The French heist and feminization (10-22-2025--Hour2)

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 thepeteclendershow 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. I might be touching a bit of a third rail here, but I'm going to do it. I'm gonna lick my fingers first too, because it needs to be covered, it needs to be said. First. Let me start with the with the robbery. People keep calling this a heist at the French museum, the Louverray, I think is what it's called, And that's not a heist means there's no weapon involved. And according to the reports, there was actually a weapon involved, So that makes it a robbery. Okay. So according to the New York Times, the heist, the robbery at the Louver took eight minutes, okay, And it wasn't like some mission impossible kind of operation. Thieves broke into the Louver Sunday while tourists were there looking at the artwork, and they made off with jewelry said to be of incalculable worth. Here's how they did it again, according to the New York Times, at nine point thirty am, the thieves parked a truck under the windows of the Apollo Gallery. Okay, they then climbed up an electric ladder from the back of the truck. And there's a name for this thing. It's a French word. And I make it a point not to say too many French words in any in any podcast here or on the radio, because if you speak too much French, you get FCC finds and stuff. And I mean, I do speak French, but I don't want to say these things because there are a lot of these words are banned when you speak French on the radio. So anyway, it's a these these ladder, these electric ladders. It's like a lift basically. Okay, you've seen these things like to people use them for like window washing, right to put bring stuff up to a window or up to a building site like three four floors up, that kind of a deal. So, and they're pretty common in cities where you can't get like bulky items up a staircase, you know, especially in these old Europe types of cities. So they they park the truck under the window, they go up this electric ladder on the back of the truck, and they then go to the window and they they cut a hole in the glass window with a disc cutter that then sets off the security alarm. Okay, so you've got an alarm. You got a broken window up on the floor in the vicinity of these these family jewels of incalculable worth. And here from the New York Times. This is why I say this was a robbery, not a heist, because they cut through the glass, sets off the security alarm. They then threatened the guards with the disc cutter, which like that's a power tool. So they're standing there with this like a it's like a disk saw and like stay back, stay back, I guess I'll cut you. So I guess the guards are not armed at the museum. They have no way of taking down armed intruders. Okay, so then they just smash two display cases while the staff of the museum evacuate the museum. But why would you do that, because now you've created pandemonium. Now you've got people running for the exits, and now the thieves, the robbers can sort of blend in with the crowd. So the robbers grab a royal sapphire necklace, a royal emerald necklace, and something called a diadem. Don't know what that is, maybe a crown or something that was worn by Empress Eugenie again, I don't want to pronounce it in the French, that is the wife of Napoleon, the third Empress Eugenie. And then they mount, they rush out the door. They get onto a couple of high powered scooters that are waiting for them outside, and they scoot away. They drive off. That was the That was the whole plant. Take a ladder up to the second floor, a third floor window, cut a hole in the glass, threaten some guards, break some some glass enclosures, which, by the way, I read a different story yesterday about this where they had they had recently replaced the glass. Apparently the glass used to be like bulletproof and all this stuff, and they they changed out the glass on the displays. That's kind of a stupid thing to do, but anyway, they did that, and so that's how it all went down. Now, the museum security chief has been accused of putting the cultural heritage of France at risk following the theft of priceless jewelry. The security chief at the Louver is a person named Dominique Buffin. She has worked as the director of Public Reception and Surveillance, which is a European title. I've ever heard one public reception and surveillance. Welcome, Welcome. Now I'm going to monitor you. So she's been there since last year, so she's been on the job about a year. She previously worked in the police department and at France's Ministry of Culture. The accusation is that she was hired by the museum director, Lawrence Dick Cars or Desk Cars, who is a female. The name is Lawrence, that's a female, and that she was hired as part of a quote unquote feminization policy. That's the accusation. So this is sort of a a dei case, if you will, that this woman was hired because she's a woman. That was the I mean, she may have other qualifications, sure, right, she worked in the police department, she worked at the Ministry of Culture. But to put you in charge of the museum's security, they were looking for a woman, and the person who made that call is also a woman, And apparently this was something that everybody was celebrating at the time. Look at us, we have a feminization policy. We're getting more women to work in the museum. So now these two women are facing calls to resign after the theft of the Crown Jewels, the family jewels. Apparently, the hiring of Buffin was a matter of great pride for the museum and was hailed as an important moment in the history of gender equality. Now, however, people are calling this an intolerable humiliation, and it is a humiliation, David Strom says, it's not just one for France, but for DEI itself. The business argument for Dei has always been that diversity brings new perspectives and an increase in your value. Right, if it's a business, if it's a museum, whatever, that having a more diverse staff is going to be beneficial to the bottom line, Right, you will have more value. That claim has never been shown by the evidence, he says, and is completely destroyed by the number of woke disasters, of which this is just the most recent and spectacular. Okay, so what I keyed on here is the use of this term feminization policy a feminization policy, because just a couple of days ago, over at Compact Magazine compactmag dot com, a woman named Helen Andrews wrote a very lengthy essay that's not that lengthy, I mean you can get through it in about twenty minutes. And the title of this is called the Great Feminization. And for longtime listeners of the Rush Limbaugh program, you've already heard this term. Rush used to call it the chickifocation of news, remember, And that's what Helen Andrews is talking about, although she never uses that term. But we are engaged right now, much like with social media. But we are engaged right now in a social societal civilizational experiment the likes of which no other society has ever undertaken. Is it working? 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 Ashville is your connection. 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Call or text eight two eight, three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at Cabins Offashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. All right, So, Helen Andrews, Okay, first off, let me say I love women. Okay, this is not an attack on women. I'm reading a piece by a woman. Okay, so this is not meant in any way to attack women. My favorite wife is a woman. I married her. It's my only wife actually. So in twenty nineteen, Helen Andrews says I read an article about Larry Summers, remember that guy at Harvard, And she says it changed the way I look at the world. The author was writing under the pseudonym of J. Stone, and he argued that the day Larry Summers resigned as president of Harvard University marked a turning point in the culture. The entire woke era could be extrapolated from that moment from the details of how Somers was canceled. And here's the key. Most of all who did the canceling. It was women at Harvard. Now you remember Larry Summers had made a comment in what he thought was like a closed door meeting or whatever, and he was talking about how, you know under the underrepresentation of women in the hard sciences was partly due to different availability of aptitude at the high end, as well as taste differences between men and women. Right like men, men are intrigued by things and women are intrigued by people, essentially, and that this is sort of in eight in our biology, okay, and he got canceled for that. The essay argued that it wasn't just that women had canceled the president of Harvard. It was that they had canceled him in a very feminine way. They made emotional appeal rather than logical arguments. I know what you're gonna think. I can said that, but that's what this all is because what Summer said was actually supported by the science. And I don't mean fauci, this is what the science shows. And he said the thing that was true, and then he got canceled by women in a feminine way, using emotional appeals rather than logical arguments. So Helen Andrews goes on to say that because all cancelation or she says that this cancelation was feminine, because all cancelations are feminine. Cancel culture is simply what women do whenever there are enough of them in a given organization or field. See what I mean third rail stuff. That is the great feminization thesis, which the author of that piece later elaborated upon in a book, saying everything you think of as wokeness is simply an epiphenomenon. Which means a secondary phenomena sort of downstream of something else, which is demographic feminization. She says, the explanatory power of this simple thesis was incredible. It really did unlock the secrets of the era we are living in. Wokeness is not a new ideology, an outgrowth of Marxism, or a result of post Obama disillusionment. It is simply feminine patterns of behavior applied to institutions where women were few in number until recently. How did I not see it before? She says, Jordan Peterson has talked about this. He got into trouble also when he said it, which was you know, why and why do we allow women to wear makeup in the workplace? What? And he asks the question. He's not asserting anything, He's simply asking the question. And then of course he got all of this emotional reaction to it and the premise he was laying out from an evolutionary biological standpoint, You know why are you prettying yourself up to go to work? That is that has historically been in order to attract a mate, particularly in some of the some of the ways women wear makeup. Some of the makeup itself is designed to attract. Let me just say it that way, okay, And he said, like, we don't know what the long term ramifications are when you have co ed workspaces for an extended period of time, we don't know what those ramifications tend to be. At the societal level, but also at that organizational level. This is all brand new territory. You know. 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. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot Com. We started the hour talking about the the heist at the Louver Museum where they stole the family jewels, and eight oh three number says this he doesn't believe this story because I guess France hasn't had family jewels for many decades now, So that kind of that does that does track. Grumpy Major says, when you said the security immediately evacuated the museum, I figured that the security chief must have actually been ex military because it's always their first reaction to retreat. Oh, I get because it's France. Okay, So this was part of their hiring of this female security chief. It was celebrated at the time as part of a feminization policy, right to elevate, prioritize the hiring of women into key roles. Okay, And again, the idea behind this has always been, you know, diversity is our strength. We want a more diverse workforce or leadership, and so we're going to focus on you know, these these types of immutable characteristics, Well, what what would be the downside? And again this is not to say that you know, a workplace filled with only dudes is better or only women is better. It's just different. There are there are pros and cons to both of those types of scenarios. Okay, there are downsides you've got like, uh, you know, frat broke culture, locker room talk like you get. There are there are you know, toxic masculinity, actual toxic masculinity like you have. There are things that are downsides to having, you know, a workforce that is only one gender, right, there are downsides. There are upsides, but there are downsides, but we are never allowed, I guess, to examine whether or not there are downsides when the workforce is predominantly female. Are there any downsides? There are upsides, no doubt about it, But there are there are some downsides, and they manifest in the way that men and women behave when they hold sort of a majority block in an organization. For example, law schools became majority female in twenty sixteen. Law firm associates became majority female in twenty twenty three. Today, women are thirty three percent of the judges, and sixty three percent of the judges appointed by Biden women. The New York Times staff became majority female back in twenty eighteen, and today the female share is fifty five percent. Medical schools became majority female in twenty nineteen. Women became a majority of the college educated workforce nationwide about six years ago. Women became a majority of college instructors in twenty twenty three. Women are not yet the majority of the managers in America, but they might soon be. They're now forty six percent. What does all of this mean, Like, this is like this window going back to like within the last decade. This has also coincided with the rise of quote unquote woke and the cancel cancelation campaigns and such. And what her argument here is that woke and cancelation, which is part of that that you know, woke world, that that is a feminization issue, Like that is that's part and parcel. She says, everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine. Empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition. Again, wokeness prioritizes the feminine over the masculine, and her examples empathy overrationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition. The most relevant differences are not about individuals. So again I want to emphasize this, this is not about you personally. If you're a woman, I'm not talking about you personally. This is about group dynamics. It's about groups. Female group dynamics favor consensus and cooperation. That is not the same as a dude dynamic. Okay, and I'm speaking to you as a dude. It's not the same. The outcome in the in the female group dynamic consensus versus consensus and cooperation. The outcome of a discussion is less important than the fact that a discussion was held and everybody participated in it. I remember reading about this group dynamic in a little book from years ago called men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. And this is why, Like when Christy and I have conversations and we start getting frustrated because we're like talking past each other. If she's talking about like problem that she had in her day, sometimes I will ask her, are you looking for a solution or support? Because women derive more benefit from the discussion, feeling heard, having somebody take their side right, dudes want to fix. Dudes are like, oh, this is your problem, here's the fix. Oh, thank god I asked you about that. That's like the highest form of flattery you can give another dude is to ask him for his advice on a solution for something, and the guy's like, let me put my solution hat on and I will go about giving you a solution. The most important sex difference in group dynamics is attitude towards conflict. Okay, In short, this is not the case for every individual, but in a group dynamics setting, men wage conflict openly, women covertly undermine or ostracize their enemies. Those are group dynamics and there is an evolutionary biological re for it. 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. Going over this piece at a Compact magazine by Helen Andrews about group dynamics, the group dynamics that occur in an organization or an industry when men predominate or women predominate. And this may come as a shock to people who don't even know what a woman is, but men and women are different. We are different. We think about things in different ways. That's not to say that one is better or worse. It's just different, and that's a good thing. Dare I say it's diversity. She talks about when men are in a group dynamic, their attitude towards conflict is to do it out in the open, to wage conflict openly, while women tend to not all women hashtag not hashtag, not all men, but women tend to in a group dynamic setting will covertly undermine or ostracize. Right. We saw this in the documentary from I don't know what fifteen years ago called mean Girls. She goes on to say later that men tend to be better at compartmentalizing, and Wokeness was in many ways a society wide failure to compartmentalize. She gives an example, you know, your doctor may have political opinions that are different than yours, but like it's a professional duty to keep those opinions out of the examination room. There's no reason to talk about this stuff with you in the exam room. Right. But what happened as woke rose there was this you know, breaking down of every single affinity group and every barrier. Everything then had to be politicized. People just wanted to be able to go to their sewing circle, go to their hobby club or whatever. They don't want to talk about politics. But no, no, no, you will be made to care, right. She goes on to say one book that helped me put the pieces together was a book called Warriors and Warriors the Survival of the Sexes. It was written by a psychology professor named Joyce Beninson. I believe that's a female and she theorizes that men developed group dynamics that were optimized for war, while women developed group dynamics that were optimized for protecting their offspring. That sounds crazy. That actually, it sounds sounds pretty legit, Like that does make sense. These habits formed in the mists of prehistory explain why experimenters in a modern psychology lab. In a study that Beninson cited in her book, they observed that a group of men given a task will jockey for talking time. They will disagree loudly, and then cheerfully relay a solution to the experimenter. And by the way, I was at an HOA meeting last night, the landscape committee, and I got into an argument with a guy who was new to the committee, and we argued back and forth. But after we were done, it was just like, yeah, we're cool. That was it. But that was open conflict, and I could tell the two women at the table grew very, very uncomfortable, very uncomfortable with it. These habits again go back thousands of years. A group of women given the exact same task, they will quote politely inquire about one another's personal backgrounds, their relationships, a lot more eye contact, smiling, taking turns, and they will pay quote little attention to the task that the experimenter presented. So what did I just say about MENA from Mars? Women are from Venus. Right. Men define themselves by the hats they wear. I'm Pete, I'm a talk show host, right, I'm Joe, I'm a cop, I'm a firefighter, whatever like. That's like who we are. And when we are presented with a problem, we will go off to our caves. We will think about it, we'll try to figure out a solution. But it's a very solution focused kind of approach. It's like, Okay, here's the problem, I fix it. I'm done. Whereas when the women are trying to figure something out, usually they look, y'all know what the solution is too. It's not that you don't know the solution, it's just that that's not how you derive the satisfaction from the process. The process is like the talking through the things, and women tend to define themselves not by the hats they wear, but by their relationships. I'm a mom, I'm a grandma, right, like these are the things. These are just different and again not saying one is better or worse, just pointing out that they're different. And so when you get a lot of people of the same gender together, those group dynamics get amplified, right, She says. The point of war is to settle disputes between two tribes, but it works only if peace is restored after the dispute is settled. Men therefore developed methods for reconciling with opponents and learning to live in peace with people they were fighting yesterday. Females, even in primates, are slower to reckon stile than men are. That's because women's conflicts were traditionally within the tribe over scarce resources, to be resolved not by open conflict, but by covert competition with rivals with no clear terminus, no clear ending, because you're in the tribe. Again. This is from female psychology professor Joyce Benison in the book Warriors or Sorry Warriors and warriors. This is not some dude saying it 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.