Women's Tears and the Public Square

As you know I believe with sociologist George Simmel that the public square was invented by men for men, and that, with women coming into the public square they are changing it to suit "a more feminine sensibility."

Now comes Richard Hanania with a piece "Women's Tears Win in the Marketplace of Ideas." He is saying that when men argue in the public square they can stand there are argue away forever -- although argument tends to end up as fisticuffs.

But if a man is arguing with a woman and she dissolves in tears, then she wins.

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.

Hanania proposes three available rules for male vs. female argument:

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.
   
   
3. 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.

But, of course, this means that women have the upper hand, because they can always switch to hyper-emotionalism when they are losing an argument.

Actually, I think that any capitulation to female rules is unworkable: you cannot have an effective public square on that basis.

Moreover, I don't know if you've noticed, but the option to be "exhausted" or to use hyper-emotionalism is only OK for lefty women. If you are a regime-approved activist, go ahead. But don't try that if you are a conservative, or a female supporter of a Canadian trucker. I don't think that Sarah Palin was ever allowed to be "exhausted." And I doubt if Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) gets to be all emotional with Chuck Schumer.

Actually women's rules cannot work in the public square, and the reason is obvious from my notion that men have a Culture of Insult -- which is the male one-on-one confrontation minus the actual resort to violence -- and women have a Culture of Complaint.

I have said that the way the women's Culture of Complaint works is for two women to be have coffee together and complaining about a third person.

But I realize that is incomplete. There is another instantiation of the women's Culture of Complaint. A woman may directly complain to her husband or to a man. And she does this because she knows that the man cannot win in that situation. If she gets angry, he cannot resort to violence, as he might with another man. If she gets emotional, he cannot resort to disdain.

The reason that the Culture of Complaint works for woman on woman is that the woman has the option that "she will never talk to that woman again." Whether it's the neighbor across the street or another officer on the US Navy ship. Remember the case of the US Navy destroyer colliding with a container ship back in 2017? The "officer of the deck" (OOD) and the "Tactical Action Officer" in charge of "monitoring the combat radar" were both women.

The OOD was named Sarah, and the Tactical Action Officer was named Natalie, and they weren’t speaking to each other!!!

Obviously a Navy cannot function when the women aren't talking to each other. But a neighborhood can.

The way that public institutions work -- have to work -- is that every day the people working there have to suck it in and work with the other people. Even if the other people suck. Especially if they suck.

For men, they have to stop short of violence. For women they have to stop short of "exhaustion" and "never talking to that person again."

Otherwise you don't have a public institution. You have a barroom brawl and you have Navy destroyers crashing into container ships. And that is not good.