The Gender Gap in Free Speech

A piece in Psychology Today has recently reported that men are more pro-free-speech than women (from Steve Sailer).

In a 2019 study, 59% of women said protecting free speech was less important than promoting an inclusive society, while 71% of men felt opposite.

But young men have the same attitude as adult women. And a study of online speech found that "women are more censorious than men."

Which all fits in with my "women in the public square" notion that women do not like the open-outcry culture of the public square, because open outcry is a guy thing. The culture of the community of women is one that creates an organic, subconscious pressure towards outward conformity and being outwardly "nice." It is appropriate for domestic society and neighborhoods, where the needs are for people to get on with each other, help each other, and keep the kids alive.

There is, in my view, a need in domestic society to avoid innovation and conflict, because the whole point is to have babies and keep the kids alive.

Or, to argue from the opposite position, in the marketplace the majority of innovations and creative endeavors end in failure. Which is fine in the marketplace as we have seen over the past 200 years of the Great Enrichment.

But, of course, innovation in making babies and raising children is personal. It is no good for me to make innovative changes in raising my children or growing my food, knowing that in the aggregate the innovations will result in a better, more prosperous society. Because if innovation hurts my kid, then that is final.

So that explains why women are more risk-averse than men, why women are more likely to be censorious cancelers in corporate world, why women are less likely to be involved in corporate startups.

It explains why women are more pro-mask in the current COVID dispensation, and more likely to follow the advice of experts. Women are coded for these things.

Whereas men are coded to take stupid risks, because "men are expendable."

My prediction is still that women are going to retreat from the public square and occupy positions and occupations with less risk and that reward conformity. That probably means that they will occupy most of the positions in government and corporate bureaucracy, because those positions are coded for following the established procedure and not deviating from approved norms.

But young men have a problem. If, as the "experts agree," young men are low on free speech approval, it means that they are ill-equipped for male adult life. For one thing, women are better coded for "go along to get along" lives and occupations, so if men choose low-risk occupations they are likely to find themselves outperformed and out-judged by the women around them.

It is interesting to note from another piece, that East Germany was perhaps the most censorious society in history.

If someone looked like he might challenge the Communist Party’s legitimacy or control, the Stasi systematically destroyed his life. They used blackmail, social shame, threats, and torture. Careers, reputations, relationships, and lives were exploded to destabilize and delegitimize a critic. 

The trouble is that this sort of top-down ideological control, while benefiting the ruling class in the short term, does enormous damage to the body politic -- including the ruling class -- in the long term. 

If there is one thing we should have learned from the history of the West in the last several hundred years it is that today's rebel is tomorrow's CEO, and that a healthy society permits a vigorous circulation among the elite -- the political elite, the cultural elite, the economic elite.

But that is exactly what women have seldom done, and the current political and cultural elite are trying to prevent. Because they are the good guys, the virtuous guys, and people that don't agree with them are evil and ought to be suppressed.

There is no doubt it will all end in tears, because life, the universe, and everything is a constant renewal that is achieved by the death of the old. The truth of the women's culture of conformity is that you need to keep things on hold to get the kids out of the nest. The truth of the men's culture of competition is that you need to innovate so the next generation will have a world to live in.

How do you balance the two? I have no idea, except to honor women's need for a quiet place and men's need to shake things up.