Did you ever read "The Cider House Rules" by John Irving. In case you haven't it is set in a time in AmeriKa that indeed religion played a stronger role in our society.
And illegal abortions were rampant.
Women need to determine what they do with their bodies, not men, and particularly stupid white men.
Deal with it. Just deal with it.
29
Brooks has become insufferable as self-appointed seer and healer for all that ails us.
He references "Trump , Clinton and Holder"in the great false equivalence of our time ; it's become chant of all the enlightened,, compassionate conservative Republicans like brooks.
Trump is sui generis. If you can't acknowledge that Trump is a cancer unleashed and promoted by the Republican Party, that that he is cruel and dangerous and ignorant unlike any other president in our history, then you lack the critical thinking and wisdom to offer anything other than another disingenuous, vacuous column.
38
Another feel good puff piece to pump up the deflated tires of failed feminism. From Times articles opining the end of men before Hillary’s defeat to scorch earth gender warfare it’s been a sad crash to earth for the so-called superior gender:
4
“All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love.”
What religion is this?! Nothing has been more oppressive to women’s rights than organized religions. Islam and Christianity are the still the worst offenders - female genital mutilation, laws permitting rape in a marriage, anti-gay agendas, etc.
22
This is either feckless naiveté or naked duplicity. I’m willing to give Brooks the benefit of the doubt. Of course empathy is an important human trait – one that many argue is inherent. But David – newsflash! – conservatives don’t have any empathy. Apparently it’s been scrubbed from their DNA. You are preaching to the choir, to the “bleeding heart” liberals.
Conservatism, by definition, privileges the individual. Democracy in your own words is “faith in the capacities of individual citizens…faith in the idea that people know best how to run their own lives.” It’s me, me, me – my rights, my liberty, my guns. The collective? Not so much.
A calculated conservative movement, begun in the 1970s, created a master-plan, devoid of collective empathy, to pack the Supreme Court with judges sympathetic to the cult of individualism, to Christianity and its creed of individual salvation, and to unfettered market wealth for individuals creating vast inequality. Empathy? That was destroyed in a solipsistic, Hobbesian black-hole.
And BTW – mouthing religious platitudes ( the “gospel of mercy, charity and love”) does not equal empathy. “Hate your next door neighbor, but don’t forget to say grace.”
Man-up David. (Is that too “chest-thumping”?) Grab the bull by the horns. “Compassionate conservatism” is nothing but marketing rhetoric dreamed up by some Bush speech-writer. The audience that needs empathy training is your conservative cohort. That’s who you should be talking to.
34
Thanks for mansplaining feminism for us.
44
Credit due, Mr Brooks. Good column.
5
Take this empathy thing to Nigeria, Pakistan, Brazil, Russia. See how far you get.
3
We have the most misogynistic, ignorant, faux macho president in our history.
When will Brooks stop being such a coward and address the real issue.
22
This assertion of empathy is not surprising from Mr. Brooks, The Conservative with the Most Feelings.
So much feelings its odd Republicans still invite him to meetings.
It is somewhat undone by his opening gambit, a not-very-empathetic lumping of 'academic feminists", whoever they are, into a single obnoxious pile.
Just as Mr. Brooks makes a living yelling "No! Really! I'm the GOOD Republican!", there are good and bad academic feminists. Or academic feminists you like and those you don't.
Unsurprisingly just as Mr. Brooks manages to find the good in less-academic feminists, there is good to be found, if rarely, among Republicans. Probably.
None of which is the point. Our culture fetishizes pretend manliness, the manliness of "Paladin" and "Shane", of the stoic Navy Seal, the decisive Man of Business.
No room for feelings there.
Just stubborn, goal-controlled transactionalism. And lots of money. And boys clubs where you can go and have a Jack and a cigar with the guys and say rude things about people who aren't like you.
Or even better, people who are like you but let their feelings or their conscience prevent them from acting like men.
Even among feminists, even girl ones, those who act like Ayn Rand could only dream about still get the best rewards.
There's your problem.
That and the refusal to understand that all anyone wants is to be treated fairly, with respect, with support and access to opportunities, and meaningful help when the need arises. Even men.
15
Seriously, feminism is simply about choosing one’s own path; and not being told (no matter how kindly) that you can’t do that or you have to do this simply because you are a girl. David Brooks thinks this is bad - that it means “vague oppressor stories about the patriarchy” and a “strange unwillingness to admit inherited gender differences”. Boo hoo. Men just hate being held responsible for their behavior; for the schools and professions that were barred against women; for the resentment and hostility women faced when they breached those barriers; for the widespread male assumption that men are entitled to have sex and women are obligated to provide sex. Apparently Mr. Brooks thinks when religion (supposedly) played a “larger role in national life” these things were somehow mitigated. I don’t know what time period he is referring to. Official prayer in schools coincided with girls being denied sports teams and recreational opportunities; with female teachers having to quit or be fired if they became (gasp!) pregnant; with pregnant teenage girls kicked out of school in disgrace but teenage fathers allowed to stay in school so they wouldn’t have their lives ruined for “one mistake”. Mr. Brooks apparently believes in some mythical time when people tried to live the gospel of mercy, charity, and love. What a fiction. If women had for religion to support them, they would still be waiting for hell to freeze over, because that’s the soonest it would have happened.
22
This column can be summed up thusly: "Tut, tut, my little dears. Don't worry your pretty little heads about feminism. Let Uncle Dave explain it all to you."
29
Did you, by any chance, let any women read this before you gave it to your editor?
34
We have a crisis of connection all right, but the crisis is that men can't "see" their advantages and ignore the grossest forms of discrimination against women. You don't even have to get beyond the pay gap on this. Or if they can see, they really don't want to do anything about it. If you think this is just some kind of academic parlor game, its because you aren't a single mom paying for childcare. I am. So was my grandmother, but then they just told you the reason for not getting a raise is you didn't "head a household" as widow with two children. So zero cheers for your patronizing and damning with faint praise the movement that seeks to fix these injustices.
15
The first sentence of your column made me hesitate to read on. Academic or not patriarchy is oppressive.
A. Nash
11
"If nobody has ever loved you, do you think you could still be a good father?”
This sentence is worth the price of admission.
Thank you.
1
I tend to think that non-misogynistic gay men, especially the ones I have known, bridge the gap between being "feeling" people and being "thinking" people, and they do a much better job of it than some dusty old patriarchal religion. Also, let us not forget Native American religions before the Europeans came. And other ancient polytheistic religions in which goddesses played a large part when it came to creation, nature, nurture, farming, hunting and the law. When a man knows that if he catches a goddess bathing, he will be turned into a deer and taken down by his own hounds, he tends to have a lot more respect for the "fairer sex."
5
I enjoy reading David Brooks columns - they always make me think - except this one made me think of Kanye West.
4
Patronizing and full of false equivalences.
First try living for a day as a woman.
17
Where's the false equivalence?...wait for it... wait for it...
"..Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder lining up to present their pseudo-masculine, chest-thumping displays to show how much they hate the other side."
Ah, there it is.
7
Two Cheers? Are you sure you can spare them, David?
Usually people give three cheers.
But I'll forgive your reticence in allowing women as much as "three cheers" because in this society, where men like Kavanaugh become Supreme Court judges while male-dominated narratives get philosophical about how much a woman should be open to and able to put up with.
11
I think David Brooks knows even less about feminism than Maureen Dowd does! Brooks, who graduated from the University of Chicago in the early 1980s, probably read Aristophanes' play, "Lysistrata." That may be the sum total of his familiarity with contemporary feminism. Mr. Brooks: academia has changed, and feminists have published loads of important scholarship over the past few decades! Suppose I were to pop off and write about feminism, or Zionism, or deconstructionism, or some other -ism with which I am only somewhat familiar. I would make wild, unsubstantiated generalizations. And I would, deservedly, be criticized. Mr. Brooks would do well to confine himself to topics with which he is familiar, and stop lecturing about what he imagines to be the shortcomings of feminism.
20
“If nobody has ever loved you, do you think you could still be a good father?”
My heart broke when I read this. Enough of the mansplaining rants; can't people just read what this article actually says?
5
Someone said that David Brooks doesn't read the comments to his articles. He should. He has so many brilliant commenters.
12
Brooks writes his columns where almost everyone groans from the first paragraph, like his recent ones defending Kavanaugh being seated on the SCOTUS.
Then he has his ones like this, where it starts out interesting. Until he devolves into his usual religious balderash like this: "All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love. But now we have an ethos of detachment and competition all the way down."
Really? Survivable? For the African-Americans who couldn't vote but were counted as 3/5ths as a person to bolster the representation of Southern states in the House and EC? For the native Americans, those who weren't slaughtered before they were banished to reservations, unseen and forgotten? For women, who couldn't vote until our country was almost a century and a half old? Who couldn't open their own bank accounts or have their own credit cards until several decades ago?
Mercy, charity and love emanating from Brooks' pen reads like Dorothy crying lions, tigers and bears- oh my. Many of those Catholic priests were dispensing things besides mercy, charity, and love. Oh, I'm not just talking semen, I'm talking religious leaders like Father Coughlin. Or Franklin Graham?
9
Wait a second, Brooks states that he disagrees with feminism a lot because of "vague oppressor stories about the patriarchy" and then in the very next paragraph admits that social thought has been dominated by men for thousands of years?
I think he just set a land-speed record for cognitive dissonance.
11
David Brooks seems to think that today's churches are all about: "All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love. But now we have an ethos of detachment and competition all the way down."
Listen to all of the right wing Bibleers praising Trump at those rallies and from the pulpit on Sundays. From the gospel of converting our demonstrably fragile democracy into a theocracy to the gospel of wealth accumulation, I would appreciate hearing from the Christian segment of our country about how Jesus preached a gospel of compassion and empathy, caring from the needy, the sick, the elderly and the homeless — which he did.
But today's religiosity seems focused on genuflecting to the gospel of Ayn Rand where empathy and compassion have been sacrificed on the alter of greed while the self-absorbed among us (the Republican faithful) pretend they are for "freedom." For whose freedom are they fighting? Wall Street's freedom to corrupt? Big Energy's freedom to pollute the air and water and soil? Big Pharma's freedom to gouge the sick?
The Republican party is a group in lockstep to create an autocracy from the shredded remains of the Constitution, which will be used to line a personal litter box for the GOP sycophants to greed and absolute power.
Ladies, you must vote in record-setting numbers for the Democrats to at least take over the House. GET OUT AND VOTE. HELP OTHERS GET TO THE POLLS. IT IS NOW OR NEVER.
5
Rough start with "vague oppressor stories about the patriarchy". Maybe Brooks has some serious bones to pick with academic feminism but this was very dismissive.
I did like the points about empathy and partisanship fatigue. Why couldn’t he just stick with those and not start with such a dismissive attitude that he KNOWS will turn off a lot of people? He speaks of empathy but lacks it when he dismisses things out of hand.
And yet - a lot of the commenters here are pretty much proving Brooks' point about "chest-thumping displays to show how much they hate the other side”.
Empathy is lacking all around.
1
The future is brighter for women because they are not asking, they are demanding change. The levers of power they now seek, elected office at every level, certain to force change.
At age 74 I see Emma Gonzalez unafraid to challenge with an open mind and heart. She is not alone. Lessons from her and others easy to see and accept as real and valid even by old white men.
4
Brooks: I think you are 10000% on point with this column.
Women are raised to say "I don't know" and men to say "I don't care" and neither is emotionally authentic.
I will also say that I think, like you, that we do ourselves a disservice when we minimize the impact of our difference in biology. For example, as young mother, the biological drive to be with my young children was the most primal thing I have ever felt. I really think it's counterintuitive to deny that the act of giving birth has the potential to be emotionally transformative----but also, we have to acknowledge that transformation is not permanent and nothing is universal. Just like there are many hues of grays, there are all sorts of female and male experiences that do not conform to expected norms.
One thing I like about socialist countries is they allow mothers to stay home with their kids for the first year. That long maternity and paternity leave really allows for whichever parents needs it to answer a call that may have some biological origins. We ignore that here---and women are then faced with leaving the workplace or misery....and men, for whatever the reasons, don't seem to feel it the same way. (When was the last time you heard about a dad weeping in the bathroom because they left their baby?) (Ever tried pumping breaks milk in a conference room? Not that fun of an experience).
One thing kids get right---they are more open to different emotional experiences and less likely to put people in boxes.
5
For an elderly boomer who now cedes the future to the young I am amazed that the arguments are the same, the fierce partisanships are the same as they were back when I was a young guy, absolutely ashamed of being male mainly because of the Vietnam War. Feminism was far more intense in those days because it was new and startling to see the woman's global point of view and her interpretations of history or herstory. And it was decided at that time, by the generation, to "let women go and do her thing." Women did gain respect and credibility at that time mainly because of the great shame brought on by the Vietnam War, a collective shame. Why the process of this growth and development for women stopped, apparently, I don't know. Perhaps the sons and daughters of the baby-boomers were far more profoundly effected by the gender changes that took place in and out of families. I don't know. All I know is that my representative in Congress was a woman for a long time before Hillary put her in the state department. My two senators are female. I've had three female bosses over the years. Known women of great wealth, women of no means at all. Women are all delightfully different. Men have to learn to respect women and listen to them and yes, even teach them, when women believe it's a man's world, that they have options in life. Don't underestimate, however, the resentments and terrors that young men who feel they've been shunted aside can do. I view that as a social problem.
7
David Brooks' mention of feminism and religion have generated many comments.
However, the crux of this article for me was the heartbreaking question of a wounded teen, "If nobody has ever loved you, do you think you could be a good father?". David, the masterful writer, landed a real gut punch that left the tears streaming.
Indeed, humility, empathy, and the old King James version of charity or Buber's "I-Thou" would go a long way in restoring our connectedness. When the restraints of enforced gender roles are released, both women and men will come from a place of power and agency to extend compassion.
How intriguing it is to imagine our government, our churches, our economic systems, academia, the press as coming from a long history of matriarchy. Would the "exhausted middle" exist? I like to think, not so much.
2
"All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love."....If you have to have religion in order to express mercy, charity, and love, then you need to spend more time off by yourself thinking.
5
While I agree with acknowledging the weaknesses of your opponents positions, the opening could have used a softer touch. Not everyone is a professional debater. Brooks comes across as more than a little bit tone deaf.
That said, I was making a similar reference to "The Breakfast Club" just the other day. I can't say I remember the particular quote mentioned here. However, cinematically, I agree the film is all about empathy.
Hughes portrays the sort of white, everywhere America, stereotypes for which he is famous. The film isn't really about the stereotypes though. It's about learning how to feel the pain of someone who you thought was entirely different from yourself. The stereotypes are just tools.
The closest parallel I can think of offhand is Sidney Lumet's "12 Angry Men." The jurors are all ludicrously unrealistic but they all convey a certain truth about socioeconomic identity. Characters are acting out their identities and world views in every scene of the script.
This is true for "The Breakfast Club" as well. Although, Hughes advances the emotional content to a 1980s sensibility while focusing on split-gender teens instead of male class issues. Both films are decidedly white regardless.
I'll give credit to Brooks for that much. His cinematic reference is correct. However, the male stereotypes in "The Breakfast Club" show their feelings more than a little bit. Contrary to Brooks' argument, the film is actually gender neutral on emotion and empathy.
David Brooks has mastered the art of the backhanded compliment. The first indicator is the mandatory disclaimer for Brooks as a conservative columnist to clarify just what he means when by writing "Two Cheers for Feminism." His portrayal of "academic feminism" makes it clear that Brooks is not well-versed with the many divergent strains of a complex discipline. After making it clear that he rejects these vague stories about patriarchy, he launches into a vague story about women and the expression of emotion. Brooks completes this ode to his brand of feminism by contrasting it with Hillary Clinton's "display," described as "pseudo-masculine [and] chest-thumping." It is a perfect example of why women suppress certain emotions. To react with anger, frustration, and vigor means you are artificially (and improperly) adopting masculine emotions. In contrast, the expression of traditionally nurturing emotions like empathy and compassion makes you worthy of praise.
6
More mansplaining here from David Brooks. The problem isn't academic feminism, which I think has done a good job studying, quantifying, and explaining how women and girls are harmed by patriarchy, but that too many men still don't see women as being people worthy of the same respect, dignity, and rights as men. To me, feminism isn't about putting men down, nor about making women superior but it is the radical notion that women are human beings too.
But seriously, David Brooks, lack of religion is to blame for this? You can't really be serious! Organized religion has marginalized and minimized women for hundreds of years. Women still are not full participants in the Catholic Church (they cannot be priests, bishops, cardinals); religion has required women to submit and obey their husbands, silencing them and keeping them as third-class citizens. In some Baptist and other evangelical Protestant churches, women are not permitted to give sermons or otherwise lead those parishes. Remember that women were burned at the stake and hanged as witches for daring to be other than meek, silent, obedient wives and daughters. Anne Hutchinson was banished for daring to challenge the male Puritan hierarchy and for discussing religion without male leadership at home. Look at how the Catholic Church as ignored sexual abuse and rape victims, how they treated women who got pregnant out of wedlock, and how they treated children born outside marriage. Religion is the problem.
127
@marybeth
Mr. Brooks seems to hold them in a type of esteem that is typically reserved for the family pet. As long as they remain cute and cuddly and remind us of the sort of unconditional love that Fido bestows upon us, he champions them. If they sort of get out of that lane, he's not so certain about them.
5
@MaryBeth Wonderful response to DBrooks, who keeps trying to convince us things would be better in America if more people were more religious. What he totally fails to weigh is, how many of us are truly spiritual, without the framework christianity or islam or judaism bestows? You can believe in something bigger than yourself, in goodness or lack thereof and I suspect many do. Religion is very strong in the South and with Trump's followers; they obsess over gayness and abortion and scream "LOCK HER UP!" over an 84-year old woman. Funny, they care not about his incessant lying or the serial cheating or locking up babies or bogus tax cuts. Frankly, the holier than thous don't send ANY clear message that I find good, wholesome or appealing.
@marybeth And yet...it still goes on. then the men were never punished for their misdeeds.
2
"with the strange unwillingness to admit inherited-gender differences..."
Human brains like most of human anatomy and physiology are not binary. They are a spectrum and I propose that my so-called female brain is more similar to some men's brains than some men's brains are to one another.
That is why we have those NASA women who could out-perform most men on the so-called male traits and some men who have more empathy and desire for connection than many women.
David Brooks, while saying some "nice" things about women, retains that binary view and should just shut up.
7
I encourage the Times to provide a sabbatical for Mr. Brooks, so that he might talk to some women and learn something about women’s lives from the point of view of women (if he insists on writing about this topic).
12
There comes a time when the discrepancy between actions and words cannot be tolerated. These are some of those times.
The Republican party, and in particular it's conservative wing has been waging war on women for a long time - Voting against the Lily Ledbetter act both before and after the Supreme Court ruling in which conservative justices ruled against her. Voting against the ACA and the idea that sick people should have to pay more for the healthcare they receive, presumably including women who use more healthcare than men. Waging war on Planned Parenthood. Voting against the family and medical leave act, supporting legislation restricting abortion, voting for Clarence Thomas and Bret Kavanaugh with the excuse that the other side has gone "too far".
Week after week after week, David attempts to show a kinder, gentler face of Conservatives by sounding reasonable and thoughtful and proposing ways of helping people that find a receptive audience among liberal NYTimes readers, but are completely out of touch with the modern Republican ideology. He gets away with it because he is not in gov't, and not casting votes, but when pressed, he invariably refuses to condemn those who continue to further the hard right agenda, and now, Trump's agenda.
If Thomas Jefferson had been alive during the Civil War, and had chosen to fight with the South instead of the North, like Robert E. Lee, he would have been supporting slavery, no matter what his personal opinions. Brooks is an enabler.
13
"All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love"
Seriously David? You write eloquently about repression and then cite one of the long standing catalysts thereof as part of the solution. What institution other than organized religion has been nearly as responsible for the ancient gender roles we continue to embrace? Nice try.
10
Clearly, we are a society which is increasingly unable to communicate on a personal level - empathetically, if you will.
Though Mr. Brooks awkwardly fumbles toward making his point (which, given the third-rail topic, is somewhat understandable), he eventually gets around to pointing out that feminism, in his view, has THE antidote to a systemic breakdown of civility.
And yet, for many readers (whom I would wager didn't read the article in its entirety), Mr. Brooks' gender and race (and perhaps political and religious background) unequivocally disqualified him from even participating in the conversation. (If you can call it that.) And in the process, validated several of his points!
What a better world it would be if those, with more direct and relevant experience, could correct those who need more understanding with kindness instead of malice. The latter almost always begets in kind.
Mr. Brooks, I concede that this is not your best work; but the way in which it abraded the sensibilities of the average NYT reader perhaps made it worthwhile after all.
2
Well I guess we should be greatful for small mercies that David Brooks should finally wake up and smell the roses.
Much like your awakening re Barack Obama, you eventually get there, after most of the rest of us...
"usually alpha men ' Although that you are still using this canard of an out dated and thoroughly discredited myth shows you are still not really paying attention.
Too late and too slow and that is a problem.
When its needed you are not there, its no use letting us know after the event that you have just noticed.
1
David, this is the time, on this topic, for you to be quiet and listen. Your attack on "academic" feminism ( a term invented by you ) is frankly ignorant and paternalistic. You're saying that feminist scholars in the academy are not rigorous using "vague stories about the patriarchy" and shouldn't be taken seriously because they're only faculty lounge militants. As a Trustee of the University of Chicago please check out their excellent Center For The Study of Gender and Sexuality. You'll be a better man !
136
@Rob I think I love you!
4
Mr. Brooks is welcome to his opinion about what works within the feminist movement, but ultimately we need to change who is welcomed at the theoretical table of power in our society. The Kavanaugh hearings, for one, were about so much more than Kavanaugh. They were about women changing the conversation. Once again, the male dominated Senate protected their privilege. At some point, women and minorities will rise up and vote out the old white male Baby Boomers and Gen Xers that are destroying the country.
8
I almost clicked to the next article after reading Brooks' lead of "I disagree a lot with academic feminism," and thinking "well, who doesn't?" That's kind of like saying "I disagree a lot with academic philosophy, literature, economics, history and social science." These fields as well as feminism, or women's studies, or gender studies, or whatever Brooks is referring to, are vast areas of inquiry.
Still, ending up with a focus on empathy, mercy, charity and love, is worth two cheers for David Brooks. Although we all know those are kind of girly attributes, which might be one way of saying what many feminist studies have been fleshing out for at least a half a century: sex is more or less innate, gender is performative. And those performances form and deform the soul. The "partisan charade" continues on along with shame-based reality tv and other competitive domination nastiness. But there's money to made there, even in religious programming. Keep at it David.
3
A column about feminism written by a white, conservative, Republican male. I'd take it with a nanometer of salt.
103
@Larry Dipple I did not read this as a column about feminism. (Hint: the thesis is in the subheading, for all you speed readers).
1
@Larry Dipple Are you a male? Should we then categorically discount your comments here, too?
So much for empathy.
Or maybe you're just scared.
It is laughable that Brooks is mansplaining feminism for us.
Religion has played a role in National life like Pope Francis praising Cardinal Wuerl as a model Cardinal. Cardinal Wuerl presided over many years of child rape.
6
Is it just me, or is David Brooks getting increasingly goofy?
8
No David. Just no.
2
David Brooks famously doesn’t read any of these comments, so he never improves. I am addressing my comments to the Opinion Page editors today: for your own sake and ours, please make him read them. See if that makes his columns somewhat less ignorant, dishonest and embarrassing. Then act accordingly.
11
Every one of the claims of "The Crisis of Connection" about men's culture is belied by what everyone of us saw on our TV screens during Hurricane Florence and now Hurricane Michael.
What an unbiased eye sees is men (and only men) risking their own lives to rescue perfect strangers. (Women take part solely to fulfill their professional duties.)
Traditional men's role is to protect women, children, and other men.
But do they get any credit from victim feminists? Not in the New York Times comments.
2
@VCR How do you know that "Women take part solely to fulfill their professional duties"?
Did you ever consider that emergency services might be subject to the same kind of sexist stratification that affects other aspects of our society? Or that men, in 'taking the reins' to help people in their neighborhood, might be denying their women to participate on the grounds that it is dangerous work, 'not fit' for women?
So how do you KNOW? You insist that helping is part of a 'traditional male role,' without even examining that assumption.
8
@Six Minutes Remaining
Quite right, emergency services are very much, if not more, subject to sexist stratification. Plenty of qualified, intelligent and capable women are overlooked and rejected by police and fire departments here in the liberal East Bay.
1
I am so glad Mr. Brooks has found at least some use for feminists! The title of this article has nothing to do with feminism, and everything to do with Mr. Brooks's highly prejudiced mindset. It's been argued and proven that Republicans lack empathy. Why would Mr. Brooks be so surprised that as more and more blatant lies are spread across the country by the GOP, the partisan schism may never be breached? The right is incapable of understanding the plight of women, minorities, immigrants (documented and undocumented alike) because they lack the basic empathy. Sure, the society at large can be blamed for this, but ultimately the blame lies in their own social circle where this very fundamental human emotion is taught. The debacle of the Kavanaugh hearings is a prime example of this. Feminists, for decades now, have fought against this very oppression from every corner of the society. But is it any wonder then, that the very republicans who lack empathy are not able to see forest for trees? Mr. Brooks bemoans the academic feminism ( I have no clue where he gets those misplaced ideas from), but isn't it true that the very academic feminism has brought about the social feminism? Mr. Brooks, advice from a feminist: listen, and I mean truly listen to the women's voices. Stop putting them into your limited schemata, and let those voices be. Maybe you will never mansplain feminism to feminists again!
8
Perhaps your disagreements with "academic feminism" (which are really opinions shared by lots of folks outside of academia you've never met or heard) is based on some empathy deficit in your wheelhouse. To wit:
It is absurd to say they they deny "inherited-gender differences." They realize they can have babies and you can't etc. But they fight against using gender differences to discriminate against opportunities. Mostly when those feminists have said, "But we can do this" they have. Fly jet fighters, be astronauts, lead fortune 500 companies, be math geniuses, fight fires, even be leaders of religious congregations -done most all.
This helps to understand your frequent complaints about their "militancy." If you and people who had the same body parts as you had been shut out of opportunities for several lifetimes you'd probably be militant too. The reality is you are not connecting with their pain; their losses have been over the top profound. Perhaps you have a wide empathy gap. You understand all of this intellectually, but repeatedly just can't seem to rock the baby.
10
"All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love."
Tell that to thousands, yes thousands of Catholic boys and girls over many decades who have been sexually abused by priests, bishops and cardinals.
9
The "woke" comments here explain perfectly why Democrats will continue to lose in every race that matters. Brooks is making a humane, rational, and nuanced argument. Yes, he is a man. Who cares? And yet, commenters accuse him of "mansplaining." They dither about his (*gasp*) speaking of religion in a somewhat positive way. In summary, the moral purity demanded on the left these days makes it utterly unpalatable for all but the most-woke among us to engage in debate. What is left for the 50% or so of Americans who remain caring, reasonable people is to walk away discouraged, and hope it doesn't get any worse. At least those on the right are united in their irrational, hateful rage.
3
@purpledog
Well, I agree that Republicans have long ditched moral purity as an organizing principle. However, I don't see that as a good reason for voting for them.
4
You equate Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton with DJT? It's always the same story with you. Everybody is equally bad.
Guess what David? Nothing could be farther from the truth. Dress it up however you like and Republicans and their corporate masters seem to like to frame their arguments with women these days....see:Rachel Mitchell or any corporate ad defending the status quo using "housewives" to tell their sad tale. The Republican party looks like Mitch McConnell and David Brooks. It's white and it's male.
Using women to frame your argument or sell your argument is actually pretty disgusting given what Kavanaugh is likely to do to women in this country.
11
The last sentences/thought of this column have almost nothing to do with the opening premise. DB's pontificating so often obscures what ever points he thinks he is trying to make.
5
Too bad that the author disagrees with "academic feminists" as they did - and are still doing - a pretty good job of researching patriarchy and the ways it defined and assigned gender roles for centuries the consequences of which we still have to live and deal with. Patriarchy is a proven fact not fiction.
Teaching young people about the influence of religion for eg on cementing the inferior role of women in the society for centuries and bringing them to understand that it is a part of how patriarchy works, is an important accomplishment of the academic feminism.
The lack of empathy is not an assignement for feminists only but rather a society as a whole. The role of social media in exacerbiting it should be certainly looked into.
5
Read Desperately Seeking Mary, a polemical memoir using Carol Gilligan's research to aide men in choosing love and finding the feminine to be sacred.
1
"All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love." I was just re-reading To Kill a Mockingbird with my seventh grade son and was pulled up short when, in a book about racism, Scout casually mentions how both her church and Calpurnia's church lecture regularly about the dangers women pose to men: worse than gambling. In an otherwise thoughtful piece, I have to remind you, Mr. Brooks, that religious communities are not utopias.
12
Mr. Brooks, you often set up binary categories you apply to American society whose generalizations are too sweeping for me even as you present some depth in your categorizations. My immediate reaction is to list all the ways in which they don't work. I know it's because you and many of us long for more straightforward and simpler ways to understand all the changes that have happened over the past 50 years, but it rarely holds up.
There are too many exceptions to what you describe and there are too many environmental factors. People are just biologically determined. I know that I would have turned out very differently if my father had become a conservative church minister instead of having a religious crisis and no longer believing in Christianity and becoming a Foreign Service Officer. I would have turned out differently if my mother had had her own career, which was impossible as a diplomat's wife in the 1960s-1980s, instead of being a stay-at-home mom and an unpaid Foreign Service Officer's assistant, as the State Department expected wives to be. Hundreds of U.S. diplomats' daughters my age will both have similarities to and differences from me.
If anything, girls often, but not all, dumb themselves down when they hit adolescence so boys won't be intimidated by them and it takes them years to be self-confident and assertive about their intelligence and judgment, all in the face of implicit and explicit messages that they shouldn't be. But that's a generalization, too.
3
While sounding more deliberative and thoughtful, your comments on women and feminism are simply a more tempered version of Trump's -- for those with a thick skin, you can revisit some of those Trump gems at the link below.
"All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life..." Wow! Worldwide, hugely disparate religions have played a bigger role in the suppression of woman than any other cultural factor that I can think of. Real close to home, just look at the evangelicals. If religion was a "natural outcome" and ever "useful" it lost that usefulness long ago.
Now for some deep thoughts on women from that guy in the White House:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/03/08/21-times-donal...
6
Men (not all) still don't get it. It's not all about sexually charged comments or actions toward women. Women are treated differently than men are in all levels of society and business. I am the lone female manager in the company. I am responsible for bringing millions of dollars into the company. Yet in a recent staff meeting with the company director (YUGE alpha male), when I said I wanted to bring my mostly female staff into a conversation that affected them, he said, "No, I don't want to bring emotion into it." When the head of engineering said he wanted to bring his mostly male staff in, that was ok. A few years ago I calmly questioned a point that a male manager made in a meeting and when he didn't answer, I persisted. A few hours later, my (male) manager called me into his office to tell me I was being "confrontational" and to knock it off. Yet when a male peer rants and pounds the table in a meeting, he's showing "managerial courage." These are just two examples in a long career under male-domination. I don't know how to even begin to change this mindset. I guess we need to write off the middle-aged chauvanists and work on enlightening the millenials and younger.
9
My first thought about minor children is NO SOCIAL MEDIA. Even the people running social media giants don't let their kids have accounts. Kids never need a phone until they are involved in after-school activities that require being picked up late.
There are phones that are ONLY a phone with no internet access. I'd prefer teens being kidded about not having internet phones over having to run an attempted suicide to the ER.
2
Of all places the great historical anti-feminist Catholic Church, will lead the way (to save itself) by appointing woman cardinals and
giving them top spots in church governance in the Vatican.
3
The loss of empathy in our society is shaping our politics and society. Trump and the Republican party have empathy for no one but the wealthy and powerful and are admired for it. The poor are contemptible and desperate refugees more so.
5
This is what it looks like when someone assumes his rightful position in the tunnel of patriarchy and tells us all how things work through the lens at the end of that tunnel. I would also differentiate between the “church” and faith, one of those having been proven destructive over millennia and the other being a source of strength and, frankly, an antidote to and respite from the tunnel for me.
5
Good god that last paragraph is one of the most heartbreaking things I have ever read. It speaks to the need to be a caregiver as much as our need to be cared for.
I consider myself a feminist and owe so much to feminists before me, but a crucial mistake of the feminist movements of the 20th century was in largely insisting on meeting men on their turf rather than also arguing for the importance and power inherent in homemaking, caregiving, and other traditionally feminine responsibilities. Traditionally "female" professions - nurses, librarians, teachers - also continue to suffer from being undervalued, much less being a stay-at-home caregiver.
I am hopeful that my kids' generation will laugh incredulously at our tired insistence on gender determining much at all about who you can be.
5
Any decent culture needs to facilitate the dance of men and women in ways that celebrate difference and respect, as well as grace and desire. As new music arrives, and new steps emerge, things are often awkward; desire, however, ensures that the dance continues in spite of it all.
I'm all for empathy and its practice. But I think Mr. Brooks is being a bit unfair towards "traditional" male roles, the roles of "warrior and trader," as Mr. Brooks puts it. The simple point, to which I am sure almost everyone agrees, is that the intimacy and trust for which Mr. Brooks seeks, is most possible in an environment of personal safety. The key is what is needed to create this environment of personal safety. I believe that is where our society has strayed; because we are mostly so physically safe, and mostly able to be fed, and mostly able to find shelter, we forget where safety actually originates. Perhaps because we are not in Syria, we forget that the use of physical force can disrupt personal safety (often that is the point of its use). Perhaps because we are mostly very well fed, we forget that the lack of food creates distrust. Perhaps because we are mostly very well sheltered, we forget that the lack of shelter creates mistrust. Or, maybe trust is only created in a foxhole, and all of this fuss is to search for the right foxhole needed for us to show empathy to one another.
ALMOST right.
If you had replaced "empathy" for "compassion", I'd completely agree.
We need to show greater compassion for others, not empathy.
Empathy is what you extend you extend to your close friends and family, not strangers. Empathy overrides reason, Paul Bloom's primary concern in this area.
Indeed, it is too much empathy, and therefore not enough reason and compassion, that drives our identity politics.
So great column! Except, you should have said "compassion".
1
A very moving story of the boy holding the baby.
I hope he finds people to love and who love him back.
4
This is just Brooks’ doing his party duty, post Kavanaugh hearing reassertion of white male dominance and privilege, to sooth any injured feelings amongst the ladies. Claiming to celebrate feminism, he first dismisses the feminism that seeks to level the playing field and allow girls and women to excel to the best of their abilities. He then redefines it to mean females are, and should ever be, all about emotions, the typical patriarchal stereotype. I’m sure this will play well with the Republican base, men and women, as it relieves them of any need to confront that deepest of fears in the right wing mind, change. I only wish his daughter-wife had enough self respect to cringe at her father-husband’s shamelessly reactionary column.
11
Empty words. As always, Brooks talk a good game, but somehow always backs away when it counts. He felt it was perfectly reasonable for our groper-in-chief to get away with nominating a judge who denied the possibility that he might have acted like an Animal House frat boy while drunk - despite the abundant evidence, and his own admission, that he and his friends were very much admirers of that culture in high school.
The fact that Kavanaugh very possibly engages in the objectification of women in determining who clerks for him - that he likes a "certain look" in his clerks was never even brought up.
Brooks entire party embodies the alpha male culture - never explain, never apologize, never allow the emotional pleas of constituents get in the way of decision making. All of David's erudition has not led him to abandon his party - over their war against Planned Parenthood, the ACA, subsidized birth control. He never calls them out, never denounces the leadership or called on Republicans to buck it and vote with the Democrats.
I read that Brooks doesn't read the comments. So I think the best way to send him a message is to stop commenting on his pieces entirely. Wouldn't it be great if suddenly he had fewer than 100 commenters? What better way to show how irrelevant his analyses actually are?
4
The whole manly man thing worked when there were nomadic tribes and the males did the hunting and warring while the females did everything else. Ridding us of the seemingly biological imperative that men are strong and women are weak is a work in progress. Our societies need collaboration as well as competition. The systems of care that Mr. Brooks mentions makes civilization possible.
Instead of teaching children to be cliches, what if we teach them to be human? There's enough artistry, empathy, fierceness, curiosity and ambition in all of us that would serve us as well or better without the unnecessary veneer of socially (un)acceptable role playing.
2
"DTrump, HClinton & Eric Holder lining up to present their pseudo-masculine, chest-thumping displays to show how much they hate the other side."
A mischaracterization. Zero-sum game gender politics is only incidental. This is about the radical Left highjacking #MeToo to cynically re-engineer it as a weapon of inquisition, control & destruction. Run-of-mill radical Left #BanMen misandry morphs into Stalinist mob rule & career-ending assassination of even *liberal* men who simply show insufficient disdain for the accused.
Eric Holder, turning Michelle Obama's quote on its head to incite the mob: 'When They Go Low, We Kick Them'
Camille Paglia:
"1920s-30s is my favorite period in feminism, because these women admired what men had done. There was no male bashing as became systemic to 2nd-wave feminism. It’s an absolute poison that has spread worldwide. A feminism based on denigrating men—trivializing what men have done, defining men as oppressors & tyrants through history…This is an element of 2nd-wave feminism that…is an extrapolation of neuroticism on the part of these fanatics who have been attracted to this movement….Human beings…need a religious perspective, a cosmic perspective, & getting rid of the orthodox religions…has simply led to the new religion of political correctness…It’s the same kind of fanaticism.…the 2nd-wave feminists—it’s like the Spanish Inquisition…Any form of dissent, even w/in feminism, is treated as heresy & they actually try to destroy you."
6
"For our own shortsighted reasons - protection, safety, greed, ignorance - we have perfected a dangerously disconnected and dehumanizing set of discourses and practices. This profoundly important book suggests that our innate human determination to bridge differences and live in vulnerable, loving relationships is the antidote to rising fear and anxiety and the best chance we have to solve the wicked problems before us."
—Lyn Mikel Brown, author of Powered By Girl: A Field Guide for Supporting Youth Activists..
1
Welcome to reality David. So many have been here for so long before you, but it is nice that you finally found your way here. Stick around for awhile.
2
One cheer, no, no cheers for this silliness. When you lump Hillary Clinton with Trump in their "chest-thumping," you show your bizarre hatred for the ACTUAL women who strive. The Catholic Church is as misogynist as you. You might want to do some more reading, or even better, speak to some more real, actual, women.
5
Only two cheers? Women get two cheers while men get.....three?? Is your.... sexism showing?
4
Nice article. Get rid of the first paragraph.
2
mansplaining feminism...
6
Once again Brooks writes a column that sounds as if he was still living in 1955. So sadly anachronistic and wasteful of the Times’ space.
5
Another NYT writer I will not be looking at again. What a disappointment. Pretending to support women and feminist ideals is just as insulting as ignoring them completely.
4
Your ignorance about what you term “academic feminism” is quite breathtaking . Were you in my class, that first paragraph alone would earn you an F for its utter poverty of evidence, its unsupported assertions, and its strong implication that you had done none of the assigned reading.
9
Mr. Brooks is right. What gets lost in what he calls "academic feminism" is the fact that all of us are being asked to sacrifice a vital part of ourselves in order to fill the role that we perceive society expects. I know there must be many millions of men of my generation who have hated the fact that they couldn't fit the stereotype. Believe me, as a young boy and man this can be excruciating. What's going on between men and women is akin to what is going on politically: everyone has chosen a side and rejects the possibility that the truth is in the middle. I watched my single parent mother struggle with the inequities she faced in the workplace every day. I am perfectly capable of empathizing with the frustrations women face every day. If things are going to get better all of us who want change have to work together, and stop demonizing one another. Men per se are not the enemy. The enemy is stereotypical expectations about gender roles. Maybe men invented these expectations, but we don't have to like them.
45
@Rod Snyder
I agree with you and would like to add that all of my friends who are women are feminists and they are married to men. We, as feminists, can differentiate between men and patriarchy. Certainly the patriarchy exists within women as well - as in my mother complained about "women drivers" and my father never once put women down like that. The patriarchy is the problem. It breathes down our necks and gives more power to masculine tendencies. Feminine qualities need equal value - in men and women. And feminists just want equality that's all. Maybe some feminists are angry at the men and women who deeply encourage the patriarchy because we feel very strongly that this imbalance is not healthy for the world and it is so frustrating that others can not see that.
3
@Rod Snyder
"Men per se are not the enemy. The enemy is stereotypical expectations about gender roles."
I think you leave out power, Rod. Power disincentivizes the powerful from peeling back all the layers of stereotypes.
A powerful current-day gender stereotype, getting full and enthusiastic use from powerful men these days, is that "feminists" treat "men" as "the enemy."
3
I am sorry but you lost me at "vague oppressor stories about the patriarchy" -- it makes the historical realities about women and the experience of inequality sound "made up". If you have ever been treated as "less than" because of the skin you are in -- you know there is nothing vague about it. And all the nice fluff about feelings being the "big thing" women have contributed was just out of touch with reality. I felt like I was reading something from the 1970s - just unsettling to know there is so much ignorance about the history and contributions of women. You may note that this very paper failed to publish the obituaries of notable women of the last century and is now trying to undo this wrong. Add that to your vague oppressor stories.
5
When one begins an essay extolling the virtues of empathy and connection with a direct dig at those with “vague oppressor stories about the patriarchy,” one may be missing one’sown point.
4
Perhaps religion, with its "gospel of mercy, charity and love," has failed to stem this tide because almost all organized religions have always been about power and male dominance. It is no coincidence that it is Our Father in heaven, and that there are almost no major female figures in the Bible.
5
@John Terrell
Well, there are major female characters in the Bible, but the only one who gets to play an active, traditionally male heroic role is Judith, in the Old Testament. The rest are assigned important but supporting roles - as mothers (Sarah; Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist; Mary the mother of Jesus); as supplicants (Ester); as penitents (Mary of Magdala); or as evil temptresses (Delilah, Jezebel).
1
Both David and Bret Stephens chafe at notion of white male privilege when in fact they are almost textbook examples of it.
5
vague? somehow I think it should be loud and clear that women/girls deal with sexual aggression and or assault by huge majorities. I am so happy for those that don't but find it's as rare as hen's teeth.
what I learned as a babysitter - Married men can't be trusted to not try and sneak up on you when you're alone with them - ie, no thanks Mr. Smith I do not (definitely!) want a ride home (alone with you).
what the lesson was and seems to still be is that males cannot be trusted to control their urges...
4
Good on many points, but as others note, the delusion that religions provided positive attributes? Ever? It created the machismo and brutality we are just now, post-60s, through secular humanism, addressing. It created too the misery and submission that women still adhere to.
Stop pandering to religion. Its the main root of most evil.
1
"All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love."
Really? Were all those religious types voting for "mercy, charity, and love" when they voted for Donald Trump?
5
This is a half-hearted endorsement of feminism, which agrees with my own feeling.
Yes, it is important for women to achieve a greater measure of equality in American society. But feminism will backfire if its adherents scuttle the Bill of Rights in order to achieve short term gains.
The Bill of Rights grew from a realization that trials could easily become politicized. This happened in Great Britain.
Thus for example, Henry VIII executed Thomas More on trumped up charges of treason because More maintained his allegiance to Catholicism, while his daughter Mary burned Thomas Cranmer at the stake because he represented protestantism. The London mob cheered both executions.
And therein lies the problem. Justice is not served by mob violence, whipped up by media coverage that favors one side when inflammatory charges are brought against a defendant.
The Kavanaugh hearings brought up inflammatory charges from 36 years ago. Memories have faded since then. Was there an encounter between Kavanaugh and Ford? Even that was not certain. But did the encounter constitute attempted rape? How can one determine? There were no witnesses except for the accused and accuser. Or more accurately, any potential third parties have no reliable recollection.
Some things are unknowable. The public must learn to live with ambiguity. And it is wrong to destroy a career because of allegations with insufficient evidence.
The Me Too movement represents a step backward.
@Jake Wagner
Its not the charges, its the culture that made thing inflammatory.
Ooh...sex!
The charges, inflammatory or no, also brought up more than a glimpse of the true Kavanaugh, of his bizarre sense of entitlement, of his inability to see or speak clearly and without bias when over-excited, of his consummate skill in reading and acting out a prepared script.
The fact the game was fixed, and he was rushed into that corrupt fraternity, in no way diminishes the value of the exercise, or the courage of the women who pushed it forward.
2
David Brooks, could you please... offer up come citations of those "vague oppressor stories about the patriarchy, with the strange unwillingness to admit inherited-gender differences and with the tone of faculty lounge militancy".
It's an awfully antagonistic way to preface an article about Empathy.
4
Not any fulsome analysis here about the 900 pound raging male gorilla in the room, a/k/a our misogynistic Fake President, the most divisive national “leader” in modern history. A boastful, unrepentant abuser of women whose everyday hyper-aggression and unrelenting alpha male persona serves as the worst possible example of someone for our young boys to emulate, Brooks commits journalistic malpractice in refusing to adequately explain how Trump has been personally responsible for seriously harming male-female relationships in America. A brief jab at a false equivalency between Clinton, Holder and Trump only makes this column’s deficiency worse.
5
NY Times editors: please stop having your male op-ed writers lecture your readers on feminism. Brooks' first sentence in this article is how much he disagrees with "academic feminism." Feminism isn't something to compartmentalize so that men can choose which versions of it they can handle. As a male in this very raw time, I know I need to listen to women and stop reacting. All men need to do this. Especially David Brooks.
7
@James Lester Thank goodness that the New York Times allows their op-ed writers the freedom to write about what they choose. If I wanted an editorial board that dictated what subjects op-ed writers could write about (based on sex, race, etc.), I'd read the Post.
2
David, your seem isolated from the hardware/lumber yard where, even if you are a known handball player or pool shooter and owner of a tractor, and you dassn't let on that you have published many books of poetry, even if awards were attained. A poet doesn't fly. Not with local pastors, Psalms aside. I remain as quiet as a woman about some things. I am fiercely a feminist but keep it to myself among the guys. Even with a big tractor I do all the maintenance on while sipping a cold one. I know the seminal weaknesses of my gender, play the game, but I vote otherwise in the secrecy of the booth. This November, will you vote Left? Just don't tell
anyone but your favorite lady.
1
@Poesy
Depending on where you live in the world, there is more room for poets and women's libbers and book writers. It's solemn and sad when people live their entire lives silent because they are afraid to be what they are. It doesn't have to be that way. Oppressors can be stopped - and as you say - the privacy of the voting booth is one good way.
One day I hope you find your loud.
2
LOL! As a fellow white man, I cringed when I saw your headline, "Two Cheers for Feminism!" because I knew that any white man that says anything about women these days is bound to be skewered somehow. The comments did not disappoint.
As a fellow human, though, they deeply disappoint. All of the political capital recently gained by feminists is being squandered as women attack even their obvious allies, instead of working together with a strategy to bring about equality. Pity.
32
@Steve M
Would you please define attack? All of the comments that I've read have been reasonable responses, and, okay, maybe a few have been a bit crabby. If people disagree with David on certain points in his article, kudos to David! He's opening discussion. He is brave enough to take this on. I admire that AND I am interested to read and try to understand the responses.
2
@KLC: I said skewered and you're going to do the same to me when I say that it's disappointing that the first response to his piece isn't "thanks for being there with us".
@Steve M Sorry Steve. All the political capital gained by feminists is not being squandered. It's being attacked as it always has been, but women have and will survive against all odds stacked against them. We don't need you to mansplain feminism to us. We need you and most other men on the planet to learn that the world is not privately owned by males.
4
I was not raised religious, and recognize all the messed up things organized religion has done. However, I wonder if Mr. Brooks point was that the cause of those was not due to the original ideology, but by domination by alpha male competition for power, esteem, and riches.
Roots of Empathy sounds great. Reminds me of the Grey Matter article (I think) about the generation of empathy among the young through group drumming and seeing adults cry. But we all need more time and space for these things. But is that scalable.? The church used to provide those things (for better or for worse). Who will do it now? Seems like the resources have to come from taxes and/or thw profits of large corporations. The will has to come from us.
Thank you, David Brooks, for writing this. One of the saddest things I ever read, Darren's story brought me to literal tears. One of life's greatest challenges is keeping an open heart. It gets more difficult all the time, there is so much darkness around us. But we must continue to try to find the light in ourselves, in each other.
Darren will make an exemplary father.
2
As a humane educator, I wish that humane education were a required curriculum for all schools in the US - public and private. It is no coincidence that the decline in humane education coexists with increased bullying, school violence, and youth suicidality.
2
To be meek, patient, tactful, modest honorable, brave is not to be either manly or womanly; it is to be humane.
- Jane Harrison Feminist
70
@MARY
It is also to be truly Christian.
Thanks so much for your mansplaining Mr. Brooks. We were all nearly breathless waiting for your opinion on academic feminism.
11
David Brooks has become so obnoxiously preachy I rarely make it through to the end of his columns. And I don't care about his or any other Republican male's opinion of feminism.
9
Seriously?? You're going to put Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on the platform as alpha male chest thumpers?? You just can't help yourself can you Mr Brooks.....
5
All you needed to do w this column was write the last 2 paragraphs.
2
Mr. Brooks,
You need to be able to at least consider walking in women's shoes before you are qualified to say anything about it. You are obviously clueless.
5
No one needs your permission to voice an opinion. Your headline and tone drips with condescension.
Stick to what you know - older white men.
7
@Beth, he already is, really. He always is.
2
Very insulting, Mr Brooks. You talk out of both sides of your mouth. You couldn't give feminists three cheers?
6
This article isn’t addressing the power dynamic between the genders. Men have power. Gender roles are of course damaging to men as well as women, but to say that it is somehow equal to what women experience because men cannot express their emotions without social punishment is ludicrous.
I wish men like the author could truly know what women go through at the hands of men and what it’s like to live in a male dominated culture. I feel for men in this moment in time. Many seem truly bewildered by feminism and the #MeToo moment as we are all grappling with what kind of culture we have been and are going to be.
Many men I talk to feel “afraid” to do or say something wrong in their interactions with women. I’m empathetic, but I have to laugh. As a woman, I’ve spent every day of my life afraid of men. Afraid of attack, sexual assault, stalking, intimate partner violence. I’ve experienced been groped, catcalled, stalked, harassed at work, threatened, masturbated at while jogging, etc (and I consider myself lucky).
Every day I take in male dominated media, entertainment, and advertising where portrayals of women in media are often sexualized, shallow, and trivial.
While the feminist movement isn’t perfect, to say it’s all about “vague” experiences of patriarchal power is absurd. Come on, Mr. Brooks!
312
@Kathryn Z, yes--and note in media that day and night women are being attacked. Stalked, raped, mutilated, killed, posed--props for stories of fascinating criminals or dazzling forensics or police heroes--both in fiction and reality-based programs. If we saw that many dogs being treated so, we'd be up in arms. If the attacking was race-based, we'd see it with horror, I hope. But we're accustomed to this action on women and look at our 9,754th TV dead woman without surprise. The depth of sexually based fear is not something men often notice, or maybe want to. And to realize what it means that attackers look just like other men--till they get a chance to attack--the effects on women and men of that--I don't think men see that often. But when we do see it, it really is stunning.
7
Thank you
1
@Kathryn Z
Bravo!
I've often wondered if the elaborate rules and systems men create for themselves are just a kind of production anxiety.
Men can't do the one thing that is actually essential to humanity: Make life. So they elevated all these masculine codes, contests, (ahem) elaborate religions, politics, war, sports, and all the other nonsense to make themselves seem important.
6
Mr Brooks,
You write "All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love."
Obviously, you've never experienced religion.
6
Oh William! Thank you.
I can’t imagine where David gets some of these ideas. I spent six decades as a second class citizen in my church which does not ordain women and is a stifling patriarchy, and never once did the gospel of mercy, charity and love refer to the women right in front of their noses.
5
If this world doesn't get an equal amount of women sharing the driving of this bus, the old men are going to drive us into a wall, and fast. This world can't take much more of them.
When J. Trudeau put together the first female and male balanced cabinet and someone asked him why, his quick answer was, "Because it's 2015." Trudeau will get more honour for this later, but he is definitely a smart guy. It's 2018 and the Republican party still can't understand the brilliance of his insight. But they aren't that intelligent.
5
All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love.
Seriously David, I work in health care focused on gay and bisexual men, and let me tell you that I meet very few men who have been taught mercy, charity or love through the church.
147
@Scott Robinson: You're not spending serious I'm in church then.
@Caldey
You misread the comment. Try reading it again. The commenter made no statement about the amount of time he spent in any church, if any at all. He's simply observing that churches generally don't show much mercy, charity and love towards gay and bisexual men.
There are some inclusive religious organizations in this country, such as the Unitarians, who welcome everybody. But, the Catholics, Mormons, and Evangelicals? Not so much.
Your comment might have been helpful if you told us what church you attend where homosexuals are so loved and welcomed.
Plus, when men try to show warmth toward each other or have close relationships, as depicted in Westerns for example, society immediately portrays it as closeted homo-eroticism.
3
Thank you for making me cry, David.
Judging from past columns, it seems empathy for Mr. Brooks is selective.
3
I always turn to David to learn when and why women and/or blacks have gone too far.
8
Hey girls/women,Dave says you got something right! Way to go.
4
You lost me at "vague oppressor stories about the patriarchy".
Are you denying that patriarchy exists?
All feminists really want is equality.
7
It doesn't take an "academic feminist" to understand the essential David.
2
I always fall for your pose of unbiased clear thinking; and I'm almost always disappointed to discover your naked bias and failure to think clearly. Usually I have to wait to come to the end of your columns to find the disappointment. This time, though, it was right up front in your silly broad brush attack on what you call "academic feminism," which was clearly designed to keep you in the good graces of the Good Ol' Boys Conservative Club. I don't need a study by More in Common to let you know that I am exhausted by your partisan charade.
5
Does this guy really not hear his condescension right out of the mansplaining gate?
13
Oh wow. This is just so...bad. So off the cuff, nonchalant ridiculousness. It is as if you were designing a power and control word search. First writing the words (misogyny, downplaying of feminist thought/scholarship, oversimplified gender stereotypes/biological arguments, accolades for how organized religion had mercy! and love! and "helped" women, being too political is bad, holding babies good!), and then you filled in around your messages with random, vaguely relevant studies.
Sorry we don't just need to teach boys empathy, we need to legislate empathy!
4
Conflating Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder with Donald Trump, a man who, as we all know, has insulted women, the disabled, Gold Star mothers, and a senator who was a prisoner of war while he was fighting his personal Vietnam against venereal disease, really Mr. Brooks? Shame on you.
5
David, you just couldn't manage three cheers huh?
2
Oh David, I couldn’t get past the first paragraph. Your patronizing tone telling academic feminist that they are “right” about something... just more of the same old same old entitlement thinking of male opinion writers. Who died and made you the arbiter of all things right or wrong, particularly regarding the scholarship that has evolved form women out of their unique experiences. You simply still don’t get it!
5
Too bad Mr Brooks cannot, for the life of him, put his kind of lens on American capitalism. I guess that's a bridge to far.
1
What's interesting is that it is the LGBTQ community that is changing some of the pressures to be a prototypical girl or prototypical boy. The young adults today really just don't see these rigid roles and certainly will raise their children based on their beliefs, not those of their parents or their grandparents. I think this is healthy.
Religion has faded as an influence as many of today's teens have never really been exposed to a church, let alone brainwashed into blind faith and slavish following of orders from the Pope or their pastor. Sadly most religions have oppressed or ignored women with some vague protective attitudes that didn't always work, domestic violence, divorce, single moms being ostracized, etc.
The dads of the last 20 to 30 years have not just been absent breadwinners, but as their wives started working more, became much more involved in their children's lives. A loving father who has time for their kids, not just work and their buddies and a loving mom who is enjoying a life outside the home as well as the security of two incomes, helps both boys and girls become real people not the half people that many people became during the magical 50s and 60s of the neurotic Valium taking moms and the workaholic dads.
The world has changed .. and while David Brooks seems like he is on the right side for once, his solutions about religion and all the baggage that implies .. he's not on the right side often.
1
Dear Mr. Brooks,
The stories about the oppressive patriarchy may feel vague to you because you are a member if the oppressing patriarchy. By this I do not mean that you yourself are actively, intentionally engaged in oppressing others. I mean instead that to you the stories may seem amorphous or overwrought because the events and emotions they describe don't touch you. In writing that opening paragraph, you have displayed an enormous, condescending lack of empathy, one that will perpetuate women's accurate understanding that men don't take this crisis seriously.
Having a Women's Studies minor in college, I am familiar with a large group of academic feminists. Not once in their courses, or in discussions outside of class, did any of my professors in the field ever insist there was no difference between the genders. Rather, they believe there is no difference in the level of talent, intellect and potential between the genders, while clearly stating that those attributes might likely manifest in different forms.
On a positive note, thanks for the Breakfast Club quote. A classic movie that wrestles with issues of masculinity and power in its own way.
10
As a 68 year old women's rights activist of 50 years now I would like to thank you for mansplaining feminism for us. What would we poor gals do without big strong smart men like you?
251
@JS Seriously, this guy knows no bounds.
1
@JS
Well, at least you've shown it isn't just the young who go for this divisive and off-putting form of feminism!
There is nothing whatsoever wrong with a man expressing his views on feminism.
2
@Meagan
So, apparently, a man commenting on feminism is out of bounds.
And you don't see a problem with this, which is part of the problem.
By the way, for all the male bluster, they sure seem like a bunch of snowflakes when faced with a bunch of middle aged woman demanding fairness and respect. Mitch McConells whining is grating.
5
Feminism, all kinds of feminism, has always been about empathy.
And as far as talking about the patriarchy - it is an actual thing, a system recognized by anthropologists, long before second-wave feminism. Why does Brooks talk as though feminists invented the concept or the word?
3
Is it possible that David Brooks is labeling former AG Holder as a bad guy because of voting rights? That's his main campaign these days, and he has a point. Shelby v. Holder was all about voting rights, and Georgia is having a field day. Their gubernatorial candidate has, in his capacity as Secretary of State, removed 1.4 million from the voter rolls, and is refusing to process 53,000 voter registration applications.
Way to win, making Holder equivalent to Trump! Good work. Stalwart Republicans should not pretend to be honest when they do this. I'm fond of Brooks, but this is not his finest hour.
5
A cohort of females never brought home a mastodon for dinner, for certain, built the Forum, and never swung a "two-fisted engine" to fight off invaders.
"Tunnel vision" brought us Alexander, Magna Carta, Michelangelo, Newton, "Bill of Rights", Fermi, and Patton--shame, shame. That is to say, "Feminism" is a post-Modern bourgeois, self-absorbed slam-dance, nothing more.
2
@Alice's Restaurant
How do you know a cohort of females never brought home a mastodon for dinner? Some truths are lost to history. Like talents, genius and gifts of women were ignored, diminished and restricted in their times.
5
@Alice's Restaurant
I grew up hearing that kind of taunting. "Women cook and raise babies, but they aren't even the best cooks! Why aren't any women even among the world's best chefs? Women can't do anything as well as men!" I found these taunts hard to argue with, and demoralizing. That's why women had to fight to get out from under their historic subjugation, and open the path to an equal opportunity to achieve.
Well, of course, women ARE chefs now. And now the New York Times is producing obituaries for women who SHOULD have been recognized (but weren't) for being great scientists, or artists, or activists. If women had been given a chance, maybe some of them could have been out with those men chasing mastodons. This does not mean that men aren't wonderful, and needed, and full of unique talents, because they are. And yes, men have produced many amazing things, while women were forced to remain around the hearth. But women want to experience the full range of life's possibilities. That has proven to be a struggle, sometimes bitter, and it continues. I don't know why, but women's efforts to achieve equality make some men (and even women) angry, and resentful.
7
@Alice's Restaurant
Given recent (too long delayed/still insufficient) developments in the world of archictecture, one has to wonder how much more magnificent the Forum might have been if the cohort of females had been given the assignment.
Your bully introduction is more about the short-sightedness of men than about the abilities of women.
I had gained a modicum of respect for David Brooks, especially when I hear him on the radio (week in politics on NPR). But this is one of the worst things he's ever written. It's patronizing and full of ridiculous assertions (which other comments have already pointed out). I just wanted to comment to really express my complete disgust with this man.
3
Not all women are white like Hillary Clinton, Melania Trump, Christine Blasey Ford, Gretchen Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Laura Ingraham, Ivanka Trump and Nancy Pelosi.
White women have benefited more than any other group from the black blood, sweat and tears shed in the black led and fought civil rights movement era and beyond while advancing and preserving their power and privilege over both black men and women.
The reality is that there are only two naturally procreative human DNA genetic evolutionary fit genders. And only one human race species that began in Africa 300,000 years ago. Our closest primate ape relatIves are the matriarchal peaceful sex driven bonobo and the patriarchal violence driven chimpanzee. We are far more like the chimpanzee by our nature and nurture. Until the advent of DNA no one knew for sure who the baby daddy was.
The whole notion of feminism is condescending paternalistic and patriarchal. Either all humans are divinely naturally created equal with certain unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness or none are. Feminism needs to and should be replaced by humanism. Two cheers are fleeting trivia.
1
@Blackmamba Are you suggesting that for a more peaceful, and equitable society, men should aspire to cuckoldry?
2
This one is for me so that I can get on with my day without having this outrageous notion rattling around in my head.
"All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love..."
Are you mad, David? What alternative universe are you from? You think that the religion as practiced in the US has been merciful, charitable, and loving?You need a rest cure.
12
"The big thing is that for thousands of years social thinking has been dominated by men — usually alpha men — who saw life as a place where warriors and traders went out and competed for wealth and power. These male writers were largely blind to the systems of care that undergirded everything else."
What utter Uni Chicago sociology claptrap, David.
"O you who hear within these scattered verses/the sounds of sighs with which I fed my heart/in my first errant youthful days when I/in part was not the man I am today;"
"Who wishes for the laurel, or for myrtle!/'In poverty and naked goes Philosophy,' the masses bent on making money say,..."
-Petrarch (c.1333).
And nearly 300 years later, the Sonnets of Shakespeare lacking in "empathy" and an understanding of "intimacy", are they?
This just gets tiresome.
Not all men are insensitive twits, David. Less sociology, more poetry.
1
The past was a time where women, if rich, were put in convents against their will, or were forced to marry based on the decrees of their fathers. They did not have the right to vote, to hold property or make contracts. They were considered often wards of their male relatives, whether they liked it or not. The major schools and universities of the times denied them education, and there was no acceptance of women in the workplace.
This is the times of mercy, charity and gospel that Mr Brooks refers. The good ol' times where white men like Thomas Jefferson could rape their slaves. And the husbands could rape their wives, because marriage gave them permission to do so.
Never trust a person like Mr Brooks with regards to the past. His is not the one any woman would want to be a part of, and any man should be ashamed to promote.
6
Life was better for women when churches reigned supreme? Is this the Catholic Church, who refused divorce, no matter how terrible the circumstances, until very recently? The ultra-orthodox Jewish church courts, that hold women captive in a dead marriage unless their husband decides he wants out? The Islamists who stone adulterous women to death, but it's okay for the guys? The Hindus who shame and shun girls for being raped? The Mormons, who until recently married their girls off at menses into enforced polygamy?
You can make interesting cases for religion as a good thing. But you have to be a contortionist to look at the above, real practices and say that this is specifically good and liberating for women and girls.
Oh...what does any of this have to do with the lovely parable at the end?
11
Checking into this column, thanks to its testily provocative title and opening that has a whiff of Orin Hatch's dismissive hand wave, I am reminded of why I stopped reading Brooks some time ago.
The comments are far more insightful.
And I will return to ceasing to bother with his bland, self-serving and self-congratulating nostrums.
6
One of the side effects of western civilization coming late is this: "The big thing is that for thousands of years social thinking has been dominated by men — usually alpha men — who saw life as a place where warriors and traders went out and competed for wealth and power."
All over South Asia, these 9 days Oct 10-18 are being celebrated as Navratri, "The worship of the feminine has been the most ancient form of worship on the planet, widespread not just in India, but in Europe, Arabia and large parts of Africa. Unfortunately, in the West, goddess temples were razed to the ground in a concerted attempt to wipe out all traces of so-called paganism, polytheism and idolatry. The same happened in other parts of the world. India, however, is one culture in which the worship of the feminine has endured. This is also a culture that gave us the freedom to create our own goddesses according to our needs. The science of consecration enabled each village to make its own temple according to its specific local requirements. In every village in southern India, you can find an Amman or goddess temple even today."
"Those who aspire for strength or power, worship forms of the feminine like Mother Earth or Durga or Kali. Those who aspire for wealth, passion or material gifts worship Lakshmi or the sun. Those who aspire for knowledge, dissolution or the transcendence of the limitations of the mortal body worship Saraswati or the moon." Sadhguru
1
@Petey Tonei. Worship of the feminine in India? Maybe at temples, but India clearly suffers from an epidemic of rapes, gang rapes, and sexual assaults these days that is horrifying.
1
@SW, unfortunately in a largely peaceful country of 1.2 billion and counting, that’s is what makes the news. Also south India (south of Hyderabad) historically did not see lasting islamic rule so women there do not have to cover their heads.
Okay, I’ll bite. What the heck is “moral one-upsmanship”?
1
EMPATHY VERSUS KICKING
I agree in general, but why must we always disparage Hillary Clinton—and now also Eric Holder—when we criticize Donald Trump in an effort to appear fair-minded? There is simply no comparison between the proactive “pseudo-masculinity” of Donald Trump and the reactive “pseudo-masculinity” of Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder fighting back against that “pseudo-masculinity.” Action does not equal reaction. There is no guilt in responding to a bully’s punch with a counter-punch. The guilt is always with the bully.
To use an extreme example: empathy would not have worked in Nazi Germany. It is what we should always aim for, yes, but it is not always the solution to the problem of the moment. Bullies don’t respond to empathy. They respond to strength. The philosophy of Neville Chamberlain will not work with the Russian President with the pectoral calendars or the United States President with his hair weave or the Senate Majority Leader with his facial freeze any more than it did for the Austrian Chancellor with the silly mustache.
Sometimes you have no choice but to kick.
And if the world responds to the kick against the bully by rewarding the bully because it can no longer tell the difference, then it will get what it deserves.
And god help us all.
4
David, Congrats, you've finally caught up with the suffragettes.
3
Yes, Academic Feminism is right about the Big Thing. But, David Brooks is wrong about what the Big Thing is. The Big Thing is Higher Education, Traditional Hard Hitting Classical Thought, IQ Standardized Testing at the World Level.
Also, Mr. Brooks clearly does not know about the latest plans for The 5th Wave of Feminism: The Personal is Professional. Top Tier Corporations and Top Level Executives/CEOs are going to be involved in developing The Future Workplace. A Betty Crocker warm chocolate chip cookie social hour is not planned for this 5th Wave Boardroom.
There is no time for "social" anything for one of its Top Academic Achievers. This Women's Studies Certificate Earner just placed #1 in the World IQ Competition.
Do Not Sleepily Fall for this NYT David's soft, dull thinking and poor research. If you do, then you will take yourself out-of The Competition for such Academic Achievements as Highest IQ, Highest Ranked Resume, Highest Education Achiever.... essentially that Position of #1.
David Brooks clearly underestimates Academic Feminism as a heavy Academic Field for Student Development towards Top Score Test Performance, Top GPA School Report Card. And consequently his Resume is much lower ranked than the current #1, who is an Academic Feminist. The next Gloria Steinem is the rumor.... The 5th Wave is coming.
"Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder lining up to present their pseudo-masculine, chest-thumping displays to show how much they hate the other side." The only chest-thumping I saw was from Mr. Brooks favorite senator, Lindsey Graham who of course is just the sort of religious man that our society needs more of.... according to the author.
5
To compare the "chest-thumping" of Trump with Hillary or Eric Holder, as though they are similar, is absurd, David.
4
David, you have the sensitivity and delicacy of brass knuckles to write this piece so shortly after the Kavenaugh hearings.
Republicans have erected the new American standard: their white male "meritocracy" must never be accused of anything ... it might upset their wives and children.
No accusation(s) will be accepted unless there is "corroboration." We now have the new Republican sharia: it's all a hoax unless four white men testify it is true.
Women will need all the "empathy and connection" they can muster. I wonder if fashion might bring back the hat pin?
5
How dare you compare Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder to Donald Trump? Donald Trump hates everyone except himself and has the bully pulpit to express his hate hourly. When someone of stature replies to his lies and insults they are not chest thumping, they are drawing a distinction between Trump and civilized society. When you, David, put blame on folks who are--by Trump standards--silent, your analysis sounds like Fox News. I read all your columns and listen to your commentary on The News Hour. I think in areas other than current republican politics your views have merit. You must have great difficulty in supporting republican behavior so you attack democrats who answer back from time to time. You also reveal a certain level of intolerance for women who take strong positions. Ask yourself if a white male would be taken to task for laying it on the line.
1
I'd be interested to know what feminist work David has read that he disagrees with. Usually when people talk about "the feminists" they're talking about the people they've made up in their own head.
3
Brett Kavanaugh laughed out loud about his ability to place his hand over a woman's mouth while rubbing lewdly against her.
Similarly there's a vague suffocating nature to these words and ideas that feels exactly like an alpha man leaning with all his might against the door of the faculty lounge, because he thinks it's hilarious, to get away with it in broad daylight. Like Brett insisting on his right to be a child in such a public place as a nationally televised Senate hearing, these words appear in no less a public place than the New York TImes.
Such audacity and verve!
Such winning of men!
What is the purpose, please, of opening with pitiful snobbery towards "academic feminists", (whatever that may mean), without saying another word about them or their ideas? Is it important for a national audience to vicariously experience the pleasures of being snide and condescending to them? And why?
Is it a "celebration of self interest" to celebrate only your own self interest? Or is it just being a vacant boor? Is celebrating your own independence to the exclusion of others, in any way related to celebrating independence?
Why should any of us care about any overgrown frat boy's manners?
5
I don't think you understand that your column has widened the partisan divide considerably.
Religion as our survival in the past? You make it sound like lack of religion is causing all our problems. This country is being ripped apart because of religion. The Bible contains lessons on mercy, charity, and love, but today's churches are political blocs hiding behind self-righteousness. I don't want people's pseudo religious political beliefs shoved down my throat. I pray to my Maker every day for freedom from religion.
Why these political entities still get tax exemptions is utterly beyond me.
Then, you lump Trump together with Clinton and Holder? Oh, come on. Clinton and Holder have spent years of their lives in service to this country and its institutions. Trump is destroying this country and its institutions. What's that old saw about evil prevailing when good people stand by and do nothing? Clinton and Holder are just refusing to do nothing--and you know it. But, you just can't resist a good straw man false equivalency.
You are worse than Fox Fake News. At least they're blatantly and even proudly dishonest. They love making up their alternative facts, which they don't even try to back up with any real data. You read a lot of books and papers, cherry pick a little thought here, a little data there, and hide your obvious hate behind a kumbaya veneer.
8
Please be aware David that even if your vision of empathy takes hold as both boys and men gain the ability to be in touch with their true feelings the Republican party will not be transformed from its status as the White Nationalist Party nor will the Resistance be sublimated.Racism.fake news,and the image of immigrants as criminal thugs will continue to prevail until the day that Trump and his enablers are crushed
Sort of right. Not quite as patronizing as you could have been. At least you are thinking about how women behave and think. And yet you still have to add your hobbyhorse about religion and academic feminists who name the patriarchy as the vicious force of oppression it is. You want us to talk about our oppression in a way that makes YOU feel comfortable. Tsk tsk tsk.
2
As usual it's all about the college class. They write the narrative of how they navigated adolescence. They tell about their problems with college today (for most of them, the real problem is that they're in college, which demands more than you get from EZA'ing your way thru high school).
Even today, most people don't go to college. So don't base your ideas of what happens growing up on what collegians say and write.
How odd that David is bothered most by some feminists decrying a hypothesis of inherited-gender differences. The truth is gender is a bad predictor of talents - the range within a sex is too broad. More importantly, he neglects to touch on males - in the guise of religion - insisting women be deferential to the men in their lives. We have our own version of the Taliban among us.
5
You know what, Mr. Brooks? It's bad form to pat women on the head and say well done when they fetch your slippers, newspaper, and serve a little empathy and compassion with your morning coffee.
I cringed when I read the headline, very cautiously clicked on the link, and then rolled my eyes when I got a glimpse of the subtitle.
I'm certain that this was all well intentioned and I would agree with much of what you have to say if I had the stomach to read on, but save this sort of thing for your dog. Women aren't the family pets.
(This is classic benevolent sexism, btw. Peter Glick and Susan Fiske and their associates will be using this piece as exhibit one in their ambivalent sexism lectures for years).
4
If Gregory Corso, late great beat poet were here today, he would say " What about humanity?"Tiresome and disappointing to read an article lauding feminism, as if the author were bending over backwards to please the left wing p.c. crowd, ingratiating himself to them because these days they are the ones who are writing the script!Brooks writes more like a social scientist and less like a hard hitting journalist,and his article seems more appropriate for a scholarly periodical than for a great newspaper! There are some really good stories out there, like the gradual weaning away of African Americans from the Dem.Party, exemplified by the words of Kanye West,Candace Owens and Niger Inness among others, who realize that their future is more hopeful with a success oriented president than with the Dem. Party, party of Jim Crow, secession , segregation and urban poverty!We are learning more from D'nesh d'Souza these days than from Mr. Brooks, who I believe has become complacent. I never met a feminist who was not hostile to men! Who's kidding whom?
Oy yeah, everything was better when that good ol' religion taught everyone the gospel of mercy, charity and love.
That mercy, charity and love for others is wonderfully displayed during every single rally of POTUS, ain't it, Mr. Brooks?
5
“If nobody has ever loved you, do you think you could still be a good father?”
When I read that sentence, I immediately thought of the 1,000 + young immigrant children separated from their parents and the emotional toll which this will take on them their entire lives. No matter where they are eventually placed, the chance that all these imprisoned kids will grow up to be confident, productive adults is zero to none.
4
Stereotypical perhaps for me to say that a man (Brooks) compliments women giving credit where it is due but can't do so without the tired assertions about academic feminists. Why not just start out positive? We already know you are disagreeable with a thin veneer of civility.
1
"What girls and women get right about empathy and connection."
Interesting subhead. Not to mention implicitly revealing about the author, who apparently thinks there's much more they get wrong. No surprise here, I'm afraid. Sigh...
1
Chest thumping? Lack of empathy? Alpha Males? Huh. Trump, Kavanaugh, Grassley, McConnell, Graham, Hatch. Those are the names that come into my mind. You throw Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder into that category? I don’t think so.
4
Why thank you David Brooks for telling feminists what they get right. As a feminist, I have been waiting so long to get these words of praise from you. Did you title this piece? Are you really so tone deaf?
4
The religion of David's "golden past" was a better time? Really? Do you not read history? Do you not read the papers? Know you nothing about the tenets of the major religions (not to mention the lesser ones?) How about the Times' front page today and Francis' inability to deal with the horrors visited on the faithful by his church? What about the Hindu treatment of the "untouchables" and women? The treatment of women by Orthodox and other ultra-conservative Jews? The isolation and worse of women by Islam. The cutting of young girls? The honor killings? The multiple wives and their casting aside of the Bible? The list would extend to many pages. That statement alone by David makes the rest of this piece highly suspect, at best.
2
David, with all due respect, you begin “I disagree with academic feminism a lot — with those vague oppressor stories about the patriarchy, with the strange unwillingness to admit inherited-gender differences and with the tone of faculty lounge militancy,” and then proceed to describe what the patriarchy is- a system which oppresses both women and men by not allowing them to be just as they are, emotional human beings with an inherent need to be seen heard and connected. Your opening line regarding the tone in which feminists speak is an example of how women get shut down. Hoping you take a moment to recognize what you got wrong while you, from a male position of authority, tell women what they got right.
1
"Feminism" is the belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. You either agree with the concept or not. You disagree with "academic feminism"? You are making up a term to let you get away with scolding women while trying to sound enlightened. You cannot blame problems boys and men are having on feminism. Come one, you're a wordsmith--you can do better than this.
So if God had sent a daughter, lets call her Grace, instead of a son, and Grace had accomplished what Jesus did, would the world be different today? The world today might be a better place if he had.
2
One common thread you’ll find among conservative columnists of this paper is they all gaslight.
They pretend that’s not conservative cruelty you’re experiencing, it’s just humanity in general struggling to be empathetic. Then they cherry pick anecdotes they have no right to be appropriating. Total diversion. Let’s talk about the faultiness of your worldview Mr. Brooks.
2
"All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love."
Sorry David, "Religion does three things quite effectively: Controls people, deludes people, divides people." ~ Carlespie Mary Alice Murray
5
I was with Brooks until he mentioned religion. Does he not realize that religion helped to create and then perpetuate gender stereotypes? How about all of the abuses by the Catholic church? The Magdalene homes, the pedophile priests? The witchcraft trials? Anne Hutchinson, who tried to debate with ministers and found herself banished? The conservative churches who say women should obey their husbands (yep, still). Even in the Civil Rights Movement, women were dissed and ignored.
158
@kathleen cairns: Gender stereotypes (the Vestal Virgins) long pre-dated the Catholic Church, and the percentage of Caholic priests who abuse children is no greater than the percentage of other males. Do not be ruled by your prejudices.
1
@kathleen cairns
You're absolutely right. I found the religious association odd too. However, I think it wise to point out that the Catholic Church was also a source of women's advocacy at one point back in the day. The Catholics wanted to undermine the power of the British monarchy as much as possible. Their principle tool was to convey property and inheritance rights to women. The crown would therefore lose the right to redistribute lands and wealth to allies hostile to the Church. Daughters and wives would become estate holders beholden to the Catholic intervention.
Everyone remembers Katherine of Aragon. However, England's true beef with the Catholic Church began much earlier. Feminism was as much a theme in ancient politics as it is today.
What in the world are you writing about here, Mr. Brooks.
Once again you descend into the false equivalency of Trump and Clinton.
Are you kidding me?
Trump is the President of the United States, and he is quite simply, a horrible human being.
Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate general in Istanbul last week, and disappeared.
Turkish security officials concluded that the "highest levels of the royal court" in Saudi Arabia ordered the assassination of Khashoggi, according to a senior official cited by The NYTimes, the paper you work for, Mr. Brooks.
Trump said today that “it would not be acceptable to me” to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia in response to the disappearance last week of the columnist.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said he was open to other actions but questioned the wisdom of not selling military weapons, saying Saudi Arabia could instead turn to Russia or China, hurting US defense companies.
“What good does that do us?” Trump asked.
This is your disgusting amoral equivalence Mr. Brooks,.
This is Brett Stephens dismissing Trump's tax fraud.
This is Lindsey Graham's attack on Democrats, when a credible witness testifies that she was attacked by Brett Kavanaugh.
This is Mitch McConnell wishing President Obama to fail and refusing to speak out against a foreign enemy attacking our elections.
What in the world has happened to you, Mr. Brooks?
What in the world has happened to the Republican Party?
394
@VThis comment should be on the first page of the paper!
3
@V. The party is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Capitalism Inc. go against them and they will run someone even more extreme to replace you.
1
@V The Republican Party sold it's soul to Trump, made a pact with the devil, and went over to the dark side.
There they wallow in a cesspool of evil. There are very few exceptions. He's not perfect but Brooks is one of the exceptions. Thanks for a provocative column.
1
"...the culture teaches girls not to talk and boys not to feel."
Why is this so? What aspects of our evolution as a species led us to this place? I think that these are important questions to consider, otherwise we're left with the narrow notion that one gender is "right," while the other is "bad." That kind of thinking gets us nowhere in our attempts to understand ourselves.
1
You mention your time spent on campus. I can't decide whether that time was too much or too little. In any case, you seem to have fallen into a very unproductive mode, where you are able to state with a straight face that "girls are like this and boys are like that" or that things are this way because it's what culture teaches and we no longer have religion. What your campus time has denied you is engagement with the real world, where things are really complicated for all kinds of reasons. I am all in favor of efforts to figure it all out, but the kinds of studies cited don't go very far in that direction.
2
My college professor, who was near and dear to me, was superficially a first generation feminist. She rescued dogs and was a professed vegetarian. She didn't even wear anything leather. Of course, she was very independent, not just because it was the go-go 60s. But deep down, she was - still is, I hope - a humanist. She cared deeply about her students. She treated all her colleagues well. She would be offended if anyone called her feminist
All human beings, if not all beings, crave empathy and connections. And most, not just girls and women, manage to reciprocate, if not engender. Perhaps culturally or naturally - after all, only females can be mothers, who live through 9 months of joy and woe of gestation to bring another being into this world - girls and women have a head start, but empathy and connection are not feminism
While humanity has taken a step back in this epoch in which reactionism dominates, we as human beings need to strive beyond the old patriarch weltanschauung. A backhand praise of feminism is no praise at all
5
Which part of the "gospel of mercy, charity and love" was operative when that esteemed Man O' God™ Joel Osteen locked the doors of his 18,000 seat church to flood victims of Hurricane Harvey? Lies, damned lies and statistics are what passes for political currency these days, it seems.
5
Only TWO cheers? Damning with faint praise; the expression of (actual) praise is THREE cheers...
2
As soon as Democrats start to fight back, fighting fire with fire, the Republican punditry starts preaching "civility". Where were they during the last forty years of Republican smears and hate mongering?
8
Brooks is losing it. He puts Trump, Holder, and Hillary in the same sentence implying equivalency.
6
If most of the "Times Picks" are written by feminists, then it's safe to say he was right about the militant feminism. And militant feminism is necessarily contradictory to the point of his story, that feminism teaches empathy. They completely negated the one positive he attempted to highlight about feminism. If feminism doesn't teach empathy, as most comments seem to reflect, then I'd have to say I'm hard pressed to find one good thing about this latest incarnation of the ideology that wishes to do away with due process of someone being smeared in the name of believing women. I have never learned empathy from feminism, and am pretty sure I never will. Though you did make me a little mushy with the last line about the boy who was never loved but will grow up to be a great father!
2
@PJ ABC
I never called myself a feminist because I didn't like the 'militant' aspect, which does exist to some extent. I had enough of a hard time convincing the engineers I worked with almost fifty years ago that a woman can, indeed, think in three dimensions. Yes, that was a fairly common misconception. So, I had enough on my hands without airing a list of social grievances.
When the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas debacle unfolded, the probability of her telling the truth was extremely high in my mind because how likely is it that all the stuff she talked about--pubic hair, porn films, sexual exploits, etc. etc. was exactly the same moronic male toxicity I had to endure daily in my own sphere?
So. Twenty seven years later, all we ask is not to place another man with a credible sexual harassment accusation leveled at him on the Supreme Court. That men take sexual harassment seriously, just this once.
If you can't understand what I'm saying, if you feel no empathy, there's something wrong with you.
1
It's heartening to see that Mr. Brooks is sympathetic to the important research and ideas of these women. But it's very strange, if characteristically so, for Mr. Brooks to begin a column of fulsome praise for work of a group of academic feminists with a very petty assertion of disrespect for academic feminists.
You like to praise civility, Mr. Brooks. But that was very poor manners.
110
@TMSquared this precisely the problems with the punditry just look at Ross and the other pseudo intellectual Bret
I know you try very hard to intellectually describe what you see but this column seems to be missing the emotional impact on women who see men dominate most of the world, I.e. its businesses, its politics, academia, and I could go on. It’s a gut punch to read that when religion was the center of most people’s lives there was more empathy. Really? A friend of mine who was a psychiatric nurse and raised in the “empathetic “ Catholic Church, told me once that she thought the major purpose of the monotheistic religions was to oppress women-and I haven’t seen anything in the hierarchy of Judaism, Islam or Christianity to refute her claim. Yes in some Christian churches there are female clergy and in Reform Judaism some female Rabbis but they are the exceptions. No Catholic female priests, the abuse of the women in Ireland-the most Catholic of countries-women who still must sit in a separate section of the synagogue, the women who cannot attend daily prayers at the mosque- sorry that all points to a lack of empathy and frankly makes me angry! Please stop trying to point to a past that might exist in your mind but for most of us women didn’t and we are still struggling to make it happen for our daughters and granddaughters . Maybe you should try a bit of empathy yourself!
3
I love how you want to dismiss everything feminists say, except for the one thing you can relate to - which is how men have been shortchanged by alpha male dominance behaviors. Silly man - you seem to still want to ignore the notion that women have been systematically and brutally oppressed in many parts of the world for many centuries (Can you even relate to having been considered property by another person? How about to just being a brood mare?) C'mon David - you can do better than that. Look at historical texts - it's almost as if women didn't matter, or didn't exist, or weren't worthy. But continue to dismiss this as just being some form of oversight instead of the oppression it was. Don't worry - we don't blame you for the sins of the past....but we are getting mighty frustrated at the repeated denial in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Faculty lounge militancy? Your deep-rooted insecurity is so unbecoming.
5
"These male writers were largely blind to the systems of care that undergirded everything else."
Quite so. It's just part of the background before which the "heroes" play their games. (Ever notice that a "hero" is just somebody who fights another "hero"?)
Our socio-economic systems have become ever more complex feedback loops of mutual dependency, yet the narrative continues to exalt the independent individual. The humblest tools of daily living make that independnence a fantasy.
Got a ball-point pen? Think about how many people it took to bring it to you, starting with the miners and ending with the cashier who took your 79 cents plus tax when you bought the pen. People you will never know, yet all of whom did their jobs. But of course they aren't "heroes", so they don't make the news. They're just part of the furniture.
3
Re religion as an antidote. When I was 11 my mother and I went to pick up my brother from altar boy practice. She sent me into church to hurry him up. The church was empty but I could hear voices from the sacristy (the little room behind the altar) so I walked up the aisle and past the communion rail and softly called my brother's name. All at once, the priest erupted from the sacristy, red-faced and already yelling. "What do you think you're doing? Get off the altar. Get off the altar. Don't you know women are never allowed to set foot on the altar. You are committing sacrilege."
I was 11. So much for the church as a source of connection and nurturing. Religions are cultural institutions, all imbued to one degree or another with patriarchal contempt and fear of women. Some have begun to change, but that's a lot of history (and a lot of hate) to overcome.
7
@gypsy I recall, on a vacation trip from the West Coast to NYC many years ago that upon visiting St. Patrick's Cathedral all women and girls HAD to wear something, anything on their heads. Even a handkerchief would do. What was wrong with my hair?
4
Calling something "academic" in this context is shorthand for dismissing it as an idea with no practical application in the real world. That you get to disagree the parts of "academic" feminism which implicate yourself, your party and the way you live your life is part of the problem. Try going back to read Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own." The horror of watching men rule and squash the lives of women to promote their own agendas is as alive today as it was when she wrote in 1929.
5
I have no doubt that we would have a better society and polity if it we were more empathetic. I'm voting for a lot of women these days.
However, sadly, I fear that in the immediate circumstance we may not be able to survive by relying on empathy. That's because the ruling Republican Party is both ruthless and shameless. They are hellbent to crush empathetic behavior. More than that, the GOP has eschewed basic decency in favor whatever it takes to win.
The Kavanaugh confirmation struggle is just the latest case in point.
At this point, I think we need to do whatever it takes to win. There's no hope of moderating the GOP until they have felt the pain of a long run in the minority.
2
Men and women have equal intelligence. According to Forbes report on the 400 richest Americans, "most of the country’s wealthiest females inherited their fortunes from husbands, fathers and grandfathers. Only 1-2% of wealthy females are self-made."
Perhaps if all the business and government leaders in the world had been females instead of males.....then females would have prevented WWI, WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, and the little fights in the Arab countries from ever occurring. Correct? Or are females just as angry and warring as males? In terms of human behavior, the more things seem to change....the more they remain the same. Correct? Then some will say, "no hope left for humanity." But actually there is hope if you believe in God. That hope is great for Christians. So what hope is there for atheists and agnostics??? Is this why separation of church and state exists?
In case anyone is wondering why Mr. Brooks left out the Third Cheer, let's recall, those of us who are able, the days of yesteryear before Feminism as we now know it.
Back then most women had more sense than joining a bunch of drunken and or drugged men at a party, and then becoming equally incapicitated themselves.
Suprise, surprise at what happens then! Yes, those men are culpable, and if the women are not so much, they are surely foolish.
Who among feminists remembers the lessons of "Little Red Riding Hood?"
3
@Lake Woebegoner
"Back then" women were still raped and told it was their own fault because of the way they were dressed or the time of day or night they were out or the neighborhood they were walking in. Surprise, surprise when women get angry when told that they were responsible for being raped. "Little Red Riding Hood" is an ancient fairy tale that was used to warn children to stay out of the woods. Comparing women who have been raped to children is appallingly condescending.
5
@eheck---you failed to understand that women who drink or drug too much at parties with men have a far greater risk of rape than those who do not. The safer place to be for everyone is at a party where this doesn't happen. As soon as you see it, you've been warned. PS: Drunken men are far worse than sober men.
@Lake Woebegoner
Huh. The lesson I recall from Little Red Riding Hood was to carry a big knife and stick it deep in any wolf who attacks you. Did I get it wrong?
3
"...All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life..."
David always has to try to get us back in time. And this assertion is a sneaky way to say that the guidance of a male dominated institution is always the way to go.
11
The recurrent nostalgia for religion begs two important issues. First it ignors the fact that religion declined not merely because of its external critics, but that it lost its power to give spiritual nourishment. Had it not ceased to be little more than a shell of itself it would have easily resisted the external criticism. But second, granting for sake of discussion that it has salutory benefits, how do you reinstate it? Mandatory church attendance? Legislate that everyone must have regious beliefs? As Kant pointed out you when trying to explain the golden rule, you can not legislate feelings. If you don’t feel something, you don't feel it, and ordering someone to feel what he doesn’t feel is pathological and wicked. Its like the old joke about the child who when commanded by his mother to love his little brother responds, “I may love him, but I won’t like him.”
1
You lost me with your first line: "I disagree with academic feminism a lot — with those vague oppressor stories about the patriarchy..." Vague?! I suppose it's vague to you because your life hasn't been stunted in the myriad of ways that patriarchy stunts women's lives. Until you can show some empathy (or intellectual curiosity) for half of the humans on this planet, I don't see how your observations are expansive enough to convey substantive meaning to this issue.
6
David,
You are wrong on two very important points, otherwise what you say is right on target.
The first is that since time and memorial girls are taught from birth to be subservient, their only role is to mutely serve the male. Society had always condoned the killing of worthless girls, today they are not stoned but punished.
Second, you include Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder in your analysis along side trump, trump is the all time king of male chauvinist pigs. The Republicans banned together to condemn women and the Democrats in the recent charade over the nomination of Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh and the Republicans mission now is to return women to their rightful role of servitude. They are right on target to achieve their goal, because they now control all three branches of Government.
In my humble opinion, the world will be a far better place if we were lead by women.
1
Vague oppressor stories? Have you not been listening to all the women who have come forward with reports of assault and harassment, starting as young as 4??? To all those who have kept it secret for years and years?
Sometimes things change, and you have to share. Many men of your age are understandably not happy to share. This is why we are where we are today. All those old guys in Washington are trying to hang on to the good old days, when they could have their cake and eat it too.
Genetic differences are indeed real. But when the deck is stacked so profoundly, change can be a good thing. Change also comes with difficulty.
97
I like everything you write in this piece, except for the part where you dismiss "those vague oppressor stories about the patriarchy".
I work in a position of relative power in a business mostly dominated by men, and I am a man myself. I also have the intellectual honesty to admit that the "patriarchy" exists, and it is the cause of many of the evils that women have to suffer through their lives.
Women have come a long way in asserting their rights (in the western world, at least), and I am always very happy to work with women who have made it as senior executives or CEOs in this male-dominated world. But many men don't share my support of women in power. You've no idea how often I hear disparaging comments about women in the business world. If they tend to be older, it's about their unattractive looks; if they are pretty, they are judged and lusted after for their looks and sexuality, never for their professional skills.
Women are damn right to fight, and fight hard, against the toxic male culture of dominance and abuse, disguised behind the antiquated and seemingly genteel patina of "patriarchy". It is not imagined. It is real, and it stinks.
15
So we're back to all men are one way and all women another? This devalues individuality, creativity and complexity in the human world.
3
Maybe two-thirds of citizens are exhausted by the "partisan charade", but that's not good news, Mr. Brooks. I direct your attention to Michelle Goldberg's column today about election rigging in Georgia. That's no charade. That's partisanship committed to the destruction of any adversary.
7
Alexander Harrison wrote in a yet to be published comment that he has never met a feminist who was not hostile to men. But I should have added that vast majority of those involved in animal rescue efforts were, those whom I knew, feminists, and sentient 4 legged creatures whom they went all out for could not have cared less what their orientation was. Hope Ryden, photographer, writer and animal rights advocate was a feminist, and look how much she did for defenseless creatures. Knew her when she was on the Board at ASPCA and she loved Lucky, 1 of my dogs rescued from a local NYC shelter thanks to Sen. Krueger. (See my video).So, hostility of feminists towards men? Nothing wrong with that as far as 1'm concerned, but possessing an abiding altruism, philanthropy towards helpless canines and felines!
The wonder of know-it-all progressivism is its ambition to re-order the universe into some self-defined utopian state. The progressive mindset is both regulatory and anti-normative. The progressive seeks to impose rules that disrupt or prohibit social patterns they disagree with.
The authors' characterizations of gender roles, to the extent they can be universalized at all, emerged not from rules but rather from norms. And perhaps those norms created a perceived balance that attracted adherence through successful outcomes. People imitated behaviors that appeared to work. At the risk of striking a sore spot among the gender warriors, I believe I benefitted from exposure to the distinct sensibilities of my mother and father in the ying and yang of demand vs. nurture.
While I am perfectly content to allow gender norms to evolve over time, I am frightened by progressive campaigns to force the issue -- particularly the gender reorientation efforts underway in most school systems. I don't want my government attempting to re-engineer gender relationships in our society.
1
@AR Clayboy The government has often legislated gender norms and changes and continues to do so. Just think about Title IX for gender equity in the public schools and various changes in the military, like women in combat positions. Even further back, it wasn't until the 1970s that women could actually obtain credit on their own or have a medical procedure without a male's consent. The times, they are a'changin'
5
Mr. Brooks makes a convincing case for society to unlock the current super-competitive, black box of gender dynamics.
A full spectrum of unhappiness plagues our young people. The rising suicide rate is the terrible price of our collective neglect. We do need honest and balanced examinations of the many interlocked facets of our culture.
The greatest hindrance to knowing anything are the one-sided reductions uttered by politicians trying to secure the limelight. Nothing is ventured and, consequently, nothing is gained from shallow rhetoric.
I suspect that conservative students aren't heard because liberal students feel that they must dispel Trump's delivery of tactical controversy and the Koch brothers' taste in primary hit squads. Those are easy targets and only the face of Republican opinions today. So, conservative students have more to say; they should distinguish with clarity and be heard.
For democracy to work, we need at least 2 viable parties. That ought to be enough incentive to resuscitate honest and civil discourse.
1
Brooks: Girls begin to say, “I don’t know.”
For 30 years I taught graduate students at a university. One of the skill areas that was required was statistics.
I can't tell you how many times the female (NEVER the male) students said to me in advising sessions: "I'm not good at stats." Even the way it was talked about was different---the female students used the word "stats," while the males used the more sophisticated word "statistics." The faculty (male and female) always used the word "statistics." And, of course, being a director of their program I had access to years of student grades and it wasn't true that the male students outperformed the female students in statistics (or anywhere else, for that matter).
I immediately pounced. I said to these female students: "Are you aware that you are just as good at statistics as the male students are, but only female students say they aren't good?" That was all it took. They got it immediately.
I have thought of that phenomenon many times of the years, trying to figure out what it means. This article explains it.
5
I wonder what "vague oppressor stories about the patriarchy" Brooks is referring to? Is it the century that women had to fight, bleed, and even die to get the right to vote in this country? Is it the burning alive of women who dared to speak truth to power? Is it the fact that until the mid 20th century, a woman couldn't have their own credit cards, bank accounts, or own property without her husband's permission? Is it the fact that women have always been paid less than for the same work? Is it the fact that the church has historically been part of patriarchal oppression of women?
17
David Brooks quoting Carol Gilligan? I suppose we are to applaud him for anointing long-established, peer-reviewed social science with the intellectual Conservative's imprimatur of legitimacy. Making the Conservative world safe for Liberal-progressive thinking!
Here's the thing, and there's no way around it. Developing an effective pedagogy to teach empathy is an admirable goal, but the most immediate, far-reaching, and durable way to infuse our culture with the wisdom of women's insight is to pipe down and listen to them.
6
David, Instead of retreating to psychology and philosophy, you could be of great moral value to our country by applying and counseling the conservatives that control the Republican Party. The party certainly hasn't demonstrated any empathy, and certainly had adapted the win at any cost philosophy. If
they don't change Democracy will win in the end and Destroy that party of evil , for truth doesn't die , it just takes a little longer to emerge.
4
In a final act before heading home for the election season, the Senate approved a dozen or so new Federal Judges, all men. The GOP contingent on the Senate Jusiciary Committee is all white men. A Congressional Women’s Health working group met around Trump’s big table in the White House during the failed attempt to repeal Obamacare. An entire table of men deciding the future of women’s healthcare.
Women outperform men at school, with many colleges currently experiencing ratios of women to men in the neighborhood of 60:40. Recent studies show that patients of female surgeons have less complications such as infections, spend less time in the hospital and have less occasions to come back for surgery-related problems once discharged as compared to patients of male surgeons. Women read more. Way, way more. I could go on and on.
When Democrats fail, when they miss the mark, when they lose ground, they’re at least starting from a mindset of inclusiveness and diversity, especially women. The three women on the Democratic side of the Senate Judiciary Committee asked many brilliant questions, and Senator Klobuchar elicited the most telling response of anyone on that committee when her calmly asked and perfectly reasonable question unleashed a scornful, disrespectful, partisan, arrogant reply.
David, thanks for noticing some of our many good qualities but please understand that for us women talk is cheap. Angry women are a “mob” but angry men with tiki torches are “good people.”
4
“If no one has ever loved you, do you think you could still be a good father?”
That is heartbreaking. And while I recognize how this young boy’s life has been upended for half his years, I also recognize that he is just one yr younger than my nephew who is perfectly capable of understanding the concept raised.
The state has failed him, failed him miserably, if he is asking such a question 4 yrs after the fact. Who did they place him w such that he “honestly” believes that nobody has ever loved him? Was he given counseling? Were his foster homes all temporary w people who he could sense only care in a vague fashion? Did this all stem from his personal upbringing to that horrible moment in time?
I realize this wasn’t the focus of the piece, but I can only hope that following his statement, ACTIONS were taken. Even such simple ones as his teacher saying that he was loved. And then the teacher called his guardians, who promptly told him how much they loved him, and how sorry they were that he didn’t realize it. And then the guardians set up counseling of some kind to FIX THIS.
2
I got a kick out of the Holder/Clinton comment which you justified by including Trump. Trump is the head of the Republican Party today and he is taking it down a dark destructive path. Anything Clinton or Holder said is mere child's play compared to Trump's lies, deceit, egomania and willfull ignorance
3
Super tone deaf David. You needed a young woman or two, perhaps my 19 year old feminist daughter to read your piece to assess the accuracy of your statements from the perspective of those who you are struggling to talk about. You showed your age, gender, race and class throughout the piece. Just like the GOP illuminati who couldn’t understand the rage and perspectives of women during the Kavanaugh confirmation process.
17
Feminists need to get over it. During the past 100 years in America, boys spent most of their time under the supervision of their mothers and female teachers. Women had nearly exclusive power over them until high school. These are the most impressionable years! Men are who they are because women molded them that way.
1
David Brooks you nailed it for me. Thank you for writing this. I often find I am with you and then half way through your column you veer off into an ideological conservative explanation. We part ways. I’m with you all the way here. I hope this happens more often.
As a university professor who spends around 50 hours per week on campus, forgive me David, exactly how much time are you spending on campus? You lost me mostly at faculty lounge militancy, but I read further and finished. Again, you summate a book rather than reflect on your experiences. I do not share your views when you reflect on campus life; I do agree when you consider cultural gender development-but that's not exactly revelatory. Get off you desk chair, spend a year in university class rooms, student unions, faculty lounges (of which none exist-in what era do you speak to?), go to regional "directional" schools, not ivy or R1's. Think more.
5
Nice try, David.
In 2008, Hillary Rodham Clinton cried on the campaign trail in New Hampshire. And lost the party's nomination.
Yet recently, Brett Kavanaugh cried and immediately catapults as one of the most powerful people in the USA -- SCOTUS justice affirmed!
C'mon!
13
Gee, thanks for the two cheers and your encouraging view that we feminists have actually gotten something right! Wow, it just makes me feel so darn good about myself and proud as heck of those marvelous "inherited-gender" differences of mine. Love that crazy hyphen, too!
Now we just have to win over Ross Douthat and our work will be done, ladies!
3
"Vague oppressor stories about the patriarchy." It's called history, David.
11
Shorter David Brooks: I don’t like academic feminism, though I wouldn’t recognize it if it bit me in the tuchus. I’m mansplaining about the good old days when religion taught us right and wrong. And here’s a cute story about a little boy and a baby. Empathy is good!
5
And, Mr. Brooks, "they (boys) often turn stoical, unemotional and tough."
And they have drunken parties where they abuse women to prove their "manhood."
And they learn to lie. Maybe it's the testosterone.
1
I wanted to like this article and hoped to learn something from it about how a thoughtful man understands and views feminism. I was disappointed in that regard.
I roughly understand what Brooks means by "academic feminism" but academic as opposed to what? And what does academic feminism or even just feminism have to do with this article?
Feminism is advocacy for the rights of women, and for the recognition of the equal rights of men and women.
Is Brooks arguing that women have the "right" to talk just like men have the "right" to feel?
If so, why does he refer to Hillary Clinton's talking as "pseudo-masculine?"
Sorry, this one is a dud.
9
It's been very cute to watch the process of Mr. Brooks shedding his Conservative parochialism over the past two years, as he experiences wokeness in his new-found "discovery" that many of the insights and principles that Liberals have been espousing for decades actually aren't as evil as he previously had believed.
However, please stop the condescending tone of your writing, as if YOU'VE suddenly discovered these amazing truths.
I'd have a lot more respoct for you if you would simply come out and say something like: "You know, I've been blind for all these years. I blanketly dismissed Liberal ideas and principles without really knowing them or understanding them. In fact, many of the problems that are tearing our country apart are rooted in the fact that so many of us Conservatives have demonized Liberalism and dehumanized Liberals for the past two decades, to the point of believing that they are all unAmerican and evil. This caused us to foment hatred against them. We were wrong, and we're to blame for this mess."
Without doing this, you're guilty of appropriating our understandings and our principles. (Cultural appropriation is one of the issues that Liberals understand, acknowledge, and work to overcome.) Experiencing wokeness without truthfully and fully acknowledging the source of your sudden awakening is in and of itself intellectually and ethically unjust. But it also furthers the divisiveness that you have stoked, rather than working to bring us back together.
4
.
And three cheers for reason over emotion!!
The culture is asking for men to be more empathetic and women to be more reasonable. That will take generations of time and practice. In the meantime, review the lessons of the Salem Witch Trials and the Kavanaugh Confirmation. Learn the obvious lessons.
2
Feminism, girls, women, empathy and connection? I'm not persuaded that any one gender has or values these more than any other. People are individuals. Moreover, there are too many mean girls and women who bully others for me to ever adhere to an idealistic view of them.
2
sometimes you surprise me, David Brooks. that's why I read your column.
Most times, you make me cringe, though.
As when you are able to publish "American political scene over the last two weeks dominated by Trump, Clinton and Holder?
No, the last 2 weeks were dominated by a persuasive Christine Blasey and an arrogant bully Kavanaugh.
But then you mention Darren. Heartbreaking!
I will continue to read your columns.
For shame. This paean to False Equivalence misses the important point--namely that of male privilege that was on display in the Senate Committee Room just recently. And that's just the beginning. In the "good old days" women didn't have the vote because they would just do what their husbands ordered them to do in the voting booth. And if they were unmarried, well then the miss had something amiss. And to mention "chest thumping" comparing Trump with Hillary Clinton is, even for a shallow thinker such as yourself, over the top--you win the False Equivalence Award of the Year.
10
I find David Brooks endorsement of religion as an "antidote" contradicted by reality. "Religion"..." with it's gospel of mercy,charity,and love"...exactly what religion is David referencing ? Aspects of intolerance and demonization are endemic to all of them, as is structural misogyny and blatant homophobia. The patriarchal culture of the Catholic church led to the sexual abuse of thousands. The murderous homophobia of Islam is a grim reality.The Christian Right's attempt to use the Free Exercise Clause to justify blatant bigotry against the LGBT community is disgraceful.
.
9
Mr. Brooks,
I did not know whether to laugh or cry when I read this piece. This was one of the more offensive AND confusing pieces yet from a distinguished (?) though perplexing columnist.
From the twisted pseudoscholarly analysis of girls and boys and how they learn not to talk or feel (backed up by a quote from a >30 year old movie) to the jawdropping equivalency of Trump, Clinton and Holder “chest thumping” (not to mention the wistful nostalgia of a more merciful and religious America), I cannot help but agree with a great many of the other people commenting: You don’t get it...Thanks, but no thanks. We don’t need your approval.
17
@SB Exactly! Another white man approving who we are.
2
Only two cheers for feminism, Mr. Brooks? It sounds as if vocal, angry women scare you, but they are the ones you should give that last third cheer for.
6
i complained when another white male was nominated for the Supreme Court instead of a woman (preferably a non-white woman) because I want the court to look more like the population of the US, which is not 66% white male. However, upon reflection i see that having 2 men on the Supreme Court who have been openly accused of sexual abuse and gotten away with it, is representative of the US. Two out of 6 men who sit on rhe Supreme,(30%) of the men on the Supreme Court have been accused of sexual abuse and gotten away with it. White males, including political pundits, need to own this stat. Sorry, David, that academic feminist teaching isn't something you can relate to, your education bias is showing. You were right when you wrote that thought and academics have been dominated by males, which is exactly why we need gender, racial and sexual studies. Teaching has been through the lens of males for centuries and in the west, under white male dominance. This is a biased view of the world and culture. The US is less than 50% male and the Supreme Court should have 4 men, not 6. This male dominance suppresses reality. Male dominance subjugates the work of anyone who is not male. Male- dominated teaching sustains the imbalanced status quo. Thankfully, male dominance is crumbling all around the world, while here in the US, we are having a moment of regression into male-dominated repression. We need to grow gender, racial and sexual studies programs. And Vote in November.
8
Sorry, David. It is far too simplistic to blame the decline of empathy on the diminished role of religion. Religion has also given people cover for bigoted, hateful thoughts and actions and has served to marginalize many of us. The decline of empathy likely has many causes. Citing the only one that corresponds best with your point of view is misleading and demonstrates narrow thinking.
1
I don't know where are these emotionally cut off stereotype boys that Brooks talks about are. I do know some very kind teenage boys and girls. And I know some who are "apathetic" and emotionally "independent"; boys and girls. What they have in common is not their gender, but social situation and their age. They tend to be spoiled and 14. They are "apathetic" because they are used to the world revolving around them. They are self-obsessed. The good news is that it usually passes when people get older and gain a sense of themselves as active subjects in society rather than as people whose job is to be entertained. We need to stop treating young people as victims who are being emotionally scarred by a "male" upbringing. Actually, we need to stop treating everyone as a basket case. Doing that greatly diminishes our expectations of people, whose lives are pathologized, and whose potential is limited to therapeutically neutralizing their mental illness.
A. Stanton, Because I have enjoyed many of your other comments not related to gender roles, I'm going to try to respond in a measured, and not angry way, to your preferences for "women in dresses rather than pants" who "speak softly" and "stay home with children" - with a thought: perhaps your needs don't have to be gender-based, and you simply enjoy having caretakers and an audience in your life? There are people, not men OR women, but people - who are alphas by nature and enjoy having men AND women with submissive personalities surrounding them who stay behind the scenes and laugh at their jokes because it makes them feel good. And that's perfectly OK, as long as those men and women enjoy playing that submissive role. But even subtly hinting to women in your life that, because of their gender, they should talk softly and not wear pants? That's offensive - and from the intelligence displayed in your other comments, I never would have expected that from you.
18
Mr. Brooks seems to have retreated from reality in his last few columns into these wishy-washy, feel-good tales of imaginary pasts and communities, tinged with cultural resentment. It’s as if he has given up.
8
Reading this you'd think we were all asleep for the last couple of weeks. You give us cheers for feminism as you purport to criticize "male-dominated narratives" when just a week ago you wove a male-dominated narrative in which you deliberately ignored a woman who displayed all of the virtues you claim to value here.
You pretend to care about women yet keep evading the fact that one side consistently and repeatedly acts in bad faith in order to defend powerful men at the expense of women, or more accurately, defend powerful men who have nothing but contempt for "empathy and connection" and prey on "girls and women." You actually defended a bunch of powerful men who enjoyed the pain and horror they were inflicting on the very women and girls you now say we should emulate.
A very useful exercise is to pull a quote from this piece and put it up against the very real horror which occurred over the last several weeks. You state that "Culture teaches girls not to talk and boys not to feel." Doesn't that explain everything? Why didn't you write that during the Kavanaugh hearing? Since you insist that "Culture teaches girls not to talk" every person in the world should understand why Christine Blasey Ford did not talk about how Brett Kavanaugh tried to rape her at the time it occurred.
It's upsetting to see you forever claim to be taking the moral high-ground when you're never willing to condemn the worst sort of misanthropic, misogynistic, and predatory behavior imaginable.
13
I wonder what he means by "gender inherited differences"?
Two cheers, not three, eh David. Why is that? What you are suggesting is we need to open some windows into the tunnel so those outside can see in and those inside can see out. I see Holder and Clinton as reacting to Trump. They will do what they need to to try and come up with a way to win. Even if it is outside their comfort zone. Trump, on the other hand, is a person who has never experienced any empathy. And is so at ease like that. He personifies what his base wants. A man who when he should have been holding his own baby and bonding was too busy bedding porn stars. When the president of the United States has the view that what we need isn't more cuddling, but more porn stars to bed, it tells you all you need to know. And his base can't understand why anyone would have a problem with that. They are too busy pulling all the open shades in the tunnel closed for Trump. Enthusiastically. You can stop wasting your time reading all the studies and anthologies. Where is the study that watches what a Trump supporter does when left in a room with a mother and her Black or Muslim or Hispanic baby. Wonder if they would say "Can I hold her?" What do you think, David?
11
As you frequently do, David, you have overlooked the contribution of rampant and crass commercialism as the most powerful force alienating one human from another.
1
Stoicism and lack of empathy are our inheritance from classical culture. They are necessary traits in a society and economy that is built on oppression and domination of the many by the few. Making nic and keeping the oppression will do nothing to cure them.
5
What is Brooks saying? Is he ragging on capitalism? Is he extolling the virtues of collectivism? Is he saying that everyone is better off if everyone is better off? Seriously? And just where is his Americanism gone? Isn't I the important thing and we the unimportant thing?
Thanks for acknowledging that women are important. You would not even exist if your mother had not carried you inside her body for long, uncomfortable months, gone through the pain of childbirth and then kept you alive when you you were a child unable to take care of yourself.
Because women were busy taking care of these crucial tasks, men had more time to do other things. One of the things they did was invent myths that said God was a male. They told women they must "submit to their husbands." They made up all kinds of stories about men's bravery and superiority. Well, my God has no gender. In fact, the most loving and supportive people in my life have been female.
Now that humankind has an easier lifestyle, thanks to washing machines, dishwashers, cars, etc., women also have time to participate more in public life. Many males seem to be threatened by this but that is silly because women have much to contribute. Any thoughtful person has to admit that it is testosterone that causes wars, and perhaps women - who generally are not as violent as men - can work to reduce violence and help create a more peaceful, caring world.
136
@Carolyn: Many women, most in my experience, have children not as a selfless act, but because they want that the childbirth and mothering experience for themselves.
To your second point that having more female leaders would "reduce violence and help create a more peaceful, caring world"? You've obviously never had a woman boss. They are typically much less empathetic and willing to throttle-back their power responses than most men I've worked for. One may see the poisoned death from a woman much later, so it seems less violent, but it still damages as much as the knife between the ribs as you look into a man's eyes.
@Carolyn
Humankind as such does not have an easier lifestyle, thanks to washing machines, dishwashers, cars, etc.
Europe, and the United States yes. Check out Africa, Asian, South America, a few people in these countries do, most do not and those are the majority of women in the world.
Mr. Brooks, one of the first people I learned empathy and compassion from was a guidance counselor in my high school. He, by his concern and caring for me, taught me a good deal about what it is to be an adult, to be a responsible human being, and how wonderful it can be to care and be cared for by the right person.
I can never repay that lesson. My mother didn't teach me that. My grandmothers didn't. Nor did my aunts. He was the first one who showed real concern for me when I needed it. He didn't turn away from me after I was out of high school. He was a friend. Decades later, when his son was critically ill I was able to return the favor though not to the same degree. I told him, when he said it wasn't necessary, that if I hadn't been able to respond to his need now all that caring he had given me would have been meaningless.
Empathy and compassion is a human response. But someone has to have shown it to us first whether we remember it or not. A woman can be a feminist and not be compassionate or empathetic. It's not feminism you're cheering. You're cheering for our better angels and that's not a female or a male thing: it's human thing.
3
I concur with other writers who point to the destructive influence of society dominated by patriarchy. The subset of men who lead it are the very aggressive, self-centered individuals you criticize. This strain of men were the slave owners, the politicians who denied equal rights to women and minorities and still do.
I was overwhelmed by the two Women's Marches. This was a type of political activism that was very different from anything I had seen in many decades. It's still hard for me to describe, but I sensed a determination to change the world for the betterment of all that was devoid of the male tendency to destroy the opposition, not merely to oppose them. I've since seen this determination in the many women involved in political campaigns this year. More than ever, I am aware that humankind has suffered enormously by excluding women from power.
4
Relationship is great. Love ... real love in the sense of processing compassion, goodwill, rejoicing in the joy of another, etc ... is what power looks, I think. But the thing is, this comes from individuals who stand on their own, too. In particular, how can one offer self to another, including cause, without being whole, self-wise? Indidualism, though surely often perverted into unilateral dominance, is essential to the relationship of wholeness. The big question is, How does one get there? Not by analytical reasoning and systematic strategy, it seems. Living the mystery is something else.
I am not so sure that the tendencies (importantly, these are just tendencies!) of male moral psychology are always as troublesome as some people make out. Likewise, I am not so sure that the tendencies of female moral psychology are always so virtuous.
But I am sure that it is a problem when I, a woman, begin to think that you, a man, are bad, oppressive, privileged DUE TO differences in moral psychology along gender lines.
A lot of NY Times commentary now falls into this latter category and it is very troubling.
43
When you grow up, your heart dies.
I love that quote too and the works of the late great J Hughes.
However it's just not true as the character of Alison would have discovered. It is true that all our hearts eventually stop as Mr Hughes unfortunately discovered far too young but emotionally my heart has expanded with love as I have got older with girlfriends, a wife, children, pets...the death of loved ones etc. I cannot speak scientifically but I believe empathy is a fundamental emotion that we share.
2
If by the 'church' you mean 'spiritual values' fine; but if you mean 'institutional religion' then I fear you fail to see that such places continue to foster the feeling toward women that they are somehow 'lesser' in the hierarchy of a male-dominated human race. Spiritual values can do much to counter the false identification that cultures impose on us, by revealing and encouraging faith in an inner reality and sense self-worth.
3
Not your best work. The problem may be with the difficulty in making sense of that word “empathy.” It’s too often confused (especially in a patriarchical situation) with “sympathy.” Whole academic fields are inspired by the problem of feeling or understanding what other human beings are feeling or understanding, presumably providing the means to better do that (political polling is offered as means to that end, for example)—in short, they’re presumably based on the problem of empathy. The problem in your example, as I see it, is you project sensible conservative thoughts and feelings onto your reading public and, yes, there is much sensible conservatism out here. But there’s a lot more—including sensible non-conservative thoughts and feelings. You may feel sympathy with the latter, but empathy ain’t your metiere—at least not in this column.
3
Just because a story is ubiquitous doesn't mean it's vague. Patriarchy is the structural manifestation of the male-dominated narrative. It produces tangibly oppressive outcomes. If you still hear academics as touting "vague oppressor stories about the patriarchy," you might want to review Kavanaugh hearings and their aftermath. They're as 3-D, hi-def an illustration as you can get.
9
@Leslie I believe he is referring to women's' studies programs that teach all white males are members of the oppressor group regardless of how they live their lives rather than identify the true elites that are using patriarchy, institutional racism, and other levers of power to maintain their elite status.
This messaging and teaching divides instead of brings people together and creates vast openings for opponents of patriarchy and white male dominance from acting in concert to create a more just and fair society.
1
Religion as I knew it may have preached a gospel of mercy, charity and love but absolutely did not practice it; particularly when the role of women was taught.
I believe there are more similarities than differences in the personalities of men and women. As the professions and business that were essentially closed to women opened up to women and professions that were entered only by women such as nursing and teaching are increasingly being filled by men and more men sharing raising children the gender differences are blurring.
Of course anatomy is destiny but it is not absolute.
4
Thank God for women, their frequent differences from men and their growing willingness to stand up, speak out and show us what it is possible to achieve personally and socially/politically.
The old, gray men of the Senate like Grassley, Hatch, McConnell and too many other have little native empathic capacity for anything other than attunement with their old, gray counterparts whose predominant legislative interest is in perpetuating their power, which precludes our children and grandchildren’s ability to make decisions respecting their own future.
Diversity, which includes women, hopefully better women than these Senate dinosaurs, can better reflect our society and its many elements, perhaps thereby helping men to improve their capacities to both feel and think!
4
What begins as a good essay is soon marred by some sneaky cognitive biases I've come to associate with the Brooks world view. Academic feminism is wholly bad (rather than some of it). The crippling situation for women was once ameliorated by religion (rather than an even more severe strait jacket). HRC was bad (rather than being victimized by an irrational system). The suicide statistics for ages 10-17 are due to their brutality and moral one-upmanship (but pooploads of that in the over 70s at Kavanaugh hearing). A story about a foster care boy who wants to hold babies sheds light on the patriarchy (rather than just being a statistical glitch in an eighth grader).
7
Perhaps the essence of this editorial is in the last two sentences. It is how we value all of our children in the ways we nurture, protect, educate them form the time of conception forward. The young boy knew it is love that creates empathy.
1
I agree that academic feminism has become lost in the diversity rubric, another column or box, which, when checked, ties into the larger official discrimination model. I am much more comfortable with Christina Hoff Summers' "equity feminism" than "victimhood feminism".
What has this now academically institutionalized discrimination/diversity model wrought? If we're lucky all the efforts to make young adults aware of differences and to celebrate diversity will lead them to greater empathy. On the other hand, their inability to handle any concept that deviates from their rubric does not bode well. How good is any model that cannot withstand challenge?
2
Interesting, as always. Hopeful, I guess. The problem is that when surveys show that people are tired of partisanship and say that they want more cooperation, they really mean that the other side should capitulate.
4
The message the democrats must send--which some are doing---let's stop yelling at each other and begin solving problems. Every problem we are now experiencing in this country--from health care to climate disasters---have solutions or at least rational strategies for examining the problem and experimenting with solutions. Instead our lawmakers, from both parties, yell or point fingers at each other across the aisle ---all fueled by a President whose gift is keeping the fires burning hot. At some point, and we maybe be nearing that point, people in general become tired of yelling and look for less drama and more solutions.
6
Broken hearts never heal.
I learned that living in rescue missions and mental hospitals, and living on the streets. That doesn't mean there is a disease called broken heart disease, it means we did it, we can stop doing it, and we can then open our jails and stop producing broken people.
Cutthroat capitalism is about treating people like machines, without feelings, or even worse, treating us like horses needing to have our spirits broken. We of the lower classes have nothing that endures and we are totally dependent on people who neither know of us, or care about us.
So talk about the crisis of connection all you want, but it is about income inequality, about the gilded investor class, and it is about you.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
13
Two cheers for you as well, David. I think you got some of it right. But until we start seeing each other as individual human beings and respect differences, WE are not getting it right.
For example, I made phone calls for Hillary Clinton in her presidential race. I was told she was "very smart, but too ambitious." Would anyone hold the trait of "ambition" against a male presidential candidate? Women are still fighting very strong subliminal stereotypes and until then, unfortunately, a lot of old out of touch white men will still be making all the important decisions.
243
“All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love. But now we have an ethos of detachment and competition all the way down.”
So religion was the savior of women in a male-dominated society?
What planet was that, David?
18
@Sam Kanter
You, like many, make a monumental mistake by viewing religion only through the prism of male dominance. There's so much more to religion, like helping the neediest, learning forgiveness, developing trust and faith. It's been a tragic mistake to throw the baby out with the bath water, especially when religion helps so many through so much.
@AACNY: "...make a monumental mistake by viewing religion only through the prism of male dominance. "
You realize about 50% of the wprld ois made up of women, right? So, yeah, that 'male dominance' thing is kinda a big deal.
and enculturating their sons to treat women as their sisters or mothers. They are encouraged to be macho, masculine, virile, and aggressive, to have multiple girlfriends, multiple sex partners. How about having four wives? That is not acceptable. Four girlfriends or four mistresses are fine. Four adulterous relationships are fine. I see American young men, or even not so young men, on the lookout for a seducable a girl, a seducable woman, whoever they can handle. It is easier for me to see this great flaw, because I am from a different culture.
3
David, Thank You for affirming what women have always known. Empathy, compassion, ability to share emotions expands our humanity.
Women grow up reading He and doing the automatic mental gymnastics of translation in our heads that He really means Me, and All people. Women know that ManKind is really HumanKind, but we play the game; yes, to get along.
But what you still get totally wrong is the implication that women are wrong when we rail against the patriarchy. You belittle our truth about the savagery of conditions for women in most of the world when you say "...vague oppressor stories about the patriarchy..."
Our stories, our truth is NOT vague. It is as real as Hurricane Michael shredding whole communities.
This you must understand if you are to be truly inclusive of half the world's reality.
243
Not believing that you actually ever dwelt in your imagined faculty lounges populated by the feminist types you posit here. Never seen such a lounge in academia. High school, yes. You cannot set HRC and Holder next to Trump and simply claim common character in lacking empathy. Trump lacks it; the other two call for fierce resistance to the very debased character you discuss here. That does not mean they, too, lack empathy. Rather, they advocate for more empathy in their own ways.
12
"The church"? Historically?
Do we mean the ones that burned witches, named harlots, and excluded women from leadership? The ones for whom lgbt people were pariah? The ones that railed against interracial marriage? The ones for whom people of other faiths were always suspect? They were a safe haven from patriarchy? Really?
I still recall my Baptist stepfather listing the colourful pejoratives they had for Catholics in his hometown in east Texas. Where his father was a preacher, cold and hostile, I assure you, to a great many things.
Or maybe we mean that Church that, wherever we look, we find institutionally protected male child sex abusers, and sent the children of unmarried mothers to early graves (as reported here) all while condemning divorcees as fallen and gay people as made wrong...
There are good churches, with good people attending them. But "the church" has been everything the culture has been, both good and bad. Sexist here, feminist there; cruel and judgemental here, kind and tolerant there; abusive and exploitative here, protective there. One thing it has not been is a safe place for those suffering under patriarchal hierarchies.
Speaking as a woman from the Bible Belt with many gay friends though, the church was *famously* not the place you'd go for empathy and tolerance. It was the place you escaped from.
Maybe you felt loved and accepted by the Church. But be careful about interpreting your experience as the norm. I assure you, it was not.
336
@AAC - thank you for summing up the issues with Mr Brooks' assertions...it was hard to do with only 1500 characters but you did an admirable job!
4
@AAC When Brooks refers to "the church", he, perhaps unconsciously, means "a social framework". Humans are social animals and function best as part of a group. Unfortunately that trait can work against us when it becomes a mechanism for destructive dogmas as in some church settings as you illustrate, or manifests as the tribal "us vs. them" as in the mindset of the current hyper nationalist republican party.
What would be healthy for this country, and in turn, the world, would be a turn to a more healthy form of patriotic, participatory model of citizenship. One of the many destructive trends that started with the Reagan presidency was the redefinition of Americans from "citizens" to "taxpayers". A citizen is a part owner of his country, and shares responsibility and pride in its welfare. On the other hand, a taxpayer, just wants to get out of paying taxes.
@AAC Amid many good comments, this one stand out. Thanks.
The American culture is deficient in coaching, educating, and enculturating their sons to treat women as their sisters or mothers. They are encouraged to be macho, masculine, virile, and aggressive, to have multiple girlfriends, multiple sex partners. How about having four wives? That is not acceptable. Four girlfriends or four mistresses are fine. Four adulterous relationships are fine. I see American young men, or even not so young men, on the lookout for a seducable a girl, a seducable woman, whoever they can handle. It is easier for me to see this great flaw, because I am from a different culture.
3
I still belong to the category of men who look to women for support and understanding rather than leadership and don’t feel apologetic for doing so. I prefer women in dresses rather than pants, women who stay home with the kids when it is an option, women who, as a matter of preference, speak softly and carry no big sticks, women who work behind the scenes rather than in front of them, women who permit me to open doors for them, carry their coats and umbrellas and laugh at my jokes, especially the ones that aren’t very funny.
The last 50 years in this country has been a time of profound changes. Today it is women who are increasingly the doctors, lawyers, college graduates and primary wage earners in millions of families. American men in large numbers now feel superseded and irrelevant. The traditional supportive role of women in American society is now largely regarded as something akin to a crime against them.
Trump, by his boorish, brutish and ugly behavior, has been taking full advantage of the backlash and resentment to this that is prevalent among millions of Americans of both genders who long for the “good old days” of men’s and women’s roles that were simpler, more clearly defined, more stable and better suited to their natures.
I voted happily for Mrs. Clinton in 2016 and would gladly vote for
a qualified woman again, but not without a measure of sympathy for the millions of men who are now feeling hurt, angry, displaced, lost in the world and yes, unqualified.
33
@A. Stanton
This is an interesting comment and I'm trying to be fair to you. But honestly, my first reaction is that I prefer coffee to tea, or Adidas slip-ons to Skechers, or the Times to the Post, or opera to football, or "Ozark" to "Downton Abbey."
In other words, as a woman, I am a person, not a commodity or experience. What you "prefer" is irrelevant. "I prefer" expresses your relations to women as a consumer or aesthetic preference, as if what you "prefer" has anything to do with what a woman is.
Please understand that I don't think you're a misogynist (in fact this is a good reminder that "sexism" and "misogyny" have usefully different meanings). I appreciate your vote for HRC and your respect for competent women. But I respectfully suggest that you've got a ways to go.
Men say they are about competition and winning, but when women got to compete in the professional fields you list, men feel "hurt, angry, displaced, lost in the world, and unqualified"? Join the club of humanity. If you feel lost and displaced, find out where you really are. If you feel unqualified, go get some qualifications. Don't blame it on women with jobs or the success of women in the workplace. Blame it on the exploitive class, the extractors of value who treat you (and all of us) as disposable.
And don't blame the rise of Trump on women pursuing opportunities for independence and achievement. Putting women back in aprons is not an antidote to the rot of white nationalism and hatefulness.
13
@A. Stanton Yes, the last few decades have been difficult for both men and women. And, I truly understand how difficult it has been for people to try and change their automatic reactions to cultural cues.
I was raised in the 40's and 50's, certainly not a time of equality for women. I have done both. And a good part of what I did in my life was a conscious decision.
I've been married for 60 years to the same man. We have 3 adult sons. While they were small I stayed home and ran our home.
As the culture changed I listened and changed. I went back to school and then went to work, at first part-time and then as the boys started high school full time. It was quite the juggle, running a home with everybody pitching in and putting energy into my work world. But like a lot of women I did it and felt a sense of accomplishment.
So yes, its is difficult for people to make this huge cultural change. But its already happened. The reason so many women are now doctors and lawyers is because they have been willing to do the hard work.
Now many men are beginning to realize they are now competing with women who are just as smart and hard-working as they have always assumed they were. Not an easy thing for many men to swallow as a fact.
8
@A. Stanton Why can't women lead while also being supportive and understanding? Why does what women wear matter? Why can't a woman speak calmly and forcefully, up front and center, when she has something to say? What's wrong with a man staying home with the kids if he and his partner decide together that this is the best choice for their family? If you get to the door first, open it. If someone is burdened with stuff, while your hands are free, offer to help carry it. Why do you need women to be a certain way so you can keep on feeling the way you want to? This reminds me of something delightful one of my students said: "I'm a great leader. I just don't have any followers."
11
Yesterday I attended a live radio interview of the remarkable historian Jill Lepore, conducted by the also remarkable host, Dave Miller, of our local Fresh Air equivalent, Think Out Loud.
Among the many insights she shared with us from her latest book, These Truths, were two tidbits: one, that when the Federalist papers were first published, it was done in a newspaper which also featured advertisements for the buying and selling of slaves. Second, that nine of the teeth in George Washington's famous wooden dentures were pulled from the mouths of slaves.
Then I came home to learn that Kanye West gets superman powers and male energy from wearing a MAGA hat because, poor man child, he is married into the Kartrashian family and I'm With Her, Hillary's slogan, just doesn't cut it for him.
All this is to underline that the dichotomy of male/female isn't enough to understand America's lack of compassion without taking into account the brutal fact that America was stained from the get go by the sin of white people owning black people. Yes, women weren't enfranchised either, but at least they were free.
Donald Trump is a poor excuse for manhood, but he's a living, boasting metaphor for ownership, for marking with a brand, like a dog lifting his leg against a tree. He unleashes the still simmering resentment of white people in the red states so as to bask in their adulation. That is our current dilemma, not whether we should just let girls be girls or try to be more like them.
11
@Thoughtful Woman -- May I remind you of H.L. Mencken's true quote:
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
It is becoming quite tedious to read Mr. Brooks as he tries to keep and defend his long held beliefs while at the same time try to find a new path that leads to a more positive country. Please stop trying and see the truth for what it is: All that you are defending and supporting created the negativity that you are trying to abolish. It is not because society is turning less to religion because your party is full of "Christians", and it is not because universities are full of liberals because a ton of Republicans went through those colleges with their ideology in tact. It is because we as a country cannot agree on what is important. We are at odds as to whether it is the individual or the society that holds the superior position. Republicans want to believe that the individual should be free and soar but so often that soaring is at the expense of others. Your side has bent over backwards trying to rationalize the freedom of individuals making corporations people and money speech.
Man up Mr. Brooks and admit it is this dogmatic belief in the individual rights whether it is to own other humans or to profit from others' misery that brings with it all the ills you wish would just go away. But they won't and we are stuck where you helped lead us.
2
Do you really believe this, David? Mentioning Clinton and Holder in the same breath as Trump is just about the ugliest joke of the week. Especially when I can think of so many others, all in your party, who said much worse. Holder and Clinton were merely registering anger at the spectacle they, along with the rest of us, had to sit through and endure. If there wasn't such a lack of civility right now, Clinton and Holder wouldn't have to come back with what seems like the same incivility. Your party doesn't seem to understand anything else.
7
Modern feminism and the future of men? Are women more empathetic and connected than men?
The large scale, biological view of the human goes something like this: An omnivorous creature, gradually gaining consciousness, in a frightening chemical/biological natural world of profound imbalance in the sense that life forms feed on each other, this creature, the human being, viewing nature as hostile, always trying to get above it, make the world safe for itself, creating civilization, constantly trying to eradicate the predatory around it and within itself, trying to make the world "just" for itself, but obviously in the process turning itself more and more into prey type animal (sheep) at least psychologically and breeding out of control, and with each increase in its weakness, further departure from being a predatory animal, increasing its call for "justice", until one day, presumably, human beings will be entirely domesticated, approximating the weakest, most tender, "most empathetic and connected" people around us today, course of psychology, human consciousness, intelligence, profoundly influenced by this "necessary alteration of the human for our survival".
It seems there is no obviously pleasant course of development for the human: Behind us in time, historically, we have tale after tale of the predatory human, savage humanity approximating a state of raw nature, and before us we have a future of being blinking, domesticated sheep, tender, empathetic, connected.
We're not tired of the 'partisan charade' so much as with consistent and brazen efforts on the part of the Republican Party, your party, to regulate our bodies, deregulate environmental and worker protections, and lie their way to victory despite not representing the majority of the country. Empathy isn't going to get us far, strategy will.
And do please save us the condescension about what feminism and women get right. On this subject - judging from your aside about religion and slander of Hillary Clinton - you ain't been right yet.
17
I grew up in the sixties with Gloria Steinem as my role model and two chesty cousins,always bra-less, an inadvertent non verbal statement to feminism.
Women in the 21st century are battling a lot more weighty issues. In professions dominated by women, such as education, we are underpaid, overworked, and suppressed. Not wearing a bra seems superficial today, especially after all the abuse I was immersed in as a NYS teacher and adjunct professor, putting my life at risk from the poverty created by NYS government.
Femminism? Time to come up with a new term.
@MF
Second wave feminism wasn't all about individual issues. Whatever the blind spots (there were some; and all movements have them) the 1960s' women's movement, like that today, wanted all women to have an full place in society, free of discrimination that restricted their futures. If you remember the sixties, you must remember things like landlords refusing to rent to single women, banks requiring a husband to co-sign a loan request, statutory limitations on women's privacy and personal autonomy. There were also sex-segrated employment ads, and open misogyny permeated many workplaces. There was active opposition to women's progress in professions (including your own) and open hostility directed at women who tried to get good-paying blue-collar jobs. The effort to change that culture wasn't frivolous at all; nor was the analysis that flowed from it. It gave the next generations perspectives to build on and tools to build with. The gains have been stuttering and arguably more limited than some of us wished. But they were real, nonetheless.
3
@MF
Second wave feminism wasn't all about individual issues. Whatever the blind spots (there were some; and all movements have them) the 1960s' women's movement, like that today, wanted all women to have an full place in society, free of discrimination that restricted their futures. If you remember the sixties, you must remember things like landlords refusing to rent to single women, banks requiring a husband to co-sign a loan request, statutory limitations on women's privacy and personal autonomy. There were also sex-segregated employment ads, and open misogyny permeated many workplaces. There was active opposition to women's progress in professions (including your own) and open hostility directed at women who tried to get good-paying blue-collar jobs. The effort to change that culture wasn't frivolous at all; nor was the analysis that flowed from it. It gave the next generations perspectives to build on and tools to build with. The gains have been stuttering and arguably more limited than some of us wished. But they were real, nonetheless.
1
To connect religion with positive attitudes towards behavior to women is total hypocrisy. Every church has diminished women since their founding. Catholic, Muslim, Jewish et al.
It's too long a discussion for a comment, but there's plenty of literature to support my comment.
21
@Jim Gordon, you do know there’s a world beyond the abrahamic cousins. Thank goodness for that
I wonder which "genetic differences" you are thinking about. It was not so long ago that women were considered intellectually, emotionally, logically inferior because of "genetics".
This way of thinking was called Social Darwinism - which was a pseudo-scientific justification for the devaluing of women (and non-northern white men).
Is there a hint of this way of thinking in your essay?
Is there more than a hint in the current administration?
9
@Marc that should read "non-northern white, and all non-white men".
@Marc, the argument was used against "the black race" down here, too. Only white males had the right kinds of brains to have well paying jobs, to make decisions, etc. Any argument you can imagine is proffered when power is on the line.
Toxic masculinity is a real problem in our country. Man babies are a real problem in our country. We will eventually get to a better place, but I hope we don’t just brush this under the rug. We need to deal with the very extreme male entitlement syndrome.
9
I agree with your first paragraph but am not surprised that any mention of "feminism"by a man is a trigger for a spate of comments on "not getting it" etc etc. It seems that the feminists want to keep the conversation to themselves and their supportive menfolk. In short to avoid an open discussion.
1
How about Three Cheers for feminism!What are you talking about when you say Academic Feminism refuses to recognize inherent gender differences.Women get connectivity and empathy but they also get they have the ability to do jobs that were formerly known as men’s work.They are CEO’s, surgeons, judges,astrophysicists.The Commandant of the Air Force Academy is a woman who is a Brigadier General and she is also a mother.Feminists get a lot of things right- they deserve three cheers!
4
David, I usually love your columns because you find connections between people. You tend to create bridges and convey hope. But in this column, I am confused and put off a bit by the tone in your first paragraph. What is "academic feminism" vs feminism? "Vague oppressor stories about the patriarchy"? You make it sound as if feminists are shaky in their knowledge of or just making up "oppressor stories." And the tone of "faculty lounge militancy"? As a just-retired high school teacher, I have to laugh. I know you are probably referring to higher ed, but the phrase implies that a teacher or professor even has time to wax philosophical in a faculty lounge -- ha! As a feminist who tries every day to live my deeply held convictions and my faith, I'm feeling like... ouch, ouch, and ouch.
202
@Mary H-S Agree wholeheartedly with your comments, Mary. After reading this, and what struck me as his opinion undergirded with [I believe, unintended,] condescension, I couldn’t help but feel an urge to say, “Thanks, dad.”
2
@Mary H-S. I think he is revealing his age, much like Trump, Grassley, McConnell, Hatch, and so on. The world was easier for them when men could have it their way all the time.
Yes, there are genetic differences. But society has been set up to the advantage of white men, and I think when they are asked to share some of the pie, they naturally get a bit possessive.
5
Long before there was academic feminism (whatever Mr. Brooks means by that) women were able to tell that we lived in a male-dominated world. All we need to do is look around. The Kavanaugh hearing offered the most recent public evidence that the patriarchy persists and that it's not vague at all. Brooks is wrong, too, that feminists are unwilling to acknowledge "inherited-gender differences". Across society, you can see their practical impacts on the lives of women and girls -- difficulties in access to health care, limited expectations for girls, our shocking maternal mortality rate, children in poverty, wage gaps, stubbornly persistent employment discrimination, the prevalence of sexual assault. Those are some of the effects of gender-based discrimination, and many scholars have documented them. Feminists aren't denying difference, we're looking to end the social and economic injustices it's used to excuse.
19
I continually find it interesting that certain groups buy into the thousands of years of men oppressing women narrative. The reality is that virtually all people were oppressed and suffering. This was not unique to women. Prior to the industrial revolution 95% of all people worldwide lived in extreme poverty. This 95% of the population (men and women) typically lived their lives controlled by Monarchs, Emperors, etc. Individualism was not yet an accepted philosophy. Everyone’s lives belonged to their rulers or their religion. Life was suffering for virtually everyone. Well over 90% of the population was oppressed.
6
"All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love. But now we have an ethos of detachment and competition all the way down."
No, David. Religion wasn't the antidote, it was the mechanism used to implement it.
21
If only people who call themselves Christians were more Christian. Try the Gospels. Religion is not the answer any more, and in any case institutions like the church have all too often been about power and wealth and control.
The most moral people I know are atheists.
Yes, it would be nice if we lived in communities that helped people work together for the common good. Unfortunately, lately we've had too much evidence that pastors of so-called Christian churches are eager to bypass the teachings of Jesus.
Jesus was a radical socialist. He'd be in jail if they had their druthers. He taught a radical message of love, and he stood up for the less fortunate.
34
By the way, a gold star for obnoxious stereotyping - I thought David Brooks was preaching in favor of "tolerance" and understanding, and against knee-jerk bias:
"Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder lining up to present their pseudo-masculine, chest-thumping displays to show how much they hate the other side."
13
I disagree with nearly every sentence you wrote. Jesus was not a socialist and any effort to make him so is a completely distortion of the texts. You’re also making blanket statements about conservatives Christians that just isn’t factual. Of course facts don’t really matter to the left, just feelings. (just not those of white males, right?)
Beyond all of that, the atheist has no basis for their morality given that objective moral truths cannot exist in an atheist worldview. It’s a logical fallacy. If there is no God there are no more absolutes. If we are just matter in motion, a cosmic accident so to speak, objective morality isn’t justifiable and is ultimately just a social construct.
As the left continues in its efforts to push religion out of the public square, they should begin to ponder of what the secular right may look like? I can assure you the secular right will be far worse than the religious right ever dreamed about being.
2
@Shay
Try the Gospels. Here are a few.
"do unto others as you would have them do unto you"
hypocrites, "whited sepulchers"
"moneychangers in the temple"
casters of first stones
the Good Samaritan
The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew)
Turning the other cheek; coals of fire
Let God be the judge
his attitude towards women and the underprivileged
As for atheists and morality, perhaps I know more of them than you do. They are mostly less sanctimonious and better walkers of the walk of caring and restraining violent impulses. I'm a big fan of real Christians, but this bunch doesn't qualify. (I'm particularly fond of Isaiah, by the way, but Genesis starts the trouble with Dominion and slavery rather than stewardship and sharing.)
The notion that kids are unaware of gender stereotypes and the expectations that come with them until age nine is preposterous. Mr. Brooks, please do a bit more research. Studies show that children's awareness of gender expectations are well established by preschool. Girls too often learn that they must be docile and yielding to others. Boys are given the message that rambunctious behavior is part of their genetic make-up. Classroom studies show that boys consistently get more teacher attention, positive and negative, while girls are reinforced for being calm and quiet. Girls are also taught that beauty is a central part of their worth when people comment on their appearances ("I like your dress," "I like your hair"). All of this is extremely damaging to children of all genders, and well-meaning adults are perpetuating it every day without even knowing it. Research shows that the differences between one woman and another or one man and another are far more significant than any real differences brain-wise between men and women. Mr. Brooks would do well to do a bit more thinking about how social constructs of gender determine the behavior patterns he describes.
17
Your comment: "All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love. But now we have an ethos of detachment and competition all the way down." is apt. Without getting into the challenging conversation about the way religion can get compromised by its fallible leaders, the quieting of that gospel of mercy, charity and love, leaves a serious void. Sports (and I am a fan) culture is the American culture...win, pursue wealth, entertain, align with military power, and shed an occasional tear for the hardship some overcome. This is the backdrop against which Donald Trump rose to the presidency. The way forward will require some serious moral reflection and a cogent code, which I predict will involve return to and reform of our religious instincts founded on the best of those traditions.
4
Really? And how do you propose to increase empathy when the current "leader" of this country is outstanding for his total lack of empathy, when the political party that supports him wants to cut off support for the poor, the ill (those with pre-existing conditions), and the refugee? It's hard to see how "religion" (however you define it) can remedy the situation when there is no evidence of love, mercy and compassion at the hight levels of government.
32
I've been hearing that "Americans are exhausted by the partisan charade" my whole life. But it keeps on getting worse and worse. I don't really believe it anymore. Maybe Americans just like to think that they're tired of the charade. Or maybe the point is that what many Americans really want is for the "partisan charade" to end because their party prevails and eliminates the other entirely.
12
Thank you David. This is a hopeful column in an angry week.
There are days when, after reading your column, finding both agreement and disagreement, I wish I could buy you a cup of coffee and talk with you for a while.
5
"All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love." Survivable for whom? Who survived and flourished the best?
18
I am a Northern California subscriber to the New York Times and probably confirm to most of the stereotypes that implies. My favorite articles in the Times are those written by the conservative columnists that Really make me think because I completely agree with them. This article is one of those. Thank you so much Mr. Brooks.
5
Religion? Everything was fine when "religion played a bigger national role in life"? Where was religion when little children were being oppressed, molested, and abused by the purveyors of faux piety? Where was the love? Where was the mercy? What exactly do you think this kind of abhorrent treatment of children taught them about kindness and love? These indecent religious men of the cloth were the pillars of the community and the role models for the very children they abused.
"Male dominated narratives" have their origin in religion which has been the progenitor of patriarchal societies for hundreds of years. Religion promotes the empowerment of males, period, relegating women to the role of helpmeet. It is what the "academic feminists" you disdain have been fighting against, - women being relegated to the handmaiden's role.
Religion is not the antidote to society's ills. Religious organizations which embrace an amoral president and which allow the abuse of children have no moral authority. Religious institutions are not a place of safety, nor refuge, nor love.
You are "living in the memory of a (religion) that never was" Mr. Brooks.
40
I had a lot of issues with this column (not least the attempt to wrestle with "academic feminism" [hint: there's not just one!]) - and I also didn't much like the reference to religion making things more tolerable for the sexes [see: women in Ireland just a decade or so ago]. All of that was nonsense.
Yet, this article also touches on some important ideas re: compassion and the social acceptability of showing emotion.
The idea of feminism isn't just about making a place for women in public life, it's also about loosening some of the constraints on men as well, particularly in private life. It means that Dads don't have to be distant authoritarian figures, and that introverted or non-macho boys who don't like competitive sports don't have to be shamed as a failure to their gender.
I know very few Trump-like wanna-be-alpha type males (thank goodness), but know plenty of men who love being fathers, being silly, being cat owners and cooks and arty or sporty or nerdy or whatever.
Feminism is simply about removing some of the shackles that have kept both females AND males in their stifling, socially-confined boxes - and surely that's a good thing for everyone??
42
Mr Brooks, I know you try hard to understand. That is evident from your writing. Having followed you on PBS NewsHour and here at the the Times, I was always frustrated with why, when so much was at stake, you couldn't be more charitable towards Hillary Clinton during the election, and why now, you take Eric Holder's words out of context.
I don't think that any male voice will ever have the immediacy or trust that feminine voices have, especially now in history. For all the difficulties we have faced growing up in this patriarchal society, women see the problems facing both genders far more clearly than most men. Feminists with mature voices realize already that both women and men need to be liberated from the past. If sexual abuse and harassment is to decrease, then boys need to be raised that respect both themselves and others, including girls and women.
My advice, Mr Brooks, is to listen carefully. Not only to the feminist professors you don't take a shine to, but to the many voices of women who have been hurt by men. Like anything else, it will be uncomfortable but so worth it.
28
This article is just a nature verses nurture argument couched in the language de-jour. Those in power clearly bias towards nature, as it justifies their success. Those without power clearly bias towards nurture, as it explains their lack thereof.
To make any headway, we shouldn't be relying on anecdotal evidence or arm-chair reasoning like in this article. We would all be better served learning more about how our genes actually affect us, and how society further shapes who we become.
3
If you want to write inspirational columns about poor young men from broken families who become sensitive and caring people, great. Just don't start with gratuitous attacks on feminists and a lot of pseudo social science. The causes of oppression of women are not "narratives", but economic and social factors that changed very significantly over the centuries. If we, as a culture, have become less empathetic and more misogynistic in the last few decades, I suggest you look to your true sacred institution, capitalism. "Greed is Good" and "Creative Destruction" are the narratives that promote and reward detachment and competition, and we need to replace them with more humanist ideals. Are you ready to give up those narratives, Mr. Brooks?
39
Men get to decide what "women and girls get right." If men don't agree, it's not "right." Feminists, which I consider myself, can talk all day long and into the night, but they're just talking to each other. The best we can do is everybody, male or female, does. Live the best we can in the system we inherited: patriarchy. Yes, Mr. Brooks, it's patriarchy.
26
I don’t think this article is as much about feminism, which Brooks is slow to understand with or without religion shaping lives, as it is about emotional intelligence. Valuing and trusting emotions to play an essential and empathetic role in a conscious life brings us together in ways that defy fundamentalist and conservative strictures in which Brooks seems planted.
15
The Big Thing is, in my opinion, exactly where most supposedly feminist thinking goes crucially wrong.
Assuming that our current male-female split in values is eternal and unchanged since the beginning of time, and that the values labeled male have always been given uniform preference throughout all cultures in world history is just flat out wrong.
In fact, different cultures draw different lines dividing male and female personas, and 1000 years ago they were even more different. There's not actually a consistent patriarchy or matriarchy or anything consistent, really, against which to rebel. History doesn't offer a coherent "past" against which to define our present by contrast.
All people are doing is taking some very modern concepts and projecting them backwards in time, then pretending they've always been that way.
Even periods as recent and familiar as the 1950s and 1960s in the US have been so distorted by modern stereotypes, they'd probably be unrecognizeable to those that actually lived then. The restrospective distortion of more distant cultural settings is probably even more drastic.
4
And that’s why feminism is so skeptical of identifying inherited gender differences in behavior. It’s virtually impossible to separate nurture from nature so we have no real idea which of those differences are ineradicable. Possibly some are! But we won’t know until we fight to eradicate them, eliminate the prejudices and preconceptions that may be causing them, and still see the differences persist.
5
@James
Here's the deal James, I was born a female in the USA 60+ years ago so I can speak to my life time in a male dominated USA. How about being in a business class at Northeastern University, 1974, the only woman when the teacher tells the whole class women do not belong in business but barefoot in a kitchen. Given women were not allowed to vote, not allowed to own property blah blah blah -- I can, given my history lessons and own experiences and shared experiences, say that white men have dominated American society since they arrived.
We are smart and we are capable and yet you just dismissed us as a whole as if we don't know about other cultures and history. Since the puritans arrived here in the early 1600's white men have pretty much dictated how it will be for all of us -- 400 years -- I think that's enough!
11
@James
The fifties and sixties? Been there, done that. They are not only recognizable to those of us who "actually lived then," in many ways, not much has changed.
Here's the perspective of a woman who went to engineering school way back: they didn't exactly roll out the welcome mat, but the civil rights movement that finally got black people out of the back of the bus and onto stools in "whites only" restaurants kinda guilted them into pretending to welcome us with open arms.
Having been here for a few decades now, I can see that I was overly optimistic about women's chances of becoming seamless in the workplace, meaning, that men would just shrug, accept us, and stop being sexual harassers.
As for gender differences, of course they exist. My innate female ability to refrain from clenching my fists in rage every single time something stressful came up was a real asset. I remember one colleague telling me I had "a way" of getting "everyone moving in the same direction." Maybe that's because I didn't spend all day screaming at people like the wonderful alpha males in the office did.
4
Thank you for this piece, Mr. Brooks. I appreciate your thoughtfulness.
I have typically measured my own success in terms of money and power, but as I’ve aged I see things through the lens of connection. Connection to my kids. My parents. My spouse. My friends. My community. It is surely a luxury for me to do so, but I often see the gender debate - focused so much on money and power, and so little on connection - as misdirected. The fact that women often spend time with children is a victory for women and a loss for men. It’s no wonder that men are more often lonely, more often have alcohol problems, and more often commit suicide. Men have something to learn from women in prioritizing connection - I wonder why this is not more often part of the discussion?
11
Mr. Brooks talks of how boys are taught not to feel and girls not to think, and says "All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love."
Give me a break! All this was survivable when women could not vote, work, go out alone at night, or aspire to most of the best jobs, and got their legal identity through their husbands. Religion taught that men are and must be the heads of families, society, and churches. Women who challenged this got little mercy, charity, or love. Wives got no sympathy if they were beaten; their job was to not provoke, and endure. A violated woman who complained was doubly soiled.
The modern age is not a decay and descent from some prior garden of eden where mercy and empathy abounded. Those women who had these were lucky to have men who allowed them to be that way; if they didn't, there was very little they could do about it. Women who were happy in their roles were like happy slaves, admirable in how they bore an unfair and tragic fate but unable to be fully admirable until they escaped it and became more of what they could be. The traditional place of women is like the Southern Way of Life -- inescapably and irretrievably flawed at its very heart, so that its virtues are poisoned.
Mr. Brooks, as usual, still does not get it.
119
Absolutely!
2
@sdavidc9 Thank you sdavidc9.
2
Stunning to watch the lion with his mane resting in the shade, while his wives go out in the sun to track prey and return to their territory where 'King' leaps to get first dibs. A friend from Africa laughs when I relay this documentary, and nods. True, she is the closest I have seen to an empress in this lifetime, and much honored and loved by the men in her family.
In Paris sitting across from a Catholic priest in his suit, we discuss the funeral mass for my mother, with a friend of hers by my side. He hedges when I ask if not only men but women can be added to the psalms and my companion hastens to reassure him that she is not a 'feminist'. We do things differently in America, I continue, undeterred.
My parent's son stays at the hotel, while I remember what our mother told me in adolescence, 'Men are more sensitive than women and respond like bees to honey', the cause of a silent snort on my part.
"When I was returning from school, you were standing alone on Lexington Avenue and you were only four in the middle of traffic. Don't move, I shouted, because I am coming to get you". A recollection from my brother's past.
Here's to my sibling now a grey beard who wrote recently: 'I may be careless and clumsy at times, but I am not dishonest'.
Happily married to a brilliant professor and feminist, he continues his study of temples in the Egyptian desert. We both like the writings of David Brooks, and we remain orphans at heart.
A privileged Child is a Loved one.
7
Persist David.
You will never get it all right, but the intention is laudable.
Striving to find the better side is what America desperately needs.
9
What a beautiful column this was to read. It gives us motivation to show others we care for their humanity every day we wake up.
4
Mr. Brooks:
When "religion played a bigger in national life" just who were the beneficiaries and who did the surviving? What matriarchal religion gave us this golden age of "mercy, charity and love"?
Which of the works you cite here features religion or it's loss of influence as an important component of their theses? Which of these authors would agree with your assessment? What ethical rules do you subscribe to that allow you to co-opt others work to support your own agenda?
It seems to me that the origins of patriarchy lie in the physical differences between genders. The question is whether the fruits of the exercise of brute strength will continue to dominate society. Clinging to a patriarchal
notion of divinity is not a way forward. Recognizing it's origins and deficiencies might be.
23
It was not just social thinking that was dominated by men. Nearly all areas of thinking are now benefiting from female participation. This new inclusiveness, although only recent, will benefit not only social cohesiveness, but the great collective efforts that are essential for progress in nearly all human endeavors. Thanks for highlighting these authors David.
2
This is the most frustrating column I've ever read by Mr Brooks.
Why this one?
I don't shy away from disagreement or debate, but there are so many statements in this column that are not backed up by facts - it would take a piece as long as this column to explain what the facts are.
So, I'll just sum it up as frustrating - and dead wrong. But I am glad the boy enjoyed holding the baby.
48
How about you simply say that men have a lot to learn and women can teach them if both men and women are brave enough to talk, listen and change.
Why in the world did you have to diminish women by making the cutting remark before you said good things. They are just as free to form their opinion without male approval as you are to associate with those self centered people called Republicans.
83
Agreed. What a terrible start to this column. Has Mr. Brooks learned nothing or is he simply entitled to dismiss the feminism he does not like?
2
The story of "Darren" was moving and poignant, Mr. Brooks. I am sad that it only had a small part at the end of your essay. As a matter of fact, I think you would have served your audience better, both men and women, if you focused only on the attributes of empathy and compassion.
Without meaning to, I'm sure, you have separated further the two sexes. Maybe you can speak for yourself, but you can not speak for us women. You can read a hundred books explaining about our mind set, but you will not get it. You are but looking from the outside, and in your attempt to connect with your female counterparts you risk patronizing us...as I feel you just did. I think perhaps in the future you may just want to focus on qualities that both men and women together must share to coexist and how parents, mentors, and advisors need to nourish those very traits.
57
@Kathy Lollock-I wish Brooks had made Roots of Empathy the entire focus of this column. It and a related program "Seeds of Empathy" are taught in elementary and junior high schools in Canada. Over 11,000 + schools. Their mission: to build caring, peaceful, and civil societies through the development of empathy in children and adults. Fortunately, they are spreading the message internationally and school districts in the U.S. are starting to sign on. This is the movement to support!
http://us.rootsofempathy.org/
1
The lead paragraph here, he disavows what he calls 'academic feminism' makes no sense, given that he likely has never taken a women's studies class, nor taught women's studies - including but not limited to the the history of past and current patriarchy - and the struggles of women to gain the vote, equal rights - oh, what about that lack of rule of law concering sexual assault? I am baffled by this opinion piece and the contrary dismissal - just so readers know he is very much a man. Then it warms up but not too much. Okay.
39
For a really smart person you write some incredibly silly things.
For example this:
"I disagree with academic feminism a lot ... with the strange unwillingness to admit inherited-gender differences"
Name me a group that has been discriminated against that likes to be told (in the absence of a shred of credible evidence) that it is because they are genetically different (invariably read 'inferior' for 'different'.) Would you agree with a group that said jews or blacks are genetically different? Hence inferior? Hence deserving of their status as the objects of discrimination? I think not.
Ditto for not understanding the patriarchy issue either.
David - you just don't get it. Stick to topics you can understand please and leave feminism and gender to others. It diminishes you and your work one other areas.
153
Observing feminists these last few months, with their shrill, screeching, demands that men “shut up”; getting into the faces of representatives; shouting, chanting, etc., the word “empathy” does not come to mind.
But, obviously, they elevate feelings over thinking.
Isn’t feminism simply about doing what the boys do? The least empathetic thing one can do is kill a child, which “right” forms the non-negotiable cornerstone of feminism. Why? Because it isn’t fair that men can walk away from the consequences of sex, but women can’t. So, feminists establish, as the model to be emulated, the cad; the bounder; the rake. Feminist don’t seek to improve men; they seek to copy the most pathetic examples of the male sex.
Abortion: the ultimate selfishness.
Relationships? Feminists demanded no-fault divorce. They champion welfare policies which condition payments on the absence of a husband/father. "Relationships" sound suspiciously like being “relegated” to family; can't have that.
One can only conclude that someone who avers that men don’t make strong, deep, emotional commitments has never set foot in a locker room or on a battle field.
“Teach empathy”? Fine. One can start by ending the ceaseless, confrontational marches, marked by chanting and bellowing. By losing any mention of the word “patriarchy” or the phrase “rape culture”. By forgoing the assertion that one’s sex is a political statement.
And stop with the “us vs them” narrative, as so many of the comments display.
2
@Brenda
We saw the testimony of Dr. Blasey Ford and the testimony of Judge Kavanaugh.
And you conclude that it is the women who are "shrill" and "screeching."
And that the issue is simply that girls want to do "what the boys do."
In this case in particular -- which is indeed a huge issue involving millions -- a very serious complaint on the part of women is that there are cases in which the girl DOESN'T want to do 'what the boy wants to do.'
And he does it anyway, with the music turned up and a hand over her mouth so that no one can hear her scream.
And it was never proven that this did not happen (it wasn't even fully investigated:there were plenty of relevant witnesses whose testimony was ignored when it was offered).
The accusation was simply drowned out by Kavanaugh's -- and the Republicans' -- screeching.
20
@Brenda You don't get it. Feminism isn't about what the boys can do. Though some conflate it that way.
I found Lindsey Graham's "screeching" and Brett Kavanaugh's "moaning" and Trump's "shrill" antics a lot worse than anything from a woman in the last couple of weeks.
8
@Brenda
PS The "ultimate selfishness" is to prejudge someone else's situation and choices regarding their pregnancy -- especially when unwanted -- and to label preemptively the choice that NO ONE EVER WANTS TO MAKE "selfish."
And regarding "ceaseless, confrontational marches, marked by chanting and bellowing" plus threats of and actual acts of violence, which is the case among the very vocal anti-abortion (so-called "pro-life") movement, one can start by exercising some empathy THERE.
And SHOW it, not only by greater civility and compassion, but by actually supporting women's health care, including prenatal and postnatal, as well as access to all the resources of family planning, so that the "selfish" choice is made far more rarely.
And access to nutritional food, education and child care for the lives we profess to value as a society.
Plus greater support and protection to women and men in society from sexual violence and rape.
Get serious about THAT while preaching being 'pro-life' (and hey -- I'm pro-life too, including postnatal life!) and your ears will be spared the ballyhoo which so annoys you.
And there will be far less "us vs them."
If you balk at those proposals, then...
1
Mr Brooks, for once I found myself agreeing with you. Even reading you with pleasure. Then came the faux equivalency, where you place Trump and Hillary on the same footing, as if they were equally to blame for the sordidness of our current political climate.
Stop, David. Just stop. You are far too intelligent, as are your readers, to buy into this sloppy line of thinking. Stop feeding us false equivalencies. You never failed to criticize Obama's government when he was in power. You seem languid when you call congress or the Trump circus to task. Please stop insulting our intelligence.
132
David, I normally disagree with you. But, by the end of your column I fell to the floor with uncontrollable sobs, not just over the moving example of Darren, but over how you model empathy yourself. In your empathetic selflessness you mentor that we should not have abandoned the “gospel of mercy, charity and love” - the gospel of the religious right who support Donald Trump in exchange for his promise to pack the Supreme Court with more religious conservatives who will enforce the true role of women as handmaidens because of their “inherited-gender differences” as defined by a loving and merciful God.
Your empathy has opened my eyes to the myth of patriarchy in spite of all the historical and scientific evidence to the contrary – all those “alternative facts” about how humans behave.
And I thank you for connecting together for me the masculine values (‘”self over relationships, individual success over the common good, the mind over the body, and thinking over feeling’”) and the conservative movement. I finally see how “individual success over the common good” perfectly describes the masculine hegemony of the conservative ethos. It could be the mission statement for the Heritage Foundation or the Federalist society.
Because the “common good” that is the antithesis of this “male dominated narrative” would require some kind of collective social contract, say, universal healthcare, universal education, and fair, money-free elections. Wouldn’t it? That would be REAL empathy.
31
“All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love.”
Dear David,
All Judeo-Christian-Muslim religions are patriarchal and teach women to shut up and produce lots of babies with their designated male partners.
Ever visited Saudi Arabia?
Please note: the current dilemmas engulfing the Catholic Church, an immensely wealthy organization run by (allegedly) celibate men who have been taught they can do miracles, that they have the power to represent God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ.
So. What happens? Lots of nasty stuff behind the velvet curtains. Such as pedophilia.
That ain’t mercy. That ain’t charity. That ain’t love. It’s simply a more shadowed route to the repression of women.
Thank you for listening.
122
“I invite you to the American political scene over the past two weeks, with Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder lining up to present their pseudo-masculine, chest-thumping displays ...”
It is shocking that you would compare Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump so carelessly, and call them both “chest-thumpers.” It’s offensive. You don’t know beans about feminism.
414
@Deborah
It is also a bit shocking to compare Trump and Holder. What would really be shocking, in a nice way, would be a David Brooks column criticizing conservatives without a gratuitous poke or two at a figure on the other side, just for balance (and to not offend his conservative readers).
2
@Deborah or women.
When you talked about chest thumping, you forgot Lindsay Graham and Brett Kavanaugh. Two self centered, self absorbed alpha males. Clinton and Holder don’t come close to their peacock preening display of victimization. Poor little boys.
300
Brooks has amnesia. He has forgotten his worship of the macho George Bush, who embodied all of the regrettable aspects of American maleness and none of the positive ones. He has forgotten his embrace of a president who ordered the torture of many prisoners, and the indefinite detention of others without a semblance of civil rights. America has much to be embarrassed about in the way it brings up its men, and Brooks should be as embarrassed as anyone. Instead of wagging his finger, he should be hanging his head.
51
There are a lot of things I disagree with in this column, but I choose to go to bat for the college kids of today (2010 more specifically), who, it is claimed uncritically, are less empathetic than those of the 1980s. I went to school in the 1980s, when evangelicals flooded the campus and smugly let us know we were all going to Hell unless we jointed their cults. The fraternities were hotbeds of sexism and homophobia, where people were injured and assaulted during boozy parties. We young women were given instructions in gym class on how to not be raped. Want to wager if the young men were given similar lectures on how not to rape? I'll take the 2010 co-eds in a heartbeat. The young people I know are caring and decent, and while they too are not perfect they deserve our support, not condescension nor lecturing.
62
Huh? When religion played a role in national life?
It still plays a HUGE role. Why look at the Catholic church, still working on their molestation issues. "Hey son, want to be an altar boy?" Thanks, but it's best I implore him to study his history on Sundays. Safer at home.
I don't know what this "one off" article is really about. The headline is pretty cheeky. You read like a guy who still doesn't get it. For instance, don't be cheeky about women's issues. Don't tell women and girls what they "get right". Makes you sound like a glib Matt Lauer.
I love reading the Times. As a dude, I look forward to all the opinions. But even the Times has to look at itself for continuing this divide amongst men and women that we have going on. I'll counter your nice anecdote of the boy with the baby with this. Todays paper has 9 Opinions to read. 6 Mens Opinions, 3 Women's opinions. It's a simple anecdote, but it's not false.
Regardless, it's silly for a man to write about women's issues and what they "get right". Stop.
264
@M
"You read like a guy who still doesn't get it. For instance, don't be cheeky about women's issues. Don't tell women and girls what they "get right"."
Well put. Thank you!
41
@M Kind of like men explaining to women about their menstrual cramps, isn't it?
1
My usual criticism of Brooks holds true in this piece: He uses broad sweeps of nostalgia to convey the impression that things were always better in the past.
He writes, "All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love. But now we have an ethos of detachment and competition all the way down."
Yes, this was the religion in which secrecy in the hierarchy created a silence that shielded sexual abuse by clergy against the boys Brooks claims were "born with a great talent for emotional openness and a great capacity for deep and loving male friendships."
No wonder these boys became mistrustful—of themselves, and of others— hid their emotions, became apathetic. This was the result, under cover of religious dogma, of adult mentors betraying that natural trust.
What we need today are leaders who live out in the open, who admit mistakes, and who offer freely examined personal lives. Unfortunately, we are far, far from the ideal. Glossing over the past does not help the remedy Brooks seeks.
31
I am so tired of hearing and reading this stuff. I especially don't care for it after the last two weeks. It feels like a consolation prize. "There, there, you girls/women/ ladies are so strong in your empathy. How wonderful!" I'm not an academic feminist, heck, I'm not a feminist anything. I'm just a woman who knows the score. Its the same score as always: Those who have the power, wield it. Would men trade their power for more empathy? No, I thought not.
I always tell my husband, " I just want women to have power for a while so we can screw up stuff like men have for the last millennia. We can hardly do worse.
102
I invite you to the past two years, from the Republican primaries through today, to see the best examples of chest thumping and hatred for the other side.
32
More identity politics! I can’t get enough!
4
Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Eric Holder? These three have dominated the American political scene over the past two weeks? These three are the point persons of hate for the other side? What planet are you on? Donald Trump, Brett Kavanaugh, and Mitch McConnell have been sneering, chest-thumping, and obnoxious towards anyone (particularly females) standing in their way of power. Your failure to mention them speaks volumes.
190
@Martha R And add Lindsay Graham to that list. I will never forget his tirade last week. "All you want is power. I hope 'to God' that you never get it."
41
@acm Sometimes in the fit of passion, a truth can come out of the mouth of babes. What Freudian thing was going on when Lindsay declared himself a single white male? Maybe he was trying to underline the fact that, although Lindsay is also a girl's name, he's not "one of them"?
Darren's question at the end got to me deeply, as a father & a human being. I hope he gets to be a father, a good one at that, I'm certain.
9
I stopped being a Christian when all the nominal Christians began to eschew empathy and compassion for others and decided that the way to heaven was to glorify themselves (and make sure that gay people couldn’t marry and that women’s rights didn’t include their own body).
39
''Feminism'' is about treating everyone equally.
To write books and columns trying to break it all down with psychobabble one way or the other means nothing, unless, at the end of the day, you are going to treat everyone with respect and equality.
That could mean at the work place, in the home, or anywhere.
13
Is Darren still in foster care?
Does he need a permanent home?
5
He was 14 when the incident took place, and I feel as if I heard the story long ago. I did find an article from 2008 about him, so I think it is clear he is an adult now. And hopefully a loving and happy one.
Says the person who believes in the government controlling women's bodies...
43
@gratis,
On a note of levity, David Brooks is a self-declared 'Whig' and gives little indication that he is a true believer in this impoverished government.
1
@Miss Ley, given how dismissive and patronizing Brooks is when he writes about feminism, it's highly doubtful he favors female reproductive autonomy, no?
Take a look at yourself Mr. Brooks. Your tone and analysis are patronizing at their very core. Feminists do not need or want your “two cheers.” We want men like you to take a cold, hard look at how your male-centric understanding of the world perpetuates our oppression. Read some Butler and Hooks, self reflect, listen to women instead of pontificate, and then, maybe then, I’ll care what you think.
208
@Cathy Gnatek - I was stunned at the condescension of the headline "Two Cheers..." Isn't the expression Three Cheers?
3
What a shame you had to name three individuals for the hatred and divide when you belong to a political party whose promotion and distrust of the other is its whole reason to exist.
What are Republicans but a cult of low taxes , small government and hatred of the other.
40
I’m sorry Mr. Brooks, but you totally had me until this: “with Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder lining up to present their pseudo-masculine, chest-thumping displays to show how much they hate the other side.” In no world can you possibly compare anything Donald Trump does to anything Hilary Clinton and Eric Holder might do. For one thing he has no morals, empathy or conscience and they do. Any “chest thumping” he does is entirely self interested. While if the others have even done it, and I know which Holder quote to which you refer, it is merely in the interests of inspiring the Democratic Party to stop bringing knives to a gun party. The GOP and Trump have given up even a pretence of observing any norms or rules or, in some cases maybe even laws. So it IS about time that the Democrats DO thump their chests a little and get tough with these people who only seem to care about power and winning for their party but not at all for the rest of America. Holder and Clinton DO care about ALL Americans so good for them if they finally get a little hot under the collar. And do please notice that one of them is a woman and the other is a man, but they are using their voices and their hearts equally well.
29
@ST. David is referring to Hilary’s and Eric’s new tactic of getting down and dirty with Republicans. Hillary a day or so ago said Democrats had to stop being civil and adopt incivility. Holder said it was time to “kick’ the Republicans. I take it that they are impressed by Trump’s belligerent methods and think it’s time to adopt them as they seem to work. Maybe. But perhaps people are getting tired of Trump’s low road politics. I am tired of it. It might be getting stale though he does seem to find fresh ways of inciting his followers. Consequently he might be hard to imitate, especially for Holder or Hillary who have developed different personae. In any case, politics seem to be evolving away from the emotional authenticity David talks about here. It has always for both sides been more about rhetoric, finding the right persona, right language for the moment, the most timely emotional repertoire. It’s an art form practiced in high and low ways. Right now, Low moral pssaions seem to be driving things. Maybe, in another era we’ll have a Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln who have command of a higher, nobler rhetoric, and make us feel better, although like Hillary or Trump they too had their own manipulative political agendas.
What makes you think that males' diminished emotional connections and increased competitiveness as they age are learned behaviors rather than biological? And let's remember that, rightly or wrongly, males led modern society to achieve the incredible advances that have been realized. Only from our positions of great prosperity and safety from dangerous external forces can we afford to look back and second guess how we got here. Things could have turns out much worse, you know.
2
David Brooks is the king of moral equivalency. Only he can regularly publish in the New York Times and parenthetically mention Donald Trump outrageous verbal assaults as somehow equal in moral toxicity to commentary by Hillary CLinton and Eric Holder. Trump's megaphone is a 24/7 outrage that continuously erodes the cultural, moral, social, and political norms that we all took for granted until he became the President. One can only hope that with this upcoming election, he will be somewhat more mindful that the majority of Americans find his rhetoric and politics reprehensible, and in so doing, Mr. Brooks will not have to figure out ways to defend him.
109
David didn't mention Trump, Clinton, or Holder in this column. Did you read it?
1
@SE
"And if you think the crisis of connection is limited to campus, I invite you to the American political scene over the past two weeks, with Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder lining up to present their pseudo-masculine, chest-thumping displays to show how much they hate the other side."
@SE He did. "And if you think the crisis of connection is limited to campus, I invite you to the American political scene over the past two weeks, with Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder lining up to present their pseudo-masculine, chest-thumping displays to show how much they hate the other side."
Well boys just continue to defy expectations! Turns out they are “born with a great talent for emotional openness,” but women are born with pesky “inherited-gender differences.” Vague oppressor stories, indeed.
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@Karen Johnson
Brilliant. I was looking at the column thinking where to begin as far as writing a rebuttal. Now I don't have to bother.
7
"... when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love …"
And 'when' exactly was this time? Which century, which decade. Having a gospel of mercy, charity and love versus the actual practice of mercy, charity and love are two non-overlapping magisteria. Talk is cheap. We see the talk, but certainly don't see any of the action in the GOP and its supporters.
Religion has always played the largest role in national life, it still does. That is why separation of church state is necessary.
I'm going to go out on a limb here: I speculate that most feminists want the same things I do. I won't cite generalities. They should be obvious anyways. For a specific instance, I did not want to see a volatile and immature man such as BK seated on the SCOTUS, a man who views women as what exactly? Whatever it is, it does not look good.
36
@oldBassGuy
And only Christianity has gospels. While there is mercy, charity and love in them, there’s also anti-Semitism, which also used to play a bigger role in American life.
@oldBassGuy
I guess he views women as clerks in his courtroom and persons to be mentored as young lawyers, according to his actual record.
2
You disagree with feminism's "vague oppressor stories about the patriarchy" but acknowledge that "for thousands of years social thinking has been dominated by men." HINT: That is the patriarchy.
370
@Enid Primates (of which we are one) and most other mammals have been 'patriarchal' for tens of millions of years and probably much longer. Males are dominant to females in the great majority of species - larger size and a degree of aggressiveness are baked into our genes. Demands for instant change are unlikely to alter basic biology any time soon.
1
Mr. Brooks,
I applaud your concern about our society's lack of empathy and obsession with competition. You mention the decline of religion as a factor but fail to mention capitalism and the decline of the social safety net. You mention a "partisan charade" as if both Democrats and Republicans are playing a role in the lack of empathy. But it is Republicans who are responsible with the obsession with competition, the decline of the safety net, and chest-thumping (wars; blaming poor people for being poor). I challenge you to write a column that, for once, considers how capitalism drives the lack of empathy.
75
@JS27-Good points. President Obama mentioned empathy a lot in his speeches. Before starting that column, perhaps Mr. Brooks would find it useful to read them
1
Hi David,
Where’ve you been? This is a totally f-d up time and the voice of decency and reason are missing. Have we come to this? I guess so.
Please keep writing for those of us who feel outnumbered and overcome. So discouraging. Drunk texting! Yikes. I don’t care anymore.
5
It's phones and social media that is causing a decline in empathy, not a lack of religion. Kids are so cloistered now, monitored moment by moment by their parents, that they never have to react in the real world to people that aren't like them. Beyond their parent's, social media dictates their behavior and interactions. How the heck are kids going to learn to empathize if even a teens they are told not to talk to strangers? If your exposure to "others" never extends beyond your age group or ordering fries with that, you will never develop empathy.
8
I don't like academic anything. Lots of great instruction happens at colleges and universities but when it becomes "academic", it becomes self consumed and irrelevant. Which is to say, Mr. Brooks, your point of not agreeing with academic feminism is a given. Don't throw your conservatives a bone because plenty of people on both sides have no patience for that stuff. OK then, thank you for indirectly recognizing that women will be taking command in this country because men, especially white men, have shown they are incapable of governing instead engaging in endless macho displays. The primal screams of Trump, Graham, and Kavanaugh, for example, will become a thing of the past-sooner rather than later I hope.
20
I think this is too generous to throw the focus on positive behaviors. Boys don't need to be taught how to feel, they need to not be punished for expressing it. Girls don't need to be taught how to say how they feel, they need to not be punished for speaking their mind.
Our culture isn't set up the way it is, isolating and daunting, because we don't know how to connect. It's set up this way by people actively enforcing the norms and inflicting social punishments on deviation. If you want to build a better culture, you have to fight the people refusing to let it change. Simple as that.
37
Some readers rightly dispute Mr. Brooks's assertion that religion's once significant role in the lives of most kept people civil, but I think the era of religion he's referencing isn't the traditional one that dominated most of the past two centuries but the brief, touch-feely one of his (and my) youth of the 1970s. At that time, guitars and tie-dye T-shirts weren't too out of place in churches and synagogues and "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Godspell" were seen as valid means of religious education.
1
The character in “The Breakfast Club” who said “When you grow up … your heart dies” was Allison Reynolds, played by Ally Sheedy – the character who adorned a printed landscape with snow shaken from her unruly mop of hair. The self-defensive response, by the character John Bender (played by Judd Nelson) was “Who cares?” I suppose that this scene, while it was filmed 33 years ago, still supports the contentions about females and males that David analyzes.
His analysis proceeds from empathy and openness to one of connectedness, to one of a rising feminist thrust toward teaching empathy. My own experience with committed feminists has been that they argue interest, not empathy, and that their arguments tend to be self-righteous and not very empathetic. Maybe things are changing. I’m willing to consider the evolution of feminism, and even to laud it, but I won’t be parsing feminism further here, as it’s not really what David is analyzing.
What he truly is arguing, his favorite recurring theme, is that we become increasingly degenerate, dysfunctional and depressed the further we distance ourselves from the verities that kept us civilized throughout history – faith, family, purpose. And while the arguments he presents in this column don’t really have a lot to with his underlying theme, the theme itself is worthy of serious consideration.
Our addictions, the “dropping-out” of large numbers from the workforce during the Great Recession, the accelerating need for constant …
1
… distraction, all seem to me to be symptoms of an increasing divorce from the fence posts within which we traditionally maintained our sanity … and civilization. Human beings generally don’t seem to function well without immutable, largely unchallenged convictions that provide the purpose required in their lives: relativism doesn’t seem to work well for us. To me, this explains the popularity of extreme versions of religions, which impose convictions of their own to provide that rapidly dissolving purpose and give comfort to the needful.
I see three alternative evolutionary paths: 1) A Darwinian process takes hold that vastly reduces human populations to those who CAN deal productively with a lack of anchors; 2) the tendency to relativism largely disappears as human beings split into discrete cohorts bound by increasingly exclusionist belief systems characterized by fire and brimstone religions; or 3) we come up with secular and compelling rationalizations for why we exist, apart from eating, excreting, fornicating … and dying. I can’t really imagine the type of civilization to which the first evolutionary path would lead, and the likely constant war the second would summon simply is unacceptable. But the third, which I find the more likely path for us to take, compels a question – what might be the more INclusionst systems of belief that provide our need for purpose to remain emotionally healthy and evolutionally productive that can appeal to ALL of humanity?
1
@Richard Luettgen,
In 'The Evening of Adam', a professor marries one of his students, Eve, who would like to continue to learn. He starts placing roadblocks in her way and when an American academic couple, the Heimlichs, visit them in the countryside of England, Mrs. Heimlich is on to Adam's pretensions right away.
"The Heimlichs sat side by side in bed. 'Adam said he was worried about her' observed the professor 'only the other day.' Mrs. Heimlich said nothing. 'I never imagined things were as bad as that,' he went on. 'Poor Adam'. Mrs. Heimlich lay down and gazed at the ceiling".
Alice Thomas Ellis, the author of this short story, wanted to take her religious vows, but married instead her literary agent and had seven children. Describing her thoughts of Humanity, she once wrote 'Men love Women; Women love Children; and Children love Hamsters'.
Another favorite is the wife who is talking to the cat, while her husband is shouting for his socks. He wants her to join him with his buddy on a hunting expedition, and she declines. 'Here's your lunch and here's your gun, she said, holding it carefully by the barrel, 'make sure Tyler tries the sandwiches. They are special'.
Having dumped a can of cat food into the above with cress, she reflects 'always reminds me of wreaths, of what are known as floral tributes, an attempt to conceal the fact that here in these tender morsels, we have mortality.'
@Richard Luettgen
Actually, the first and third paths are not mutually exclusive. I believe we are in the throes of the first and a necessary clearing of the air for the third.
After that jolt of reality, humans may be a little more receptive to hearing the voices and the tunes singing all around us in which our purpose is self evident and clear.
The simple and profound joy in evolutionary productivity for its own sake, without preconceived notions of outcomes, may not appeal to present day humanity in significant numbers yet. But we will get there. It's just way too much fun compared to what's been going on around here for far too long for us to miss it entirely.
It's why I came here and why I'll be back. See you on the other side.
Mr. Brooks thinks old-time religion would help us navigate through today’s troubles, back when pious women wore high heels and flared dresses as they cooked breakfast for their breadwinner hubby and popped out babies willy-nilly. If the Cleavers could do it, so could we.
But then, women discovered that they were tired of not being listened to, and treated like housekeepers and baby incubators. For some reason, they suddenly felt resentment, which caused unrest that men had to listen to. How ungrateful, said conservatives.
As in Biblical times, men should rule the house and women should serve their needs. This worked through the Middle Ages, and all the way up until 1968 or so. Then all hell broke loose. You’d think society would have rewarded them for protesting against unfairness and burning their bras. But it caused an unexpected uproar.
The legacy has left men stunned. A boss’ firm, open-palmed pat on the butt no longer tells a woman, “job well done!” She throws a fit, and tweets #MeToo to her lawyer.
Women and men made a lot of progress in the last fifty years, but resentful underachieving men were tired of it all. Especially the president.
The story about the baby triggered something. Then I thought, Hey, we’ve got a baby in the White House! He folds his widdle arms, makes pouty faces and would probably cry if he knew how stupid he appears to people with normal intelligence. But he’s our role model in this godforsaken country. Amen.
55
Two cheers for feminism indeed!!! So what makes you think that empathy is a strictly feminist trait? That’s no less sexist than using the “boys will be boys” excuse to let men off the hook for abusing women.
Empathy is a natural human emotion but it's just one of many, and it can be overcome by others. On the political front, greed and lust for power currently dominate, but they are not equally shared by both sides. The GOP is consumed by its desire to wield power. It aims to rule rather than to govern (after all, it doesn't believe in government); and the less it has to offer people, the more it needs lie and cheat to win.
And here's the point - the GOP is not a policy machine, except for rewarding its donors in every possible way; it's smear machine that clings to power by means like voter suppression. Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, now running for governor, has used various suppression techniques that disenfranchise large numbers of minority voters. And now here comes the GOP’s new golden boy, Kavanaugh casting his first vote as Justice. His promise not to act in a partisan way notwithstanding, he does his political patrons a favor by helping a 5-4 majority throw out a complaint that North Dakota has disenfranchised tens of thousands of Native Americans. And so it goes.
So, David, forgive me if I, as a man, cannot feel any empathy towards the Republican party. Maybe it will some day put its house in order.
66
What a fraud is Mr. B!
Lauds feminism tepidly,
Pseudo psychiatric
But Wealth holds the stick,
Not Brooksian psychiatry.
137
"All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love."
Your essay was going fine until you included that doozy, David.
The idea that religion has any respectable ownership of morality or human decency is one of the greatest con jobs in history; sure the religious buildings, hymns and rituals have had a hypnotic effect on the struggling, bamboozled, brainwashed masses, but the world's various patriarchal, medieval, misogynistic religious cults are still just patriarchal, medieval, misogynistic, religious cults in the final analysis and they have not been historically nice to women and non-members of the cult.
I've always been revolted by alpha male culture, although I'm a male.
I have always related to people intellectually and emotionally moreso than via mindless alpha-male 'competition'.
And the evidence is in on alpha males in 2018; they tend to stink at school and languages compared to women; women are known as being more productive and industrious compared to men in office settings, domestic settings and other work settings.
As the old 1968 Phillip Morris Virginia Slims cigarette ad campaign said about women:
“You’ve come a long way, baby”
Women have come a long way against terrible religious patriarchal odds, and they deserve an international round of applause.
If only the world's Neanderthal alpha-male men could somehow manage to move into modernity, we might have a decent world to live in.
393
A hearty AMEN from many, Socrates!
13
I couldn’t agree more with you!
6
@Socrates
It seems bizarre that to approvingly quote the slogan of Philip Morris - a company marketing a product that contributed to the death or disability of anyone that used it - and still does. "You've come a long way baby" sounds condescending at best. I believe it came with images of fashionable-looking women, designed to attract more addicts, just as the Marlboro cowboy ad did.
You hold up a death-dealing corporation's slogan and disparage religion - what was so very wrong with the Sermon on the Mount? Or with the idea of treating others as you would want to be treated? This seems strange indeed.
Glad to see an essay about empathy bankruptcy, but I don't see why it has to begin with a big swing at feminism. It makes the dismissals of "games of moral one-upsmanship" appear to be projection.
73
Wait a minute! I was raised as a boy to strive for "extolled competition, self-interest and independence" back in the '70's and early '80's. It's not fair to me that you'd like to change the rules of the game abruptly. There has to be a gradual plan how to be more inclusive...
3
Is empathy more like carpentry or more like Enlightenment? Can you teach insight just from a book or from a class? Maybe Yoga.
It has to come when people are ready for it, from life or if you will, the heart. It's not building a house but inviting yourself with humility into the house of a stranger
2
@Howard I'm not so sure. This sounds to me like there's some sort of inherent "human nature" or strictly endogenous, individual pacing at play. Do not enlightenment and carpentry both occur in social context? Are we not living in a more auspicious age for such enlightenment than our our parents, especially our fathers? Should we not all be considering carefully how we can be of help to young men who might open to empathy? Or more simply, can we not simply show love where we might otherwise not so that the young can find warmth and so learn?
3
"In other words, as the editors of the anthology put it, the culture teaches girls not to talk and boys not to feel."
An America that refuses to believe in itself and denies itself the self-care and respect a functional society needs will always be vulnerable, exposed to powers it doesn’t have the strength to repel, beliefs it doesn’t have the knowledge to dismiss, and the duplicitous leaders it doesn’t have the wisdom to distrust. It will continue to produce mothers who instill in their sons a belief of supremacy and entitlement over woman. It will continue to instill a fatalistic belief in their daughters that male supremacy, and all that engenders, is just a woman’s lot in life. Rapists, the type who never go to jail, have moms, too.
For as long as there is absolutely nothing to counter and then banish this culture of patriarchy, hypocrisy, inequality, and the entitlement of certain classes of individuals over the rest of the nation, we will remain condemned to a fate of repeating cycles of the push-pull of past decades until the forces of conservatism and regression give progress one final shove into the abyss.
---
Rapists Have Tiger Moms, Too: Kavanaugh, Rape Culture and SCOTUS
https://www.rimaregas.com/2018/09/22/rapists-have-tiger-mothers-too-kava...
15
“Vague oppressor stories”? David I appreciate your effort to acknowledge feminism and the value of of female character traits but really, the social, economic and political imbalance of power between men and women that persists to this day has been well documented by feminist scholars like the ones referenced in your thoughtful article. Those stories are not “vague” at all, just ask Dr Christine Blasey Ford.
Dawson Ruhl
276
@dawson.ruhl Perhaps you selected a weak counter example. It could well be that Dr. Blasey Ford's story is perfectly true, but it is undeniably very "vague" - it lacks a concrete date, location, or set of other human beings in the frame. I can't know what happened in the lives of strangers 30+ years ago, but that story was indeed rather vague.
1
Her story is not vague to those of us who have suffered similar attacks. But perhaps you don’t get it, probably not.
8
So I am completely annoyed by the tone of David Brooks writing about feminism--Gee, thanks for your approval, David....sort of. However, the ending grabbed me an made me suddenly weep. And what it really told me is that all of us, men and women, Left and Right, feminist or not, need to start putting the care and well being of children first. A child should not grow up not knowing love. Mr Brooks, can you please start writing about that, giving voice to all the ones advocating and caring for children (mostly women!) and using your pulpit for where change in this world really needs to happen?
60
We're wired by Mother Nature to empathize. Take a look at the Mirror Neuron System, the discovery of which pointed to a physiological basis for empathy.
7
@Geoman We're wired with the ability to speak, but it still must be taught and nurtured.
6
@Geoman
Not everyone is born to empathize. Look at Trump and others who have zero empathy for their fellow man or woman.
10
You lost me at religion making things better - for presumably women? That must be a joke - no system around the world, throughout history has been more oppressive and brutal toward women than organized religion. I don't think girls in Afghanistan would share your point of view - or women throughout European history until fairly recently. Religion indoctrinates the idea that women are inferior and second class- as God intended. I agree -there are inherent differences between men and women. As a feminist -I have no problem acknowledging those differences - the problem is that society at large places value judgments on those differences with most of them going against women. Or men appropriating them (a la the crying Kavanaugh ) being viewed sympathetically when a woman would have been ridiculed and shown the door. And I stopped reading when Hillary Clinton was conflated with Donald Trump. The dragon lady is too weak or too masculine depending on who is trying to discredit her. Disgraceful!
532
@Dana The atheist community is at LEAST as misogynistic as the religious community - and as a progressive Catholic I'd argue it's worse. Women tend to be more religious than men. Is it because we're stupid? Do we little ladies need to have big reasonable men explain to us how irrational we are? Over 80% of Black women claim that religion is extremely important to them, and they are the most progressive voting bloc in this country. As a homeless rights activist, I can tell you it's religious people who are out there on the ground directly feeding, clothing, and nurturing the poor - not the atheist libertarian dude-bro's. Religion is only as good as the people who practice it - and the same can be true for atheism and any other dogmatic belief system.
11
@Dana Looks like Brooke is at it again, Hillary just like Trump, gag.
"When you grow up, your heart dies.”
My first recollection of empathy as a man. I was 22 years and our first son had a bad case of colic. I would arrive home and relieve my wife who was holding him. I would take over and walked around holding him on my shoulder for hours it seemed. But I knew he was hurting and it helped to sooth him. I never forgot that lesson.
When I grew up my heart came alive. I kept my feelings to myself until I married and left home. And wish to thank my wife and children for helping me to express myself and not hide behind that macho door.
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@cherrylog754
What a beautiful comment on how love and taking responsibility bring out our true selves. I read this and thought, now that is a real man, somebody who knows how to be human.
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Excellent, Brooks. Girls WILL save us all, if we will move aside and let them. Brute force and physical strength is rarely needed in our society, and even that can be outsourced, if necessary.
“ Men are afraid Women will laugh at them. Women are afraid Men will KILL them “ - Margaret Atwood. The older I get, the more I understand and revere that statement. Perhaps WE militant Feminists will be less outraged when many more decent Men stand with us. Cowering from and collaborating with Trump is the epitome of cowardice and self interest. Seriously.
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The only job women can do that men cannot do is bear children. It’s a very important job in our society, and for that reason, women are respected - and should be. But, every last other job can be done by a man better than a woman. It doesn’t matter what the occupation is. If not for political correctness and an appeal for diversity, men would completely dominate women in the workforce. In fact, the only reason women have paid jobs in America is because men allow it. So, two cheers for men.
@Mark
So, what you're basically saying is that women are nothing more than (somewhat glorified) broodmares. Don't know if you ever came across Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal," in which he satirically proposes that women should sell their one-year-olds for food for the rich. At that point, men would appreciate them more, as they now produced something of value: "Men would become as fond of their wives, during the time of their pregnancy, as they are now of their mares in foal, their cows in calf, or sows when they are ready to farrow, nor offer to beat and kick them (as it is too frequent a practice) for fear of miscarriage."
At any rate, you might want to consider that women outnumber men now in higher education, earn more degrees than men, etc. (at least in the US), now that the playing field is at least somewhat more level. You can look up the stats. In the classes I teach at a regional university, my female students regularly earn higher grades and by and large work harder than my male students. I don't understand how you would attribute that to political correctness or "an appeal for diversity."
A final example: my youngest sister is an airline captain, the youngest and the first female check captain for Lufthansa. She had to fight lots of institutional gender bias, but made it based on her skills and never played the "gender card" in a field that is still stubbornly male-dominated even though it doesn't take much brawn to fly a plane nowadays....
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This is hilarious. There are more applications from women than men at elite colleges. There are more women than men graduated from law and medical schools (and all evidence suggests women are better doctors). It looks more like men can't compete without a leg up.
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@Mark
The only reason men dominated women in the workforce is because they refused to allow women in. I have a legal career and a degree from a top law school because you and your ilk could no longer keep women out. But I got in because of good grades, an LSAT score in the 92%, and passing the bar exam.
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"In other words, as the editors of the anthology put it, the culture teaches girls not to talk and boys not to feel."
Our culture teaches all of us that intelligence is not a worthwhile asset, being honest is being foolish, caring is a waste of time, and that doing a good job means nothing when it comes to keeping or finding a job. All of this is why college students and people in general in America are no longer kind to each other. We cannot afford to be because our mental resources are given over to surviving what has become a brutal, nasty, and highly competitive rat race.
In existential terms what all of us are being taught is that our efforts are worthless. The college students of today are the children of those who graduated in the 80s. They grew up seeing their parents lose jobs for no reason, lose a home because they couldn't find a job, lose their self worth because society considered them useless mooches who weren't trying hard enough to find a job. Never underestimate the effects of seeing one's parents unable to take care of themselves and the family.
The past 40 years have been an exercise in the disintegration of the American dream of having a decent life. The greed of the economic 1% has destroyed life for girls and boys unless they were born rich. Money is our religion: if you have it you're wonderful. If you don't or you can't earn a fortune in America you're worthless.
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@hen3ry-Agreed. When Trump said only the little people pay taxes and not paying taxes made him smart--that should have been a career ender.
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Big boys don't cry, we're told from 2 or 3, which leads to closing off emotionally. Girls are not allowed anger or too much ambition. Both are tunneled, and a lot sooner than adolescence.
But I worked in childcare with toddlers for a number of years and children also learn empathy very early, as well.
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I don’t understand the couching of this essay in such patronizing terms, accusing “academic feminism” of vague stories about the oppression of patriarchy, especially when that is immediately followed by a description of “the stereotypical masculine culture [that] values “self over relationships, individual success over the common good, the mind over the body, and thinking over feeling”” - add to that the valuing of men over women, and it’s a pretty accurate description of the oppression of patriarchy. Why do these important points have to be framed in an overall dismissal of feminism - a lens on the world that has been making these points for years? Rather than strengthening, it diminishes the force of the argument, and creates division where there is none - aren’t we all on the same page in wanting our children (all our children) to grow up to be whole human beings? (Hint: the answer is yes.)
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Patronizing David Brooks' stock in trade. His middle name is Smug.
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@Jocelyn the title "two cheers for feminism" set the patronizing tone.
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Those with the courage to see SEE the obvious. Differences in men and women are thru lived experience not biology.
The human mind is rules by what Stephen Jay Gould described so eloquently Neoteny. That is the infant capacities for creativity connection plasticity playfulness and neither the potential for neither good nor bad but the capacity for choice over instinct.
Your ideas about difference are driven by prescribed stereotyping. Persons of the non dominant group know there are two realities. Theirs and the dominant groups inability to see beyond their own.
Your article obfuscates your ability to see women’s lives experience and the choices before us all men and women to stop seeing difference and start making informed choices as equals.
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@BERNARD Shaw
Brooks knows all that. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He just doesn’t care.
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"All of this was survivable when religion played a bigger role in national life, with its gospel of mercy, charity and love." Haven't you noticed the extent to which the conflict in our national life is exacerbated by religion?
Who reads and interprets the sacred texts, in what environment, and to what purpose has always been more important than the writing on the pages. Belief in reward and punishment in an afterlife can inspire the faithful to offer love and charity to everyone- or to "Kill them all, God will know his own." Lately, the loudest voices representing religion in our society haven't been very uplifting.
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Thank you, David. I often disagree with you, but this essay gets very much to the heart, in my view, of so much of what is wrong. If memory serves, Carol Gilligan's later research, summarized--and beautifully, poetically, mythically elaborated on in "The Birth of Pleasure--found that boys tend to run into intense socialization pressure (as you say, to repress feeling) much earlier than girls, typically as early as 4 or 5. In addition to the more general pressure simply not to feel (as opposed to girls not speaking of what they do feel), I think this is really crucial. This stuff is burried so deeply, so unseen and repressed, for men that it is a truly herculean task, individually and societally, to unearth and learn to work with it. To, as Gilligan puts it, "give birth to pleasure" as an alternative to power and control. In that, I believe, is our salvation. Thank you for helping.
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Mother Teresa:
“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.”
Thank you for this heart fully crafted column.
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@Southern Highlander
A hungering for something that does not exist. How does that help us deal with the issues at hand?
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I don't know where you were two weeks ago, Mr. Brooks, but the rest of the nation was riveted to the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford. Her experiences was more than "feminism;" it was a deep cry of the heart that every girl, every woman, has screamed into the silence of their nights, of their lives. If you want a description of the "alpha male," look no further than the president and the most recent member of the Supreme Court. Their attributes: rampant, predatory, territorial, controlling.
All women want, Mr. Brooks, is what's their own, and too often in our maddening history, men have gone out of their way to prevent the self-realization of women's true selves. They refused to let them vote. They hate Roe because it bypasses them.
Women want control over their own bodies and religion has nothing to do with it. A cynic might argue that the clerical fathers dating back beyond the Middle Ages dropped the anvil of religion into the secular debate about family and reproduction simply as a means to control them.
I disagree with you, Mr. Brooks, about "the tunnel." I think girls, from very early on, are quite aware of "the tunnel." They see that it's dark and narrow and confining. They know that boys don't have tunnels; with them, it seems to girls that it's all open spaces where they can frolic without a care.
Do you think that Trump's choice of Brett Kavanaugh was an accident? It was all about control, Mr. Brooks. Dr. Ford said it was. Most of us believed her. Did you?
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@Soxared, '04, '07, '13 I am in total agreement with you about the Kavanaugh awfulness--and I thought Brooks's collumn on that (as on a lot of other things) was almost as bad. But I think you're off on the tunnel thing for boys and men. I know I was in an awful tunnel for much of my life, and no less a feminist luminary, along with Carol Gilligan, mentioned here, helped me to realize it. I'm honestly not sure how we deal with these deep roots of the problem. Maybe it's too hot too handle, or too subtle a point, superficially at least, in the face of the understandable female anger and rage that's (thank God!) being uncovered and expressed. But I hope not. I think it's really important for us to move forward in the long run. I hope we all can figure it out.
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@Soxared, '04, '07, '13 I am in total agreement with you about the Kavanaugh awfulness--and I thought Brooks's collumn on that (as on a lot of other things) was almost as bad. But I think you're off on the tunnel thing for boys and men--it's just at a much deeper level than we typically are able to see. I know I was in an awful tunnel for much of my life, and no less a feminist luminary than bell hooks, along with Carol Gilligan, mentioned here, helped me to realize it. I'm honestly not sure how we deal with these deep roots of the problem. Maybe it's too hot too handle, or too subtle a point, superficially at least, in the face of the understandable female anger and rage that's (thank God!) being uncovered and expressed. But I hope not. I think it's really important for us to move forward in the long run. I hope we all can figure it out.
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@soxared
With all due respect, the characterization that boys are not subjected to different yet profound social constraints when growing up (I.ei tunnel) is simply incorrect. Mr. Brooks eloquently writes about male dominated societies effect on women, but he also simply puts a light on the social pressure placed on our young women and men and it’s possible effect on our ability to feel and show empathy— with some referenced research to support. Oppression of women is long-standing and real, no one denies—but to ignore part of its origin by denying the cultural pressures on young boys simply re-enforces and perpetuates the end result: lack of empathy.
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