The "Feminization" Discourse as Partisan Hackery

There is no evidence more masculine movements care more about truth

Helen Andrews’ piece in Compact “The Great Feminization” has been making the rounds. This is a quite popular topic, as she notes that her talk on the subject has become “one of the most viewed speeches in the history of the National Conservatism conference.” My second most read article of all time is the one on women’s tears and some of Andrews’ arguments on civil rights law reflect my own in The Origins of Woke. There’s been some mockery of her complaint that it’s illegal to run a business like a frat house but not like a kindergarten, but I generally agree that the market should decide what kind of environments people want to work in, and what makes sense from a business perspective.

That said, I’ve become disillusioned with the discourse around feminization, and the Andrews piece shows why. If you’re going to have a framework with broad explanatory power, you need to consider all the evidence that comes in, rather than simply engaging in partisan hackery. Conservatives are interested in attacking cancel culture, universities, and the media, but show no inclination to turn a critical eye towards anything they consider to be part of their own team. Andrews writes,

The problem is not that women are less talented than men or even that female modes of interaction are inferior in any objective sense. The problem is that female modes of interaction are not well suited to accomplishing the goals of many major institutions. You can have an academia that is majority female, but it will be (as majority-female departments in today’s universities already are) oriented toward other goals than open debate and the unfettered pursuit of truth. And if your academia doesn’t pursue truth, what good is it? If your journalists aren’t prickly individualists who don’t mind alienating people, what good are they? If a business loses its swashbuckling spirit and becomes a feminized, inward-focused bureaucracy, will it not stagnate?

So we have a theory here. More feminization → less concern for truth. Sounds plausible given the correlation between increasing female representation in journalism and academia, and the seeming decline of these industries, which I agree has happened. But there’s other evidence we can look at in order to test the theory. Half the political spectrum has completely rejected feminization, as can be seen in their support for Donald Trump, a walking repudiation of everything that the schoolmarm culture represents. Over 80% of Republican members of Congress are men, and Fox News famously treats women as eye candy. In 2024, the Trump coalition became even more male-coded, bringing in outspoken Silicon Valley billionaires and the bro podcast sphere. Did this masculinization of the movement lead to more concern with truth?

Andrews also complains about Title IX kangaroo courts and the Kavanaugh hearings. I agree and was on the side of conservatives in both of these cases. But then you have this, which is beyond parody for something written in late 2025.

The field that frightens me most is the law. All of us depend on a functioning legal system, and, to be blunt, the rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority female. The rule of law is not just about writing rules down. It means following them even when they yield an outcome that tug (sic) at your heartstrings or runs contrary to your gut sense of which party is more sympathetic.

Does Helen Andrews read the news? Or any non-right wing sources of information? To talk about the rule of law in 2025 and not mention Trump is like discussing the dangers of religiously inspired terrorism in 2002 and neglecting Islam. Trump’s open contempt for the rule of law is clear in everything from his attitude towards the limits of executive power on spending to demanding his enemies get prosecuted to going around murdering Venezuelans on the high seas without even the pretense of legislative authorization, when he’s not shipping them off to third world prisons without any due process.

The reason I know something about current events is because I read the “feminine” mainstream media, though you might miss a lot of this stuff if you rely on “masculine” sources of information like Tucker Carlson.

I would’ve probably nodded along to the Andrews piece if I read it four years ago. But a lot has changed since then, and being a rational, dare I say masculine, thinker means updating as new information comes in. Establishment institutions have gotten much better since the height of the Great Awokening, as their critics have been circling the drain. This has happened at the same time the right has become more masculine-coded, which has to be factored into any analysis about the supposed dangers of feminization.

“Masculine” sources of information good at upholding the rule of law

At this point, I would say it’s a mistake to think of a masculine-feminine spectrum that overlaps with a truth-seeking spectrum. In some ways, taking the more “feminine” approach is better for moving towards objective reality. Imagine some Bedouin watching two men debate a philosophical idea, and deciding that it is feminine for one scholar to accept the arguments of his opponent without trying to cut off his head for insulting his honor. To even sit down and talk about political issues using facts and reason probably seems unmanly from certain cultural perspectives. That’s why young boys who read books are often picked on as nerds, despite Andrews holding them up as paragons of masculinity. When Trump directly uses the power of the federal government to prosecute his critics, it may be a more masculine way of going after someone than appealing to trauma in a Title IX hearing, but neither represents a culture of truth seeking.

This is why I no longer favor talking about feminization as one of the main things wrong with Western culture. If you’re worried about objectivity, well-functioning institutions, and the rule of law, then those are the debates we should be having. In that case, you’ll hopefully be able to clearly see the problems with both sides of the political spectrum. You’ll be able to ask yourself questions like “does Donald Trump act within the confines of the rule of law?” instead of starting by asking “is Donald Trump subject to the process of feminization?” and then when the answer is no, deciding that he must be good on the rule of law. Of course, this isn’t even addressing the fact that there is a perspective from which you can classify Trump’s behavior as feminine, given his lack of concern with objective reality. But at that point, we’re just by definition calling everything that is truth-seeking masculine, while everything that is emotional or relies on subjectivity is feminine. There are obviously misogynistic undertones to this whole discourse. Better to rely less on this entire feminization framework as a way of judging political movements and just directly argue about the things we care about.