'Suicidal empathy' and gender group dynamics (10-22-2025--Hour3)

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. Last hour, I started going over some of the highlights of this pretty lengthy piece by Helen Andrews at Compactmagazine. Compactmag dot com headlined the Great Feminization, and she's talking about essentially evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, and how men and women behave differently in group settings. And when you have an organization that becomes, you know, dominated by men, there were certain behaviors and practices that occur that would not occur in an organization that is dominated by women, and vice versa. And again I gotta say standard disclaimer. I'm not saying one of these is better than the other. They are just different. And so what we are seeing though, you know, from a historical perspective, since women entered the workforce, they became you know, they rose to fifty percent of workforce population in particular industries and then took over the majority position. And a lot of these industries have become female dominated in the last ten years. And what Helen Andrews is arguing is that woke is feminization, that's that the tactics are applicable. What we consider to be woke is sort of this manifestation of a feminization of organizations or institutions. And she talks about different industries in this piece, but she says the one that frightens her the most is the law, which I will give you the stat again, because she went through these industries here earlier. In the law schools became majority female in twenty sixteen, law firm associates became majority female in twenty twenty three, and in the law she said, 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 tugs at your heartstrings or runs contrary to your gut sense of which party is more sympathetic. Justice is blind, right, She says, a feminized legal system might actually resemble more of those Title nine courts that we saw colleges set up where you could not face your accuser, where the burden of proof was not on the accuser, right, but on the defendant. The sort of kangaroo college courts that were developed that stacked the deck against the accused, which were mostly dudes, right, lives ruined, kicked out of the colleges and stuff based on mere accusations. That kind of thing. That's not the rule of law, as she says, it's more than just writing rules down. It means sometimes you may have a sympathetic person in front of you, but if they violated the law, then you hold them to account under the rule of law. But if you have an overly feminized organization that is now interpreting the laws and meeting out the justice, does that kind of go in a different direction. How about empathy? Right, everybody likes to talk about empathy. I don't know when this sort of happened, but it used to just be sympathy. People could just sympathize with somebody else, you know, my deepest sympathy, so I sympathize with you. But then somewhere along the lines, within the last decade, I feel like the word empathy started being thrown all around. And this now ties into a piece or a book rather that doctor Gad Sad is writing right now called suicidal Empathy. And if you don't know who doctor said is, and that's Saad Gad said. He is a public intellectual and considered to be a trailblazer in applying evolutionary psychology to consumer behavior. Okay, he's got a podcast, I believe, and he wrote the He wrote a book called The Parasitic Mind, How infectious ideas are killing common sense, And he's working on this new one. I think it may almost be out at this point, Suicidal Empathy, and it examines the descent to madness by highlighting the inability to implement optimal decisions when our emotional system is tricked into a hyperactive form of empathy, and then that empathy is deployed on the wrong targets. How does this manifest itself? He says, this is how the rights of a minuscule minority of trans women, in other words, men biological men, right, But their rights trample the rights of actual women in athletic competitions. It's how illegal immigrants end up receiving greater usaid than American veterans or American victims of natural disasters. Evolution has endowed our emotional and cognitive systems with the capacity to deploy our resources strategically. This is why parents are willing to jump in front of a bus to save their kids, but they're not as likely to sacrifice their lives to save a random child across the globe. It does not make them callous, it's Darwinian right. They do cost benefit trade offs rooted in universal features of human nature. When empathy gets elevated to this highest virtue, then people will literally sacrifice their own lives, their own civilizations, in honor and service to that virtue. And I saw doctor said Uh interviewed by Coleman Hughes the other day, and he he gave the analogy, was it seppuku or seppuku? Where Uh like the this is part of like the Japanese culture where the warriors would rather kill themselves than to than to bring shame or dishonor so they would they would kill themselves because honor was elevated to the highest virtue in the society, and rather then run a foul of that highest virtue, it would be it would be better to not be alive. Now, swap out honor with empathy. And if you can't empathize with you know, these these poor people that are coming from this other country, they just want a better life and maybe, okay, find some of them want to actually like destroy the country and blow up a bunch of Jews and stuff. How dare you not have empathy? You see this happening in the UK right now, that's what you're seeing. That's suicidal empathy. That's my opinion. You're seeing suicidal empathy on display. They have lost the ability to prioritize self preservation at the expense of empathy, right they elevate that to the highest virtue. And I would submit that that is not something that a more masculine society would elevate. I think that is evidence of a feminized society. And that's what Helen Andrews is getting at in her piece at Compact magazine. And then she cites an example. And I have cited this example since it happened. I said this at the time. It was happening that it radicalized me, and it was the bread have an all confirmation as I covered that, I watched all of it. I watched all of it. I covered all of it. I interviewed people throughout the hearings. We played audio, we took phone calls and stuff, had conversations with men and women alike about it. And there was one particular conversation I had that sort of opened my eyes to this very dynamic. All right, if you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place, so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check Dot Ground, dot News slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. All right, So I said that Brett Kavanaugh accusations, his confirmation hearings. Right, This was a radicalizing moment for me personally in my life because I was watching this unfold and the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is supposed to be weighing evidence and that sort of stuff, they just blew through all of these guardrails, and I understood the political motivations for doing so. There was a conversation I had with there was a It was a friend of my aunts. They had come to town. I was working in Nashville at the time. They had come to town for weekend vacation or whatever, and so I met them out for dinner. And this was right during the Kavanaugh hearings and such. And her friend was on the left and in talking with her about the you know, the actual evidence and the accusations and all of that stuff, and I was just I just kept asking her questions, and at some point she finally admitted that none of the evidence really mattered. She just empathized with the accuser, Christine blazey Ford, doctor Christine blaze Ford. She just empathized with her. Why because I looked at Brett Kavanaugh, and I see the guy in my past that didn't do to me what he's accused of doing to blaze Ford, but he made me feel uncomfortable. And so she's like projecting onto Kavanaugh all of these grievances that she has with some other guy, and she projects it onto him and empathizes with the quote. Victim in the case puts herself in blazy Ford's position, and so then becomes a staunch defender. And at that point, none of the logic, none of the arguments, none of the evidence mattered, none of it. She would not be moved. That's when things started becoming clear for me. And that's why when I was reading this piece and I came across this example, I was like, totally get it. She says, these two approaches to the law clashed vividly in the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. The masculine position was that if Christine blazy Ford cannot provide any concrete evidence that she and Kavanaugh were ever in the same room together, well, then her accusations of rape cannot be allowed to ruin his life. That was my position. She has no actual evidence that she ever even met him. The feminine position was that her self evident emotional response was itself a kind of credibility, and that the Senate Committee must respect that. And that's the difference. And again, it's just difference. Neither one is automatically better or worse, good or bad. However, when applied to certain situations or institutions, environments, or businesses, there can be some downsides. The great feminization, she calls it is truly unprecedented. Other civilizations have given women the vote, granted them property rights, or let them inherit the thrones of empires, But no civilization in human history has ever experimented with letting women control so many vital institutions of our society, from political parties to universities to our largest businesses. Even where women do not hold the top spots women set the tone in these organizations such that a male CEO has to operate within the limits set by HR human resources. I have never worked at a place that had a male HR director never. Why is that? I mean, just statistically speaking, you would think, right that a dude would somehow or another be in HR somewhere. I've never had one. We assume, she says, that these institutions will continue to function under these completely new circumstances. But what are the grounds for that assumption? See, this is a very good question that she's asking. Once again, this is something that no civilization has ever experimented with before, has seen before, has realized before. And again I'm not saying we shouldn't do it. I'm just saying, just like everything else, there are trade offs, right. The problem, she says, 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 a lot of major institutions. And if you just step back and think about it logically for a minute, if these major institutions were created a long time ago who created them dudes? Right, and so they in their little boys club would have constructed this institution to operate in a way that they felt comfortable with, that they understood. And now you are reworking the way these institutions operate. And is that always good? Is it always for the betterment of the institution. Maybe an institution is bettered, right, maybe it is improved, but maybe it isn't right. Maybe maybe the downside is such that it destroys the institution. Can we even can we even ask the question? Can we even examine that? That's what Helen Andrews is asking, And I think it's perfectly appropriate to do so. Right, if we're living through and through an experiment, we need to be assessing the impacts of the experiment. Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Mint Hill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. 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Helen Andrews Compact Magazine calling this the Great feminization and it is unprecedented, and so we don't know what the end result will be, what the institution's group dynamics will will look like, how they'll operate in that sort of thing. There there will be downsides. Okay, there will be downsides. She says, there are many people who think that the Great Feminization is a naturally occurring phenomenon. Women were finally given a chance to compete with men, and it turned out they were just better. Right, That's why there are so many women in newsrooms, running political parties, managing corporations. Right, that's what I've heard, And like, I am all for the competition, right, let the best candidate win. Right. However, Helen Andrews argues they're wrong. Feminization is not an organic result of women out competing men in all of these different positions. She calls it an artificial result of social engineering. And if we take our thumb off the scale, it'll collapse within a generation. The most obvious thumb on the scale is anti discrimination law. It is illegal to employ too few women at your company. If women are underrepresented, especially in your higher management, well that's a lawsuit waiting to happen. As a result, employers give women jobs and promotions they would otherwise not have gotten, simply in order to keep their numbers up. Again, I'm not saying every single woman in a position of leadership didn't earn it. I'm not saying that. However, there are people that have been elevated in order to avoid lawsuits. This is a rational thing for businesses to do, because the consequences for failing to do so can be dire. She then lists a whole bunch of companies that got sued and had to shell out millions and millions of dollars. So, right, anti discrimination law and the threat of lawsuits requires that every workplace be feminized to some degree. There were a bunch of Silicon Valley companies that got hit with lawsuits alleging frat culture or a toxic bro culture, right, And like, I understand why that would not be a comfortable place to work in. I don't think I would actually like to work in some toxic bro culture. It's toxic, right, It's right there in the description. I don't want to work in a toxic place. Right. So, women can essentially sue their bosses for running a workplace that feels like a fraternity house. But what of the alternative? Can men sue when their workplace feels like a Montessori kindergarten? No, they cannot, And so what is the rational natural response? Well, employers err on the side of making the office, as she calls it, softer. So, if women are thriving more in the modern workspace, is that really because they are out competing men? Or is it because the rules have been changed to favor them? And I recognize the danger in simply asking the question. If this piece were written by a guy, I would feel way less comfortable doing it today on the show. But the fact that a woman wrote this, I feel more comfortable giving you the information because it removes me from the equation. Right. This is what she is saying. This is what she is arguing. She's positing these questions. Once institutions reach a fifty to fifty split between the genders, she says, they then tend to blow right past gender parody and they become more and more female. So there's never a balancing that occurs. It never stays at a fifty to fifty. It always becomes just more and more and more and more women dominated. She says. That does not look like women outperforming men. It looks like women driving men away by imposing feminine norms on previously male institutions. Right, just like if a woman were to go to work at a place and it was a toxic bro culture. She would not want to hang around there, right, she wouldn't want to stay because it's a toxic bro culture. Well, what's the inverse? Is there even? Is there even a label for the opposite a toxic sis culture? No, sis is already taken with the trans thing. So uh yeah, Like, is there a toxic female culture? No, of course, not no such thing. Why would there be no such thing as that? Again, I refer you to the documentary Mean girls, there is such a thing. Right, People are people, male or female. They are people, and you put him in a group dynamic setting, and they're jockeying for power or influence or friendship or prestige or whatever. Right they're going to behave in certain ways in that group dynamic. And this idea that we can identify when a male culture behaves badly, but we can't identify when a female dominated culture behaves badly too, Like, that's well, that seems illogical. What man wants to work in a field where his traits are not welcome? What self respecting male graduate student would pursue a career in academia when his peers will ostracize him for stating any disagreements too bluntly or espousing a controversial opinion. Didn't they fire that guy what was his name, James Devour or de Moour whatever from what was it Google or something who was pointing out in a slack chat with colleagues about, you know, why aren't there more women coding and in it and programming and stuff. And he was like going through and he's talking about all of the differences between men and women, men being interested in things and women being interested in people, and like there may be biological differences. And he got fired for it. Is that something a masculine workplace would do or is that something a more feminine workplace would do? She says, our window to do something about the great feminization is closing. There are leading indicators and lagging indicators of feminization, and we are currently at the in between stage when law schools are a majority female but the federal bench is still majority male. In a few decades, the gender shift will have reached its natural conclusion. Many people think wokeness is over, slain by the vibe shift, but if wokeness is the result of demographic feminization, then it will ever be over as long as the demographics remain unchanged. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get family and friends together for a big old reunion. Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter. 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Helen Andrews breaks down in her essay The Great Feminization. This explains the why the why Woke became so strong. It also warns us that our gains in fighting woke may be temporary, because the why behind the what is still going strong again. Her thesis is that Woke has become so powerful because our institutions have become feminized, and women have different values than men. They prioritize different things than men. They behave in a group dynamic differently than men. I'm not saying better or worse. I'm saying different. They're different. The decline of universities corresponds nicely with this thesis. Higher education is now a feminine pursuit. It's openly hostile to males and masculinity. Corporate America has feminized, and if you think of the recent corporate disasters at Disney, bud Light, and Cracker Barrel, a consistent theme develops, which is men are allowed as long as they are emasculated. Not all men fit the masculine stereotype, just as not all women fit the feminine stereotype. But as classes, as groups, the truth is general after all, right, so generally speaking, right, Because the truth is general, men and women think fundamentally differently and act very differently in groups. Generally speaking, men work collaboratively in a different way than women, and women's aggression is more likely to manifest as exclusion from an in group cancelation. Right. That's why Andrews is arguing that cancelation is a feminine tactic, this cancelation And again, like I mentioned this earlier from her piece, and I've heard women wonder at like, well, wait a minute, weren't you guys just like you guys were just fighting. You two dudes just like beat each other up the other day and now you're best friends. How does that happen? And guys don't really understand it. They're like, I don't know, He's all right, I guess, you know, like that's and what she says. From an evolutionary standpoint, you know, men were engaging in war, but the end of the war was predicated on you and me being able to live side by side. If we both survived the war, obviously we live side by side, and then there's peace and so. And that's more of an external thing, tribe versus tribe, whereas the conflicts that women, from an evolutionary standpoint would encounter were internal to the tribe, and so there was no sort of off ramp there because you're always in the tribe and you don't want to be, you know, extradited from the tribe. That's death right. So you have to work in more covert ways. You have to shun people, and you engage in just different kinds of conflict resolution than guys do. Men and women are different, not saying one is better, just pointing this out. I feel like I've said that enough times. Rodney says on the text line, Pete, you keep making your point by trying to explain and disclaimer. Oh sorry, he says, you keep making your point when you're explaining and giving that disclaimer to the conversation. See Rodney got it. The mere fact that I have to keep saying that thing is because I am worried about it being misinterpreted by generally speaking women, because I understand that men and women hear things. I've been doing this a long time, and things I've said in the past, and I will get an explosion of emails from women who think they heard me say something or they interpreted it a certain way. And the guys are like, I understood what you were saying, because again, men and women are different. I'm not saying one's better. You need both of them, right. Helen Andrews says, as a woman myself, I'm grateful for the opportunities I have had to pursue a career in writing and editing. Thankfully. I don't think solving the feminization problem requires us to shut any doors in women's faces. We simply have to restore fair rules. Right now, we have a nominally meritocratic system in which it is illegal for women to lose. Let's make hiring based on merit in substance and not just name, and we will see how it shakes out. Make it legal to have a masculine office culture again. Remove the HR Lady's veto power. I think people will be surprised to discover how much of our current feminization is attributable to institutional changes like the advent of HR, which we're brought about by legal challenges, and which legal challenges can reverse. I don't know if that will ever happen. I really don't. It's an interesting idea, it's an interesting thought experiment. I don't think that will ever happen unless maybe legal challenges tear it down. But yeah, toxic frat bro culture not allowable, toxic feminine culture totally allowable. That's where we are, all right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.