The most infuriating part of modernity is the ambiguity of authority. Men can tolerate a superior who is a bit of an asshole, but they despise being mistreated by an invisible force they have no redress of grievances against.
Also, while I agree with your point the great feminization far preceded Civil rights law, and there is a biological force in play, it also made all-male spaces, often even private ones, illegal. There was a men's social club in Detroit that was forced to open itself up to women because big business deals were made there. Also, it's illegal to have exclusively male team once your business reaches a certain size. Civil Rights law didn't start this, but it's making sure it gets no competition.
So, law is downstream of culture, and will also be used as a hammer to force law to be downstream of culture, even more so, and with a sweet smile right after the words, “don’t you have some laboring that you need to go do?”
Heads women win, tails men lose and fortunately you are all so cute that men will never experience a moment when the juice won’t be worth the squeeze.
By the way, I don’t disagree with anything you said in your article, especially the last part where you predict that somehow in the future men will determine the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Maybe they’ll choose Allah!
Later in my life I understood the genius of my father! He gave my mother all she wanted! She got every spangle and dangle possible. She wore the latest fashion! My mother was beautiful! My father a very successful executive, never listened to a word she said!
“Talk to somebody who went to high school in the 70s or 80s and they’ll tell you the most horrific stories about fights and bullying, events that used to be taken for granted that we now consider exceptional.”
So speaks the sheltered author. It is not exceptional today in inner city schools, increasingly in urban schools, and spreading. Public order is changing fast across the West due to rise in status and numbers of groups that laugh at the West’s feminization. What kitten finds impossible to imagine will probably be normal in a few generations. Yes, it will be unlike the society those like kitten love.
I think there's a little bit of a miscategorization here. You are pointing to a real thing which is the feminization of elite society. No question about that, how did the judges get there in the first place, etc. Hanania is pointing out another true fact which is that while elite society has been feminized, there has never been an electoral mandate for the broader feminization of society and that the move from elite feminization to general feminization required both the force of law and the actions of an anti-democratic few in order to make it law. The argument that all of society has just naturally feminized is just obviously not true if you look at electoral outcomes and the idea that civil rights law didn't play a role in feminization is also obviously not true as Hanania shows in his book. So it's just two different arguments, both of which are right
For that reason, it's also very easy to imagine a world in which we don't end up in a totally feminized legal society because we are watching an elected president dismantle that. These forces are much less powerful than they appear, because they are less popular than they appear which is Hanania's point (back when he wasn't an insane person)
>I’m here to agree with Alexander and disagree with Andrews and Hanania as to the cause of wokeness and the Great Feminization. Politics and law are downstream of culture, not vice versa.
This incorrect assumption is why you and Alexander start from the wrong principles.
Law-making is downstream of culture--it is driven by democratically elected politicians crafting laws that reflect (generally) majoritarian thought and desire in the culture. However, law-interpretation--the judiciary--is expressly counter-majoritarian and, by design, serves as a check on the excesses of the majority on protections granted (or interpreted to be granted) by the constitution.
And it is through niche legal activism that judicial interpretations flow that constrain and diverge from the majority/culture.
Take, for example, County of Allegheny v ACLU. In 1986 the ACLU brought a case against Pittsburgh (and its county), seeking to enjoin the county from displaying a nativity and a menorah as part of its holiday festivities. The district court denied the injunction, the third circuit reversed saying both displays violated the establishment clause, and the supreme court reversed the third circuit saying *only* the nativity violated the establishment clause (the menorah did not). That Supreme Court ruling in 1989 was in no way reflective of the majority or culture.
Another great example is affirmative action, which has never been popular in the majoritarian or cultural sense (even in California!) but has had legal weight and purpose for generations now. It took SFFA in 2023 for the court to finally effectively say "Justice O'Connor's opinion in Grutter is now overruled, the use of race is no longer permitted in admissions". This is occurring at a time that the Supreme Court is *less* popular or culturally-aligned than at any point I can think of in my lifetime.
You need to pay attention to the legal activists that advance their causes and find purchase through sympathetic judges. Has anything the Courts have been doing protecting federal financial benefits for illegal aliens been culturally popular? Of course not, that's why mainstream outlets are constantly lying saying "this doesn't happen, Trump is lying to you!"--because it is so overwhelmingly unpopular it is easier to mislead the public!
I struggle to truly believe the 1971 ruling in Griggs v Duke Power, greenlighting many cases in the future, holding that even without discriminatory intent, company policies can be discriminatory, was ever culturally popular. And from Griggs, a whole plethora of "disparate impact" jurisprudence has shaped our society wildly.
Essentially arguing "Andrews is wrong because the law is just what is already popular and culturally relevant" is incorrect. The law is often not at all what is popular, rather the law is what judges rule. Andrews' piece in fact precisely argues that the feminizing judiciary (and she points to the 63% of Biden's judicial appointments being women) has the effect of the tail wagging the dog on the law.
In your piece, you argue, the civil rights law doesn't explain why [insert business area here chose to do things that targeted women in the last decade]. But it absolutely does! Andrews argues that laws designed to help women created systems where women effectively could not lose, and thus attained outsized and dominant control over business decisions. You give four examples of things "civil rights laws" don't explain: (i) boys fighting now involves therapists and lawyers, (ii) girlbosses are 80% of animated features, (iii) playgrounds have been neutered, (iv) women buy 80% of books, and publishers don't want to publish for men.
First, you're being too limited in your restriction to "civil rights laws" as the argument is more appropriately "laws generally". And "laws generally" directly explain (i) and (iii), where, just as the civil rights act in the 1960s changed the playing field in its own domain, so did the adoption of laws in the 60s and 70s changing from a contributory negligence framework to a comparative negligence framework--and liability exploded as attorneys pushed the envelope further and further with respect to which cases they'd bring to collect damages.
Additionally, for (ii), are girlboss films popular and do they sell well? (No--they are a reflection of women controlling the content production without necessary business pushback). For (iv) are women controlling what publishers publish and have they excluded men? (Yes--thus books are less likely to match male interests and males have fled the space so now 80% of books are bought by women) Andrews argues our laws have shaped the employee base, which has in turn shifted businesses away from maximizing profits to maximizing femininity. There's a straight line to be drawn there that I don't understand how you disagree with, especially since films and books are less culturally relevant than ever before. Those businesses moved against the culture, not with it (or at least, I think it can be said there were a few years of "this is interesting and new" but the culture moved away quickly and the businesses did not--and have yet to--respond).
All that to be said, the Andrews/Hanania theory has clear explanatory power. That isn't to say culture has no effect (or even that it is small), rather the law has a clear foot on the pedal that is not being lifted, and there is not any reason to believe it will in the near future with the institutional framework we have today (even if culture shifts, which I would argue it already has).
Western men, post WWII American men particularly, have built societies so long safe, predictable, equitable, free, and comfortable, that women are afforded the luxury of imagining that men and masculinity are no longer necessary. Even that men are the only impediment to the utopian world they now have the unencumbered time to envision.
But there is a world outside of our Western bubble that is violent, driven to conquest, and interested only in expanding its own power. The more feminization weakens the West internally, the greater the danger we will be overwhelmed by reality outside of that bubble. Should that happen, and I don't see how to stop it, women's concerns about glass ceilings, workplace harassment, shared housework, and affordable childcare will fade into the rubble and terror as they cower and wonder who will protect them now?
The most infuriating part of modernity is the ambiguity of authority. Men can tolerate a superior who is a bit of an asshole, but they despise being mistreated by an invisible force they have no redress of grievances against.
Also, while I agree with your point the great feminization far preceded Civil rights law, and there is a biological force in play, it also made all-male spaces, often even private ones, illegal. There was a men's social club in Detroit that was forced to open itself up to women because big business deals were made there. Also, it's illegal to have exclusively male team once your business reaches a certain size. Civil Rights law didn't start this, but it's making sure it gets no competition.
True, the law serves as a hammer to break open any resistance that culture can't crack.
So, law is downstream of culture, and will also be used as a hammer to force law to be downstream of culture, even more so, and with a sweet smile right after the words, “don’t you have some laboring that you need to go do?”
Heads women win, tails men lose and fortunately you are all so cute that men will never experience a moment when the juice won’t be worth the squeeze.
By the way, I don’t disagree with anything you said in your article, especially the last part where you predict that somehow in the future men will determine the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Maybe they’ll choose Allah!
My father never told my mom no. Esp. On big money matters.
Huge mistake. My mother even admits it now. All the sons see that.
Later in my life I understood the genius of my father! He gave my mother all she wanted! She got every spangle and dangle possible. She wore the latest fashion! My mother was beautiful! My father a very successful executive, never listened to a word she said!
“Talk to somebody who went to high school in the 70s or 80s and they’ll tell you the most horrific stories about fights and bullying, events that used to be taken for granted that we now consider exceptional.”
So speaks the sheltered author. It is not exceptional today in inner city schools, increasingly in urban schools, and spreading. Public order is changing fast across the West due to rise in status and numbers of groups that laugh at the West’s feminization. What kitten finds impossible to imagine will probably be normal in a few generations. Yes, it will be unlike the society those like kitten love.
I think there's a little bit of a miscategorization here. You are pointing to a real thing which is the feminization of elite society. No question about that, how did the judges get there in the first place, etc. Hanania is pointing out another true fact which is that while elite society has been feminized, there has never been an electoral mandate for the broader feminization of society and that the move from elite feminization to general feminization required both the force of law and the actions of an anti-democratic few in order to make it law. The argument that all of society has just naturally feminized is just obviously not true if you look at electoral outcomes and the idea that civil rights law didn't play a role in feminization is also obviously not true as Hanania shows in his book. So it's just two different arguments, both of which are right
Well said. The cultural imperative she describes is real enough, but that doesn’t mean that what Andrews and Hanania describe isn’t real.
For that reason, it's also very easy to imagine a world in which we don't end up in a totally feminized legal society because we are watching an elected president dismantle that. These forces are much less powerful than they appear, because they are less popular than they appear which is Hanania's point (back when he wasn't an insane person)
>I’m here to agree with Alexander and disagree with Andrews and Hanania as to the cause of wokeness and the Great Feminization. Politics and law are downstream of culture, not vice versa.
This incorrect assumption is why you and Alexander start from the wrong principles.
Law-making is downstream of culture--it is driven by democratically elected politicians crafting laws that reflect (generally) majoritarian thought and desire in the culture. However, law-interpretation--the judiciary--is expressly counter-majoritarian and, by design, serves as a check on the excesses of the majority on protections granted (or interpreted to be granted) by the constitution.
And it is through niche legal activism that judicial interpretations flow that constrain and diverge from the majority/culture.
Take, for example, County of Allegheny v ACLU. In 1986 the ACLU brought a case against Pittsburgh (and its county), seeking to enjoin the county from displaying a nativity and a menorah as part of its holiday festivities. The district court denied the injunction, the third circuit reversed saying both displays violated the establishment clause, and the supreme court reversed the third circuit saying *only* the nativity violated the establishment clause (the menorah did not). That Supreme Court ruling in 1989 was in no way reflective of the majority or culture.
Another great example is affirmative action, which has never been popular in the majoritarian or cultural sense (even in California!) but has had legal weight and purpose for generations now. It took SFFA in 2023 for the court to finally effectively say "Justice O'Connor's opinion in Grutter is now overruled, the use of race is no longer permitted in admissions". This is occurring at a time that the Supreme Court is *less* popular or culturally-aligned than at any point I can think of in my lifetime.
You need to pay attention to the legal activists that advance their causes and find purchase through sympathetic judges. Has anything the Courts have been doing protecting federal financial benefits for illegal aliens been culturally popular? Of course not, that's why mainstream outlets are constantly lying saying "this doesn't happen, Trump is lying to you!"--because it is so overwhelmingly unpopular it is easier to mislead the public!
I struggle to truly believe the 1971 ruling in Griggs v Duke Power, greenlighting many cases in the future, holding that even without discriminatory intent, company policies can be discriminatory, was ever culturally popular. And from Griggs, a whole plethora of "disparate impact" jurisprudence has shaped our society wildly.
Essentially arguing "Andrews is wrong because the law is just what is already popular and culturally relevant" is incorrect. The law is often not at all what is popular, rather the law is what judges rule. Andrews' piece in fact precisely argues that the feminizing judiciary (and she points to the 63% of Biden's judicial appointments being women) has the effect of the tail wagging the dog on the law.
In your piece, you argue, the civil rights law doesn't explain why [insert business area here chose to do things that targeted women in the last decade]. But it absolutely does! Andrews argues that laws designed to help women created systems where women effectively could not lose, and thus attained outsized and dominant control over business decisions. You give four examples of things "civil rights laws" don't explain: (i) boys fighting now involves therapists and lawyers, (ii) girlbosses are 80% of animated features, (iii) playgrounds have been neutered, (iv) women buy 80% of books, and publishers don't want to publish for men.
First, you're being too limited in your restriction to "civil rights laws" as the argument is more appropriately "laws generally". And "laws generally" directly explain (i) and (iii), where, just as the civil rights act in the 1960s changed the playing field in its own domain, so did the adoption of laws in the 60s and 70s changing from a contributory negligence framework to a comparative negligence framework--and liability exploded as attorneys pushed the envelope further and further with respect to which cases they'd bring to collect damages.
Additionally, for (ii), are girlboss films popular and do they sell well? (No--they are a reflection of women controlling the content production without necessary business pushback). For (iv) are women controlling what publishers publish and have they excluded men? (Yes--thus books are less likely to match male interests and males have fled the space so now 80% of books are bought by women) Andrews argues our laws have shaped the employee base, which has in turn shifted businesses away from maximizing profits to maximizing femininity. There's a straight line to be drawn there that I don't understand how you disagree with, especially since films and books are less culturally relevant than ever before. Those businesses moved against the culture, not with it (or at least, I think it can be said there were a few years of "this is interesting and new" but the culture moved away quickly and the businesses did not--and have yet to--respond).
All that to be said, the Andrews/Hanania theory has clear explanatory power. That isn't to say culture has no effect (or even that it is small), rather the law has a clear foot on the pedal that is not being lifted, and there is not any reason to believe it will in the near future with the institutional framework we have today (even if culture shifts, which I would argue it already has).
Dang. Great comment. Write this into an article and you have my subscribe.
Thank you very much! I'll consider it
Western men, post WWII American men particularly, have built societies so long safe, predictable, equitable, free, and comfortable, that women are afforded the luxury of imagining that men and masculinity are no longer necessary. Even that men are the only impediment to the utopian world they now have the unencumbered time to envision.
But there is a world outside of our Western bubble that is violent, driven to conquest, and interested only in expanding its own power. The more feminization weakens the West internally, the greater the danger we will be overwhelmed by reality outside of that bubble. Should that happen, and I don't see how to stop it, women's concerns about glass ceilings, workplace harassment, shared housework, and affordable childcare will fade into the rubble and terror as they cower and wonder who will protect them now?
Europe now.