In a recent post I talked about the sad state feminism in the public consciousness. In that post I merely sought to establish that much of what passes for ‘feminism’ these days isn’t a serious attempt to restructure society in a more fair fashion but merely emotional feelings of sympathy and identification with women. This was something of a joke without a punchline since I didn’t really explain why this was bad. After all almost most people’s political views are more the result of emotions than rational judgment so who cares why people support these ‘feminist’ policies? Well partly you should care because resources distributed out of sympathy for women will at best be hit or miss in bringing about structural change¹. More importantly this attitude actually perpetuates gender stereotypes and reinforces gender roles.

It’s well known to parents that to raise a child correctly sometimes you must suppress your sympathy for your children and punish them or make them deal with the consequences of their actions. Often if we want children to learn to deal with a situation we have to suppress our instincts for sympathy and let them bear responsibility. While I don’t think the affect of female sympathy is quite like that of the over-indulgent parent it has many similar features. A good example is the issue of crying.

It’s a frequent (and likely valid) complaint that women’s tendency to cry more than men holds them back in the workplace. As primates you can’t avoid the fact that we will parse tears as a sign of weakness while swears or more aggressive seeming behavior send a more threatening message². However, speaking as a guy who cries more than most of my female friends I’m pretty sure that our upbringing has a massive effect on our inclination towards tears³. Indeed if we gave girls the same degree of shit we give boys for crying the crying gap would shrink radically if not disappear all together. Of course I do support being less hard on boys for crying but so long as we are inclined to help crying girls (crying guys on the street are ignored) the intrinsic harms of appearing vulnerable will encourage men to cry less⁴.

Crying is really a minor point in the larger picture. A much more worrying instance of this kind of sympathetic sexism is the way we we tend to treat men and women in arguments. Intellectual arguments are the lifeblood of many disciplines and they are especially important to understanding science and math where challenging your friend who got a different answer is often the best way to learn the material but unfortunately the women who come into my office hours for math are way less likely to be engaged in any sort of argument (by other female or male peers) than the guys. If we wanted a more equitable society we would be teaching girls to give as good as they got in an argument and suck it up if they lose like we do boys. However, instead of sending girls the message that they should hold their own like boys the people who feel strongly about women’s issues today are the most likely to attack any man who upsets a woman by arguing with her.

In short ‘feminism’ has decayed into the same kind of ‘respect for women’ mentality that the Victorians used to put women on a pedestal while keeping them from achieving equality. Intuitively we all understand that if people see someone as needing of protection or requiring special gentle treatment they will also see that person as weaker and less capable. Thus if we truly want girls to succeed in the rough and tumble intellectual world of mathematics and physics we have to stop treating them like they were fragile dolls requiring special protections. If we want true gender equality we need to go a lot further. We need to congratulate girls on being competitive and argumentative like we do with guys but we also need to discourage them from asking for help, breaking down or appearing helpless like we do with guys.

I would like to live in such a world (and to some extent do) but I think it’s quite clear that most of society, including most of those who would identify as feminists have no such desire. What most people desire is an updated version of the Victorian pedestal where we tell women they can do whatever they want and write off any statistical differences to unnamed discrimination while at the same time continuing to treat women as fragile objects to be protected. Most people would rather live in a society where ditching your boyfriend beside the road is less bad than ditching your girlfriend no matter who has the black belt. Most women would rather date men who can help them with their homework when they break down rather than men who sob when they can’t get a math problem. ‘Feminists’ especially seem to prefer a society where men get shit for making a girl cry in an argument and the girl receives sympathy even if the guy did nothing but frustrate her by being stridently correct. Ultimately the problem is that most people, ‘feminists’ included like gender roles a great deal but also want perfect (statistical) professional parity. However, you can’t just take gender roles on and off the way you do with hats. The stereotypes and attitudes people form as young children will follow them into the laboratory as well as the living room and bedroom. People need to make a choice about whether they want gender equality of not and if not stop pretending.