You're also making a lot of assumptions about why women participate in these groups, what their goals are, and what their experiences are like. You're presenting only one perspective without considering the broad spectrum of experiences.
I think you're making an awful lot of generalizations based on your experience in this one group. Have you ever participated in any other groups? Beyond your writing partner, have you ever spoken with other women who participated in any other groups? You're speaking in generalities about all women's networking groups. How can you possibly do so if you haven't had broad experience with them?
I mentioned more than one group, and not all the groups I was ever in. Although I probably have limited experience with them because I tend to seek out mixed groups. I was with a great one pre-pandemic, had a nice mix of men, women, oldsters, youngsters, etc. They had panels with female business owners (on mixed panels) talking about relevant issues. I guess I’m just into all of the human race, not just half of it.
Well who says that women who join women's networking groups are only into half of it? How do you know that they're not also in mixed groups? Do you know these women personally? Do you know how they spend all of their time outside of those groups? So why ascribe so many motives to them and assume that a woman in a women's group disavows mixed groups and avoids them all together? Why paint them as scaredy snowflakes trying to avoid men? And why criticize these women for something they may not even be "guilty" of? How is that fair or balanced? Well, I guess it doesn't have to be fair or balanced, but then I question the point of the article. It appears that the point wasn't to examine the rationale behind women's membership in women's groups, but simply to judge and trash them for their participation in these groups, without understanding why they're there. Were you actually interested in knowing why they joined those groups? It's not black and white-there's a lot of gray area here. Not sure why you would write an article about this without having explored the issue in a more general sense. 🤔 Presenting only one opinion, which is based mainly on your assumptions alone, makes the article come across as a hit piece, for reasons unknown.
I happen to have co-run a women's networking group for women entrepreneurs in the early 2000s. We hosted guest speakers on various business topics and covered small business issues at every meeting. The women enjoyed sharing their successes and problem-solving about their challenges. They benefited from sharing suggestions and moral support as they pursued building their businesses. At various times women discussed work-life balance, and the challenges of maintaining high-quality social, family and romantic relationships as entrepreneurs. At no time did our meetings ever deteriorate into sob sessions, pseudo-therapy sessions, or male bashing sessions. Many of the women in our group also attended mixed groups on a regular basis, much like I did. It didn't appear that anyone was avoiding men, hiding from them, or molding our group into a girly-girl safe spot away from the big, bad world of big, bad men. It also didn't appear that any of these women had issues with men, didn't know how to get along with them, or didn't know how to communicate with them. But what if they had? What if they felt more comfortable in a female-only space because of negative experiences they'd had with men? What about women who had been physically, emotionally or sexually abused by men? No woman can avoid encountering men on a regular basis, whether in her working life, social life, or in her neighborhood. Many women have no issues with that and enjoy most of their interactions with men. Yet, the option of creating a safe space for openness and female camaraderie is something that all women should be entitled to without judgment or criticism. Perhaps some women would feel more comfortable in an environment where they felt assured that no man was eyeing them with an intention to an unwanted romantic proposition. Why would that be problematic for anyone, much less another woman? Why would another woman not support them in that space? Why should they be criticized for it? I'm gobsmacked that any woman would criticize other women for wanting to create a safe space for themselves. Whose business is it besides theirs, and why judge them for it?
Instead of criticizing women for their right to self-determination and personal agency, let's create an einvironment in which we seek first to understand, not to judge, and then support each other in our journeys. 🙂
Plenty of other mixed groups out there - no need for another. And I explained above what benefits they received from a women's group.
Women interact with men in every area of their lives, including work, social, volunteer, etc. No one can avoid that, and most wouldn't want to. So some women would also like to attend a women's group in addition to the mixed groups they attend, for the camraderie they can build with other women, and for some, avoiding harassment or feeling unsafe due to previous negative experiences with men. What's wrong with that? I don't avoid men, and yet I enjoyed the group too. So why demonize and pathologize it? Why judge it? You say you're all about helping empower women and helping them take back their power, and I see that you are. You repeatedly write about the need and the right for women to keep their spaces safe from trans women/men, to keep their spaces exclusively female, so why the exception HERE? If you do truly support women's empowerment, then you support all its colours and flavours, and you don't put conditions and limits on what that would look like, even if it wouldn't suit YOU.
A very insightful article by Grow Some Labia and Radical Radha! Women-only groups for trauma and emotional support are totally understandable. But those are the only cases where sex-segregated groups should ever be aloud. Otherwise workplaces groups should always be coed. Men and women need to learn how to communicate, get along with and talk to each other like real human beings.
Infantilizing women by allowing them to run back to their safe space wherever they feel slightly threatened by men is just pathetic and a very bad idea. If a man does or says something that makes you uncomfortable in the workplace don’t immediately go to HR and try to get him fired, resolve it with him interpersonally and explain why it upset or bothered you. If a man is being competitive or be patronizing towards you, stand up to him and hold your own. Don’t just run to your girls club and cry about to the other members and lament “the patriarchy.” As Labia and Radha show, these woman-only groups just end up being glorified social clubs anyway where nothing ever actually gets done.
I think Radha makes a good point as well when she says that men may not invite women to networking calls they do not do so out of sexism but out of fear of accusations of bigotry or committing a “micro-aggression.” In the post #MeToo world, innocent men have gotten in trouble for all sorts of innocent or misconstrued actions or statements, so this is understandable.
Women need to learn to network by hobnobbing with the best in their field regardless of gender, not to just stick with their own. That makes no sense and will hold them back from success. Men should absolutely be allowed to have emotional support groups as the brilliant Richard Reeves points out. This would be so men in the workplace can build relationships with each other and to combat the epidemic of male loneliness we have in this country. This would also take the burden off women as the primary providers of emotional support.
Lastly, I’m glad you ladies mentioned that men and women are different. Not only physically but also neurologically. Much as woke leftist academics try to deny this, it’s a fact. Just read Charles Murray’s groundbreaking book “Human Diversity.” James Damore if you’ll recall, got in big trouble and got fired just for even discussing this in an internal memo at Google. Women are more sensitive than men. Men are more stoic and serious. Women mature faster than man. Men are more assertive than women. There was a fascinating experiment done in Israel I think in the late 1940s or early 1950s about gender differences. So basically they took men and women put them in completely gender-neutral clothes and treated them the same and let them pick what they wanted to do. The men chose to go into politics, the military and leadership positions while the women chose to take care of the children, keeping the house in order, cooking and baking, etc. so we know there are certain jobs and tasks men naturally take to and women naturally take to. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging this. Nor does this mean all doors should not be open to men and women. But it’s nature not nurture.
Your opinion is completely uninformed as you've never been a part of a woman's networking group and you don't appear to understand women at all. Your arrogance is stunning. Read my reply below if you're at all interested in understanding women and learning how ill- informed you are.
I wouldn't call it uninformed although I wouldn't say 'nothing ever gets done in these groups'. There may be those in which they do. Maybe they've changed and are actually relevant. I gave up on them awhile back and even if they *are* relevant rather than social clubs, I still wouldn't join. It's just counterproductive to blow off half the human race, and I wonder at those who still do, apart from those who really do need to have a genuine safe space to discuss sensitive topics about and involving males.
Again, you can't possibly know whether or not all of those women also attend mixed groups. You're making an uniformed assumption, unless I'm wrong and you've surveyed a great number of those women. You seem unwilling to look past your bias, though.
So women who spend much of their daily lives interacting with men are "blowing off half the human race" by occasionally attending a women's group? Huh? And then by that logic, so are women who participate in girls' nights & weekends, bachelorette parties, girls' choirs, etc. And men who participate in guys' nights and trips, bachelor parties and men's choirs? Must all just be terrified little boy-men hiding in their little hidey-hole safe spaces so they don't have to deal with big, bad, scary women! It shouldn't be allowed. There oughta be a law! Make them learn how to deal with women once and for all! Nonsense.
I'm assuming you're a man. If you've never participated in a women's networking group, how can you possibly purport to know what the experiences of women in those groups are like? 🤔
lol You know as well as I do that reading about something pales in comparison to actually experiencing it. Reading about a woman's experience as a man is the tip of the iceberg to fully understanding it, same as it is for many women trying to understand men's feelings.
Funny. The one thing women can do that men can't they won't. Instead, they're all about learning to do poorly what men do with expertise and confidence from their earliest years. Road to ruin, we'll be arriving soon. (Look at the TFRs, gals.)
Not true. Why do you believe that a group of women learning from each other means that they are learning from people without experience? That suggests that only men can impart wisdom or experience.
If those groups exist I haven’t found them yet, although I don’t deny they likely exist. I don’t believe they should be legislated away, either. Each to their own.
The world isn't going to come to an end just because fertility rates are dropping. In fact, I'm just finishing up a book that speculates that fertility and reproduction will make a comeback in about 7-10 years, after we get past this very rough patch which will get worse before it gets better.
Parenthood is something *both* parents should be willing to take on fully. Far too many take it on but don't. I'd rather see a world filled with happy wanted babies, rather than...whatever the hell it is Elon Musk does. Did you know he doesn't even have sex with all the beautiful women he impregnates? He is literally a sperm donor, from afar. He rarely bothers to see his children. If this is the best men have to offer, it's no wonder the world is doomed.
Don't tell me, tell the South Koreans (if you can find any). Oh, and I'm not "speculating" about TFRs. And regarding your personal experience with marriage and parenthood; is it too, like your ideas about fertility rates, more theoretical than actual?
Watch the Peterson piece then think long and hard about it. By the way, I trend disagreeable.
I started watching, but I kinda got bored with it, seemed like it was aimed toward Make More Babies which is too late for me and anyway I never regretted making the conscious decision at 18 never to have any. I take parenthood more seriously than many parents do. As for Peterson, he’s an interesting dude, a bit of a loose cannon but not the devil incarnate as some seem to think, and when he’s on his game he’s spot-on. And I know you trend disagreeable, you’ve been disagreeing with me (although not *always) for a couple of years now. I’m cool with that.
But relax. The human race isn’t going to die off. Read a prediction the other day it may make a comeback in ten years.
You're a child with little ability to assimilate new information about the real world. Instead you build fantasy lands where your decisions have all been right and reasonable and your (lowered) expectations will all be met. Peterson's point (I am SO sorry your attention span failed you, once again) was that women's agreeableness is an evolved trait necessary for child-rearing. As men's disagreeableness was similarly evolved to serve them in claiming resources to provide their mates and children's physical well-being. Your idiotic new-age formulation that men are at least as well-equipped (or expected at any rate) to "take [parenthood] on fully" (in the female sense) is evidence of your inability to think at any other than the most superficial levels. So you go, girl! Hope as hard as you can that some other women take parenthood a whole lot less seriously than you did...and that they produce some REAL children to actually populate that shining future world of your dreams (fantasies).
Oh, Richard, you always carry on when I challenge your own worldview. You like my anti-woke work, but get snitty when I challenge your somewhat blinkered conservative view. It's no surprise that men like Peterson and Musk are harking back to a more reactionary view of women. What's happening is called 'evolution' and it means the caveman approach no longer works for humanity. There is no 'fertility crisis'; not with 8B people in the world. We may well be heading for a massive, global, culling soon. At any rate, what good is willing, fertile women if today's young men have no social or romantic skills, virginity is more prominent than it was when we were growing up, and they don't have the maturity--or sometimes just the opportunity--for good-paying jobs to support their progeny? If you want to see human fertility make a comeback, maybe have a word with the Great Orange God and the Whitest Man In The World. As they wreck the government and the economy, they wreck further the desire of anyone to want to bring babies into such a fucked-up, failing country.
You're also making a lot of assumptions about why women participate in these groups, what their goals are, and what their experiences are like. You're presenting only one perspective without considering the broad spectrum of experiences.
Yeah, maybe I could have explored that further. Maybe eventually I’ll write a followup to it. Thanks for the suggestion!
I think you're making an awful lot of generalizations based on your experience in this one group. Have you ever participated in any other groups? Beyond your writing partner, have you ever spoken with other women who participated in any other groups? You're speaking in generalities about all women's networking groups. How can you possibly do so if you haven't had broad experience with them?
I mentioned more than one group, and not all the groups I was ever in. Although I probably have limited experience with them because I tend to seek out mixed groups. I was with a great one pre-pandemic, had a nice mix of men, women, oldsters, youngsters, etc. They had panels with female business owners (on mixed panels) talking about relevant issues. I guess I’m just into all of the human race, not just half of it.
Well who says that women who join women's networking groups are only into half of it? How do you know that they're not also in mixed groups? Do you know these women personally? Do you know how they spend all of their time outside of those groups? So why ascribe so many motives to them and assume that a woman in a women's group disavows mixed groups and avoids them all together? Why paint them as scaredy snowflakes trying to avoid men? And why criticize these women for something they may not even be "guilty" of? How is that fair or balanced? Well, I guess it doesn't have to be fair or balanced, but then I question the point of the article. It appears that the point wasn't to examine the rationale behind women's membership in women's groups, but simply to judge and trash them for their participation in these groups, without understanding why they're there. Were you actually interested in knowing why they joined those groups? It's not black and white-there's a lot of gray area here. Not sure why you would write an article about this without having explored the issue in a more general sense. 🤔 Presenting only one opinion, which is based mainly on your assumptions alone, makes the article come across as a hit piece, for reasons unknown.
I happen to have co-run a women's networking group for women entrepreneurs in the early 2000s. We hosted guest speakers on various business topics and covered small business issues at every meeting. The women enjoyed sharing their successes and problem-solving about their challenges. They benefited from sharing suggestions and moral support as they pursued building their businesses. At various times women discussed work-life balance, and the challenges of maintaining high-quality social, family and romantic relationships as entrepreneurs. At no time did our meetings ever deteriorate into sob sessions, pseudo-therapy sessions, or male bashing sessions. Many of the women in our group also attended mixed groups on a regular basis, much like I did. It didn't appear that anyone was avoiding men, hiding from them, or molding our group into a girly-girl safe spot away from the big, bad world of big, bad men. It also didn't appear that any of these women had issues with men, didn't know how to get along with them, or didn't know how to communicate with them. But what if they had? What if they felt more comfortable in a female-only space because of negative experiences they'd had with men? What about women who had been physically, emotionally or sexually abused by men? No woman can avoid encountering men on a regular basis, whether in her working life, social life, or in her neighborhood. Many women have no issues with that and enjoy most of their interactions with men. Yet, the option of creating a safe space for openness and female camaraderie is something that all women should be entitled to without judgment or criticism. Perhaps some women would feel more comfortable in an environment where they felt assured that no man was eyeing them with an intention to an unwanted romantic proposition. Why would that be problematic for anyone, much less another woman? Why would another woman not support them in that space? Why should they be criticized for it? I'm gobsmacked that any woman would criticize other women for wanting to create a safe space for themselves. Whose business is it besides theirs, and why judge them for it?
Instead of criticizing women for their right to self-determination and personal agency, let's create an einvironment in which we seek first to understand, not to judge, and then support each other in our journeys. 🙂
Then.............why didn't you just allow men into the group? Why make it so excluisive? Did you ever think of, say, making it whites-only?
What did they need a 'safe space' for?
In your own words: (some women) "...who really do need to have a genuine safe space to discuss sensitive topics about and involving males."
Plenty of other mixed groups out there - no need for another. And I explained above what benefits they received from a women's group.
Women interact with men in every area of their lives, including work, social, volunteer, etc. No one can avoid that, and most wouldn't want to. So some women would also like to attend a women's group in addition to the mixed groups they attend, for the camraderie they can build with other women, and for some, avoiding harassment or feeling unsafe due to previous negative experiences with men. What's wrong with that? I don't avoid men, and yet I enjoyed the group too. So why demonize and pathologize it? Why judge it? You say you're all about helping empower women and helping them take back their power, and I see that you are. You repeatedly write about the need and the right for women to keep their spaces safe from trans women/men, to keep their spaces exclusively female, so why the exception HERE? If you do truly support women's empowerment, then you support all its colours and flavours, and you don't put conditions and limits on what that would look like, even if it wouldn't suit YOU.
You're sounding pretty judgemental yourself.
A very insightful article by Grow Some Labia and Radical Radha! Women-only groups for trauma and emotional support are totally understandable. But those are the only cases where sex-segregated groups should ever be aloud. Otherwise workplaces groups should always be coed. Men and women need to learn how to communicate, get along with and talk to each other like real human beings.
Infantilizing women by allowing them to run back to their safe space wherever they feel slightly threatened by men is just pathetic and a very bad idea. If a man does or says something that makes you uncomfortable in the workplace don’t immediately go to HR and try to get him fired, resolve it with him interpersonally and explain why it upset or bothered you. If a man is being competitive or be patronizing towards you, stand up to him and hold your own. Don’t just run to your girls club and cry about to the other members and lament “the patriarchy.” As Labia and Radha show, these woman-only groups just end up being glorified social clubs anyway where nothing ever actually gets done.
I think Radha makes a good point as well when she says that men may not invite women to networking calls they do not do so out of sexism but out of fear of accusations of bigotry or committing a “micro-aggression.” In the post #MeToo world, innocent men have gotten in trouble for all sorts of innocent or misconstrued actions or statements, so this is understandable.
Women need to learn to network by hobnobbing with the best in their field regardless of gender, not to just stick with their own. That makes no sense and will hold them back from success. Men should absolutely be allowed to have emotional support groups as the brilliant Richard Reeves points out. This would be so men in the workplace can build relationships with each other and to combat the epidemic of male loneliness we have in this country. This would also take the burden off women as the primary providers of emotional support.
Lastly, I’m glad you ladies mentioned that men and women are different. Not only physically but also neurologically. Much as woke leftist academics try to deny this, it’s a fact. Just read Charles Murray’s groundbreaking book “Human Diversity.” James Damore if you’ll recall, got in big trouble and got fired just for even discussing this in an internal memo at Google. Women are more sensitive than men. Men are more stoic and serious. Women mature faster than man. Men are more assertive than women. There was a fascinating experiment done in Israel I think in the late 1940s or early 1950s about gender differences. So basically they took men and women put them in completely gender-neutral clothes and treated them the same and let them pick what they wanted to do. The men chose to go into politics, the military and leadership positions while the women chose to take care of the children, keeping the house in order, cooking and baking, etc. so we know there are certain jobs and tasks men naturally take to and women naturally take to. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging this. Nor does this mean all doors should not be open to men and women. But it’s nature not nurture.
Your opinion is completely uninformed as you've never been a part of a woman's networking group and you don't appear to understand women at all. Your arrogance is stunning. Read my reply below if you're at all interested in understanding women and learning how ill- informed you are.
I wouldn't call it uninformed although I wouldn't say 'nothing ever gets done in these groups'. There may be those in which they do. Maybe they've changed and are actually relevant. I gave up on them awhile back and even if they *are* relevant rather than social clubs, I still wouldn't join. It's just counterproductive to blow off half the human race, and I wonder at those who still do, apart from those who really do need to have a genuine safe space to discuss sensitive topics about and involving males.
Again, you can't possibly know whether or not all of those women also attend mixed groups. You're making an uniformed assumption, unless I'm wrong and you've surveyed a great number of those women. You seem unwilling to look past your bias, though.
So women who spend much of their daily lives interacting with men are "blowing off half the human race" by occasionally attending a women's group? Huh? And then by that logic, so are women who participate in girls' nights & weekends, bachelorette parties, girls' choirs, etc. And men who participate in guys' nights and trips, bachelor parties and men's choirs? Must all just be terrified little boy-men hiding in their little hidey-hole safe spaces so they don't have to deal with big, bad, scary women! It shouldn't be allowed. There oughta be a law! Make them learn how to deal with women once and for all! Nonsense.
I'm assuming you're a man. If you've never participated in a women's networking group, how can you possibly purport to know what the experiences of women in those groups are like? 🤔
He can read about them, just as I read Iron John back in the day.
lol You know as well as I do that reading about something pales in comparison to actually experiencing it. Reading about a woman's experience as a man is the tip of the iceberg to fully understanding it, same as it is for many women trying to understand men's feelings.
Funny. The one thing women can do that men can't they won't. Instead, they're all about learning to do poorly what men do with expertise and confidence from their earliest years. Road to ruin, we'll be arriving soon. (Look at the TFRs, gals.)
Jordan Peterson illuminates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWs_vAwgZwU
How could you possibly know about the experiences of women in these groups if you haven't had extensive conversations with these women? or have you?
Not true. Why do you believe that a group of women learning from each other means that they are learning from people without experience? That suggests that only men can impart wisdom or experience.
If those groups exist I haven’t found them yet, although I don’t deny they likely exist. I don’t believe they should be legislated away, either. Each to their own.
The world isn't going to come to an end just because fertility rates are dropping. In fact, I'm just finishing up a book that speculates that fertility and reproduction will make a comeback in about 7-10 years, after we get past this very rough patch which will get worse before it gets better.
Parenthood is something *both* parents should be willing to take on fully. Far too many take it on but don't. I'd rather see a world filled with happy wanted babies, rather than...whatever the hell it is Elon Musk does. Did you know he doesn't even have sex with all the beautiful women he impregnates? He is literally a sperm donor, from afar. He rarely bothers to see his children. If this is the best men have to offer, it's no wonder the world is doomed.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexzhavoronkov/2022/07/27/elon-musk-and-other-billionaires-make-their-babies-via-ivf-and-surrogatesis-it-a-future-of-reproduction/
Don't tell me, tell the South Koreans (if you can find any). Oh, and I'm not "speculating" about TFRs. And regarding your personal experience with marriage and parenthood; is it too, like your ideas about fertility rates, more theoretical than actual?
Watch the Peterson piece then think long and hard about it. By the way, I trend disagreeable.
I started watching, but I kinda got bored with it, seemed like it was aimed toward Make More Babies which is too late for me and anyway I never regretted making the conscious decision at 18 never to have any. I take parenthood more seriously than many parents do. As for Peterson, he’s an interesting dude, a bit of a loose cannon but not the devil incarnate as some seem to think, and when he’s on his game he’s spot-on. And I know you trend disagreeable, you’ve been disagreeing with me (although not *always) for a couple of years now. I’m cool with that.
But relax. The human race isn’t going to die off. Read a prediction the other day it may make a comeback in ten years.
You're a child with little ability to assimilate new information about the real world. Instead you build fantasy lands where your decisions have all been right and reasonable and your (lowered) expectations will all be met. Peterson's point (I am SO sorry your attention span failed you, once again) was that women's agreeableness is an evolved trait necessary for child-rearing. As men's disagreeableness was similarly evolved to serve them in claiming resources to provide their mates and children's physical well-being. Your idiotic new-age formulation that men are at least as well-equipped (or expected at any rate) to "take [parenthood] on fully" (in the female sense) is evidence of your inability to think at any other than the most superficial levels. So you go, girl! Hope as hard as you can that some other women take parenthood a whole lot less seriously than you did...and that they produce some REAL children to actually populate that shining future world of your dreams (fantasies).
Oh, Richard, you always carry on when I challenge your own worldview. You like my anti-woke work, but get snitty when I challenge your somewhat blinkered conservative view. It's no surprise that men like Peterson and Musk are harking back to a more reactionary view of women. What's happening is called 'evolution' and it means the caveman approach no longer works for humanity. There is no 'fertility crisis'; not with 8B people in the world. We may well be heading for a massive, global, culling soon. At any rate, what good is willing, fertile women if today's young men have no social or romantic skills, virginity is more prominent than it was when we were growing up, and they don't have the maturity--or sometimes just the opportunity--for good-paying jobs to support their progeny? If you want to see human fertility make a comeback, maybe have a word with the Great Orange God and the Whitest Man In The World. As they wreck the government and the economy, they wreck further the desire of anyone to want to bring babies into such a fucked-up, failing country.