are, you know, where you have a lot of men and maybe it's not so much a matter of agreeableness, but um an unrelenting um respect for authority and hierarchy that can actually be destructive. So I'm thinking of for instance like airline pilots. you have um there's the you know the the hierarchy between the first officer and the captain is is such that you know my understanding anyway is that a first officer really cannot question a captain. So you have had like major aviation disasters that came about at least in part because or even totally because a first officer could not say why are you doing this uh captain you are crashing this plane now obviously that's an extreme example but I wonder how we square those things.

I'm I'm laughing because there well I shouldn't laugh because I'm talking about death Um there was a naval catastrophe in the Pacific Ocean involving two US Navy ships that collided. uh I forget the exact circumstances or the exact year but it was uh said by some I think this was never confirmed by the official report um but it was said that the reason for the collision is that the officer of officer on deck and the communications person who was in charge of making sure the boats didn't collide weren't on speaking terms because they were both women and they were feuding. So they weren't speaking to each other and that's why word didn't get through that the two boats are about to hit each other. So there there are perils of all systems and you know I I'm with the Greeks moderation in all things. It is definitely possible to have too much um masculinity in any kind of situation. Too much difference to hierarchy um all the rest of it. That's that's definitely true. But what what I see now is, you know, I am someone who by for reasons of personal taste tends to gravitate to workplaces and industries that are more masculine, more comfortable with conflict, more low in agreeableness. Other people are different. My position is that the world should be big enough for everybody and that if you are the kind of person who prefers that you know the kind of workplace that I like that should be available to you but what we see with the HRification of everything is that those workplaces are beingounded out of existence. So you know I I'm I have no problem with ladies who like a kindergarten style workplace. And there have been I saw so many people on Twitter who make fun of my line about Montasauri kindergartens. They're like, "Oh man, if my workplace was a Montasuri kindergarten, I would love that. >> That's great, girl. You do you. Try it for a >> day. That's not my thing. Come on."

>> Yeah. Well, speaking of kindergarten, um you know, another thing that I I have talked about is >> what has happened with teaching um with respect to the women's movement. So, it used to be back when women couldn't be anything but nurses or teachers. You had really, really smart, highly motivated, rigorousminded women teaching seventh grade English because they couldn't be a partner in a law firm. That's what they did. I mean, I remember even back in the 1980s having that generation of teacher just, you know, stern, tough old lady English teacher who, you know, 10 years later would never have been teaching junior high school, right? Um, and so now we have a different cohort of people going into teaching. Um, and it has been argued that I hate to put it this way, they're not sending their best. Like, you know, women who are really smart are not necessarily becoming high school teachers, much less elementary school teachers. Um, the men who go into this profession, God knows h what do you see as the downstream effects of that phenomenon?

I think I think it is objectively true that education majors tend to have the lowest average test scores. So to say that they're not sending their best when you're looking at educators, that's just a statistical fact. That's just a true thing about the world. So that's that's not just your impression. That is true. Um, the the version of the phenomenon you describe, which is completely true, that I think affects the world the most is nonprofits and charity work. >> Like it used to stay-at-home moms would throw themselves into their church or their community group. And these are women who are organizers and they're brilliant and they're creative and they're problem solvers. And now they're all working as management consultants or high-powered lawyers because they're brilliant and aggressive and great >> and they want to get paid. >> Yeah. And they want to get paid. Um uh or they go into nonprofit worlds. Um so there there are so many institutions that just don't exist anymore. Like you look at Robert Putnham and his bowling alone thesis. Well buddy, those you know the reason those institutions don't exist anymore is because they subsisted on the unpaid labor of women. and now women are in the workforce and so that's why they don't exist anymore. Um, and I'm all for the ladies getting paid uh especially when they deserve it. But on the other hand, at a certain point you have to look at um you know whether we are replicating exactly the same thing that we had uh in the 1950s but our version is worse. Like if if those women are now working in nonprofits and doing the same kind of community organizing and charity work and nonprofity community service type things that they used to do as you know church moms. Um only now they're getting paid but they're not getting paid very much. And also the substance of the work they're doing is sufficiently different from what they used to do. It's more bureaucratized. um there's less of a you know the religion the religion element has been exised completely um they're more focused on government grants you know are there ways that our new version of the same old thing is worse um so that that that is one where I do not have a a well-formed opinion I do think that we have just recreated the old version of civil society that used to exist in the nonprofit world and I think the nonprofit world is deeply dysfunctional and bad. Um, so but I'll have to I'll have to let >> Okay, that's another conversation >> will be forthcoming in a couple years. >> Okay, we'll have to come back and talk about that another time.

Well, this is fascinating, Helen. I I really I'm I'm glad you wrote the piece. Um, I think some of the some of the a lot of people certainly um agree with you and I think the the push back is uh it and it invites necessary kinds of uh questions. I mean I think one of the one of the challenges with with this line of argument is that the types of women who engage with it are by definition outliers. Like people like you and me are not that agreeable. Like you have to be not agreeable in order to even be interested in this. So just right there it I think I I noticed this in myself is that like I tend to sometimes be a little bit blinker because it's like well just because this type of behavior doesn't bother you doesn't mean it doesn't upset other women and so I have to often remember not everybody is like me. Um, but I also think you're right that this kind of um this kind of stuff is uh is not is not useful and can do a lot of damage. I mean all anybody who's tried to uh deal with you know create work work in an office full of women um >> knows that it can be challenging and I cannot tell you how many women who say I would much rather have a male boss than a female boss. >> I hate to say it. >> Yeah. But you know being women who are low in agreeableness doesn't make us better but I think it does carry with it an obligation to say what we think. >> Yes. >> Right. like we're we're unusual and the you know what what we should take from our unusual qualities and bring to the world. Our the service we can uniquely provide to the world is to be ladies who say what we think and say the things that the boys can't get away with saying because they're boys. I think that's our role. >> Totally agree. There are so few services I can actually bring. So, uh I'm I'm happy to be able to do this one.

Well, um, Helen, thank you so much for talking with me and, uh, congratulations on the article. >> Thanks a lot. >> That was my conversation with writer and commentator Helen Andrews. She is a former senior editor at the American Conservative and also the author of Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster. A conversation for another day. Helen's article, The Great Feminization, which is actually based on a speech she gave at NATCON or the National Conservatism Conference in September, was published in Compact Magazine on October 16th. This is the Unspeak Easy podcast, formerly known as the Unspeakable. Uh, lots of things are happening with the Unspeak Easy. We're about to announce our 2026 retreat schedule, which I am very excited about. Uh but for now, I can tell you that I am teaching a Zoom writing workshop early next year, uh January 6 through February 24th of 2026. That is 8 consecutive Tuesdays from 3 to 5:00 p.m. Eastern time. This is a personal essay and memoir class, narrative non-fiction. Application deadline is December 5th. Uh there's a Substack post all about it which I'm going to link to in the show notes and um yeah do get in touch if you want to take the class. I will be back next week with another super nuance guest. Thanks for listening. See you then.