Women's Tears Win in the Marketplace of Ideas

Women's Tears Win in the Marketplace of Ideas

Interesting discussions to the disaster caused by the 19th...

"What makes these cases difficult is that male versus male argumentation just has completely different rules, norms, and expectations than male versus female. Going back to the Yale video , if one of the men acted like the more hysterical women, at some point he and Christakis would either have had to shake hands, walk away, or come to blows. This is basically what happened, before it even got to that point. 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.


While most women don’t go around cancelling people, it’s clear that many do value protecting feelings over free speech. Given these realities, I think we have a few options for how we treat public discourse. The first two are

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.

Instead of either of these options, I think we’ve stumbled upon a hybrid system, where

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.

Option (2) is what I think most people mean by the feminization of intellectual life, but Option (3) is actually worse, because it also introduces double standards we see everywhere in our culture.