A DEI reboot could more consciously train women to be proactive and assertive, and handle conflicts like powerful adults, not just focus on male behavior
I still love "Women Don't Ask" by Babcock and Laschever because their focus was encouraging us to empower ourselves and learn to become "bilingual. As an executive in technology it was the favorite topic our women's initiatives asked me to facilitate. Empowerment is more desired by women than "rescue." I also recommend "Embracing Power" by Marsha Clark. For 20 years she lead her women's leadership program called Power of Self. I am a graduate of the 2003 class. I was already a VP at Texas Instruments. I acquired even more personal power through her program. Then, I shared it with the women is my circles. That's how we raised each other up. When I left TI in 2009, 26% of our officers were women - an unheard percentage in technology and far above the Fortune 500 average. We were very proud of that accomplishment.
Wow! thanks for the book recs! I'll go wish list them on Amazon now. I find a lot of 'empowerment' is often just talk, it makes women feel good without pushing them to actually act in an empowered manner. By 'bilingual' do you mean understanding of both men and women? Because the comment made me wonder if perhaps the workforce is being 'feminized' so much because some women ARE becoming 'bilingual' (if that's what you mean) and not enough men are doing the same.
I think it is a good general principle that by the time any dispute reaches HR, something has already gone badly wrong. You still need HR to help resolve disputes in those situations, but you're so much better off when the people in the middle of the issue can work it out among themselves.
Indeed. I wish I had done so in my career before this; I was too taken in with the ideas I now reject to realize I was approaching conflict in an unhealthy way.
The Golden Rule still applies in all of life’s situations. You have to strive to be objective when you face a conflict. So many things are really just small stuff. If a coworker is regularly encroaching, figure out a way to assert and protect yourself that doesn’t involve HR except as a last resort.
The idea that anyone jumps to damaging or ruining another person’s career is anathema to me.
It is not possible to “get rid of harmful, toxic, social justice ideology” from DEI. That ideology is the foundation of DEI. The only way to get rid of the harmful, toxic, social justice ideology is to abolish DEI.
Activists tried the kinder, gentler methods that you seem to want in the 1980s and 1990s. The reason why they shifted to the much harsher methods of DEI is because those previous attempts all failed.
…And replace it with something else? We don’t care what you call it, we agree that DEI in its current incarnation has to go. But there is real discrimination in the workplace still, however often unintentional. I think I myself sort of see DEI (or a more improved future incarnation) as something that would be more of a department of HR. The 80s and 90s were a long time ago. Now that we’ve watched DEI fail so grievously, we can correct those mistakes and with a fairer framework accepting everyone as adults with agency and responsibility, I think it could work much better.
Any attempts to reform will have the same negative results.
It does not matter how long ago the 80s and 90s were. We must still learn from the mistakes of the past. Otherwise, your reforms will have the same failed results. And most likely it will just morph into another DEI once everyone realizes that the reforms do not work.
Would you be okay, then, if women and minorities started getting jobs and promotions that won’t then go to men or white people because they were, in fact, better candidates?
Somehow I feel like some in these two groups will still complain about favouritism if they start losing career advancement. How would you propose handling that?
The purpose of DEI, ostensibly, however horribly managed, is to bring needed diversity and inclusion (forget equity, that’s useless). Many, including Radha and myself, believe in a merit basis for hiring. There’s still a lot of potential for unconscious bias. Can you suggest a good system for eliminating this?
This looks like a completely different question, but...
I am not worried about "unconscious bias." It is really a term invented to avoid the obvious fact that true racism and sexism has radically declined in the last few generations. True racists and sexists are very conscious and will eventually get fired for hiring and promoting incompetent people.
We need (and largely had until DEI) results-oriented organizations in highly competitive environments that practice merit-based hiring, firing, and promotions. Those organizations compete against each other for the best people. DEI is deliberately trying to destroy that (and unfortunately it is working).
Any organization in a highly competitive environment that does not practice merit-based hiring, firing, and promotions is punishing itself. The system inherently filters out those who discrimate. DEI deliberately creates discrimination, and so will any reform of DEI.
Any instances of true discrimination are best solved by those people who are discriminated against forming their own company and hiring other people who have been unfairly passed over. If there is widespread discrimination, then those people will make huge amounts of money. So it is win-win.
The problem is your expectation that Merit leads to equal outcomes between groups and that any inequalities are due to discrimination. Until you change that attitude, you will see "unconscious bias" everywhere.
Merit-based decisions automatically lead to unequal outcomes between individuals and groups. That is reality.
It's funny ( and of course I'm only one person), but almost every conflict I've witnessed in the workplace is not a conflict between a woman and a man. It's almost always a woman with another woman, and occasionally a man with another man. And every single woman I've ever said this to confirms it. All of them. But hey, I'm just one person... I do find it interesting though.
You're not wrong, my primary locus of conflict at work is almost ALWAYS with other women. That said, I have had the occasional conflict with a man and could have stood to handle it better.
Interesting observation, but does that not suggest that for whatever reason, a significant portion of women are not temperamentally suited for working in corporate environments? (whether they can change or not is a separate issue).
If so, then reforming DEI is not going to solve anything.
Why should men have to sit through sensitivity training if the problem is mainly other women's unprofessional behavior?
At the very least, those unprofessional women should not be demanding changes in corporations that accommodate their emotional needs.
Might I suggest that high school and middle schools should teach students the proper behavior in a work environment as part of their basic curriculum?
My son is currently taking a "Careers" class in his middle school, where they focus on personal finance, savings, investing, interviewing, resume writing, etc. He loves the class. I am not sure whether proper behavior in a work environment is part of his class content, but it seems like a logical extension.
This would give both girls and boys the opportunity to learn proper behavior before they get into the work environment where employers and workers will just assume that a worker knows the proper behavior and then fire them if they do not comply.
I am not saying that it will solve all behavior problems, but many young people today simply do not know what behavior is expected of adults in the work environment.
I can guarantee you that as long as men have dicks they're going to need sensitivity training. Michael, I don't know what it's like to have a penis but I've actually tried to understand, to the best of my ability, why that damn thing drives so many men over and over to their professional doom. How many CEOs and top business executives have to be brought down by affairs at the office, or sexual harassment allegations, before the executive function in the prefrontal cortex red-flag the Executive Suite *before* another CEO moron or Vice President In Charge of Vice realizes that if he pressures some female associate for sex, that it may well ruin his career? What is it about that flap between male legs that drives so many to say, do and commit stupid shit we've seen bring down so many others and ruin careers? I dunno, maybe we should segregate the coffee machine into male and female, and put saltpeter in the male ones. Maybe *then* you can focus on your work rather than your assistant's ass.
These unprofessional men perhaps don't have the self-control it takes to control their physical needs, and shouldn't be in the workplace.
Perhaps men aren't, after all, temperamentally suited to control a business strategy when they can't even control themselves. And consider how overly emotional and irrational men get when they're rejected!
And, you know, with no sensitivity training women don't need to ever bother to try and see something from a man's point of view (like 'it was just a joke') and instead run to HR to stamp a black mark on his record when she could have just handled it herself. Really, it's only women who need to try and understand the other side, amirite?
I mean, here's what it comes down to, Michael: This isn't really about workplace fairness, you just don't want to change. The world is set up by men, for men, to please and suit men, and women to serve them. It's built cities and put people on the moon so clearly it works, right? No. It has never worked well for women. We don't want you in control anymore. And that terrifies you, on some level. Which is why you want to bring marriage back. The thing is, it'll be Marriage 2.0 rather than 1.0 which means more female input and a continuing expectation that men will pull their weight more. You're not going to like it.
Did you idiots write this article to practice being assertive?
You know, send out some ideas that would upset men, so that you could practice arguing with them after.
Allow me to paraphrase the article in a sentence, " we are aware that we are not what is needed, we would like you to pay attention to us as if we were"
So far you and Richard are the only men upset about this, and I'm used to it with Richard, but not usually over "We should be more understanding of men" articles. If they upset you so, then please see "Men's Stuff", the category in my Grow Some Labia nav bar, for more articles to piss you off! There's some really super-crazy shit about how women should fear wild bears more than strange men!
Honestly, we didn't think we'd get arguments from, but rather, DEI consultants. Are you a DEI consultant?
-"So far you and Richard are the only men upset about this"
This says more about how many men you posts get to than anything else.
"So far you and Richard are the only men upset about this," (I understand what you are trying to say here but your grammar is horrible. Run it through chatgpt next time)
DEI consultants have been affecting who gets hired and who does not in my country for about 10 years. See Trudeau. So whether or not I am a DEI consultant is not reflective of whether or not I should be interested in DEI. You don't get to influence reality and then hide behind a title. Perhaps there would be less criticism headed your way if you just played The Sims.
Dude, I'm done with you. You have nothing of value to add. You can't even correct your own improper grammar. Get over women in the workplace. We're here to stay.
You really, really missed the point, didn't you, Pete.
Yes, we CAN tweak the system a bit. It's called 'evolutionary psychology' and you are not the prisoner of your own brain. Regardless of how Neolithic we all still are.
Uh, dude, we're arguing for *merit*, not equal outcomes. 'Equity' is what we argue *against*.
"It reads like"....the person who wrote the above is afraid he might have to actually shape up to work in an office with XX chromosomes.
What 'dangerous industry' are you in, per se? Roadie for a local rock band?
As for 'No' - I heard it plenty growing up. I say it a lot, too, unlike the fauxminists who never say no to anyone or anything. I say it a lot to men :)
Your last line tells is a bit more illuminating...you're running scared right now and I'm guessing you're blaming DA FEMINISTS for it. Nuh-uh. But I get it. You can't think straight when you're running scared.
-"You really, really missed the point, didn't you, Pete."
Are you asking or telling?
-"Yes, we CAN tweak the system a bit. It's called 'evolutionary psychology' and you are not the prisoner of your own brain. Regardless of how Neolithic we all still are."
Can is not should. This whole sentence is a waste of words. You aren't saying anything you're just trying to use big words.
-"Uh, dude, we're arguing for *merit*, not equal outcomes. 'Equity' is what we argue *against*."
You are advocating to train women to be more assertive. If you are a DEI consultant you are asking to be paid to train women to be more assertive. Are you looking for assertive people or assertive women? Why must the women be assertive, so you can get paid to look as though you are making them that way?
"-"It reads like"....the person who wrote the above is afraid he might have to actually shape up to work in an office with XX chromosomes."
I am not interested in working with women, never have been. Nor do I think that I ought to shape up. Nor do i think that the result of me "shaping up" would put me in an office with women. What you said just comes across as taunting. Very "nananana boo boo".
-"What 'dangerous industry' are you in, per se? Roadie for a local rock band?"
You have guessed wrong. Its rude to pry. I didn't invoke my job history in my argument.
I don't actually care how many times you've been said no to, I was trying to indicate that I think your writing is infantile and misguided.
-"Your last line tells is a bit more illuminating...you're running scared right now and I'm guessing you're blaming DA FEMINISTS for it. Nuh-uh. But I get it. You can't think straight when you're running scared."
I can think when I'm scared. Cant think when I'm horny though. That's not me coming onto you, that's me trying to subtly explain to you why men might not want women around at times. It more complicated than owing the libs or the feminists.
I am not scared of ww3, I would prefer to be on the winning side of it though. If you want to discuss war strategy or geopolitics I'd be happy to. I would enjoy that more than navel gazing about DEI.
Honestly, you sound like some dude who just can’t deal with half the human race. Except when you’re horny. Sorry if I used big words you didn’t understand, I misunderstood you as someone who had vocabulary skills above seventh-grade level. I won’t fault you for not knowing much about evolutionary psychology, but I know a little about it, and about the neuroplasticity of the human brain, which we know know to be much more changeable than we once believed. It’s not that you can’t learn to live and work with women, it’s that you don’t want to. It’s a bit Neolith….er, caveman of you.
I love that you are both shaking off the trauma and trying again. I have to say, while I appreciate what you are doing, I cringe every time I read DEI. I am too traumatized myself. Maybe a new name?
I 100% agree that part of the dynamic is realizing that men and women often perceive things differently. You first have to convince people there are men and women. I wish it weren't so, but my last sexual harassment prevention training stated that misgendering is sexual harassment. I asked for an explanation and got something like, "Well gender is related to sex, so..." For your program, this will be an uphill battle.
Lastly, yes, I have been sexually harassed in the workplace. I found myself more concerned with the reputation of my female harasser than my own trauma. That was taught to me.
You will have to grapple with the weaponization of Title IX against young men in the workplace, as well. A single accusation results in a traumatizing and nebulous investigation in which the perpetrator is treated as guilty until proven innocent. I have watched this happen to young men and no one is helping them through this.
The word that really summarizes my take away from your piece is Agency. We all have it. We all need to learn to harness it. It is assumed every one knows how to do that.
I wouldn't call it 'trauma' per se...I think the worst I ever had to deal with was a boss sexually harassing me, but it lasted for about a weekend. I've got the story somewhere here, I think. But I dealt with it and he didn't do anything stupid to drive me to sue him and today..............we're still friends and old colleagues. I spoke to him last year after not having talked to him for years and he said, "Ahhhhhh, X.....my hardest worker ever!" I was sending him a potential business partner.
So there...it's possible for these ugly scenarios to end well. YMMV! Sorry you had to deal with it too!
Change 'DEI? Well, keep the D for Diversity which it still sorely needs (mostly of opinion and POV and the ability to challenge DEI 'lesson's) and Equity is probably disposable - not because it's a bad idea, but it may not be achievable. 'Equality of Opportunity', instead, or 'Merit' for short. 'Inclusion' is problematic. Yes, that's what got us into a lot of this trouble in the first place but I don't know that I share your pessimism about the T - I think this is going to be a very bad year for 'progressives' who will be answering for a lot of terrible shit they've supported. Trump vowed to roll back Biden's Title IX decision (which itself rolled back Trump's earlier ban, which Trump was right to do) and now a federal court supports something similar:
Whatever initials or name you come up with, it sounds like it'll work. Coming back more to equality is key to me. And it sounds llike you two are on the same page.
One thing that is hard is getting men and women to be vulnerable in shared space. As evidenced by Pete and Richard. Can't really engage in a safe way with hostility and dismissiveness.
"Lastly, yes, I have been sexually harassed in the workplace. I found myself more concerned with the reputation of my female harasser than my own trauma. That was taught to me."
I'm sorry to hear this, and I can see how you would be invalidated entirely in the current paradigm. What I wanted to say many times in the past has been something like this: women can get away with sexual innuendo, humor, comments, and the like in the workplace's new rules, but men cannot. There are double standards. My partner has reported something similar - women misbehaving as though they have no clue what they're doing and what they're implying. But they do, and it's so pernicious.
Yes. Double standards are real and I think your focus on the concepts of assertiveness, etc is really great for women. There is so much to delve into regarding perspective taking and reasonable empathy.
Really great work by you two. This topic is enough for a long series of articles; I look forward to reading what you come up with.
One man's perspective (and I'm gay, which may be a little relevant when evaluating what I say): It's going to take a long time for many men to be able to stop walking on eggshells around women in the workplace. I think that has to be kicked off by women dialing down the excessive offense and "I'm going to ruin your life/take you to HR" response for mild trespasses (some of which are real, some of which are imagined/inflated).
It's gotten to the point where I know two gay male therapists who won't see women clients because they won't be behind closed doors with a woman and no other witness. These gay men have been subjected to professional complaints of "sexual harassment." I know another professional gay man in a university lecturer position who was put through a Title IX sexual harassment complaint despite the absurdity of the claims against him (propositioning, etc.).
Though not in a professional context, I have been accused of sexually harassing women. In reality, both in the cases I cite above, and in my own case, it looks more like the complainant was angry at not getting the deference she thought she deserved, and correctly adduced that her sexual harassment complaints were the most effective way to achieve her ends. When we've gotten to the point where this kind of thing can be used against men who--despite whatever real faults we/they have--cannot believably have done what was claimed about them, something is seriously wrong.
Thank you for reading, good sir! I agree with what you're saying wholeheartedly; I think the MeToo fracas will lead to men declining to mentor women because even the whiff of impropriety is too much of a risk to their careers more than the reward of bringing a woman up. So, women who have cynically deployed accusations of sexism and harassment in the workplace are hurting other women's opportunities with their falsehoods, which they may think are true. Still, any objective observer will see it as untrue. This is because, of course, the definition of harassment has expanded to become meaningless. I speak up rather often on this subject outside substack, only to be told that I'm being naive. But, while men's workplace aggression is recognized as problematic, women's less visible aggression goes unaddressed and unchecked. There's no mechanism for a woman to deal with another woman through official channels who is tormenting her *because* of her sex, and that, to me, is a bigger problem to address at the moment than standard male sexist attitudes. They may be prevalent in specific industries, but they're not as commonplace as claimed in others.
I think there’s two underlying reasons why you’ll pretty much get women having different reactions to things than men and it’s because of the 10 Year Gap and The Line.
The 10 Year Gap is that in general a man has about 10 years of extra experience joking around, fighting, trying to work out power dynamics and all that, based on competence and guts compared to a woman. Young boys get this usually from about 5. Women and girls learn different dynamics. So when a woman reacts to a certain situation she’s up against all this extra hidden context and rules of behaviour that unless she has a lot of brothers and male family members she’s not going to pick up on. And even then.
The second is The Line. Every man on Earth knows about The Line though cultures differ as to where it is. The Line is what you cross to get a smack. And when you cross it even your friends are going to say you deserved it. Often with no excuses.
So when a man makes a joke it’s pretty much going to be a bit of a dig to test your mettle but nowhere near The Line.
And men often don’t feel the need to dumb down this type of interaction just because you are a woman. We like rules. If you’re in the game learn to give and take. And when you do you’ll find you won’t get issues because you’ll have the support.
That’s all it is in the end. It’s not complicated. The hard bit for a woman is trying to gain all that nuance. That’d be exhausting.
I go out of my way to code switch when in groups of most men, and it helps. I lower my offense threshold, and men seem to appreciate it, and so they trust me more. Of course, this lands me accusations of being a "pick me girl" because many women don't like women who are comfortable in male company. But, anyone can do it if they stop being so easily offended and learn that men have a different language that's no better or worse than that of women. I prefer it.
That is a very telling statement: "many women don't like women who are comfortable in male company."
How is a women with an attitude like that going to be at all successful in a career? They have voluntarily chosen to do something that involves interacting with a large number of men...
I know what you mean about the 'pick me' girl. We need to challenge this more when it happens. It's a conscious or unconscious 'crabs in the bucket' mentality.
Interesting! I never heard of that before, but I do know that men tend to be more brutal with each other than women. Thank you for telling me about this. It does point out that the two sexes need to learn how to merge, or perhaps temper their own dynamics somewhat. Everything ultimately, for businesses is to just get the work of the day done and as efficiently as possible (it's why I dislike DEI in its current form, which is about social justice, not most businesses' objective, they exist to produce goods and services and make money).
However, your 'graph about not needing to dumb down because you like rules demonstrates classic male thinking, a tacit acceptance of the patriarchal model of business. Industry was created by men and until recently was implemented almost entirely by men. That's not our world anymore, and some of men's 'rules' and practices may not be relevant or effective anymore. This is where men, too, still need to accommodate themselves to a different world where they can't always act and behave as they have. Just as I argue women need to do.
Regarding "that is not our world anymore", I disagree. We are absolutely living in the same world. The problem is that many people refuse to acknowledge that fact. The majority of those people are women.
Yes, you are correct that "industry was created by men and until recently was implemented almost entirely by men."
But institutions were not set up to fit men's need. Institutions were set up to compete in a highly competitive environment.
If institutions were set up merely to satisfy men's needs, institutions would involve drinking beer, watching football and eating nachos.
Men adapted to the need of working together cooperatively in merit-based institutions that compete in a highly-competitive environment.
Many women have not adapted to that reality. They want the institutions to change to fit their needs. But institutions cannot do that (beyond the obvious of having 2 bathrooms) because they are highly constrained by being merit-based institutions that compete in a highly-competitive environment.
A person cannot want in, and then demand that everyone else changes to fit their needs. Unfortunately, that is exactly what many women want, and DEI is a key outcome of that.
The problem is not patriarchy. The problem is reality.
It is not about men vs women. It is about individuals adapting to working within merit-based institutions that compete in a highly-competitive environment.
I think many men simply resist changing anything that women want. On some subconscious level, I think many, liberal and conservative, resent the reins women have put on male sexual expression. That ‘highly competitive environment’ exactly describes male behaviour. So yes, it was in fact set up by men, to suit men’s temperament and drive to succeed, however unconsciously. It doesn’t need to be discarded, but perhaps amended a bit to accommodate the other sex. Many men simply can’t yet deal with having to think about someone other than themselves and their own needs. That relentless male drive for competition and risk-taking is what drove the great financial collapse several years ago. That was almost all a male failed project.
Men’s needs involve more than beer-drinking and football-watching. The human animal innately wants to accomplish. For too many men, competition is really nothing more than, on an evolutionary level, dick-slinging. Who can make the most money? Who can have, or be, the biggest dick? Watching the insane competition between the world’s biggest billionaires—-Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg—is insane. Musk & Bezos have even resorted to rocket ships to prove who’s more the more phallic. Maybe you don’t see this because you’re in the thick of it but it looks completely ridiculous, and extremely harmful to the rest of us.
You need women, women’s values, and women’s perspectives more than you know, and many of you will resist mightily. But you can’t stop it. We don’t have the ‘right’ model either, but I believe together, properly integrated it will be a better model. You might be surprised how beneficial it is to you, if you live long enough to see it.
Wow, I literally JUST subscribed to you today because Radha recommended you and this was a mostly reasonable article with some solid recommendations (even if I don't think DEI is at all salvageable, I'm strongly in favor of personal responsibility and effective communication training to overcome the inherent challenges in cross-sex interactions, so there are some points of agreement here), but if that's what you genuinely believe regarding men, that it's all just some kind of phallic measuring contest, then it seems to me that you really have leaned so far left your brains fell out. That claim isn't credible even within the evolutionary psychology community, much less the broader field of personality psychology. For actual reasons that people (including men) are competitive see papers like
I was impressed that you cited the research against DEI, especially since most DEI proponents seem more eager to bury it than grapple with it, but now I'm disappointed that you don't seem to have devoted any similar effort to research regarding male psychology or economic theory. Bluntly, it's wrong and insulting and having that as your premise for analyzing the workplace doesn't exactly strike me as compatible with your own advice to ditch the inaccurate and counterproductive social justice assumptions that have turned DEI into such a costly and divisive dumpster fire.
You've displayed the willingness to consider contrary evidence regarding DEI, so let's see how you handle contrary evidence regarding your assumptions about sex and competitiveness. I've made an effort to deliberately use left-leaning sources here.
First, demonstrating higher competitiveness isn't an evolutionarily determined 'male' trait, that's wrong, the same behavior gap is identifiable in matriarchal cultures (where it is women who display greater competitiveness than their male counterparts) and some cultures show no difference. So your basic premise that business is only competitive because men are competitive and men established that business culture gets the direction of causation fully reversed: Western men are competitive because in the West it's traditionally been men who are responsible for business. Business itself IS inherently competitive because it needs to be regardless which sex is the majority of participants or more dominant in the society. Competition is simply a functional imperative of good business.
Secondly, if you can accept the evidence that gender disparities in competitiveness are socially-determined rather than sex determined, we have a potentially actionable way forward for women to effectively learn to compete in the business world with men. As another commenter noted, due to differing cultural norms regarding encouraging or discouraging competitive behavior re boys and girls, most women enter their working years with a decade or more less practice than their male peers at engaging in structured competitive behavior, putting them at a handicap once they need to compete directly with the men. There is, however, a notable exception to this: Sports.
QUOTE: But this is not the case for women in business who have played sport. In 2014 E&Y published a report based on a survey with over 400 women from US, Brazil, UK, Canada and China. The research found that the majority (52%) of C-suite women had played sport at the university level, compared to 39% of women at other management levels.
Expanding on their sporting experience and its relationship with business, the senior women cited their competitiveness as a bigger factor in their careers compared to more junior women. Interestingly, only 3% of C-Suite women had never played sport.
Sport provides a structured and comprehensive platform to understand, explore and practice competition and competitive behaviours. In a similar way that competition is caught up in a stereotype of winning and losing, it is also pitted as the opposite of collaboration. Yet sport can also make the connection between competition and collaboration because without teams and individuals signing up to a contest and a set of rules, sport would not happen. END QUOTE
Simply put, we already have an existing cultural construct for team-based competition that teaches and practices the attitudes and behaviors that are optimal for work environments (regardless of the sex demographics of that workplace). And yes, more men in business would ALSO benefit from experience playing team sports prior to entering the workforce, "not a good team player" is a serious weakness for any worker that detrimentally effects themselves and their coworkers of any sex.
As a practical matter, I believe the Army already did a reasonably good job of building this sort of strictly meritocratic culture very well until DEI interfered. The 'Equal Opportunity' (EO) program exists to handle illegal discrimination on the basis of protected categories, the Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Prevention (SHARP) program addresses specifically sexual issues in interaction that may or may not rise to the level of illegality, and general training is conducted for teaching Army Values (Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, Personal Courage), Army Leadership (accomplish the mission AND care for the welfare of your people), and Effective Communication (a primary topic of which is teaching Assertive communication rather than Aggressive/Passive communication). Maybe I'm biased, but I don't think that the business world can possibly be more strictly competitive or historically male-dominated than the life or death stakes of military operations, so what has proven to work for enabling women to compete and lead successfully in military environments should work in corporate environments too.
Maybe there wouldn't have been, or maybe it would have gone down in a different way. Women can be as greedy and power-mongering as men, we've just had less opportunity. Leona Helmsley was maybe an early example of the wrong woman with the wrong kind of power...dunno if she was a psychopath or not but it's speculated that many of the most successful ones are. That's just the theory, not sure how much research as been done. But I wonder whether it would have happened if women had run the financial world instead of men. I honestly don't know.
You do not actually address my points. You just indirectly accuse me of " resist changing anything that women want" and "dick-slinging."
That is not productive discussion.
Is this what you intend to teach women in your reformed DEI?
How exactly can we get to the "right model" if you accuse men who want to discuss the issue of the above?
Corporations are not about "thinking about someone other than themselves and their own needs," except for customers. Corporations are about results that matter to customers and shareholders.
The reality is that "dick-slinging" led to an enormous amount of progress that women share in:
We have already had a model for integrating men's and women's values. It is called marriage. It works extremely well and has for thousands of years. But what works in a marriage does not necessarily work in a corporation.
It is also very odd that you simultaneously:
1) Criticize the existing system as being "extremely harmful", and
2) Demand that women be admitted into that "extremely harmful" system.
If the system is extremely harmful, you should be warning women to stay away from it.
I would suggest that you convince other women to form an organization based on that "better model" that you propose. If you are correct, you will make huge amounts of money and create many jobs for women. Men can then just watch the results and make decisions based on those results.
You didn't sound like you had a strong handle on what institutions were created for when you said they weren't 'set up to fit men's needs', but 'set up to compete in a highly competitive environment,' which demonstrated a distinct lack of understanding as to *why* it was a 'highly competitive environment'. You don't need to get into a millennia-long history on the Ag Revolution until today, I'm already well familiar with it (we both like Pinker, Harari, and probably several others), I will simply point out that patriarchal society is believe to have really formulated at the start of the Ag Revolution. The post-Industrial Revolution world reflects that and it is, by and large, a male creation with little input from women. 'T'would have been interesting to see a parallel world where *women* were in charge of the Ag Revolution, but since we evolved to be the baby-carriers and men were desperate to make sure they were the father of the children they took care of (damn, we female apes should have hie'd off to the South Congo when we had the chance!) that was never ever gonna happen.
Interesting you state that the 'better model' is marriage. I see your books are published by a Christian publishing house, wasn't able to determine whether it's your own creation or not. You a fan of Musk and Vance & how wimmin need to get back to makin' babies so the Captains of Industry have plenty of cheap labour for the 22nd century? I do favour returning to the marriage model, but not to equalize everything, but rather to provide a better familial model than the free-for-all we've had that started with the hippie counterculture and has devolved into 'polycules' and other male sexual prerogative nonsense. Unfortunately for you, it won't mean a return to the 1950s. We're not leaving the workplace, and I for one don't feel the slightest bit of guilt or regret for choosing never to have children. Elon Musk doesn't even take care of his own, apart from financially. That your idea of a 'better model'?
And you wonder why I suspect your interior motives for arguing against DEI. There's an underlying thread here that signals discomfort for women's growing educational and economic power.
I want to reform the system, not destroy it. Does your future vision of progress include women in a practical sense? Or should we start downloading tradwife manuals?
For the record, I actually do regard this as a productive discussion, even if we don't agree on everything or end up persuading the other. It's still been an interesting intellectual exercise, and in fact about a half hour ago I sent one of your points to Radha and suggested we discuss it in a future article - the one about women who are uncomfortable about women comfortable with men (or certain types I guess) in the workplace. I hadn't really thought about it before, but then I considered I might have something to add to that too as I've functioned very well in albeit smaller primarily male-run (IT/tech) companies.
Venting at a reader who is trying to offer a counter-view is not going to make the world a better place.
It would really help if you actually stayed on topic. You constantly claim that I said things that I did not suggests that you have no desire to participate in "an interesting intellectual exercise."
You seem to be much more concerned about creating a caricature of my stated position so you do not have to rethink your prior assumptions.
1) Yes I do know where our modern competitive world came from. I have written books and dozens of articles about it.
3) I never said anything about Must and Vance. Why do you even bring them up?
4) Captains of Industry get rich on skilled labor, not cheap labor.
5) Good luck creating "a better familial model." Are you even married? Based on your apparent attitude towards men, I seriously doubt it.
6) I never advocated "for a return to the 1950s." Why do you even bring it up?
7) I never said women "should leave the workplace." Why do you even bring it up?
8) I never mentioned you "the slightest bit of guilt or regret for choosing never to have children." But obviously, you have regrets, otherwise you would not have raised the topic.
9) It does not surprise me at all that you think that I have "interior motives for arguing against DEI." but you still need to defend your claims.
10) I don't have a vision of progress. Progress exists and it includes women.
11) I did not even mention 'tradwives." Why do you even bring it up?
Having a more reasonable and balanced approach to handling workplace concerns and conflicts seems vital. And having policies that support work life balance for everyone (and particularly mothers) is crucial.
But I don’t think it’s the job of an employer to teach self-empowerment and cure imposter syndrome. It’s a job, not group therapy.
You might be right, I thought about that even as I was writing it. But, they could encourage women to apply for positions they might be reticent about or to be more assertive.
That is a fair point. But there’s also the issue of emotions being ever present in the workplace. Just this week, I actually was having a crisis of confidence in myself, and had to (embarrassingly) crying it out with a colleague. I think managers could be more attuned to whether their high performers are living up to their potential (and many women, despite being competent, are not). There’s a blurry line there between therapy and coaching. I got coaching, for example, and that helped a lot. But I think managers could also be equipped to coach effectively.
I would think that a good manager would be one who wants everyone to live up to their potential and has the people skills to help make that happen. That doesn’t have to be gendered. Being sensitive to typical male versus female patterns is good, yes. But presuming that every individual will fit into that general pattern is not.
I don’t like the idea of gendering who is presumptively in need of assertiveness training, or coaching, or emotional sensitivity, or whatever. Some men are very insecure, too. Obviously, every male is not an aggressive, self-confident, domineering Alpha - far from it (or our species would not survive, lol). And, most men do not have high-powered professional jobs, and would not automatically have some sort of superior comfort level in a corporate, white-collar environment.
Sending the message to all women that they need special assertiveness coaching can only communicate a taken-for-granted belief that each one of them individually is less confident than a man due to their sex. That is simply not true. And it’s a bad message to send IIMO.
I understand that in the aggregate, women are less assertive in the workplace. In terms of how to address that - I would say that a cultural shift that normalizes a reasonable discussion of real — or not real but imagined or stereotypical — sex differences would be the way to go. And a version of feminism that supports women’s strengths and encourages us to develop them, rather than one that focuses on weakness and gives you points for being a victim.
I do think that men and women on the whole tend to favor different communication styles and group dynamics. So far, we as a society have not been able to have much of an honest discussion about that. Some, but not enough.
You both are doing great work to change that, and the time is clearly ripe. I am starting to feel more hopeful about gaining some traction on these sorts of issues, which is badly needed.
We are making some general statements based on research showing that women are less assertive, men more aggressive. Obviously both are on a spectrum. What everyone could stand to use, wherever they fall, is better conflict management skills which is sorely lacking in all corners and contributes to a lot of sex division, esp with 'social justice' training that teaches 'marginalized' people that they're helpless in the face of some oppressive framework, all of which are blown up out of proportion.
That is a fair set of critiques. I agree with you that plenty of assertive women (hello) are in the workplace. However, someone like me is punished because most women are not; that punishment can come from both men and women. ALL women need to learn some level of assertiveness in my age cohort because the ones who aren't causing ones like me to stick out like sore thumbs. That said, we agree on a discussion of sex differences, which is not happening on the whole. I'm trying to encourage it at my current company, but it's slow going. And, I see plenty of women who use their lack of assertiveness to present themselves as victims of more assertive women and of men; false positives of sexism when the woman is incompetent and uses those accusations to paper over it. That shouldn't be allowed to stand, and unfortunately is. But they manipulate the situation by presenting themselves as victims, and people believe it.
👏👏👏 Bravo, bravo, bravo Grow Some Labia! This is the kind of DEI I would be happy to support! DEI isn’t a bad idea in isolation, it’s all about how one applies it. A better version of DEI that would teach women how to handle conflict like adults and not make assumptions about men and that bad behavior by EITHER sex towards the other is unacceptable would definitely be the way for corporate America to go. To be sure gender discrimination to an extent, is still an issue in American society and unconscious bias is definitely a thing. But these are far from the only reasons that women are underrepresented in certain fields or don’t take certain jobs. The American workplace needs to make it possible for women to have a work-life balance. So they can be mothers and homemakers but also pursue a career in the business world and rise as high as their merits can take them. Paid maternity leave, paid time off, childcare benefits, extended vacation time, allowing women to have days off for period pain, and federal daycare programs would be solutions I’d propose. To recruit more women into jobs or fields they have yet to break into in large numbers, I would propose assertiveness training and combating imposter syndrome. I would also suggest soft affirmative action programs (that choose from two equally qualified candidates), private initiatives for diversity and school programs to get girls and young women interested in predominantly male fields. DEI such as it is, doesn’t have a solution for or even acknowledge these other factors. How can men hire more women if women choose not to take the job or not to apply for reasons beyond their control? You also are right that women in the workplace need to be taught to address male behavior that hurts or bothers them by handling it themselves by privately speaking with them and resolving the issue peacefully rather than immediately going to HR or accusing them of something heinous while in an emotional state. Only if the behavior persists should you escalate. Women also need to be made aware of their biases and held responsible if they behave inappropriately around men which also happens and is also wrong. Sexual harassment and assault are absolutely wrong whether done by men to women or women to men. I couldn’t agree more with you when you said “we all have biases and we ALL need to do the work.” This is the first article I’ve read from you or Radical Radha, and I’m absolutely blown away!
Men also need to be taught about their biases and misapprehensions around women just as much. One thing your wonderfully thoughtful comment sparked in me was the fact that men often don't understand women's subtle cues that they're amenable, or not, to sexual overtures. And many still don't understand things like that she may not want to be alone with him if he doesn't know her very well because she doesn't know how safe he is. One big misunderstanding I want both sexes to know: Women are more emotional because of estrogen production, men are more sexual and/or aggressive and less prone to crying because of testosterone production. That might help in reducing friction between the sexes, but we still need to understand and read each other better.
Watch for Radha's article on an unidentified oppression group that DEI misses because of its faulty white/black oppressor/oppressed dichotomy. It's stellar. And she got equal help on it from yours truly, and some of her writing buds.
BTW, glad to see you're a 'Rockefeller Republican' (whatever the first part means...you're into oil production? Kneecapping the Democrats, lol?) who wants to bring back 'pragmatism' and 'consensus-oriented politics'. Thank you! You sound like the kind of Republican I could break bread with. Radha too.
There are so many nuanced situations you bring up. I think women, too, hold women to gendered expectations which needs to be called out. Not all disparities are due to sexism, however, and I think the model gets that incorrect. And one other I can think of based on your comment is how it is far more ok these days for women to be open about divisive topics than men. Anecdotally, we are also less punished for oversharing than men would be.
No, the vampire can't be instructed, cajoled, trained, or expected to NOT suck the blood from innocently sleeping humans. It must be destroyed by pounding a wooden stake through its heart. Thought everyone knew this...
You two need to brush up on your Jordan Peterson. Specifically his "dominance hierarchies based on competence." Dominance, hierarchy, competence. No room at all for coerced (legislated) "attention," meaningless participation prizes, "we don't do that here" timeouts, and even less for expectations shunned, shirked or transformed into worthless feel-goods. Only relentless competition, with a healthy, yes healthy, measure of belittling and bullying thrown in for good measure.
Get used to it (again). Once you women have completely fucked up this country and the Western world built by men of character, vision, and determination, and you look helplessly at each other and your incubated soy boys to put things right, it'll be on men to bend their backs (again) and reconstruct according to the Old Rules what you've so carelessly and cluelessly pissed away.
Richard! Lay off the manosphere. It's addling your brain :) Like it or not, the female workforce genie is out of the bottle and you're not stuffing it back in. No, not even Donald Trump. Nor the Christian nationalists. You dudes have fucked up the world beyond all recognition, now it's OUR turn! Although what Radha and I are arguing, clearly, is for us to work jointly to fuck up the world beyond anyone's wildest imagining!!!
Far be it from me to defend someone you’ve just accused of having manosphere addled brain syndrome, but “dudes have fucked up the world beyond all recognition”?!
Not only does this call into question whether you’re in good faith trying to find agreement between the sexes in the workplace with this piece. It also calls into question your judgment and insight about the world. Men have literally built the current world around you and maintain its infrastructure. We know this because as feminists won’t stop reminding us women weren’t included in most things until 50 years ago. Aside from the internet, all major inventions we had 50 years ago. And most of the maintenance of infrastructure is also done by men to this day. This was a silly comment and I’m fairly certain you know that. It’s unfortunate that due to Richard’s disagreeable style of argumentation you felt that you can throw anything at him because he deserves it.
I totally acknowledge all that. But men are responsible for 90% of the violence in the world, a stat you’ve probably already heard repeated ad nauseum. And be honest, what many men hate most about feminism is that it puts the brakes on the very worst of male behaviour. Men can’t get away with hitting their wives as much. More attention is paid to rape and what constitutes it. Men can’t get away with sexual harassment as much. Men are expected to help raise their own children. They have to think about someone else for a change. Today, we women have to listen to condescending men like Elon Musk (11 kids, 10 surviving, three baby mamas) and JD Vance lecture to us that we should stay home and make babies, which is the only thing we’re good for I guess. There’s a massive backlash against women’s rights (from both sides of the partisan divide) and not all of it results from dumbass wokefuckery. A lot of it is also men seeing the opportunity to roll back women’s rights some more because in the end, women say no to men—and even worse, their almighty penis—far too much. That’s what’s behind the current transactivist drive to force women to accept men in places they don’t belong—because they say they’re women, or something. Since most of these guys are AGP or transgender porn-addled this is fight is really about the male ‘right’ to sexual pleasure - and how women should just shut up and service that thing.
That’s why Andrew Tate is so popular. Because some men are quite sick of being expected to behave all the time. You’re right, you did build civilization—on the backs of unpaid labourers, or those you stole through conquest— and left women at home to make and raise the babies, and be subjected to patriarchal structures that mandate everything circles around men and their needs and who cares what women want.
I was being a smartass with the toss-off line about fucking things up, and I do actually believe that women, if we ran the world, would improve a lot of things and also fuck up the world massively in our own way. Actually have had the idea for a novel about this kicking around in my head for about thirty years. A future world where women run everything and you’ll be terribly surprised to learn it’s not very good for men. In the end, I believe a much better world is one where we all have more say in what comes next.
No, what most men hate most about feminism is the ungratefulness. We have already put brakes ourselves on our worse behaviours (who do you think enforces the laws that protect you from that 90% of violence you cited? Who do you think wrote the laws that gave you rights so you don’t have to physically fight for your survival?!). So no, we’re here today because enough men over centuries realized we should tame our propensity for violence and build a better world, generation by generation and minimize destruction as much possible, and be humane and start defending rights for more and more groups of people who are more vulnerable (weaker) than us. And as we did that, we now are getting toxic levels of ungratefulness. When we’re at our best we’ve ever been. Imagine that!
Given the vast spectrum of feminism, why damn all of it rather than the worst excesses? Why blow off half the human brain potential because you don’t like some of the feminists (and I don’t like them either)? BTW there are also female police, female lawyers, female FBI agents, female CIA agents, females at NORAD and let’s remember it was females who goaded you into writing those laws to protect us. It was females who forced your hand on allowing us to vote. We’re here where we are today because it’s become much more of a joint effort in the last 100 years. Sometimes, we’ve had to drag you kicking and screaming.
Is Richard also Mirakulous? I briefly wondered, but then figured probably not. Richard's one of my early subscribers and we're used to mixing it up with each other. Usually, though, I have to criticize lax gun laws to get him this riled up!
Dude, fuck off. This is the wrong place for this drivel. At no point did we say we are against competition or merit, and lumping us in that category shows that you lack nuance yourself.
I will have to disagree. I don't want to go back to a world in which we paid literally zero attention to how women suffer from gendered expectations. And to be clear, I don't put that all on men. Women torment each other in this regard, also.
Here's what Robert A. Heinlein had to say on the matter:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly."
Well then I doubt you measure up...can you write a sonnet??? I can, or at least I did. In high school. To see if I could when we were studying Shakespeare. It probably sucked but I did it. I could build a wall, depending on how big you wanted it. Set a bone? Dude, that's asking for a lawsuit. I'm not qualified and I'll bet you're not either. Design a building? Well I could, and I'll bet you could too, but they'd probably never get built for violating too many construction codes because we wouldn't know what we're doing. I had a college friend who dropped out of the Architorture--er, I mean Architecture program because it was too rigorous.
Change a diaper? Have YOU ever changed a diaper??? LOL
But what if it was to men's benefit too? We want to see more *genuine* equality, based on merit. Radha makes some great points about unidentified opportunities in her forthcoming article.
I still love "Women Don't Ask" by Babcock and Laschever because their focus was encouraging us to empower ourselves and learn to become "bilingual. As an executive in technology it was the favorite topic our women's initiatives asked me to facilitate. Empowerment is more desired by women than "rescue." I also recommend "Embracing Power" by Marsha Clark. For 20 years she lead her women's leadership program called Power of Self. I am a graduate of the 2003 class. I was already a VP at Texas Instruments. I acquired even more personal power through her program. Then, I shared it with the women is my circles. That's how we raised each other up. When I left TI in 2009, 26% of our officers were women - an unheard percentage in technology and far above the Fortune 500 average. We were very proud of that accomplishment.
Wow! thanks for the book recs! I'll go wish list them on Amazon now. I find a lot of 'empowerment' is often just talk, it makes women feel good without pushing them to actually act in an empowered manner. By 'bilingual' do you mean understanding of both men and women? Because the comment made me wonder if perhaps the workforce is being 'feminized' so much because some women ARE becoming 'bilingual' (if that's what you mean) and not enough men are doing the same.
I think it is a good general principle that by the time any dispute reaches HR, something has already gone badly wrong. You still need HR to help resolve disputes in those situations, but you're so much better off when the people in the middle of the issue can work it out among themselves.
Indeed. I wish I had done so in my career before this; I was too taken in with the ideas I now reject to realize I was approaching conflict in an unhealthy way.
DEI needs to be completely abolished and the scorched earth on where it stood, salted so nothing can grow out of it again.
Great points!
The Golden Rule still applies in all of life’s situations. You have to strive to be objective when you face a conflict. So many things are really just small stuff. If a coworker is regularly encroaching, figure out a way to assert and protect yourself that doesn’t involve HR except as a last resort.
The idea that anyone jumps to damaging or ruining another person’s career is anathema to me.
It is not possible to “get rid of harmful, toxic, social justice ideology” from DEI. That ideology is the foundation of DEI. The only way to get rid of the harmful, toxic, social justice ideology is to abolish DEI.
Activists tried the kinder, gentler methods that you seem to want in the 1980s and 1990s. The reason why they shifted to the much harsher methods of DEI is because those previous attempts all failed.
Let’s not repeat the same mistakes of the past.
…And replace it with something else? We don’t care what you call it, we agree that DEI in its current incarnation has to go. But there is real discrimination in the workplace still, however often unintentional. I think I myself sort of see DEI (or a more improved future incarnation) as something that would be more of a department of HR. The 80s and 90s were a long time ago. Now that we’ve watched DEI fail so grievously, we can correct those mistakes and with a fairer framework accepting everyone as adults with agency and responsibility, I think it could work much better.
No.
Abolish DEI.
Any attempts to reform will have the same negative results.
It does not matter how long ago the 80s and 90s were. We must still learn from the mistakes of the past. Otherwise, your reforms will have the same failed results. And most likely it will just morph into another DEI once everyone realizes that the reforms do not work.
Would you be okay, then, if women and minorities started getting jobs and promotions that won’t then go to men or white people because they were, in fact, better candidates?
Somehow I feel like some in these two groups will still complain about favouritism if they start losing career advancement. How would you propose handling that?
By the way, I have a whole series of articles on the topic of DEI if you are interested.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/understanding-diversity-equity-and
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/whats-wrong-with-diversity-equity-1d9
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-merit-of-merit-part-1
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-merit-of-merit-part-2-of-2
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/dei-policies-sabotage-our-institutions
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/dei-policies-undermine-material-progress
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/we-need-to-completely-roll-back-dei
I don't understand the first question. And which "two groups" are you referring to in the second question.
Please rephrase.
The purpose of DEI, ostensibly, however horribly managed, is to bring needed diversity and inclusion (forget equity, that’s useless). Many, including Radha and myself, believe in a merit basis for hiring. There’s still a lot of potential for unconscious bias. Can you suggest a good system for eliminating this?
What, exactly, is unconscious bias?
Seems pretty squishy, at best, and likely another phantasm.
I answered your question. Now let me ask you a question:
If merit-based hiring, firing, and promotions lead to a white/asian male dominated organizations, would you still support Merit?
This looks like a completely different question, but...
I am not worried about "unconscious bias." It is really a term invented to avoid the obvious fact that true racism and sexism has radically declined in the last few generations. True racists and sexists are very conscious and will eventually get fired for hiring and promoting incompetent people.
Diversity and inclusion is the opposite of Merit.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/understanding-diversity-equity-and
We need (and largely had until DEI) results-oriented organizations in highly competitive environments that practice merit-based hiring, firing, and promotions. Those organizations compete against each other for the best people. DEI is deliberately trying to destroy that (and unfortunately it is working).
Any organization in a highly competitive environment that does not practice merit-based hiring, firing, and promotions is punishing itself. The system inherently filters out those who discrimate. DEI deliberately creates discrimination, and so will any reform of DEI.
Any instances of true discrimination are best solved by those people who are discriminated against forming their own company and hiring other people who have been unfairly passed over. If there is widespread discrimination, then those people will make huge amounts of money. So it is win-win.
The problem is your expectation that Merit leads to equal outcomes between groups and that any inequalities are due to discrimination. Until you change that attitude, you will see "unconscious bias" everywhere.
Merit-based decisions automatically lead to unequal outcomes between individuals and groups. That is reality.
It's funny ( and of course I'm only one person), but almost every conflict I've witnessed in the workplace is not a conflict between a woman and a man. It's almost always a woman with another woman, and occasionally a man with another man. And every single woman I've ever said this to confirms it. All of them. But hey, I'm just one person... I do find it interesting though.
You're not wrong, my primary locus of conflict at work is almost ALWAYS with other women. That said, I have had the occasional conflict with a man and could have stood to handle it better.
Interesting observation, but does that not suggest that for whatever reason, a significant portion of women are not temperamentally suited for working in corporate environments? (whether they can change or not is a separate issue).
If so, then reforming DEI is not going to solve anything.
Why should men have to sit through sensitivity training if the problem is mainly other women's unprofessional behavior?
At the very least, those unprofessional women should not be demanding changes in corporations that accommodate their emotional needs.
👆🏼Not really
Really?
So then why do you believe that Radha's "primary locus of conflict at work is almost ALWAYS with other women?"
And what is your plan to solve the problem?
Oh it’s true. It is always with women. We don’t have a plan yet, but working on it ;)
Might I suggest that high school and middle schools should teach students the proper behavior in a work environment as part of their basic curriculum?
My son is currently taking a "Careers" class in his middle school, where they focus on personal finance, savings, investing, interviewing, resume writing, etc. He loves the class. I am not sure whether proper behavior in a work environment is part of his class content, but it seems like a logical extension.
This would give both girls and boys the opportunity to learn proper behavior before they get into the work environment where employers and workers will just assume that a worker knows the proper behavior and then fire them if they do not comply.
I am not saying that it will solve all behavior problems, but many young people today simply do not know what behavior is expected of adults in the work environment.
I can guarantee you that as long as men have dicks they're going to need sensitivity training. Michael, I don't know what it's like to have a penis but I've actually tried to understand, to the best of my ability, why that damn thing drives so many men over and over to their professional doom. How many CEOs and top business executives have to be brought down by affairs at the office, or sexual harassment allegations, before the executive function in the prefrontal cortex red-flag the Executive Suite *before* another CEO moron or Vice President In Charge of Vice realizes that if he pressures some female associate for sex, that it may well ruin his career? What is it about that flap between male legs that drives so many to say, do and commit stupid shit we've seen bring down so many others and ruin careers? I dunno, maybe we should segregate the coffee machine into male and female, and put saltpeter in the male ones. Maybe *then* you can focus on your work rather than your assistant's ass.
These unprofessional men perhaps don't have the self-control it takes to control their physical needs, and shouldn't be in the workplace.
Perhaps men aren't, after all, temperamentally suited to control a business strategy when they can't even control themselves. And consider how overly emotional and irrational men get when they're rejected!
And, you know, with no sensitivity training women don't need to ever bother to try and see something from a man's point of view (like 'it was just a joke') and instead run to HR to stamp a black mark on his record when she could have just handled it herself. Really, it's only women who need to try and understand the other side, amirite?
I mean, here's what it comes down to, Michael: This isn't really about workplace fairness, you just don't want to change. The world is set up by men, for men, to please and suit men, and women to serve them. It's built cities and put people on the moon so clearly it works, right? No. It has never worked well for women. We don't want you in control anymore. And that terrifies you, on some level. Which is why you want to bring marriage back. The thing is, it'll be Marriage 2.0 rather than 1.0 which means more female input and a continuing expectation that men will pull their weight more. You're not going to like it.
Wow!
You outed yourself.
If someone wrote exactly what you just wrote and switched the genders, you would call them a misogynist.
Did you idiots write this article to practice being assertive?
You know, send out some ideas that would upset men, so that you could practice arguing with them after.
Allow me to paraphrase the article in a sentence, " we are aware that we are not what is needed, we would like you to pay attention to us as if we were"
So far you and Richard are the only men upset about this, and I'm used to it with Richard, but not usually over "We should be more understanding of men" articles. If they upset you so, then please see "Men's Stuff", the category in my Grow Some Labia nav bar, for more articles to piss you off! There's some really super-crazy shit about how women should fear wild bears more than strange men!
Honestly, we didn't think we'd get arguments from, but rather, DEI consultants. Are you a DEI consultant?
-"So far you and Richard are the only men upset about this"
This says more about how many men you posts get to than anything else.
"So far you and Richard are the only men upset about this," (I understand what you are trying to say here but your grammar is horrible. Run it through chatgpt next time)
DEI consultants have been affecting who gets hired and who does not in my country for about 10 years. See Trudeau. So whether or not I am a DEI consultant is not reflective of whether or not I should be interested in DEI. You don't get to influence reality and then hide behind a title. Perhaps there would be less criticism headed your way if you just played The Sims.
What part of that you think was grammatically incorrect you didn’t understand? And, practice what you preach:
“This says more about how many men you posts get to than anything else.”
What…?
Does this work as a strategy?
Blasting retarded shit at Substack till someone edits it for you.
I understand all the words you used, I'm starting to suspect that you don't.
Dude, I'm done with you. You have nothing of value to add. You can't even correct your own improper grammar. Get over women in the workplace. We're here to stay.
-"What part of that you think was grammatically incorrect you didn’t understand?"
Jesus Christ you need to learn how to speak English
-"your posts get to"
That's my typo, I'll own that
What I was saying there is that if you post something on Substack. A very low proportion of men will read it.
So the absence or rarity of men disapproving of your essay is not evidence of much at all.
It's kind of funny how much effort you're expending on insulting two women who definitely are more articulate than you.
Speaking of articulate ideas that should have been killed in public, did you get all your boosters?
The ramifications of DEI have not been funny. Some ideas are worth killing, in public.
This articles reads like the last argument for the blank slate idea.
Anyone can be anything if we just tweak the system a bit.
The objective, which you seem to hold as noble, seems to be equal outcomes.
It reads like a woman saying “well can't we just”.
It reads like a woman seeking male containment.
I could not look a man in a dangerous industry and read this to him, the shame would stop me.
This is the type of feminine nonsense that kept the covid lockdowns in canada going for two years.
It reads like nobody has ever told you no.
It reads like you wish someone would tell you no.
There's a better way to get assertive people in your workforce than training women to be assertive, I'll let you figure that one out on your own.
We are on the brink of ww3, get out of the way.
You really, really missed the point, didn't you, Pete.
Yes, we CAN tweak the system a bit. It's called 'evolutionary psychology' and you are not the prisoner of your own brain. Regardless of how Neolithic we all still are.
Uh, dude, we're arguing for *merit*, not equal outcomes. 'Equity' is what we argue *against*.
"It reads like"....the person who wrote the above is afraid he might have to actually shape up to work in an office with XX chromosomes.
What 'dangerous industry' are you in, per se? Roadie for a local rock band?
As for 'No' - I heard it plenty growing up. I say it a lot, too, unlike the fauxminists who never say no to anyone or anything. I say it a lot to men :)
Your last line tells is a bit more illuminating...you're running scared right now and I'm guessing you're blaming DA FEMINISTS for it. Nuh-uh. But I get it. You can't think straight when you're running scared.
-"You really, really missed the point, didn't you, Pete."
Are you asking or telling?
-"Yes, we CAN tweak the system a bit. It's called 'evolutionary psychology' and you are not the prisoner of your own brain. Regardless of how Neolithic we all still are."
Can is not should. This whole sentence is a waste of words. You aren't saying anything you're just trying to use big words.
-"Uh, dude, we're arguing for *merit*, not equal outcomes. 'Equity' is what we argue *against*."
You are advocating to train women to be more assertive. If you are a DEI consultant you are asking to be paid to train women to be more assertive. Are you looking for assertive people or assertive women? Why must the women be assertive, so you can get paid to look as though you are making them that way?
"-"It reads like"....the person who wrote the above is afraid he might have to actually shape up to work in an office with XX chromosomes."
I am not interested in working with women, never have been. Nor do I think that I ought to shape up. Nor do i think that the result of me "shaping up" would put me in an office with women. What you said just comes across as taunting. Very "nananana boo boo".
-"What 'dangerous industry' are you in, per se? Roadie for a local rock band?"
You have guessed wrong. Its rude to pry. I didn't invoke my job history in my argument.
I don't actually care how many times you've been said no to, I was trying to indicate that I think your writing is infantile and misguided.
-"Your last line tells is a bit more illuminating...you're running scared right now and I'm guessing you're blaming DA FEMINISTS for it. Nuh-uh. But I get it. You can't think straight when you're running scared."
I can think when I'm scared. Cant think when I'm horny though. That's not me coming onto you, that's me trying to subtly explain to you why men might not want women around at times. It more complicated than owing the libs or the feminists.
I am not scared of ww3, I would prefer to be on the winning side of it though. If you want to discuss war strategy or geopolitics I'd be happy to. I would enjoy that more than navel gazing about DEI.
Honestly, you sound like some dude who just can’t deal with half the human race. Except when you’re horny. Sorry if I used big words you didn’t understand, I misunderstood you as someone who had vocabulary skills above seventh-grade level. I won’t fault you for not knowing much about evolutionary psychology, but I know a little about it, and about the neuroplasticity of the human brain, which we know know to be much more changeable than we once believed. It’s not that you can’t learn to live and work with women, it’s that you don’t want to. It’s a bit Neolith….er, caveman of you.
You aren't dealing with what I said to you. You'd be able to do that if you were intelligent.
You know, the thing I did with the quotations.
Monkeys can throw shit too.
Watch yourself, lippy lady. These things don't always end well...
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-05-17/starbucks-racism-viral-fame-led-to-diversity-dei-project-that-the-founders-canceled
Not sure what that has to do with *this* article. Which isn't about racism at all. (But stay tuned for Radha's coming out in another week or so!)
I love that you are both shaking off the trauma and trying again. I have to say, while I appreciate what you are doing, I cringe every time I read DEI. I am too traumatized myself. Maybe a new name?
I 100% agree that part of the dynamic is realizing that men and women often perceive things differently. You first have to convince people there are men and women. I wish it weren't so, but my last sexual harassment prevention training stated that misgendering is sexual harassment. I asked for an explanation and got something like, "Well gender is related to sex, so..." For your program, this will be an uphill battle.
Lastly, yes, I have been sexually harassed in the workplace. I found myself more concerned with the reputation of my female harasser than my own trauma. That was taught to me.
You will have to grapple with the weaponization of Title IX against young men in the workplace, as well. A single accusation results in a traumatizing and nebulous investigation in which the perpetrator is treated as guilty until proven innocent. I have watched this happen to young men and no one is helping them through this.
The word that really summarizes my take away from your piece is Agency. We all have it. We all need to learn to harness it. It is assumed every one knows how to do that.
I am looking forward to see what you produce! 🙏🤙
I wouldn't call it 'trauma' per se...I think the worst I ever had to deal with was a boss sexually harassing me, but it lasted for about a weekend. I've got the story somewhere here, I think. But I dealt with it and he didn't do anything stupid to drive me to sue him and today..............we're still friends and old colleagues. I spoke to him last year after not having talked to him for years and he said, "Ahhhhhh, X.....my hardest worker ever!" I was sending him a potential business partner.
So there...it's possible for these ugly scenarios to end well. YMMV! Sorry you had to deal with it too!
Change 'DEI? Well, keep the D for Diversity which it still sorely needs (mostly of opinion and POV and the ability to challenge DEI 'lesson's) and Equity is probably disposable - not because it's a bad idea, but it may not be achievable. 'Equality of Opportunity', instead, or 'Merit' for short. 'Inclusion' is problematic. Yes, that's what got us into a lot of this trouble in the first place but I don't know that I share your pessimism about the T - I think this is going to be a very bad year for 'progressives' who will be answering for a lot of terrible shit they've supported. Trump vowed to roll back Biden's Title IX decision (which itself rolled back Trump's earlier ban, which Trump was right to do) and now a federal court supports something similar:
https://www.nysun.com/article/federal-court-blocks-bidens-title-ix-rewrite-forcing-schools-to-allow-biological-males-in-female-sports
Dudes in dresses will also face a difficult forthcoming year, I believe.
Women and women and men are men and you can't change that. We need to keep hammering that home.
Thank you for the thorough reply.
Whatever initials or name you come up with, it sounds like it'll work. Coming back more to equality is key to me. And it sounds llike you two are on the same page.
One thing that is hard is getting men and women to be vulnerable in shared space. As evidenced by Pete and Richard. Can't really engage in a safe way with hostility and dismissiveness.
"Lastly, yes, I have been sexually harassed in the workplace. I found myself more concerned with the reputation of my female harasser than my own trauma. That was taught to me."
I'm sorry to hear this, and I can see how you would be invalidated entirely in the current paradigm. What I wanted to say many times in the past has been something like this: women can get away with sexual innuendo, humor, comments, and the like in the workplace's new rules, but men cannot. There are double standards. My partner has reported something similar - women misbehaving as though they have no clue what they're doing and what they're implying. But they do, and it's so pernicious.
Yes. Double standards are real and I think your focus on the concepts of assertiveness, etc is really great for women. There is so much to delve into regarding perspective taking and reasonable empathy.
Thank you for your thoughtful response.
Really great work by you two. This topic is enough for a long series of articles; I look forward to reading what you come up with.
One man's perspective (and I'm gay, which may be a little relevant when evaluating what I say): It's going to take a long time for many men to be able to stop walking on eggshells around women in the workplace. I think that has to be kicked off by women dialing down the excessive offense and "I'm going to ruin your life/take you to HR" response for mild trespasses (some of which are real, some of which are imagined/inflated).
It's gotten to the point where I know two gay male therapists who won't see women clients because they won't be behind closed doors with a woman and no other witness. These gay men have been subjected to professional complaints of "sexual harassment." I know another professional gay man in a university lecturer position who was put through a Title IX sexual harassment complaint despite the absurdity of the claims against him (propositioning, etc.).
Though not in a professional context, I have been accused of sexually harassing women. In reality, both in the cases I cite above, and in my own case, it looks more like the complainant was angry at not getting the deference she thought she deserved, and correctly adduced that her sexual harassment complaints were the most effective way to achieve her ends. When we've gotten to the point where this kind of thing can be used against men who--despite whatever real faults we/they have--cannot believably have done what was claimed about them, something is seriously wrong.
Thank you for reading, good sir! I agree with what you're saying wholeheartedly; I think the MeToo fracas will lead to men declining to mentor women because even the whiff of impropriety is too much of a risk to their careers more than the reward of bringing a woman up. So, women who have cynically deployed accusations of sexism and harassment in the workplace are hurting other women's opportunities with their falsehoods, which they may think are true. Still, any objective observer will see it as untrue. This is because, of course, the definition of harassment has expanded to become meaningless. I speak up rather often on this subject outside substack, only to be told that I'm being naive. But, while men's workplace aggression is recognized as problematic, women's less visible aggression goes unaddressed and unchecked. There's no mechanism for a woman to deal with another woman through official channels who is tormenting her *because* of her sex, and that, to me, is a bigger problem to address at the moment than standard male sexist attitudes. They may be prevalent in specific industries, but they're not as commonplace as claimed in others.
I think there’s two underlying reasons why you’ll pretty much get women having different reactions to things than men and it’s because of the 10 Year Gap and The Line.
The 10 Year Gap is that in general a man has about 10 years of extra experience joking around, fighting, trying to work out power dynamics and all that, based on competence and guts compared to a woman. Young boys get this usually from about 5. Women and girls learn different dynamics. So when a woman reacts to a certain situation she’s up against all this extra hidden context and rules of behaviour that unless she has a lot of brothers and male family members she’s not going to pick up on. And even then.
The second is The Line. Every man on Earth knows about The Line though cultures differ as to where it is. The Line is what you cross to get a smack. And when you cross it even your friends are going to say you deserved it. Often with no excuses.
So when a man makes a joke it’s pretty much going to be a bit of a dig to test your mettle but nowhere near The Line.
And men often don’t feel the need to dumb down this type of interaction just because you are a woman. We like rules. If you’re in the game learn to give and take. And when you do you’ll find you won’t get issues because you’ll have the support.
That’s all it is in the end. It’s not complicated. The hard bit for a woman is trying to gain all that nuance. That’d be exhausting.
I go out of my way to code switch when in groups of most men, and it helps. I lower my offense threshold, and men seem to appreciate it, and so they trust me more. Of course, this lands me accusations of being a "pick me girl" because many women don't like women who are comfortable in male company. But, anyone can do it if they stop being so easily offended and learn that men have a different language that's no better or worse than that of women. I prefer it.
Instantly, I wonder why an 'offense threshold' is high in the first place? Or, put another way, why does it need to be lowered?
'...if they stop being so easily offended...'...why isn't this a default?
That is a very telling statement: "many women don't like women who are comfortable in male company."
How is a women with an attitude like that going to be at all successful in a career? They have voluntarily chosen to do something that involves interacting with a large number of men...
It's a good question, and something I think Radha and I might need to explore in a future article.
I know what you mean about the 'pick me' girl. We need to challenge this more when it happens. It's a conscious or unconscious 'crabs in the bucket' mentality.
Interesting! I never heard of that before, but I do know that men tend to be more brutal with each other than women. Thank you for telling me about this. It does point out that the two sexes need to learn how to merge, or perhaps temper their own dynamics somewhat. Everything ultimately, for businesses is to just get the work of the day done and as efficiently as possible (it's why I dislike DEI in its current form, which is about social justice, not most businesses' objective, they exist to produce goods and services and make money).
However, your 'graph about not needing to dumb down because you like rules demonstrates classic male thinking, a tacit acceptance of the patriarchal model of business. Industry was created by men and until recently was implemented almost entirely by men. That's not our world anymore, and some of men's 'rules' and practices may not be relevant or effective anymore. This is where men, too, still need to accommodate themselves to a different world where they can't always act and behave as they have. Just as I argue women need to do.
Regarding "that is not our world anymore", I disagree. We are absolutely living in the same world. The problem is that many people refuse to acknowledge that fact. The majority of those people are women.
Yes, you are correct that "industry was created by men and until recently was implemented almost entirely by men."
But institutions were not set up to fit men's need. Institutions were set up to compete in a highly competitive environment.
If institutions were set up merely to satisfy men's needs, institutions would involve drinking beer, watching football and eating nachos.
Men adapted to the need of working together cooperatively in merit-based institutions that compete in a highly-competitive environment.
Many women have not adapted to that reality. They want the institutions to change to fit their needs. But institutions cannot do that (beyond the obvious of having 2 bathrooms) because they are highly constrained by being merit-based institutions that compete in a highly-competitive environment.
A person cannot want in, and then demand that everyone else changes to fit their needs. Unfortunately, that is exactly what many women want, and DEI is a key outcome of that.
The problem is not patriarchy. The problem is reality.
It is not about men vs women. It is about individuals adapting to working within merit-based institutions that compete in a highly-competitive environment.
All of which men have understood for millenia.
I think many men simply resist changing anything that women want. On some subconscious level, I think many, liberal and conservative, resent the reins women have put on male sexual expression. That ‘highly competitive environment’ exactly describes male behaviour. So yes, it was in fact set up by men, to suit men’s temperament and drive to succeed, however unconsciously. It doesn’t need to be discarded, but perhaps amended a bit to accommodate the other sex. Many men simply can’t yet deal with having to think about someone other than themselves and their own needs. That relentless male drive for competition and risk-taking is what drove the great financial collapse several years ago. That was almost all a male failed project.
Men’s needs involve more than beer-drinking and football-watching. The human animal innately wants to accomplish. For too many men, competition is really nothing more than, on an evolutionary level, dick-slinging. Who can make the most money? Who can have, or be, the biggest dick? Watching the insane competition between the world’s biggest billionaires—-Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg—is insane. Musk & Bezos have even resorted to rocket ships to prove who’s more the more phallic. Maybe you don’t see this because you’re in the thick of it but it looks completely ridiculous, and extremely harmful to the rest of us.
You need women, women’s values, and women’s perspectives more than you know, and many of you will resist mightily. But you can’t stop it. We don’t have the ‘right’ model either, but I believe together, properly integrated it will be a better model. You might be surprised how beneficial it is to you, if you live long enough to see it.
Wow, I literally JUST subscribed to you today because Radha recommended you and this was a mostly reasonable article with some solid recommendations (even if I don't think DEI is at all salvageable, I'm strongly in favor of personal responsibility and effective communication training to overcome the inherent challenges in cross-sex interactions, so there are some points of agreement here), but if that's what you genuinely believe regarding men, that it's all just some kind of phallic measuring contest, then it seems to me that you really have leaned so far left your brains fell out. That claim isn't credible even within the evolutionary psychology community, much less the broader field of personality psychology. For actual reasons that people (including men) are competitive see papers like
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0191886995000355?via%3Dihub (spoiler, you will NOT find the word 'phallic' ANYWHERE in the relevant research). Your replies further down this chain only get worse.
I was impressed that you cited the research against DEI, especially since most DEI proponents seem more eager to bury it than grapple with it, but now I'm disappointed that you don't seem to have devoted any similar effort to research regarding male psychology or economic theory. Bluntly, it's wrong and insulting and having that as your premise for analyzing the workplace doesn't exactly strike me as compatible with your own advice to ditch the inaccurate and counterproductive social justice assumptions that have turned DEI into such a costly and divisive dumpster fire.
You've displayed the willingness to consider contrary evidence regarding DEI, so let's see how you handle contrary evidence regarding your assumptions about sex and competitiveness. I've made an effort to deliberately use left-leaning sources here.
First, demonstrating higher competitiveness isn't an evolutionarily determined 'male' trait, that's wrong, the same behavior gap is identifiable in matriarchal cultures (where it is women who display greater competitiveness than their male counterparts) and some cultures show no difference. So your basic premise that business is only competitive because men are competitive and men established that business culture gets the direction of causation fully reversed: Western men are competitive because in the West it's traditionally been men who are responsible for business. Business itself IS inherently competitive because it needs to be regardless which sex is the majority of participants or more dominant in the society. Competition is simply a functional imperative of good business.
https://slate.com/business/2009/11/are-men-really-more-competitive-than-women.html
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/business-competition-types-importance-example-and-how-to-manage/
Secondly, if you can accept the evidence that gender disparities in competitiveness are socially-determined rather than sex determined, we have a potentially actionable way forward for women to effectively learn to compete in the business world with men. As another commenter noted, due to differing cultural norms regarding encouraging or discouraging competitive behavior re boys and girls, most women enter their working years with a decade or more less practice than their male peers at engaging in structured competitive behavior, putting them at a handicap once they need to compete directly with the men. There is, however, a notable exception to this: Sports.
QUOTE: But this is not the case for women in business who have played sport. In 2014 E&Y published a report based on a survey with over 400 women from US, Brazil, UK, Canada and China. The research found that the majority (52%) of C-suite women had played sport at the university level, compared to 39% of women at other management levels.
Expanding on their sporting experience and its relationship with business, the senior women cited their competitiveness as a bigger factor in their careers compared to more junior women. Interestingly, only 3% of C-Suite women had never played sport.
Sport provides a structured and comprehensive platform to understand, explore and practice competition and competitive behaviours. In a similar way that competition is caught up in a stereotype of winning and losing, it is also pitted as the opposite of collaboration. Yet sport can also make the connection between competition and collaboration because without teams and individuals signing up to a contest and a set of rules, sport would not happen. END QUOTE
Simply put, we already have an existing cultural construct for team-based competition that teaches and practices the attitudes and behaviors that are optimal for work environments (regardless of the sex demographics of that workplace). And yes, more men in business would ALSO benefit from experience playing team sports prior to entering the workforce, "not a good team player" is a serious weakness for any worker that detrimentally effects themselves and their coworkers of any sex.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2015/09/28/how-we-define-competition-fuels-gender-inequality-in-business/
As a practical matter, I believe the Army already did a reasonably good job of building this sort of strictly meritocratic culture very well until DEI interfered. The 'Equal Opportunity' (EO) program exists to handle illegal discrimination on the basis of protected categories, the Sexual Harassment and Assault Response and Prevention (SHARP) program addresses specifically sexual issues in interaction that may or may not rise to the level of illegality, and general training is conducted for teaching Army Values (Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, Personal Courage), Army Leadership (accomplish the mission AND care for the welfare of your people), and Effective Communication (a primary topic of which is teaching Assertive communication rather than Aggressive/Passive communication). Maybe I'm biased, but I don't think that the business world can possibly be more strictly competitive or historically male-dominated than the life or death stakes of military operations, so what has proven to work for enabling women to compete and lead successfully in military environments should work in corporate environments too.
Wow...this is absurdly close to C. LeGarde's quip about if it was Lehmann Sisters, there would not have been a financial crisis.
Maybe there wouldn't have been, or maybe it would have gone down in a different way. Women can be as greedy and power-mongering as men, we've just had less opportunity. Leona Helmsley was maybe an early example of the wrong woman with the wrong kind of power...dunno if she was a psychopath or not but it's speculated that many of the most successful ones are. That's just the theory, not sure how much research as been done. But I wonder whether it would have happened if women had run the financial world instead of men. I honestly don't know.
So is there a male financial world and a female one? Make economics and female economics?
You do not actually address my points. You just indirectly accuse me of " resist changing anything that women want" and "dick-slinging."
That is not productive discussion.
Is this what you intend to teach women in your reformed DEI?
How exactly can we get to the "right model" if you accuse men who want to discuss the issue of the above?
Corporations are not about "thinking about someone other than themselves and their own needs," except for customers. Corporations are about results that matter to customers and shareholders.
The reality is that "dick-slinging" led to an enormous amount of progress that women share in:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/evidence-of-progress
We have already had a model for integrating men's and women's values. It is called marriage. It works extremely well and has for thousands of years. But what works in a marriage does not necessarily work in a corporation.
It is also very odd that you simultaneously:
1) Criticize the existing system as being "extremely harmful", and
2) Demand that women be admitted into that "extremely harmful" system.
If the system is extremely harmful, you should be warning women to stay away from it.
I would suggest that you convince other women to form an organization based on that "better model" that you propose. If you are correct, you will make huge amounts of money and create many jobs for women. Men can then just watch the results and make decisions based on those results.
You didn't sound like you had a strong handle on what institutions were created for when you said they weren't 'set up to fit men's needs', but 'set up to compete in a highly competitive environment,' which demonstrated a distinct lack of understanding as to *why* it was a 'highly competitive environment'. You don't need to get into a millennia-long history on the Ag Revolution until today, I'm already well familiar with it (we both like Pinker, Harari, and probably several others), I will simply point out that patriarchal society is believe to have really formulated at the start of the Ag Revolution. The post-Industrial Revolution world reflects that and it is, by and large, a male creation with little input from women. 'T'would have been interesting to see a parallel world where *women* were in charge of the Ag Revolution, but since we evolved to be the baby-carriers and men were desperate to make sure they were the father of the children they took care of (damn, we female apes should have hie'd off to the South Congo when we had the chance!) that was never ever gonna happen.
Interesting you state that the 'better model' is marriage. I see your books are published by a Christian publishing house, wasn't able to determine whether it's your own creation or not. You a fan of Musk and Vance & how wimmin need to get back to makin' babies so the Captains of Industry have plenty of cheap labour for the 22nd century? I do favour returning to the marriage model, but not to equalize everything, but rather to provide a better familial model than the free-for-all we've had that started with the hippie counterculture and has devolved into 'polycules' and other male sexual prerogative nonsense. Unfortunately for you, it won't mean a return to the 1950s. We're not leaving the workplace, and I for one don't feel the slightest bit of guilt or regret for choosing never to have children. Elon Musk doesn't even take care of his own, apart from financially. That your idea of a 'better model'?
And you wonder why I suspect your interior motives for arguing against DEI. There's an underlying thread here that signals discomfort for women's growing educational and economic power.
I want to reform the system, not destroy it. Does your future vision of progress include women in a practical sense? Or should we start downloading tradwife manuals?
For the record, I actually do regard this as a productive discussion, even if we don't agree on everything or end up persuading the other. It's still been an interesting intellectual exercise, and in fact about a half hour ago I sent one of your points to Radha and suggested we discuss it in a future article - the one about women who are uncomfortable about women comfortable with men (or certain types I guess) in the workplace. I hadn't really thought about it before, but then I considered I might have something to add to that too as I've functioned very well in albeit smaller primarily male-run (IT/tech) companies.
Venting at a reader who is trying to offer a counter-view is not going to make the world a better place.
It would really help if you actually stayed on topic. You constantly claim that I said things that I did not suggests that you have no desire to participate in "an interesting intellectual exercise."
You seem to be much more concerned about creating a caricature of my stated position so you do not have to rethink your prior assumptions.
1) Yes I do know where our modern competitive world came from. I have written books and dozens of articles about it.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/my-theory-of-human-history-a-series
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/understanding-human-material-progress
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/how-progress-spread-across-the-globe-5f0
2) Christian press? WTF are you talking about?
3) I never said anything about Must and Vance. Why do you even bring them up?
4) Captains of Industry get rich on skilled labor, not cheap labor.
5) Good luck creating "a better familial model." Are you even married? Based on your apparent attitude towards men, I seriously doubt it.
6) I never advocated "for a return to the 1950s." Why do you even bring it up?
7) I never said women "should leave the workplace." Why do you even bring it up?
8) I never mentioned you "the slightest bit of guilt or regret for choosing never to have children." But obviously, you have regrets, otherwise you would not have raised the topic.
9) It does not surprise me at all that you think that I have "interior motives for arguing against DEI." but you still need to defend your claims.
10) I don't have a vision of progress. Progress exists and it includes women.
11) I did not even mention 'tradwives." Why do you even bring it up?
All bad faith arguments.
You need to represent women better!
Perhaps this will help clear things up for you two:
https://open.substack.com/pub/mdcbowen/p/hands-free-driving
What? How does that make your point?
That's not an argument. Whats your argument? And, you sound condescending af.
Having a more reasonable and balanced approach to handling workplace concerns and conflicts seems vital. And having policies that support work life balance for everyone (and particularly mothers) is crucial.
But I don’t think it’s the job of an employer to teach self-empowerment and cure imposter syndrome. It’s a job, not group therapy.
You might be right, I thought about that even as I was writing it. But, they could encourage women to apply for positions they might be reticent about or to be more assertive.
That is a fair point. But there’s also the issue of emotions being ever present in the workplace. Just this week, I actually was having a crisis of confidence in myself, and had to (embarrassingly) crying it out with a colleague. I think managers could be more attuned to whether their high performers are living up to their potential (and many women, despite being competent, are not). There’s a blurry line there between therapy and coaching. I got coaching, for example, and that helped a lot. But I think managers could also be equipped to coach effectively.
I would think that a good manager would be one who wants everyone to live up to their potential and has the people skills to help make that happen. That doesn’t have to be gendered. Being sensitive to typical male versus female patterns is good, yes. But presuming that every individual will fit into that general pattern is not.
I don’t like the idea of gendering who is presumptively in need of assertiveness training, or coaching, or emotional sensitivity, or whatever. Some men are very insecure, too. Obviously, every male is not an aggressive, self-confident, domineering Alpha - far from it (or our species would not survive, lol). And, most men do not have high-powered professional jobs, and would not automatically have some sort of superior comfort level in a corporate, white-collar environment.
Sending the message to all women that they need special assertiveness coaching can only communicate a taken-for-granted belief that each one of them individually is less confident than a man due to their sex. That is simply not true. And it’s a bad message to send IIMO.
I understand that in the aggregate, women are less assertive in the workplace. In terms of how to address that - I would say that a cultural shift that normalizes a reasonable discussion of real — or not real but imagined or stereotypical — sex differences would be the way to go. And a version of feminism that supports women’s strengths and encourages us to develop them, rather than one that focuses on weakness and gives you points for being a victim.
I do think that men and women on the whole tend to favor different communication styles and group dynamics. So far, we as a society have not been able to have much of an honest discussion about that. Some, but not enough.
You both are doing great work to change that, and the time is clearly ripe. I am starting to feel more hopeful about gaining some traction on these sorts of issues, which is badly needed.
We are making some general statements based on research showing that women are less assertive, men more aggressive. Obviously both are on a spectrum. What everyone could stand to use, wherever they fall, is better conflict management skills which is sorely lacking in all corners and contributes to a lot of sex division, esp with 'social justice' training that teaches 'marginalized' people that they're helpless in the face of some oppressive framework, all of which are blown up out of proportion.
That is a fair set of critiques. I agree with you that plenty of assertive women (hello) are in the workplace. However, someone like me is punished because most women are not; that punishment can come from both men and women. ALL women need to learn some level of assertiveness in my age cohort because the ones who aren't causing ones like me to stick out like sore thumbs. That said, we agree on a discussion of sex differences, which is not happening on the whole. I'm trying to encourage it at my current company, but it's slow going. And, I see plenty of women who use their lack of assertiveness to present themselves as victims of more assertive women and of men; false positives of sexism when the woman is incompetent and uses those accusations to paper over it. That shouldn't be allowed to stand, and unfortunately is. But they manipulate the situation by presenting themselves as victims, and people believe it.
👏👏👏 Bravo, bravo, bravo Grow Some Labia! This is the kind of DEI I would be happy to support! DEI isn’t a bad idea in isolation, it’s all about how one applies it. A better version of DEI that would teach women how to handle conflict like adults and not make assumptions about men and that bad behavior by EITHER sex towards the other is unacceptable would definitely be the way for corporate America to go. To be sure gender discrimination to an extent, is still an issue in American society and unconscious bias is definitely a thing. But these are far from the only reasons that women are underrepresented in certain fields or don’t take certain jobs. The American workplace needs to make it possible for women to have a work-life balance. So they can be mothers and homemakers but also pursue a career in the business world and rise as high as their merits can take them. Paid maternity leave, paid time off, childcare benefits, extended vacation time, allowing women to have days off for period pain, and federal daycare programs would be solutions I’d propose. To recruit more women into jobs or fields they have yet to break into in large numbers, I would propose assertiveness training and combating imposter syndrome. I would also suggest soft affirmative action programs (that choose from two equally qualified candidates), private initiatives for diversity and school programs to get girls and young women interested in predominantly male fields. DEI such as it is, doesn’t have a solution for or even acknowledge these other factors. How can men hire more women if women choose not to take the job or not to apply for reasons beyond their control? You also are right that women in the workplace need to be taught to address male behavior that hurts or bothers them by handling it themselves by privately speaking with them and resolving the issue peacefully rather than immediately going to HR or accusing them of something heinous while in an emotional state. Only if the behavior persists should you escalate. Women also need to be made aware of their biases and held responsible if they behave inappropriately around men which also happens and is also wrong. Sexual harassment and assault are absolutely wrong whether done by men to women or women to men. I couldn’t agree more with you when you said “we all have biases and we ALL need to do the work.” This is the first article I’ve read from you or Radical Radha, and I’m absolutely blown away!
Men also need to be taught about their biases and misapprehensions around women just as much. One thing your wonderfully thoughtful comment sparked in me was the fact that men often don't understand women's subtle cues that they're amenable, or not, to sexual overtures. And many still don't understand things like that she may not want to be alone with him if he doesn't know her very well because she doesn't know how safe he is. One big misunderstanding I want both sexes to know: Women are more emotional because of estrogen production, men are more sexual and/or aggressive and less prone to crying because of testosterone production. That might help in reducing friction between the sexes, but we still need to understand and read each other better.
Watch for Radha's article on an unidentified oppression group that DEI misses because of its faulty white/black oppressor/oppressed dichotomy. It's stellar. And she got equal help on it from yours truly, and some of her writing buds.
BTW, glad to see you're a 'Rockefeller Republican' (whatever the first part means...you're into oil production? Kneecapping the Democrats, lol?) who wants to bring back 'pragmatism' and 'consensus-oriented politics'. Thank you! You sound like the kind of Republican I could break bread with. Radha too.
There are so many nuanced situations you bring up. I think women, too, hold women to gendered expectations which needs to be called out. Not all disparities are due to sexism, however, and I think the model gets that incorrect. And one other I can think of based on your comment is how it is far more ok these days for women to be open about divisive topics than men. Anecdotally, we are also less punished for oversharing than men would be.
No, the vampire can't be instructed, cajoled, trained, or expected to NOT suck the blood from innocently sleeping humans. It must be destroyed by pounding a wooden stake through its heart. Thought everyone knew this...
You two need to brush up on your Jordan Peterson. Specifically his "dominance hierarchies based on competence." Dominance, hierarchy, competence. No room at all for coerced (legislated) "attention," meaningless participation prizes, "we don't do that here" timeouts, and even less for expectations shunned, shirked or transformed into worthless feel-goods. Only relentless competition, with a healthy, yes healthy, measure of belittling and bullying thrown in for good measure.
Get used to it (again). Once you women have completely fucked up this country and the Western world built by men of character, vision, and determination, and you look helplessly at each other and your incubated soy boys to put things right, it'll be on men to bend their backs (again) and reconstruct according to the Old Rules what you've so carelessly and cluelessly pissed away.
Richard! Lay off the manosphere. It's addling your brain :) Like it or not, the female workforce genie is out of the bottle and you're not stuffing it back in. No, not even Donald Trump. Nor the Christian nationalists. You dudes have fucked up the world beyond all recognition, now it's OUR turn! Although what Radha and I are arguing, clearly, is for us to work jointly to fuck up the world beyond anyone's wildest imagining!!!
Far be it from me to defend someone you’ve just accused of having manosphere addled brain syndrome, but “dudes have fucked up the world beyond all recognition”?!
Not only does this call into question whether you’re in good faith trying to find agreement between the sexes in the workplace with this piece. It also calls into question your judgment and insight about the world. Men have literally built the current world around you and maintain its infrastructure. We know this because as feminists won’t stop reminding us women weren’t included in most things until 50 years ago. Aside from the internet, all major inventions we had 50 years ago. And most of the maintenance of infrastructure is also done by men to this day. This was a silly comment and I’m fairly certain you know that. It’s unfortunate that due to Richard’s disagreeable style of argumentation you felt that you can throw anything at him because he deserves it.
I totally acknowledge all that. But men are responsible for 90% of the violence in the world, a stat you’ve probably already heard repeated ad nauseum. And be honest, what many men hate most about feminism is that it puts the brakes on the very worst of male behaviour. Men can’t get away with hitting their wives as much. More attention is paid to rape and what constitutes it. Men can’t get away with sexual harassment as much. Men are expected to help raise their own children. They have to think about someone else for a change. Today, we women have to listen to condescending men like Elon Musk (11 kids, 10 surviving, three baby mamas) and JD Vance lecture to us that we should stay home and make babies, which is the only thing we’re good for I guess. There’s a massive backlash against women’s rights (from both sides of the partisan divide) and not all of it results from dumbass wokefuckery. A lot of it is also men seeing the opportunity to roll back women’s rights some more because in the end, women say no to men—and even worse, their almighty penis—far too much. That’s what’s behind the current transactivist drive to force women to accept men in places they don’t belong—because they say they’re women, or something. Since most of these guys are AGP or transgender porn-addled this is fight is really about the male ‘right’ to sexual pleasure - and how women should just shut up and service that thing.
That’s why Andrew Tate is so popular. Because some men are quite sick of being expected to behave all the time. You’re right, you did build civilization—on the backs of unpaid labourers, or those you stole through conquest— and left women at home to make and raise the babies, and be subjected to patriarchal structures that mandate everything circles around men and their needs and who cares what women want.
I was being a smartass with the toss-off line about fucking things up, and I do actually believe that women, if we ran the world, would improve a lot of things and also fuck up the world massively in our own way. Actually have had the idea for a novel about this kicking around in my head for about thirty years. A future world where women run everything and you’ll be terribly surprised to learn it’s not very good for men. In the end, I believe a much better world is one where we all have more say in what comes next.
No, what most men hate most about feminism is the ungratefulness. We have already put brakes ourselves on our worse behaviours (who do you think enforces the laws that protect you from that 90% of violence you cited? Who do you think wrote the laws that gave you rights so you don’t have to physically fight for your survival?!). So no, we’re here today because enough men over centuries realized we should tame our propensity for violence and build a better world, generation by generation and minimize destruction as much possible, and be humane and start defending rights for more and more groups of people who are more vulnerable (weaker) than us. And as we did that, we now are getting toxic levels of ungratefulness. When we’re at our best we’ve ever been. Imagine that!
That’s what we hate most about feminism!
Given the vast spectrum of feminism, why damn all of it rather than the worst excesses? Why blow off half the human brain potential because you don’t like some of the feminists (and I don’t like them either)? BTW there are also female police, female lawyers, female FBI agents, female CIA agents, females at NORAD and let’s remember it was females who goaded you into writing those laws to protect us. It was females who forced your hand on allowing us to vote. We’re here where we are today because it’s become much more of a joint effort in the last 100 years. Sometimes, we’ve had to drag you kicking and screaming.
Richard here is living into both his names.
Is Richard also Mirakulous? I briefly wondered, but then figured probably not. Richard's one of my early subscribers and we're used to mixing it up with each other. Usually, though, I have to criticize lax gun laws to get him this riled up!
It couldn’t possibly be that 2 different people disagree with you.
It's possible, but Nathalie seems to think you're one and the same. Is she wrong?
Dude, fuck off. This is the wrong place for this drivel. At no point did we say we are against competition or merit, and lumping us in that category shows that you lack nuance yourself.
I will have to disagree. I don't want to go back to a world in which we paid literally zero attention to how women suffer from gendered expectations. And to be clear, I don't put that all on men. Women torment each other in this regard, also.
...And men do the same with their relentless competition, belittling and bullying of each other.
Here's what Robert A. Heinlein had to say on the matter:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly."
Well then I doubt you measure up...can you write a sonnet??? I can, or at least I did. In high school. To see if I could when we were studying Shakespeare. It probably sucked but I did it. I could build a wall, depending on how big you wanted it. Set a bone? Dude, that's asking for a lawsuit. I'm not qualified and I'll bet you're not either. Design a building? Well I could, and I'll bet you could too, but they'd probably never get built for violating too many construction codes because we wouldn't know what we're doing. I had a college friend who dropped out of the Architorture--er, I mean Architecture program because it was too rigorous.
Change a diaper? Have YOU ever changed a diaper??? LOL
But what if it was to men's benefit too? We want to see more *genuine* equality, based on merit. Radha makes some great points about unidentified opportunities in her forthcoming article.