Melinda Gates Validates My Theory of the Sexes

Over the course of a rather sheltered life, I have come to believe two things about men and women. Men have a Culture of Insult; women have a Culture of Complaint. That is to say: men and women are not equal; they are different.

The men's Culture of Insult is obviously related to the question of Honor. As related by James Bowman, in Honor: a History, honor among men is the reputation for courage, the courage to stand in line with his brothers in battle. To publicly doubt a man's courage is an insult that must be defended. Thus the Culture of Insult, in which men cunningly doubt each other's courage, but below a threshold that must be defended by force of arms.

Women, as I said, are not equal; they are different. Honor among women is the reputation for chastity, and I mean this not just in the sexual sense, but in the larger sense of being a good little girl that never does anything wrong. Thus the women's Culture of Complaint, in which one woman complains to a second woman about a third woman's behavior.

Don't doubt me on this. Just go abroad with an open mind, and see how often I am right.

Enter good little girl Melinda Gates, wife of the billionaire. She's a feminist, dontcha know. (But not so much of a feminist that she has forsworn hypergamy). Oh no. Not that!

According to Nicholas Kristof (H/T Steve Sailer) Melinda found the office culture at Microsoft toxically masculine.

One of Melinda’s first challenges came in the harsh, male-dominated techie culture at Microsoft. “It was just so brash, so argumentative and competitive, with people fighting to the end on every point,” she writes.

See what I mean? Culture of Insult, going full throttle, pedal to the metal. And Melinda as a woman didn't like it.

So what did she do? She complained to another woman.

Then she found a woman colleague, Charlotte Guyman, who felt the same. “It’s not O.K. for women to cry at work, but it’s O.K. for men to yell at work?” Guyman once asked.

Or, as I like to put it, Charlotte complained to Melinda, "I can't believe the way that the men yell in meetings."

Believe me, I am not making this up.

Which brings me to my Georg Simmel gambit, that women coming into the public square would adapt it to suit "a more feminine sensibility." That is exactly what Charlotte and Melinda proceeded to do at Microsoft.

With other women employees, they began to create oases in Microsoft where courtesy was not seen as a sign of weakness. A critical mass of women employees helped civilize the company.

Am I right or am I right?

Now my second-hand take on Bill Gates -- what I have heard -- is that he was a holy terror in meetings. If you brought some idea or project to him that wasn't up to snuff he would say that it was the most stupid thing he had ever heard. I dare say he is still like that, unless the fair Melinda is in the room.

But here is the question. Was it a good idea for Charlotte and Melinda to "civilize" Microsoft? I'd say: it depends.

The point about Bill Gates and also Steve Jobs is that they were both impossible people heading up tech startups that changed the world.

Bill Gates' effort with MS-DOS enabled IBM to put its PC into every office. I was there; it was transformative. And then Gates did it again with Windows. What about Microsoft in recent years? Well I'd have to say that it is steady as she goes. In the 15 years from 2000 to 2015 the stock went sideways. Now it is going exponential again, under South Asian management.

What about Apple? Under the turbulent leadership of Steve Jobs, it produced amazing products, and magnificent failures, but ended up with the earth-shattering technology in the iPod and the iPhone. All the evidence is that Jobs was impossible to work with: not "civilized" at all. And since Jobs' death? Well, right now it is doing fine under the civilized leadership of Tim Cook.

What does it all mean? I think it means this. If you are talking about business startups, you are talking about men. If you are talking about steady as she goes, you are talking about introducing a more feminine sensibility into corporate culture.

Then there is this. Joseph P. Schumpeter described capitalism as a process of "creative destruction." In other words each technological revolution that transforms our lives is built on the wreckage of the old technology and the old ways.

If women had been in charge we would not have experienced the Great Enrichment of the last 200 years.

In my view men are adapted to the creative destruction aspect of things, and women are more adapted to the preservation of things. This is unremarkable, since the job of men is to defend the border, even unto death, and the job of women is to bear children, to stay alive and keep the home fires burning until the children leave the nest.

“Bill and I are equal partners,” Melinda Gates said. “Men and women should be equal at work.”

That is not what Charles Dickens thought. His Mathew Bagnet, former soldier, basically deferred to his wife -- "the old girl" -- in all things. But never admitted it: "discipline must be maintained" he told his army pal Sgt. George in Bleak House.

And frankly I think that Chuck knew a lot more about the world than Good Little Girl Melinda Gates whose main claim to fame will always be that she married the richest man in the world. The old-fashioned way.