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Every Gentleman Best Heed the Power of Hysterics To Censor

19 Saturday Feb 2022

Posted by pnoetx in Censorship, Gender Differences, Uncategorized

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Abortion, Antifa, BLM, Bullying, Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, Civil Rights Law, Critical Race Theory, Dark Triad, Defense Priorities, Disparate impact, Equal Pay, Eric Landers, Family Leave Mandates, Feminization, First Amendment, Gender Conventions, Gender Studies, Georgetown Law School, Grievance Studies, Harrassment, Hate Speech, Human Resources, Ilya Shapiro, Joe Biden, Minimum Wage, Noah Carl, Racial Quotas, racism, Richard Hanania, Sexism, Virtuous Victimhood, Yale Halloween

Here are the gender conventions we’ve adopted in Western society on the rules of debate:

“We accept gender double standards, and tolerate more aggression towards men than we do towards women. We also tolerate more hyper-emotionalism from women than men.”

So says Richard Hanania in an essay called “Women’s Tears Win In the Marketplace of Ideas“. Hanania is the president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, and a research fellow at Defense Priorities. He offers some cogent examples of this disparate treatment, such as the Yale Halloween costume imbroglio and the “cancelling” of Ilya Shapiro at Georgetown Law School. To those we can add Eric Landers’ forced withdrawal as Joe Biden’s chief science advisor, and there are countless others. About this, Hanania says:

“What makes these cases difficult is that male versus male argumentation just has completely different rules, norms, and expectations than male versus female. … A man can’t just yell in another man’s face for 5 or 10 minutes about how he’s hurting his feelings. If a man does behave this way, bystanders are more likely to feel disgusted than join in or play the role of white knight. The man at the receiving end of the abuse is at some point going to have to escalate towards violence, or back down and say something about how this is beneath him. Depending on the situation, observers may assume violence is a distinct possibility, and get between the two sides.

None of these options are available when getting yelled at by a woman. You certainly can’t make an implicit threat of violence. Raising your voice will turn everyone against you, and even walking away can look heartless.”

I’ve witnessed a few pathetic crying jags in the workplace myself, as well as some volleys of verbal belligerence from females on social media that were pointedly anti-social. In my experience, most women can dish out barbs good-naturedly in jest and conduct themselves with dignity in debate. On the other hand, there are too many men who become hostile in debate, which most observers will find much less sympathetic if the counter-party is a woman. And there are a few men, here and there, who have trouble holding back tears in a fraught exchange, but we all know it’s not a good look.

To state the obvious, tears are a natural reaction to grief or real hurt. Anger is well-justified in response to criminal or personal wrongs. Nevertheless, it’s necessary to distinguish between these kinds of reactions and the ignoble tears or venom sometimes brought to controversial debates by neurotic partisans. As Hanania says of our disparate gender conventions, considerable censorship is instigated by an intransigent minority of women who manage to “… indulge their passions in ways that men cannot … .” Most men, anyway… and if they do, they’ve usually lost and know it.

These passionate displays are often tied to claims of individual or group victimhood. The objector could be anyone who feels an under-appreciated beef, but acting-out in order to signal “virtuous victimhood” in this way might indicate a deeper instability.

Again, as Hanania says, females have a definite advantage in the deployment of tears, confrontational rhetoric, and screams. Coincidentally, in a post to which Hanania links, Noah Carl marshals data on the extremely skewed representation of degrees awarded to women in Grievance Studies (e.g. Gender Studies and Critical Race Theory).

Too often, claims of victimhood are invoked in attempts to rebut any number of principled policy positions. For example, your views might be construed as offensive, racist, or sexist if you oppose such things as an increase in the minimum wage, racial quotas, disparate impact actions, equal pay rules, family leave mandates, and abortion. Expressing a strong and reasoned defense of many positions can foment imagined micro-aggressions or even harassment.

The real danger here is that honest debate is suppressed, and with it, very often, the truth. I acknowledge that people must be free to express or defend their views passionately, and with tears, screams, or otherwise, which the First Amendment guarantees. Our gender conventions in this matter should be revisited, however, if men and women are truly to be on equal footing.

Whether baring fangs or shedding tears, there are self-appointed arbiters of acceptable speech represented in almost all of our public and private institutions, ready to shut down debate on account of their feelings. They have more than a few sympathetic allies, male and female, at higher levels of their organizations. In the past, Hanania has discussed the over-representation of females in Human Resource departments. In these contexts, adjudication of disputes often relies on vague notions of what constitutes “hate speech” or “harassment” under Civil Rights Law. If you manage to provoke the tears of a colleague or underling, you’re probably behind the eight ball!

Hanania considers some alternative ground rules or “options” for debate:

  1. Expect everyone who participates in the marketplace of ideas to abide by male standards, meaning you accept some level of abrasiveness and hurt feelings as the price of entry.
  2. Expect everyone to abide by female standards, meaning we care less about truth and prioritize the emotional and mental well-being of participants in debates.”

Either of these options is better than the double standard we have now, and Hanania point to a number of egregious manifestations of our double standard. As he notes, #2 might be what’s meant by the “feminization of intellectual life”, but it fosters the arbitrary prohibition against discussion of any number of ideas that belong on the policy menu.

Option #1 would undoubtedly be condemned as “traditional male dominance” of public debate, but it would bar no one from participation, and obstacles perceived by females, or any sensitive soul, can be viewed as a matter of socialization. Both tearful and ferocious argumentation should be marginalized regardless of the antagonist’s gender.

Imperfect as they are, we have laws and/or social strictures against harassment, bullying, and other aggressive behavior thought to be largely associated with malcontented males. But as Hanania says:

“We haven’t even begun to think carefully about equivalent pathologies stemming from traits of the other sex.”

This problem obviously pales in comparison to the fascist tactics typical of the far Left. That includes the violent behavior of Antifa and BLM, unethical attempts blame conservatives for various, often fabricated deeds, and to threaten and punish them economically, even to the point of state-sponsored thievery and threats of harm to family members. Despite the more benign nature of the disparities discussed here, restoring gender equality to the terms of civil debate, without tears and hysterics, would be a great step forward.

Leftist Ad Hominid Species Screams “White Racists!”

03 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by pnoetx in Discrimination, Equality, racism

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A Taste For Discrimination, Assimilation, Celebrating Diversity, Cultural Sorting, Davis Bacon Act, discrimination, Economics of Discrimination, Jim Crow Laws, Minimum Wage, Racial Quotas, racism, Rent Controls, Social Mobility, Systemic Racism, Unintended Consequences, Virtue Signaling, Voluntary Sorting, War on Drugs


Lately I hear that all white people are racists, and I feel compelled to examine the intellectual grounding of such an inflamatory claim. Consciousness of race is not racism, as some would suggest. Indeed, solutions to racial division offered by activists usually require that we bear race in mind as a primary differentiator. Insofar as one must consider the worth of another person in any context, people of good faith simply do not care about a person’s race. Rather, they care about traits that count, such as honesty, skills, work ethic and perhaps affability. Should they somehow care more? What would vindicate them?

Inflammatory Claims

There are probably several motives for the charge of universal white racism. On one level, it represents political agitation. Posts carrying the charge on social media always involve a measure of “virtue signaling” to like-minded friends, or perhaps before the Gods. (I’m sure the posters will be forgiven.) Such posts might represent acts of social contrition to allay deep-seated feelings of guilt. The posters might fancy that they are raising the consciousness of others, proudly imagining the important lesson they are teaching. The bad news for them is that most people of good faith are rightly skeptical of proselytization like this. In fact, the agitation probably does more to breed skepticism than anything else.

Voluntary Sorting Behavior

What some view as racial division is often an innocent consequence of voluntary sorting based upon the shared subcultures most compelling to individuals at a given time. There are many subcultures into which a person might fit: work, school, profession, sports, music, religion, politics, hobbies, geography, ancestry, ethnicity and race. And there are micro-cultures within all of these categories. These cultural segments differ in many respects, and they may overlap in many cases. The extent of sub-cultural overlap may be viewed as a gauge of assimilation.

In any given context, people tend to voluntarily sort themselves into the sub-culture they find most compelling. This voluntary sorting does not yield a fixed social distribution of individuals across groups. Individuals can choose to associate with different sub-cultures to which they belong on a day-to-day basis.

There is a pronounced tendency for sorting to occur within larger “populations”, such as cafeteria-goers in a large office or in a large school. People from particular work groups might sit together: there is some sorting by age, by gender, and by race. African-Americans often sit together. There is mixing of members of these subgroups as well. People are brought together by work or school, but the shared work or school culture is frequently less compelling to individuals in their choice of a lunch table than other sub-cultures to which they belong.

Isolation or Assimilation

Assimilation does not mean that cultural differences must disappear, but it does mean that subcultures must at least be tolerant of others. A key question is whether one subgroup would welcome a member of another subgroup to join them. There might be reasons to refuse in some circumstances, such as a group of accountants who wish to avoid economists. Lol. However, a group of Caucasians who prefer to remain exclusive, making African Americans feel unwelcome, are guilty of racism, and vice-versa. As for the converse, an African American individual who prefers not to join a group of Caucasians, and vice versa, there is usually a good rationale for presuming the individual to be innocent of racism: they are simply choosing a more compelling sub-culture.

Certain sub-cultures may be especially amenable to selection from across sub-groups. For example, team sports often foster racial mixing, as do music and various professions. Religion and economic stratum can be powerful shared sub-cultures, drawing members across racial groups. In other words, mixing of sub-cultures will occur when a compelling sub-culture is shared. That is a form of successful assimilation.

When voluntary sorting takes place, the parties seek commonalities. That’s a form of discrimination that may be quite healthy and not racist in any way. On the other hand, accepting diversity implies respect for other cultures and subcultures. Voluntary sorting allows those cultures to function, but it does not necessarily imply exclusion of others who might be curious and wish to learn and take part in a culture’s traditions, or who might even wish to become a part of a different community.

Counterproductive Compulsion

The insistence that racism is widespread is often an expression of support for compelled remedies or paying reparations of some kind to alleged victims. In a free society, the kind of voluntary sorting discussed above will always be a reality; any attempt to prevent it would require extreme coercion. Reparations for historical injustices, legal or economic, raise ethical questions about the treatment of those who must bear the costs. They also carry high administrative costs and tend to breed resentment and division. There are well-known downsides to quotas in hiring and in school admissions. Not only do quotas lead to reverse discrimination, they also can place the intended beneficiaries into situations of vulnerability to failure.

Markets Are Not Racist

Then there is the allegation that private markets are a source of “systemic racism”, having “disparate impacts” on certain minorities. However, it should be noted that the market mechanism tends to penalize racism. A consumer who chooses to avoid sellers of a different race will tend to pay a higher price for the privilege. An employer with a “taste for discrimination” must choose from a smaller labor pool and may lose the opportunity to hire the best talent. In other words, racists must pay for their preference. They also forego the creative benefits that diverse organizations tend to enjoy.

Certain minorities have struggled to achieve success in the private economy, but there are much better explanations for that difficulty than market forces, which provide the best opportunity for growth and assimilation. There is no question that institutional obstacles have had extremely harsh effects on groups starting from lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. A few examples: the failed public education has been especially burdensome for urban and rural minorities; various public policies have effectively excluded minorities from markets, including Jim Crow laws, the minimum wage and the Davis-Bacon Act; the so-called social safety net is rife with features that penalize work and reward fragmentation of families, making it as much a trap as a net; the drug war creates illicit market opportunities which present catastrophic but unappreciated risks for both the participants and their families; rent controls, zoning laws and restrictions on new construction limit the stock of affordable housing; heavy regulation makes starting a business difficult for those without the financial and legal resources to deal with it; and the ugly tradition of cronyism tends to reduce social mobility by entrenching privilege rather than rewarding economic value. The deck is stacked in many ways against economic mobility by public policy, and racial minirities have borne much of the burden.

Immigration Hotspot

Another controversy is whether racism is manifest in the negative views of many Americans toward immigrants. These claims allege ethnic and religious discrimination, including the hatred of Muslims. No doubt there are Americans who harbor racist attitudes toward immigrants. Some of this is grounded in unreasonable economic fears. There are also fears that terrorists may be among new immigrant populations, especially refugees, but that fear is hardly unreasonable given the recent experience of Europe and the difficulty of establishing reliable background information on some of these individuals.

Sharing Freedom

Racism still exists and it will never go away entirely. However, our dedication to freedom compels us to protect speech as long as it is not threatening. Racial discrimination by participants in markets can be difficult to detect, but racists must pay an economic price imposed by the market mechanism, and there are often legal remedies if racial discrimination in markets can be proven. Fortunately, racism today is not as widespread as the agitators would have you believe. The best policy for assimilation and acceptance is to promote a shared culture of freedom and economic opportunity.

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