My friend Casey Jordan would like to get feedback on this summary of an Internet pundit’s recent essay. (Here’s
that essay.) If you’re familiar with the essay, how good do you think the summary is? If you’re not familiar with the essay, Casey hopes that reading this summary is better than reading the original. In either case, what do you think? I’ll pass comments on to Casey.
Richard Hanania’s essay, distilled
Casey Jordan
Way way back in February of 2022, Richard Hanania (political ponderer? podcast provocateur?) wrote an essay that got some traction around the web. It explored some surprising ways gender functions in this, an era that claims to be gender-blind.
I find some of his observations fascinating, and wish they could be considered, discussed, and held up to the light by more folk - especially by people who’d be skeptical of the conclusions he draws, so they can give reasoned pushback.
Alas! Hanania’s prose style is, let’s say, a bit much. He’s needlessly acerbic; he picks fights even when it limits his reach. His essay is, for many people, almost literally unreadable.
Which is a shame: interesting ideas should be engaged (Hanania would probably say “attacked”) by all sides.
So, in the interest of getting more people to explore his ideas, I summarize them below, minus the punch. His original essay, I think, argues five big ideas. The fifth idea is mostly aimed at his in-group (conservatives), so I’ll leave it out of this.
My apologies for anything/everything this summary gets wrong.
1: We have a double standard
On the surface, our society claims to treat men and women equally. But in at least one important way, this is a facade: for very (very) good reasons, we treat aggression toward women as a much worse thing than aggression toward men.
Probably this is something we can all get behind. Probably this is something we all should get behind. But in the fast-and-furious world of political debate and social policy, this leads to an unexpected wrinkle:
When a man and a woman disagree in public, the man has to tread exceedingly carefully - or the audience will view him as the aggressor, and disregard his ideas.
Hanania cites a bunch of examples of this, but here, let’s consider just two situations:
Situation 1
You’re a man. You find yourself confronted, publicly, by another man. He’s screaming at you, cursing, and crying. What can you do?
If you escalate, you risk the situation spiraling out of control. You may come to blows. Others may intervene. If you de-escalate - say, by walking away - you risk losing face.
Both of these are bad, but, well, dem’s the breaks. At least they’re better than the other situation.
Situation 2
You’re a man. You find yourself confronted publicly by a woman, acting in a similar way. What can you do?
You certainly can’t escalate: even raising your voice is likely to be seen as an implicit threat of violence. You’ll turn onlookers against you. You can’t de-escalate, either - if you walk away, you’ll appear heartless, and turn onlookers against you. You lose the argument, regardless of how you react.
In sum
Just to repeat the obvious: it is for excellent reasons that our society treats aggression against women as much worse than aggression against men. However, this creates a no-win situation for any man who finds himself arguing against a woman who’s willing to employ a full suite of emotions.
Is Hanania saying that men and women can’t argue publicly? Not at all! He points out that people of any gender can debate with cool-headed logic and reason, and that the majority do. But, predictably, the outliers can have an outsized effect.
Is Hanania saying, as one person put it, that “it’s unfair women can scream, if men can’t slap”? Not at all!
Men who are outliers tend to express their full suite of emotions through physical violence. Our society has developed ways of dealing with this - for example, jails! Women who are outliers tend to express their full suite of emotions through screaming and crying. We haven’t yet developed a way of dealing with this.
(Keep reading for more on this.)
2: We’re in the darkest timeline
Given that women have been freed of the shackles that kept them out of the public sphere, there are two ways that the norms of public debate could work.
Norm A
We decide the goal of dialogue is to find what’s true and what works, even though it means that feelings will be hurt. Thus, we urge people to keep their emotions in check when debating the issues of the day.
Historically, this has been seen as a norm of men’s discourse.
Norm B
We decide the goal of dialogue is emotional and mental well-being, even though that means it’s harder to find out what’s true and what works. Thus, we support people when they let their feelings loose in debate.
Historically, this has been seen as a norm of women’s discourse.
(And historically, many people thought this was because men’s and women’s “natures” were different, through blood or genes or whatever. But we don’t need to accept any of that to understand that, culturally, these two norms were seen as gendered - and to remember that our society has held onto many old ideas.)
You might be imagining here that Hanania is one of those complaining that our society has shifted from Norm A to Norm B. You’d be wrong! Hanania thinks either of those situations would be better than the two-faced reality we actually live in: Norm C.
Norm C
We decide that men and women play by different rules. Men need to stick to Norm A: if a man expresses his feelings in a debate, he loses credibility. (This is actually true whether he expresses them in a stereotypically male way - by throwing a punch - or a stereotypically female way - by crying.) Women can, if they choose, take Norm B. And when arguing against a man, Norm B leads to victory.
3: We’re all hypocrites
Hanania argues that this makes hypocrites of the Left, Right, and Center. How?
The Left
People on the Left lean toward believing that gender differences stem from culture, not biology - and we should therefore deconstruct and dismantle them. (The gender differences - not people on the Left!)
However, they don’t treat men’s tears the same way as women’s tears. (Men’s tears are laughable, while women’s tears are allowable.) Hypocrites!
The Right
People on the Right lean towards believing that gender differences stem from biology, not culture - and we should respect and affirm them. (The gender differences - not people on the Right!)
However, they don’t actually believe that men and women should play by different sets of rules. Hypocrites!
The Center
Hanania saves his greatest vitriol for people in the Center, who cheer on studies that argue that gender differences are, in fact, biological, at least in a statistical way - and then ignore that, and commit to treating everyone as an individual. Hypocrites!
[Summarizer’s note: I’m not confident I’m putting it properly here.]
4: We need to choose, and (A) works better
Norm C is terrible - it systematically works against the participation of men in public discourse. Assuming one finds that unacceptable (!), we need to choose between Norm A and Norm B, and Hanania challenges anyone to argue against the fact that Norm A works better in public discourse.
Again, this doesn’t mean that stereotypically male norms are better. In fact, the excesses of these norms are obviously worse - when left unchecked, they lead to robbery, murder, and war! But the fact that these excesses are so obviously bad means that societies have spent millennia evolving ways to check them (think prisons, anti-bullying campaigns, international war crimes, and the general social stigmatization of violence).
During that time, women have been confined to the home, kept out of the public space. Female norms have only recently entered the public sphere - societies haven’t yet evolved ways to check these kinds of excesses.
Also, this doesn’t mean that male norms are better in all (or even most) contexts. Much of the time, we should adopt female norms, privileging mental well-being over the search for truth. (“Don’t be a jerk” is important life advice.)
To put it all together
Folk on the far Left, Hanania consoles, have long argued that Western institutions are sexist to the core - we all need to accept that they’re right. Public debate was built on stereotypically male norms, and it works better this way.
Folk in the Center, Hanania argues, have tried to hide this fact. We should drop the facade. We should be honest about how our society works, so we can make it work better.
In a public debate, it’s not okay to throw a punch to get one’s way. We should acknowledge that it’s just as unacceptable to cry.
Please comment on Twitter.
