Great article, love the spirit of it. I would agree with a lot of this piece, but now it is time to put on my grumpy Millennial Male Hat and harp on a few points.
"According to Evans, young women in mixed gendered spaces educate their male friends about the assumptions and entitlement they have about women."
I find this a perverse way of thinking of friendship, that you will 'educate' your friends. And it is precisely this sort of cultural attitude that polarizes people. I grew up overseas with many people with a lot of different backgrounds, and many beliefs I find to be plainly untrue. I had the pleasure to befriend many people precisely because we didn't try to 'educate' each other, we simply were friends and recognized each other as people we valued. Rather it has been this recent trend of 'educating' that I have found destructive.
In recent years having friendships with female friends have gotten harder, because I would prefer a more nuanced vision of how men and women should engage. A years long relationship ended a few years back because my female friend couldn't 'believe' that I didn't have completely agreement with her. Every time we hung out it would devolve into the same argument. And I would argue this need to 'educate' has tainted not only the discourse between men and women but in seemingly everything.
I am in the (un)fortunate position that I have a diverse friend group where I have people on both sides of the political aisle while I sit somewhere in the middle. The same people who I have known for years can no longer contain their political views, now having to volunteer a 'fact' about Trump or Biden, and how if you don't know this fact you are dumb and unaware. We need to stop educating each other and get away from every meal turning into an opportunity to proselytize.
"If you’re hanging out with an unsavory character, for instance, and you don’t want to get your ass kicked, you go with the flow. You might disagree with this person, but opposing theories don’t register with this kind of guy."
We all need to get more comfortable with other people thinking differently than we do. We should instead focus on spending time together where nothing is at stake.
I would also avoid this well-worn rhetoric:
"And if we are successful in our efforts to decrease gender polarization, we can start alleviating many other social problems: the loneliness epidemic, mutual hostility between political tribes, and the number of men and boys drifting towards the reactionary right and the flagrantly anti-democratic instincts it is associated with."
Firstly you are citing Charles Blow who I find to be one of the most predictable ideologues. More importantly the 'flagrantly anti-democratic instincts' is not going to win you any friends. First off I engage with some of these men and they do not appreciate being told they are anti-democratic and otherwise 'bad', thats precisely the type of attitude that they are responding to when turning to the online-right. I would also very much argue that the democrats have no love for democracy, again the previous article mentions ' “voting against their interests” or why Hispanics are suffering from such mysterious ailments such as “multiracial whiteness.”'. See the wonderful collection of clips from Matt Orfalea documenting a similar 'the election was rigged' rhetoric post-2016 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOYQeIrVdYo). Now I would argue that there is a notable difference in the presentation of these views, with the democrats adopting an intellectual sort of air about their views while the republicans appear to be represented by some high school drop out screaming on the corner. But just because you are more intelligent/polite about it doesn't mean we should get dewy eyed about the democrats, both sides simply wishes to win and cares little for 'democracy' besides as a claim to legitimacy.
Just last weekend I was trying to talk a friend out of voting for Trump, and the only way I can do that is to treat him as a thinking individual who wants best for his family. He has a lot of anger that born of being told that because he is conservative (socially and economically) that he is bad, anti-democratic, etc. If I simply reiterated the trite statement that "Trump is bad, doesn't like democracy" I will be no different than the others in his life. But by approaching it as a question of policies and what he wants for himself and his family there is possible dialogue. Doubtful that I succeeded, but at least he listens to my arguments and I hear his.
This was a frustrating read. I agree with Mr. Xu's prescriptions, but many of the facts he deploys read like the poor assumptions typical liberals make about things like the "gap" between men and women in STEM. Is it possible women and men, on average bases, are interested in different things? That the difference between men and women in STEM is like the difference between men and women in garbage collection? In nursing? In construction?
The core of this argument is that society is in some sense "holding women back" from entering those fields. I challenge that notion. I'm not going to argue men and women have it equally hard or easy; but I am going to argue that any women with the intellect and interest to be in STEM can be in STEM. It's a choice.
I cannot recall ever reading an article on this subject that did not use CEOs to show that society is unfair to women. Fortune 500 did not make it into the piece, but “uppers echelons “ did. Once again, we have the problem of the “fat tails.” In their talents and in their weaknesses, far more men are to be found long from the mean. Feminists envy the reward that comes from men’s “over representation” in the talents part of the dispersion, but not their heart-breaking “over representation” on the other side. Never have I heard or read the argument that men’s “over representation” in prisons is due to anything other than fundamental differences between men and women. There is no social construct theory to explain how unfair it is. We have no wailing about invisible forces condemning men to be caged like animals. We are told that there must be glass ceilings, but prison bars are all too visible and too real. Prisons are not social constructs, or if they are, they are social constructs built for men.
Schools are today designed to reward the behavior of girls and to punish the behavior of boys. There probably would be an overall benefit to “red shirting” boys, but there are serious structural problems that disadvantage boys, both in school and in society. The results are tragic for everyone.
One thing I find particularly damning about the CEO thing is that they are all also old unless they're founders. The gender gap of the past is how that skew happens. If we fix the gender gap, but the CEOs are still selected from an older criteria we can have a gap problem in this arena but not overall.
Tl;dr
Sometimes problems are lagged. "Solutions" to these lagged problems can often lead to dangerous overcorrections.
I really fail to understand the alarm here. The first thing is the idea that men are more conservative and women more liberal is a "water is wet" type thing to me. While certainly there are conservative minded women, and liberal minded men, they have always been the exceptions. Speaking only for myself, and in context to my age (47) and upbringing (midwestern, low income), it was a safe assumption that if you are a guy talking to a woman, her view point will be more politically or socially "liberal" than yours regardless of your position on the spectrum (key to note here is the "talking to" part).
Again, your results may vary, and I welcome evidence to the contrary, but I just thought this was fact. Then again this could just be yet another assumption I make without evidence, like I always assume a cat is female for some reason and all dogs are "good boys".
The second bit here, and perhaps more important is that part of the reason I lack the data to support my claim above is that up until the last 5 years or so I can not recall a time when someone's politics were relevant to me, and I could safely say most people I met felt the same. The only reason it is now relevant is because the media has basically started mixing this shit into the water supply at this point. Sure we all have our suspicions, stereotypes are a thing after all, but it wouldn't be weird for a couple who has been together for years or close friends to be fairly clueless about the politics between them. Most the ladies I know assume men are all about team red "guys like guns and stuff", and most the guys I know think ladies are team blue (how brave / stupid must you be as a guy to ask any random women about the abortion issue). Hell it is half the fun imo, like finding out the person you are with comes from an super liberal / conservative family when that does not match to what they are like, and the bonding that can happen when you both make fun of how superior you are to them :D. But it is most certainly not in the top ten things one considers when evaluating a friend or significant other. The truth is most people are indifferent to this stuff. Sure sometimes something comes up that is just too big to ignore without comment, but if your relationship falls apart due to a discussion about policy... idk what to tell you. But also if your relationship (if that is what we are talking about here) is in a place where you are so bored that comparing politics seems like a good idea, I am thinking maybe you got other things going on.
So I would say that instead of trying to right the ship for x gender to better match y political leaning, maybe the right tact is to put this whole knotted ball of string back into the box. While there are crazy fringe beliefs out there that are like oil and water to one another, the vast bulk of what people believe is more or less benign. Let's pretend that we are all moderates, and wait until at least third base before we start talking about our uninformed, highly polarized, political hot takes with someone we might like to get to know. I mean this all assumes that is the point.
I feel like every time I come across a piece about the divisions between groups whatever they might be, they always kind of fail to get their arms around what it is they actually want. Not an idealized state of things, but just a general direction seems hard for folks to make apparent. If you want connection, it is as available to you as it has been to humans for as long as we have walked upright. If it is an academic pursuit, or some kind of human LARPing exercise their are plenty of eyeballs for that, maybe just make it clear upfront that this is a conceptual framework for discussion and not an obituary for a life once thought possible.
Interesting read all the same. For the commentary bit I would say that if both men and women are going further to the edges in this one dimension of difference, maybe that says something about the blurring of traditional distinctions to be had. So much of modern life is homogenous, culture, music, food, etc. People have a need to differentiate themselves. If society is increasingly embracing the idea of "everyone is equal" or more accurately perhaps "everyone is the same" then it shouldn't be odd that a black market in distinction opens up. To answer the prompt of the essay, nothing. Do nothing. That much I have picked up over past decade. Almost everything people have tried to fix would have been better solved by time and not intervention. All these movements and wrist band activism, protests, boycotts etc often harm the thing they are looking to help, and when they do appear to make a change in outcomes its really just that time has passed and people have either moved on, or society has quietly corrected itself to match the new ideas.
I keep making the effort to find people with concerns like this to talk to in the flesh, but I am either going about it wrong (totally plausible), or people who have this perspective just don't go out anymore / don't offer up themselves for discussion. Anywho, my contribution to the void of replies no one asked for. :)
The problems described, although very real, are those of the wealthy in late-industrial or post-industrial societies. For almost all of human existence, the interactions of girls/women and boys/men were closely choreographed primarily for the purpose of reproduction. Secondarily, but of major concern, was maintaining, obtaining and retaining the skills and resources needed for the survival of the family, extended family and group. Things that our biology and cultures supported. Now, however, it would seem that Generation Z and the generation before it have relegated reproduction to a much lower priority and act as if all of the resources required for survival are readily available thus eliminating much of the motivation for individual men and woman to agree on things and form lasting relationships.
I agree that men now have problems. But the difference in rates of male and female college attendance and graduation rates is a consequence of rational, self-interested choices by both men and women.
On the average, for a woman to earn as much as a man she has to be roughly one notch above him in educational attainment. To earn as much as a man who hasn't completed college she has to have a degree. Moreover occupational sex segregation hasn't diminished since the 1990s. While college grads compete in a unisex labor market for jobs in management in the professions, the market for jobs available to the other 2/3 of the population are highly sex segregated. There are still lots of non-college grad jobs for which I as a woman would not even be seriously considered and the repeated suggestion that this is solely a matter of men and women having different preferences is questionable given the natural experiment of WWII when women flocked to Rosie Riveter jobs once the word was out that they could get them.
Good thing for me because if I could get a decent blue collar job I would never have gone to college much less grad school. I would much rather be a garbage collector than a supermarket checker and much rather work construction than be a secretary. Without a college degree men can get decent jobs but without a degree most women are still de facto restricted to low-wage, pink-collar drudge work. I agree that the male/female difference in college majors and college grad jobs is largely a matter of choice reflecting different preferences and aspirations. But that is not so for most jobs available to individuals without a college degree.
A minor quibble here, but I think a more relevant natural experiment on revealed employment preference is contemporary Scandinavia, where there's still a lot of (ostensibly voluntary) sex-based employment segregation.
As a more general response to the article and replies, harping on "women-in-STEM" in a US context is sort of odd since women overtook men on earned doctorates in the life sciences 15-20 years ago and in the chemical sciences around a decade ago. There are definitely plenty of problems to go around, but I think the evidence that men with low educational attainment are in a particular bind right now is more compelling than the evidence that there's a similarly acute economic problem facing women. That being said, Mr. Xu's arguments in favor of greater interpersonal connection between men and women are well taken, and increasing sex-based partisan polarization is troubling.
The first step is an honest assessment by women for what women really need out of life and then lead a course correction if currently going in the wrong direction. Men can help by culling the weak men that collude with those pushing an agenda against what women really need. But the key here is that females have to lead this movement, or it will never happen.
If conservative men are not treated properly, they may be attracted to far-rightism. There is apparently nothing comparable for progressive women -- either far-left doesn't exist or there's nothing wrong with.
A word of advice to the author: It's okay if you state your priors up front and it's okay if you try -- hopefully with some success -- to keep them from skewing your essay. Doing neither ends poorly.
It's been pointed out here that the statistical differences seem to result more from biological differences between the sexes than from structural misogyny, and also that believing that does not need to be prescriptive, preventing women from doing what they want to do and achieving what they can achieve.
It's also worth pointing out that there used to be something that drew men and women together, something that had nothing to do with education or abstract "socializing" and little to do with friendship. I'm scratching my head, but I'm sure it'll come to me.
Great article, love the spirit of it. I would agree with a lot of this piece, but now it is time to put on my grumpy Millennial Male Hat and harp on a few points.
"According to Evans, young women in mixed gendered spaces educate their male friends about the assumptions and entitlement they have about women."
I find this a perverse way of thinking of friendship, that you will 'educate' your friends. And it is precisely this sort of cultural attitude that polarizes people. I grew up overseas with many people with a lot of different backgrounds, and many beliefs I find to be plainly untrue. I had the pleasure to befriend many people precisely because we didn't try to 'educate' each other, we simply were friends and recognized each other as people we valued. Rather it has been this recent trend of 'educating' that I have found destructive.
In recent years having friendships with female friends have gotten harder, because I would prefer a more nuanced vision of how men and women should engage. A years long relationship ended a few years back because my female friend couldn't 'believe' that I didn't have completely agreement with her. Every time we hung out it would devolve into the same argument. And I would argue this need to 'educate' has tainted not only the discourse between men and women but in seemingly everything.
I am in the (un)fortunate position that I have a diverse friend group where I have people on both sides of the political aisle while I sit somewhere in the middle. The same people who I have known for years can no longer contain their political views, now having to volunteer a 'fact' about Trump or Biden, and how if you don't know this fact you are dumb and unaware. We need to stop educating each other and get away from every meal turning into an opportunity to proselytize.
This all feels a lot like the last post on Persuasion (https://www.persuasion.community/p/journalism-needs-cultural-adjacency). Particularly the line:
"If you’re hanging out with an unsavory character, for instance, and you don’t want to get your ass kicked, you go with the flow. You might disagree with this person, but opposing theories don’t register with this kind of guy."
We all need to get more comfortable with other people thinking differently than we do. We should instead focus on spending time together where nothing is at stake.
I would also avoid this well-worn rhetoric:
"And if we are successful in our efforts to decrease gender polarization, we can start alleviating many other social problems: the loneliness epidemic, mutual hostility between political tribes, and the number of men and boys drifting towards the reactionary right and the flagrantly anti-democratic instincts it is associated with."
Firstly you are citing Charles Blow who I find to be one of the most predictable ideologues. More importantly the 'flagrantly anti-democratic instincts' is not going to win you any friends. First off I engage with some of these men and they do not appreciate being told they are anti-democratic and otherwise 'bad', thats precisely the type of attitude that they are responding to when turning to the online-right. I would also very much argue that the democrats have no love for democracy, again the previous article mentions ' “voting against their interests” or why Hispanics are suffering from such mysterious ailments such as “multiracial whiteness.”'. See the wonderful collection of clips from Matt Orfalea documenting a similar 'the election was rigged' rhetoric post-2016 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOYQeIrVdYo). Now I would argue that there is a notable difference in the presentation of these views, with the democrats adopting an intellectual sort of air about their views while the republicans appear to be represented by some high school drop out screaming on the corner. But just because you are more intelligent/polite about it doesn't mean we should get dewy eyed about the democrats, both sides simply wishes to win and cares little for 'democracy' besides as a claim to legitimacy.
Just last weekend I was trying to talk a friend out of voting for Trump, and the only way I can do that is to treat him as a thinking individual who wants best for his family. He has a lot of anger that born of being told that because he is conservative (socially and economically) that he is bad, anti-democratic, etc. If I simply reiterated the trite statement that "Trump is bad, doesn't like democracy" I will be no different than the others in his life. But by approaching it as a question of policies and what he wants for himself and his family there is possible dialogue. Doubtful that I succeeded, but at least he listens to my arguments and I hear his.
This was a frustrating read. I agree with Mr. Xu's prescriptions, but many of the facts he deploys read like the poor assumptions typical liberals make about things like the "gap" between men and women in STEM. Is it possible women and men, on average bases, are interested in different things? That the difference between men and women in STEM is like the difference between men and women in garbage collection? In nursing? In construction?
The core of this argument is that society is in some sense "holding women back" from entering those fields. I challenge that notion. I'm not going to argue men and women have it equally hard or easy; but I am going to argue that any women with the intellect and interest to be in STEM can be in STEM. It's a choice.
I cannot recall ever reading an article on this subject that did not use CEOs to show that society is unfair to women. Fortune 500 did not make it into the piece, but “uppers echelons “ did. Once again, we have the problem of the “fat tails.” In their talents and in their weaknesses, far more men are to be found long from the mean. Feminists envy the reward that comes from men’s “over representation” in the talents part of the dispersion, but not their heart-breaking “over representation” on the other side. Never have I heard or read the argument that men’s “over representation” in prisons is due to anything other than fundamental differences between men and women. There is no social construct theory to explain how unfair it is. We have no wailing about invisible forces condemning men to be caged like animals. We are told that there must be glass ceilings, but prison bars are all too visible and too real. Prisons are not social constructs, or if they are, they are social constructs built for men.
Schools are today designed to reward the behavior of girls and to punish the behavior of boys. There probably would be an overall benefit to “red shirting” boys, but there are serious structural problems that disadvantage boys, both in school and in society. The results are tragic for everyone.
One thing I find particularly damning about the CEO thing is that they are all also old unless they're founders. The gender gap of the past is how that skew happens. If we fix the gender gap, but the CEOs are still selected from an older criteria we can have a gap problem in this arena but not overall.
Tl;dr
Sometimes problems are lagged. "Solutions" to these lagged problems can often lead to dangerous overcorrections.
I really fail to understand the alarm here. The first thing is the idea that men are more conservative and women more liberal is a "water is wet" type thing to me. While certainly there are conservative minded women, and liberal minded men, they have always been the exceptions. Speaking only for myself, and in context to my age (47) and upbringing (midwestern, low income), it was a safe assumption that if you are a guy talking to a woman, her view point will be more politically or socially "liberal" than yours regardless of your position on the spectrum (key to note here is the "talking to" part).
Again, your results may vary, and I welcome evidence to the contrary, but I just thought this was fact. Then again this could just be yet another assumption I make without evidence, like I always assume a cat is female for some reason and all dogs are "good boys".
The second bit here, and perhaps more important is that part of the reason I lack the data to support my claim above is that up until the last 5 years or so I can not recall a time when someone's politics were relevant to me, and I could safely say most people I met felt the same. The only reason it is now relevant is because the media has basically started mixing this shit into the water supply at this point. Sure we all have our suspicions, stereotypes are a thing after all, but it wouldn't be weird for a couple who has been together for years or close friends to be fairly clueless about the politics between them. Most the ladies I know assume men are all about team red "guys like guns and stuff", and most the guys I know think ladies are team blue (how brave / stupid must you be as a guy to ask any random women about the abortion issue). Hell it is half the fun imo, like finding out the person you are with comes from an super liberal / conservative family when that does not match to what they are like, and the bonding that can happen when you both make fun of how superior you are to them :D. But it is most certainly not in the top ten things one considers when evaluating a friend or significant other. The truth is most people are indifferent to this stuff. Sure sometimes something comes up that is just too big to ignore without comment, but if your relationship falls apart due to a discussion about policy... idk what to tell you. But also if your relationship (if that is what we are talking about here) is in a place where you are so bored that comparing politics seems like a good idea, I am thinking maybe you got other things going on.
So I would say that instead of trying to right the ship for x gender to better match y political leaning, maybe the right tact is to put this whole knotted ball of string back into the box. While there are crazy fringe beliefs out there that are like oil and water to one another, the vast bulk of what people believe is more or less benign. Let's pretend that we are all moderates, and wait until at least third base before we start talking about our uninformed, highly polarized, political hot takes with someone we might like to get to know. I mean this all assumes that is the point.
I feel like every time I come across a piece about the divisions between groups whatever they might be, they always kind of fail to get their arms around what it is they actually want. Not an idealized state of things, but just a general direction seems hard for folks to make apparent. If you want connection, it is as available to you as it has been to humans for as long as we have walked upright. If it is an academic pursuit, or some kind of human LARPing exercise their are plenty of eyeballs for that, maybe just make it clear upfront that this is a conceptual framework for discussion and not an obituary for a life once thought possible.
Interesting read all the same. For the commentary bit I would say that if both men and women are going further to the edges in this one dimension of difference, maybe that says something about the blurring of traditional distinctions to be had. So much of modern life is homogenous, culture, music, food, etc. People have a need to differentiate themselves. If society is increasingly embracing the idea of "everyone is equal" or more accurately perhaps "everyone is the same" then it shouldn't be odd that a black market in distinction opens up. To answer the prompt of the essay, nothing. Do nothing. That much I have picked up over past decade. Almost everything people have tried to fix would have been better solved by time and not intervention. All these movements and wrist band activism, protests, boycotts etc often harm the thing they are looking to help, and when they do appear to make a change in outcomes its really just that time has passed and people have either moved on, or society has quietly corrected itself to match the new ideas.
I keep making the effort to find people with concerns like this to talk to in the flesh, but I am either going about it wrong (totally plausible), or people who have this perspective just don't go out anymore / don't offer up themselves for discussion. Anywho, my contribution to the void of replies no one asked for. :)
The problems described, although very real, are those of the wealthy in late-industrial or post-industrial societies. For almost all of human existence, the interactions of girls/women and boys/men were closely choreographed primarily for the purpose of reproduction. Secondarily, but of major concern, was maintaining, obtaining and retaining the skills and resources needed for the survival of the family, extended family and group. Things that our biology and cultures supported. Now, however, it would seem that Generation Z and the generation before it have relegated reproduction to a much lower priority and act as if all of the resources required for survival are readily available thus eliminating much of the motivation for individual men and woman to agree on things and form lasting relationships.
I agree that men now have problems. But the difference in rates of male and female college attendance and graduation rates is a consequence of rational, self-interested choices by both men and women.
On the average, for a woman to earn as much as a man she has to be roughly one notch above him in educational attainment. To earn as much as a man who hasn't completed college she has to have a degree. Moreover occupational sex segregation hasn't diminished since the 1990s. While college grads compete in a unisex labor market for jobs in management in the professions, the market for jobs available to the other 2/3 of the population are highly sex segregated. There are still lots of non-college grad jobs for which I as a woman would not even be seriously considered and the repeated suggestion that this is solely a matter of men and women having different preferences is questionable given the natural experiment of WWII when women flocked to Rosie Riveter jobs once the word was out that they could get them.
Good thing for me because if I could get a decent blue collar job I would never have gone to college much less grad school. I would much rather be a garbage collector than a supermarket checker and much rather work construction than be a secretary. Without a college degree men can get decent jobs but without a degree most women are still de facto restricted to low-wage, pink-collar drudge work. I agree that the male/female difference in college majors and college grad jobs is largely a matter of choice reflecting different preferences and aspirations. But that is not so for most jobs available to individuals without a college degree.
A minor quibble here, but I think a more relevant natural experiment on revealed employment preference is contemporary Scandinavia, where there's still a lot of (ostensibly voluntary) sex-based employment segregation.
As a more general response to the article and replies, harping on "women-in-STEM" in a US context is sort of odd since women overtook men on earned doctorates in the life sciences 15-20 years ago and in the chemical sciences around a decade ago. There are definitely plenty of problems to go around, but I think the evidence that men with low educational attainment are in a particular bind right now is more compelling than the evidence that there's a similarly acute economic problem facing women. That being said, Mr. Xu's arguments in favor of greater interpersonal connection between men and women are well taken, and increasing sex-based partisan polarization is troubling.
The first step is an honest assessment by women for what women really need out of life and then lead a course correction if currently going in the wrong direction. Men can help by culling the weak men that collude with those pushing an agenda against what women really need. But the key here is that females have to lead this movement, or it will never happen.
If conservative men are not treated properly, they may be attracted to far-rightism. There is apparently nothing comparable for progressive women -- either far-left doesn't exist or there's nothing wrong with.
A word of advice to the author: It's okay if you state your priors up front and it's okay if you try -- hopefully with some success -- to keep them from skewing your essay. Doing neither ends poorly.
It's been pointed out here that the statistical differences seem to result more from biological differences between the sexes than from structural misogyny, and also that believing that does not need to be prescriptive, preventing women from doing what they want to do and achieving what they can achieve.
It's also worth pointing out that there used to be something that drew men and women together, something that had nothing to do with education or abstract "socializing" and little to do with friendship. I'm scratching my head, but I'm sure it'll come to me.