No tongue-in-cheek meant when I say that in psychotherapy, I regularly adjure the men to act more like women, meaning to not be the emotionally constipated macho man. They listen to me because I prove that it's right. The 15-year-old guy is wearing his girlfriend's fingernail polish. The big guys are crying about their childhood. People think about being "human beings not human doings." Maybe therapy strips away ambition, which can actually be a pretty neurotic pursuit.
8
Absolutely. I chucked Sheryl Sandberg's book by page 30. Men can move toward us. Chicken crybabies.
20
A smart column.
Two things:
Re apologies: To recognize where one has transgressed, sincerely apologize and — this is crucial — make amends, is anything but "weak," as I suspect many people incapable of doing so perhaps believe or feel.
Is there anything more pathetic than a person who errs or causes harm but is so insecure that they cannot own up to it? Can *you* think of anyone in public life today who matches this description? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?
Re assertiveness: I don't agree with the way Ms. Whippman uses this word; I suspect she means "overassertiveness."
I subscribe to the view put forth in Randy J. Paterson's excellent, "The Assertiveness Workbook: How to Express Your Ideas and Stand Up for Yourself at Work and in Relationships." On Paterson's scale, there are four basic ways of communicating (or not): aggressive, passive, passive-aggressive and — the Goldilocks approach — assertiveness.
It's not about thrusting yourself and your notions forward like the point of a sword; that's aggressiveness. It's not about backbiting and gossip and other nastiness behind someone's back; that's passive-aggressive.
Using cognitive behavioral techniques, the book teaches readers how to "set and maintain personal boundaries without becoming inaccessible. Become more genuine and open in relationships without fearing attack. Defend yourself when you are criticized or asked to submit to unreasonable requests."
2
You are brilliant. Period.
12
Men , virility , feminism everything is leaving .
Can't even bother reading this opinion piece based simply on the headline and subtitle...
How about you figure out whichever way you care to lean and - while you're absorbed in that weighty project - leave everyone's leanings out of it.
7
Every so often-- and it seems with increasing frequency-- some wealthy or famous person wear a bogus "do gooder" costume shows up with some new acronym or slogan that we're all supposed to adapt and if we just do that, life will be grand.
It's like the whole Lean in thing. I bet Ms. Sandberg never had to make the choice between a box of Tampax or ice cream for the kids on their birthday or one of so many other "choices" that real people have to make on a daily basis. I lost my spouse very suddenly around the time she did and empathize with her loss. But she took her kids on vacations to cope with the sadness. I sat in my 500 square foot apartment with Chinese takeout and cried. Yet, she has wisdom for me?
As a woman, I frankly am tired of the whining. If the workplace is unfair, there are many uber wealthy and talented women available. Build your own company, hire women in key positions, train them, school them, show them what life is like "up there."
For those languishing in a male dominated arena, when you see something, say something. Speak up. Like incest, gross, vulgar and disgusting behavior thrives in darkness. People are wimps today. Afraid to speak. Think of all the people who are afraid and whose fears could be eradicated if everyone else got up with them.
But alas, it won't happen. They couldn't even put together a women's march without ensuing drama, cliques, and exclusion.
12
Feel good to get that off your chest, did it?
3
So much navel gazing and not enough doing.
3
Your last name makes me uncomfortable.
3
With luck, the atrocious behavior of Facebook will turn "lean in" into a phrase as attractive as "Arbeit macht frei".
2
Liberal San Franciscans are rearing hyper-feminine girls. No matter how sensitive boys are raised nor how far they lean out it will not be enough for the next generation of girly-girls with their glitter, magic wands, and pink costumes.
4
A little tired of the feminist man-blamers. The majority of white women in America voted for Trump. That's not my fault.
You've got enough of your own hash to settle.
I'll be happy to be ignored until you do.
7
Sounds good. I’m an old white guy. I’ll shut up. You guys solve it. Peace out.
5
Any man worth his own carbon, will absolutely ignore this article.
13
Let’s TELL men to…”? Just that in the title is enough to turn me, a man (with three sons and five grandsons, no less), off before I read any further. Could you imagine the reaction to a piece by a man with a title including “Let’s TELL women to…”
15
What an absolute joy to read this! Finally, the NYT starts to get it. The pervasive male bullying in the workplace under the guise of being a hard worker probably permeates many offices, perhaps even the NYT editors' and writers' ranks. You can even read some of the comments herein from men, who believe that pushy behavior, as long as conducted within the confines of "hard work," is entitled.
14
I'm sorry, but you're not going to get me to apologize for being male...
10
This article suffers from the misconception that the universe owes you something.....all you have coming is your eventual demise and dissolution.....You will always have to work hard for what you get....And so has everyone else....They didn't get to where they are by being anything but assertive....And they will not just hand it over because you are nice.....Welcome to the real world, where it is usually eat or be eaten.
7
Rachel Maddow used “stones” and “baller” to describe the strong action of the FEMALE former Ambassador to Ukraine. Thank you for your insight.
3
Hear hear! Thank you!
4
Lean in was always about a PR campaign to sell books. It had nothing to do with breaking barriers or improving the lives of human beings. Convincing women that they have to be as sociopathic as some men and sexually promiscuous as our President doesn’t move the equality movement forward. In fact this entire “wear your stilettos and tight dress while you ground your employees into the dust” isn’t better it’s just more of the same.
11
Beyond her blithe reverse sexism, Miss Whippman (you couldn’t invent a more apropos nom de plume) never pauses in her tirade to reflect on where these male traits originate, other than to imply men are just jerks who need to feminize themselves. Mother Nature gave us men the gift of testosterone; just let another war break out, and we’ll see how quickly this kind of facile, uninformed male bashing is silenced.
Such women will be the first to send my son overseas, just to protect their oversized American homes and gargantuan SUV’s. There are a thousand ways my wife of 30 years benefits from my aggression, pushiness, and arrogance, and I in turn benefit from her more cooperative virtues. And we are both well aware of the way circumstances can force upon us all kinds of delightfully ironic role reversals. That’s why we’ve been married for 30 years.
6
What qualifies Ruth Whippman to tell men how they should behave or raise their sons? Sorry Ms. Whppman, you have no clue what it's like to be a male.
There is an obit in today's Times for Francis Currey, awarded the Medal of Honor for risking his own life in the Battle of the Bulge to rescue wounded Americans. Where does that fit into your portrait of men as aggressive jerks?
Raise men to be more like girls?
I'm pretty sure that's not how Mr. Currey was raised.
6
I'd like to see the Times publish an article containing the phrase "Let's tell women to..."
5
I was reading this article when, Bang!, it spontaneously combusted! It must have been the pile of straw people that provided the fuel.
7
please have WASP women also take a back seat, they greatly benefited from Affirmative Action, while all genders of colors have and continue to be sidelined!
4
"we should instead be training men and boys to aspire to women’s cultural norms..." Wow. Where would you build the re-education camps you envision?
2
Women need to take ownership and do what many other creatures do. Sex strike.
Second wave feminism rears is head. Again. Finally. Thank god.
Time to re-read 'The Gate to Women's Country' by Sheri S. Tepper.
Whippman? Seriously?
3
I’m shocked ! Shocked ! at another editorial denigrating men for creating the most free, most democratic, country on earth. You’d never know 600,000 white men died in a struggle to free blacks; or that white men voted to make women equal under the law.
... and folks wonder why normal folks support President Trump.
5
White women like Ivana Trump, Melania Trump, Nancy Pelosi, Diane Feinstein, Laura Ingraham, Ainsley Earhardt, Hillary Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Elena Kagan are separate and superior to black men and women.
Feminism is and always has been a white woman thing in America.
White women were the greatest beneficiaries of the blood, sweat and tears shed by black, men, women and children during the Civil Rights era.
Sex was added as a protected class to the 1964 Civil Rights legislation by Southern white supremacist segregationist in order to invoke misogyny and patriarchy as additional motivation for legislative defeat.
6
What most men hear...
And now for the double-reverse half-gainer with tuck....
Gosh, let's do this! It's a great idea! No, let's not do that? No, let's not do anything? But men are mean. No! Women are too nice! They have to become more like us. No. We have to become more like them.
NO! You need to become transgender for at least a century until you learn to be exquisitely and precisely attuned and empathic in all things or you will be fired immediately and imprisoned for crimes against feminism!!
Remember! It's not enough to be nice. It's not enough to be fair. It's not enough to care. It's not enough to be strong. You have to be nice, fair, strong(not too strong) and care in just the right measure and in the way we tell you to or you're a mean, uncaring, sexist monster. No excuses.
Now do it!!!
..... Are you listening?
4
I despise Sheryl and that statement of hers was so patronising I'm surprised she wasn't laughed off stage
4
Can’t wait to show this to my mom. (Bonus credibility: she’s not white!) She’ll get a kick out of the claim that “assertiveness” is a “masculine” trait. First in her family to attend college, she started at the bottom and worked her way to the top of her organization, 30 employees, interns, and volunteers reporting to her. She got there because she knows her worth and accepts nothing less. Men who try to talk down to or over her never do it a second time. Standing up for herself is so natural, she doesn’t even think to mention it.
What she does complain about, though, are the women she works with who cry when they’re overwhelmed. Who pity themselves. Who are passive and fear speaking out. Who refuse to take the bull by the horns.
These lessons were imparted to her by her father. She imparted them to me. If I’m lucky enough to ever have a daughter, I’ll impart them to her, and she’ll mop the floor with the boys who have the misfortune of being indoctrinated in this nonsense and girls who are taught not to “act like men.”
6
Very good piece. It riminds me of what a friend once said. She said women (as writers, even writers of song lyrics) are alway afraid that what they write isn't up to the mark. Men (lyricists) write 'push, push in the bush' & think theyr'e a genius. I responded, half in jest, 'Gloria, I thing you have a great hit single there'.
2
“Let’s TELL men to…”? Just that in the title is enough to turn me, a man (with three sons and five grandsons, no less), off before I read any further. Could you imagine the reaction to a piece by a man with a title including “Let’s TELL women to…”?
4
America's gods are called power and money, not wisdom and peace. What do you expect?
1
BRAVA! Pieces like this are the ONLY reason I haven't cancelled my NYT subscription yet.
Sorry not sorry - not gonna happen. My 'white' boys will compete and lean in and win.
3
So now we have to back off to make women look better. Are you crazy. What a defeatist attitude this is for women. You need to realize that we are different creatures. We only share 95% of genes. That 5% difference means a lot.
Are you suggesting that baseball is NOT a branch of philosophy???
1
Good point, about norms of maleness being transposed onto feminism. Vain hope, that men will help in any way. We'll seem to want to, to get laid or not get sued, but...
So, male standards (and just plain males) not helping. Where to go from here?
Finally someone speaks with common sense.
2
I'll be the first to agree that men have a lot to learn from women, both in work and in life generally. But I'm really starting to get annoyed by these finger-wagging lectures about how men are stupid and wrong about everything. Yet another essay that reads like a poorly written term paper by a 19 year old gender studies major. Seriously NYT, why do you keep publishing these?
The author is right to point out that the traditionally male way of doing things is not the human default, but neither is the traditionally female way of doing things. Women and men both have valid experiences to bring to the table and true gender equality will require mutual respect of those perspectives. If it's wrong to make women conform to the male norm, isn't it also wrong to make men conform to the female norm?
Worst of all is the author's insinuation that men need to get out of the way, sit down, and shut up in order for women to succeed. I think women can succeed on their own without male acquiescence. I see them doing it every day where I work. If Ms. Whippman is going to suggest otherwise, then maybe she should check her own internalized misogyny.
5
There is a feminist dialogue that men know nothing about. Plays into the stereotype that women talk too much. Just to be clear, I think women don’t talk enough. Lol.
Funny! In liberal San Francisco you can’t even go to the grocery store without all the girls dressed as fairies, goddesses, and Cinderellas under foot or waving their magic wanes...the chances of women’s empowerment is dying.
However, the number of dad’s pushing half-grown boys and nannies speaking in Spanish to kids in strollers is growing exponentially.
The future is hyper-feminine girly-girls and soft sensitive boys that are bilingual.
2
Many women these days are seemingly unaware that femininity is *powerful,* and men respect it.
Want respect from men? For starters, don't use profanity in an attempt to fit in. You're not a man. You know you're not a man, and the men know you're not a man.
Behave like a lady who respects herself. It's quite likely the men around you will, in turn, behave like gentlemen.
1
So in a nutshell, men are bad. Therefore, women should stop trying to be like men and men should try to be like women.
5
Ironically, the writer along with the commentators enjoy the freedoms the United States because of the existence of aggresive men in the militiary who do most of the killing and most of the dying.
7
Professor Henry Higgins from "My Fair Lady" had his own opinion on this:
...Why can't a woman be more like a man?
Men are so decent, such regular chaps;
Ready to help you through any mishaps;
Ready to buck you up whenever you're glum.
Why can't a woman be a chum?
Why is thinking something women never do?
And why is logic never even tried?
Straightening up their hair is all they ever do.
Why don't they straighten up the mess that's inside?
Why can't a woman behave like a man?
If I was a woman who'd been to a ball,
Been hailed as a princess by one and by all;
Would I start weeping like a bathtub overflowing,
Or carry on as if my home were in a tree?
Would I run off and never tell me where I'm going?
Why can't a woman be like me?..
1
..so femsplaining should be the new norm? How about defining/aiming for acceptable, professional behavior that isn't tied to gender, ethnicity, class, age etc.. Leave tribal identity politics at home!
5
Whippman has an apt name.
2
Finally, someone speaking some sense on this topic.
Excellent essay!
Funny how sexist feminists always come off as when the whole point of the movement was to stop sexism.
It's not like being kind or reticent are "womanly" traits. There are plenty of guidelines men have made on that have what you call "effeminate" traits as core tenants. Chivalry included respecting women and obeying your superiors, Bushido includes politeness, Buddhism is all about restraint and reflection, and all of these philosophies were made by men for men.
Maybe instead of pointing fingers at a group of people who had no choice in their physical appearance and demanding that they become more like "your" group we all try to become better human beings instead?
5
Curious. Are we talking about gay men or straight men?
2
Who wants to work in an environment where everyone is treated like a gladiator everyday? As a woman manager in the Aerospace and Defense and high tech industry it gets old. I found if you take care of your customers and team you have less turnover and greater customer satisfaction.
1
As a male old enough to look back on it all, the defensive side of me says, "Hey, do you think this game is fun?" Really, does anybody think that a world of aggression and competition where only a very few actually win is enjoyable for the millions who feel like they have to play it?
My take is that most men are just trying to play this game according to the rules as they understand them. If you ain't first, you're last. Many of us have been taught this is how the world worked since we were little guys. And I think we all know that the world hasn't changed so much that a fella can just be his own caring, loving, nurturing and egalitarian self without paying a heavy price for it.
So here's an honest look into the world of men that I offer up. Men care about how we stack up against other men. Period. And it is a serious situation. But that is the arena. And when women enter it, they are entering a fight that I don't think they understand. We are at war with each other and when you arrive, well, how is that supposed to work? You and your values are invisible to us because we are focused on winning a fight that doesn't involve you. And for us, it is an existential war. Stupid? Horrid for women? Detrimental to the advancement of humanity? Yes! All of the above. But for men, that is the struggle. At least as I've always understood it. If I were you, I would steer clear of this silliness and make your own better world without input or approval from us cavemen.
114
This is my favorite Op-Ed ever. THANK YOU!!
3
In their social lives, women adore driven, assertive and even arrogant men. But in the workplace, these same traits become problematic for women.
A step or two down from the overachiever suite, women will find men who are not as confident nor assertive. Men who are humble and do things like apologize too often. Women, and other men have a name for this likable personality type: loser.
2
All well and good, except women would lose respect and reject such men. It is the nature of women.
4
The cleanest, easiest, least accusatory, least entropy way for women to gain the immunization from men's folly (as it is said) is to do the obvious: women can build it themselves, hire whom they want, install the workplace ethics and standards they want.
Every company was built by someone, owned by someone. Do it yourself, and set your standards, and your pay scales. That seems much easier than changing men by the you-are-in-need-of-changing method. Why do you have to work for & with men; is there a reason?
50
Excellent piece. The idea is that people of all genders can and should be able to realize their best selves. Assertiveness can sometimes be useful and admirable, but deference and cooperation is valuable too. It just seems stupid to insist that for equality one kind of person must adopt the attributes of another kind of person. And really, since when is offering an apology a sign of weakness? Has the word courtesy gone completely out of usage?!
37
Good luck with telling people to basically shutup.
5
I reject the underlying theme here with two words: Hillary Clinton.
Clinton would have made an excellent President - able to hit the ground running , with a full qualified cabinet in place, ready to take on the world.
Her first days in office would not have been spent, as Donald Trump says his were / discovering “how complicated “ running the nation is.
But Clinton, who won the popular vote by a decent chunk, failed in too many “flyover states “ because she came on as a girl, soft, feminine, behind those gold (not grey-flannel pinstriped) pants suits.
Pummeled by Trump, she apologized when she had done nothing wrong.
She didn’t stop the debate when he inserted “you’re a liar” every two words, saying “if my opponent cannot be civil enough to abide by the rules, how is he going to handle domestic let alone foreign policy I know so well - after going across the table with the most vile gang of dictators the world has seen in 20 years and putting them in their place.
I demand 5 minutes to respond to each of my opponent’s improper remarks or the debate can just end here ...”
When Tip O’Neill twisted arms, “now there was a man.”
When Nancy Pelosi does it “she’s a bitch”.
But Pelosi wins - not just putting more tough women into the House, but keeping everyone in line.
She held back members calling for impeachment without evidence, until she had a smoking gun to point to - and Trump’s tracking polls have been in a nosedive.
Control. Aggressiveness. Pelosi’s rules - will win the day.
When I start to get my back up over a piece like this, I think of my granddaughters.
A nuanced article for sure; may I add a perspective.
The author points to the unfortunate, avoidable asymmetry in what is encouraged and valued for males and females (women encouraged to be fighter pilots with more vigor than males to choose needlework as a defining hobby or career).
Of course the asymmetry exists.
One of the key forces that exacerbate the asymmetry is, sadly, the loud and shrill proponents of feminism that are without merit (many are of merit, and them is not whom I speak about). The meritless, untalented and the unaccomplished waste everyone's time with preaching and preening.
Want some asymmetry? I have seen men shut other men down for acting like Neanderthals (happens all the time). The best weapon against men for women, in any field of work, is to say 'you are making me uncomfortable, you are discriminating, you are violating this and that." Despite the horrendous cases where men act like Neanderthals, it is senseless to discount that some women use this to plain get their way without opposition.
I have not seen sufficient number of meritorious, intelligent, accomplished women shut down dull feminists engaged in narcissistic, self-indulgent preaching to others. Just saying. True, I've not been everywhere nor seen everything, but I can see the impact on the exacerbated asymmetry.
Cheers.
No actually, we're just different and it's time men stopped thinking women should be more like men and women stopped thinking men should be more like women.
Get over it.
2
i get it, men try too hard and stop using whatever advantages and tools that they have.
4
II wonder if the author or anyone commenting has read Dorthy Dinerstein's book "The Mermaid and the Minotaur"? If not, you should. History can be a laxative for the constipation of post- modern thought.
Bravo! From reading some of the responses here I see that many (mostly men) seem to be deliberately misunderstanding the point of the article and blithely getting on with their chauvinist, misogynistic agendas. I have a couple of question for these folks.
What gender is responsible for WWI, WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (yes it was a war), the slaughter inflicted on the Cambodian people by the Khmer Rouge, The Sandy Hook massacre, the Pulse massacre, the Las Vegas massacre, the Pulse nightclub massacre, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre? What gender has sponsored most of the legislation that attempts to take away the sovereignty of women in regards to their bodies, crushes the poor, disenfranchises people of color, and gives corporations the go ahead to run roughshod over their employees? Hmmm?
7
You know what's missing in all of these books and articles?
Basic sense of gratitude.
3
You want to watch it pushing MEN too hard like we don't matter in society. It'll create worse problems than Trump.
3
Yes, let’s make men more like women. That’s a great idea. Women are the new men and men are the new women. What could possibly go wrong?
1
Click bait but I read it so I guess I fell for it. Sure got everyone riled up but way oversimplified things.
1
Ms. Whippman has too much anger towards men to write a book about raising boys.
3
Thank you so much for this.
YES!!!!! Perceiving the female/feminine as the norm nees tp happen sooner than later. Not in every arena per se but in many such as communication, etiquette, etc.
Well alright then. Thanks for womamsplaing whatever that was. After plowing through the self pity of being a woman I guess what the lady here was saying that boys and men should be lowered to the levels of woman and there ways (apologists) who she seems to think is much better while somehow being not quite good as the boys. Confused? Me too. Get it? Sorry she said it best when she admitted there will never be equality. And that of course that is by design. Be it darwinian or theologian. So here’s an thought. Why not just be who you are and stop trying to be who or what your not. You’ll live longer and probably happier!
For decades now, we have been preaching to children that boys are bad and the concept of sportsmanship that directs boys natural energy and aggression into socially beneficial behavior is actively being suppressed in favor of eliminating gender difference.
The simple fact of reality is that boys and girls are different and no social engineering will ever change that. Boys and girls have different physiques, body organs and most importantly, different hormones. The male hormone is testosterone which amps up boys natural aggressive traits. The female hormone is estrogen which is associated with women’s natural biological purpose of giving birth and nurturing infants through to adulthood.
As much as the #MeToo movement would deny the physiological differences between the two sexes, the reality of biology cannot. There is no question that women should be paid the same for the same work as men. But this current emphasis on suppressing boys natural emotional development is only serving to warp their personalities into twisted distortions of healthy manhood.
Ruth believes the answer for sexism and discrimination is sexism and discrimination. Nice ideology you’ve got there.
1
What are women’s “cultural norms”? Since when do women naturally “listen and yield to others’ judgement”? I attended an all girl prep school. I assure you that women and girls — from about grade three, going forward — can be as ambitious, scheming, belittling and cruel as men are. Our shortcoming as a gender is that too often we turn our claws toward our sisters. Men aim theirs at us, from early years, and it can make us lose our focus. If you keep your opponent on the defensive, she is less likely to land that knockout blow. (Politicians know this. That’s why abortion rights are always at the forefront of presidential campaigns. It’s the old divide and conquer tactic.) Don’t take the bait, women.
What we women need to do is form a united front. And we need to play the game according to the rules that exist. Don’t waste time and energy trying to change the rules. We must improve our “teamsmanship” and keep the other side running so fast that they lose their advantage. If we can do this, the patriarchy won’t even realize that they lost.
And maybe, if we face off on a level playing field we can finally learn to respect one another, and regard one another as true peers.
The poison at the heart of the gender divide is disdain. Boys learn this early, and popular culture stokes it. Women have, for too long, been told to rise above it, ignore it, smile, be gracious, and soldier on. I say rubbish to that. If you are pushed, push back, with everything you’ve got.
44
As Ms. Whippman aptly points out, ersatz feminism has sold women a bill of goods that has nothing to do with their well-being and everything with reinforcing the status and privileges of men. Who decided it is better to be a host as opposed to a hostess, or a waitress or an actress? Jobs that require the traditionally feminine traits of nurture, empathy and kindness---teaching and nursing, which are also among the most important in a society, are still among the lowest paying. Women who work in the home and perform one of the most difficult and significant tasks of raising children are still stuck in the 19th century. Studies show that the economic worth of the work they do is well over a $100,000 annually, but after years of labor, housewives receive no social security of their own. Some may remember an ad for a perfume from the 80s that showed a sexy woman dressed in a suit with her tie undone, singing how she will bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never ever let her man forget that he is a man. So, the perfect woman makes her own money, does the cooking and is happy to be a sex object? In the same vein, female sexual "liberation" has coaxed women into ever more "liberal" sexual acts and the proliferation of porn has forced sex workers into subjecting their bodies to increased exploitation for lesser pay. However, every man who behaves badly, was once just a child. Mothers are the world's most powerful beings. Hopefully, future mothers will raise better men.
35
How about women allowing themselves to be shrill and unattractive and downright mean when a man behaves in an unwanted sexual manner. That's what I do, and I don't have problems. I shout Stop It and Leave Me Alone, anytime, anywhere. I mean anytime, anywhere, to anyone. THIS WORKS!
32
Yes.
I could go on … but, simply put, I agree.
1
Truth is, feminists have been saying various versions of this for years. This liberal feminist narrative has remarkable traction: in the 1980s, women were told to put on their little suits and running shoes and run all the way to Wall Street. The "lean in" version is just updated as a corporate answer to the persistent questions that this "formal equality feminism" left unanswered. And for years, women of color feminists have been pointing out that "leaning in" and its trappings are directed to white bourgeois women--leaving the majority of women out. So yeah, this all needs to be said, but this time, can we remember that we figured it out and move forward to actually engage serious solutions? or do we remain captured by a sexist, racist, capitalist system--where a few Sheryl Sanbergs make their billions and tell the rest of us we just haven't worked hard enough?
2
So in a nutshell, we should encourage our sons to be more passive? Do you encourage any of your kids, boys or girls, to be more passive?
Yes, it seems that a lot of people think the response to all the jerks we have to contend with in life is to become just like them. It's not the answer. But it is the trend. Somewhere along the line being rude has become "cool."
1
Why do women’s gains need to come at the expense of men’s achievements? Can we not find a way for us to be additive instead of subtractive?
So it’s a cultural problem? Now insert the blanket accusation onto some religious or ethnic minority and its racism, bigotry, misogyny etc. much of this article rings true but the exceptions are so numerous they undermine the rule. That doesn’t matter though because to many it just feels feels right. That’s lazy thinking and it’s essentially what the left accuses the right of. Thinking is hard. Feeling is easy. Is that a man-woman dichotomy too?
Yeah, I was a huge success in business, I made a ton of money… I was a winner!
I also lied to and cheated my customers, degraded the environment, took the easiest way out of any difficulty, failed to pay my employees a living wage and so relied on public assistance to finance my business, ignored diversity, subjugated women, and found every way I could to get the most while giving the least.
So much winning… I am tired of of winning. I no longer want winning, I want fairness and quality and equality and cooperation and community.
3
In any culture, women are the keepers of 50% of that culture. Yet we often fail to study, write about, recognize or value the 50% of culture that comes from women.
I have long standing curiosity about people and cultures around the world. I remember very clearly in my early 20's picking up a book titled, "Bushmen." It was an anthropological "study" of the Kung!. Unfortunately, as I read the book the authors revealed that they had no women anthropologists in their group. Because of this they did not have access to most of the Kung! women's activities and lives. So...they just wrote about the men as though they encapsulated the whole culture! They didn't find a way to gain admission to the woman's lives. They did not find a female anthropologist to follow the women and document their perspectives.
This omission of awareness of the contributions of women to their own cultures is long standing and very pervasive. Part of our learning to embrace traditionally female values involves first acknowledging the value of these contributions.
My mother knits. Once my husband made a dismissive and derisive comment about a knitting class. I told him he was out of line. That knitting was a craft and an art practiced by women for hundreds of years. That women had used knitting to clothe and care for their families. It is as critical to the evolution of civilization as blacksmithing. Hubby apologized. But where are the studies of the role of knitting and sewing in civilization?
5
Bravo NYT and Ms. Whippman! This article perfectly encapsulates something that has been bothering me for a while. As the mother of a 12 year old girl and 9 year old boy, who is trying to raise her daughter to be confident and undeterred by a world that is overwhelmingly bent in favor of men and her son to be more sensitive, caring, and well... “female,” this article nails the greater problem. We are not actively encouraging boys and men to take on what are considered more female roles, characteristics, jobs, behaviors, etc. Why are girls almost exclusively still encouraged to babysit while boys are not — even among my group of friends and acquaintances who are progressive, feminists? If we don’t raise boys who know how to care for children, and value doing so, will we ever achieve true equality? Boys need to be taught how to do the same things girls are and also believe that interests traditionally considered female (fashion, dance, crafts) and jobs (teaching, caregiving) are acceptable and even necessary male pursuits. Our daughters don’t always need to be more like our sons, our sons need to be more like our daughters.
3
I had a much older colleague years ago who had worked for Bankers Trust for decades. He said way back, they would intentionally make groups and even individuals within groups compete with each other - winner takes all kind of thing. Very aggressive, terrible for morale, trust, and productivity.
Bankers Trust then started hiring more women at higher levels, including as managers and VPs. The women brought in more collaborative practices and encouraged support within and between teams. Morale when way up (as did employee retention), and so did productivity.
3
Plato warns that men who pay too little attention to letters and only pay attention to seeking honor and victory become more savage than is appropriate. If only we lived in a culture where the humanities were taken seriously, maybe our men would not be so brutish.
5
Yes!!! This 62-year-old man has spent a professional lifetime witnessing the value of stereotypically female qualities in the workplace: thoughtfulness, consideration, thinking before speaking, considering all the angles before stating one's conclusion, accepting responsibility, recognizing the contributions of others and then giving them the opportunity to contribute.
And my favorite: Women tend to understand that the certainty with which a statement is made is not correlated to the truth of the statement. Men tend to equate assertiveness with competence; women tend to equate ability with competence.
And don't get me started about the abysmal failure of most men to meaningfully participate in raising their kids and maintaining a home.
I've waited 40 years for the workplace to become more feminized. I'm still waiting.
10
Men still reflect the dominating behaviors of the past.
Women still reflect the accommodating behaviors of the past.
It will take some time before an adjustment will be close to universal. But we are making progress. Thank you Ms Whippman for helping to level the scale.
2
Aren't there examples of strong men deferring to their communities for the good of all? Certainly there must be this personality among all of the others. Are listening, empathy, joy for others and overcoming short term egos only traits of women? I don't think so. Everyone seems to be off track. So men become predominantly insensitive, and women become overly sensitive.
1
Not going to happen.
It’s a competitive world out there.
It’s not up to others to step back.
Don’t rely on it.
Rise to the challenge.
3
Women have risen above the challenge. Men need to rise to the challenge of changing their behavior, outlook and actions. Women and men need to be held accountable.
5
I'd like to challenge the assumption behind the linked research. Actually, there are a lot of assumptions here that are misguided but I'll focus on the one.
Assertion: Women are just as likely as men to ask for a raise.
Conclusion: Men are more likely to receive a raise after asking.
I believe this relationship is true. However, the inference is dubious. Allow me to ask a different question.
Are women as well trained in requesting a raise where the request will be granted?
I will politely suggest the answer is often no. Not that women are less intelligent or less hard working. They just aren't as well educated in the art of raise-asking as men. This isn't a gender fault. The reality is systemic of a male oriented system. However, there are multiple instances where I know a woman could have asked for more if they had simply asked better.
"Lean In" was one woman's attempt to correct this imbalance. Assertiveness became a surrogate for proper education. However, the failure is really one of information imbalance. Men are more likely to quantify and communicate their salary requests in terms of a business case than women. The people in charge of granting raises are more likely to understand and appreciate the business case because they are similarly trained.
If you are going to operate in the corporate world, you will need to understand and navigate this relationship regardless of gender. Start teaching your daughters now.
1
I give women much more credit than this. They don't need to have men "retrained " in order to flourish. Right now, in traditional power professions like medicine and law more than 50% of the graduates are women. I work with many emerging female professionals and they have no issues with the confidence gap that many from previous generations encountered. As they are growing and developing in their roles they are finding their own voice without this kind of help. The idea that human resource departments can train men into new behavior patterns that will allow women to flourish in a business setting is demeaning to all. In addition, I believe that this type of unnecessary forced behavioral modification creates anger and resentment that unfortunately can be (and is) leveraged by the growing male resentment/empowerment movement.
3
Most men have appeared, and still appear to be sexual predators especially in the work place. When there is equality between the sexes, behavioral differences will fall into place.
What’s your data source for your first statement?
We will only see true equality when we focus on being human beings. Yes, males and females are physically different, but when I need a civil engineer, doctor, or plumber gender does not matter, I am hiring for skills and knowledge only.
We should present career paths as being gender neutral and not push kids towards anything. If a kid likes math and science then present options, otherwise present options. As an FYI we really do not need more STEM majors. Too many are not working in STEM fields and trying to pay off a life long education debt on lower wages.
2
Most.
Bizarre,
Op-Ed piece.
Ever.
Written.
The reason it is so strange is because, stripped of “gender roles”, the world is a competitive stage. If women choose to enter it, that’s what they will find. Sorry.
If men want to be nurses, let them. If women want to be construction workers, they need to be able to do more than manage flag duty.
As I was reading the citation for the Medal of Honor honoree this week, I thought “If a woman was in battle, expected to carry all those casualties to safety, you would have had more dead, due to her lack of upper body strength.”
To which a woman, maybe this author, will say: “Well, then, no more fighting.”
The male standard is not more socially desirable. It is a role. Perhaps with so many single parent families, the result of divorce, maybe it looks cool.
And women should not show up at the office with bare arms and cleavage and pretend we don’t know what’s going on.
This is a piece written by a woman explaining the world to men.
Call it woman-splaining.
Bizarre.
My wife never worked in a paying job more than one year after the birth of our daughter. My wife is indisputably the head of our household. What I do, shortening my life and getting my head knocked around as I criss-cross the country on planes, is nothing more than my duty to my family.
Someone had to do it. I am glad my wife did the important work while I was leaning in or leaning out or whatever I needed to do in the real world outside a feminist’s imagination.
18
Stuart, Boston
Right on, Stuart! The author is supposedly writing a book about raising boys...has she ever raised one?
Stuart’s comments about women’s wardrobe choices at work(& on news programming on cable) & the value of the “work” of raising children are spot on.
Let’s raise more men like Stuart!
2
Wow! Thank you Ms. Whippman! This never crossed my mind and doh, it was so obvious. Thank you again.
3
Thank you! I just sat in a professional development presentation at work that encouraged women to interrupt more and apologize less. No one talked about men interrupting less. No one talked about anyone interrupting less! If we’re all talking, then who’s listening?
8
Great article! As a man I am usually quite sceptical when people say the world would be a better place when ruled by women. But I wholeheartedly agree with the author we would all - men and women - be better off if we stop embracing ‘masculine chest thumping behaviour and learn more ‘feminine’ behaviour, like modesty, forgiveness and care.
7
The author here comes right out and says, men need to be women. Nonsense. Workplace and social rules need to be structured so that all are given equal opportunity, and all forms of contribution are valued, and equal contribution equally valued. But you still have to assert yourself to collaborate, and you need to be present and be heard to contribute and especially to lead. Leaning in is about being present and being heard.
1
Could not agree more.
I had some related thoughts when the movie WONDER WOMAN came out. It was lauded at the time as a film that "empowered" girls by giving them a role model that was just as strong as the superheroes the boys were watching. I found this to be dead wrong. The reason we want more women in positions of power and leadership is precisely because they don't behave like men. A female superhero who beats the heck out of the bad guys isn't a good role model for girls, it's an unfortunate appropriation of a male stereotype.
1
Fantastic piece, bravo!
1
Ms. Whippman makes good points, but commits the classic rhetorical error of using pink and blue language that perpetuates what she is trying to eradicate. She talks about "men" and "women" instead of talking about behaviors. It's the concepts of "masculine" and "feminine" and are expectations of such that are flawed, not men as a class or women as a class.
Even her byline states that she is "working on a book about raising boys," as if "boys" require a special, sex segregated style of being "raised." Rather than working on "a book about raising balanced children" or "a book about teaching children healthy balance." If you sex segregate child rearing strategies from the get go, you perpetuate sex segregated paradigms.
3
This is a tiny sample size, but my best bosses were women who did not pretend to be men; rather, they rallied the troops when necessary, and they genuinely cared about us and our needs. They inspired us to do our best work, by showing data about how our work provided the most good for the most people (and this was manufacturing semiconductors for a multinational corporation). They listened and were generally quiet, yet they were very powerful. My worst boss was a woman who tried to act like a man: loud, incompetent, overconfident. My male bosses were mediocre at best, but incompetent on average.
Said nobody, ever: "He was only promoted because he's a man." And yet, nearly two thirds of my male supervisors were unqualified for their jobs. (Only one third of my female supervisors were unqualified for their jobs.)
I would like to see a study on the competence and performance of managers by gender.
4
The author is a terrific and effective writer, assertive and powerful, figuratively leaning in and pounding the table and filling the room with enough volume and brilliant aggression that you might fail to notice the extent to which her case is built on half-truths, non-truths and gross generalizations.
6
Well said and so true. My husband and I are both STEM professionals, and have been for decades. I can't even count the number of times I was the only woman at the table, feeling obliged to "lean in" just to fit in, and thus to be heard, and so to pursue what I wanted (this was way before Sheryl Sandberg). There has been NO time when my husband was the only man at the table, or felt obliged to change any aspect of his behavior to fit in with female colleagues. Actually... not true: he was once called out for complimenting his boss when she didn't wear a suit that mimicked that most ridiculous work-uniform of men!
Why not just say that men and women are different and that neither group needs to behave like the other?
Excellent article!
Let’s tape All men’s eyelids open, tie them to a chair and make them memorize it.
1
Yes, bravo! Loved the article and couldn't agree more. One quibble: feminism doesn't say act more like a man, it just asks for equality. In what direction we move the needle -- toward a "masculine" or "feminine" trait middle -- is up to all of us.
1
This piece really spoke to me, an introverted, artist-type in the field of education. I was raised by parents who were educated, successful and yet quite humble: first generation American values, perhaps. All my life I have worked to balance appearing assertive but not aggressive. It's a hard row to hoe when you are naturally neither, and it's irritating to note when I sense I am not being taken seriously (whether at work or in social situations) because I'm not interested in asserting myself (aka being a jerk).
And why is education not considered a weighty enough career field to be covered regularly and in a meaningful manner in the NYT or any other serious publication? I'm still waiting.
2
For many years now whenever someone tells me I just need to lean in a bit more, I tell them if I lean in any farther I will literally fall down.
2
Just how sure are y’all that one of the major problems in American life these last forty years or so has been an insufficient amount of criticism directed at men and masculinity?
3
This really is only a Boomer issue. Maybe you should all retire because that would fix the problem.
Actually, it’s not. The behavior of some Gen X, Millenial and Gen Z men is more than appalling.
4
I agree with the author that men and women who believe they can steamroll everyone through life are jerks.
However, I disagree that "assertiveness" is necessarily a male trait. I raised 3 sons and at our house the two things that got you in trouble were lying and trying to justify your bad behavior.
As a parent I knew when I was wrong and I apologized to my sons.
Once, I was teasing my middle son Josh who was 3 years at the time. I forget what it was about but when I fobbed it off to Josh as "aw I was just kidding" my 3 year old said to me "no Dad that was lying".
He was right! I apologized, not because it is a nice female virtue, but because of the humbling realization that I was wrong.
Believe me it was not the first time and as imperfect being it will not be the last. But as the author rightly says a bit more humility and deference would go a long way to making us a more pleasant society.
2
Silly article. Could it be that assertiveness usually wins over deference because assertiveness is a component of competitiveness? Deference may work in one on one situations where goals are shared but, not in any zero sum game such as asking for a raise.
So, perhaps the next article will tell us just why competitiveness is a terrible masculine trait - ignoring the obvious fact that women are by far the most competitive of the sexes in their interactions with each other (in work situations, through fashion, in dating, etc.). The simple fact is that competitiveness (including assertiveness) got our species out of the muck, onto the savanna and to the moon. Competitiveness is simply a basic driving characteristic of Darwinian evolution so, it and assertiveness are not going to go out of style anytime soon. (It's also a key reason why we should stop trying to contact other "intelligent" life!).
3
So we should encourage by people to abandon the character traits responsible for the discoveries and advances that drive our modern life?
Sounds like a fantastic strategy. The next scientific breakthrough will definitely not come from the non-assertive and apologetic male or female. Those breakthroughs require a dogmatic, unrelenting, and often times unrealistic belief in your own ability and vision.
Grow up. The internal combustion engine, electricity, modern medicine, etc. didn’t come from whiny, insecure, and apologetic pushovers.
5
A little dose of biological reality:
The major cause of male dominance, contrary to the author, is that men are more willing to kill and risk death to get what they want in this world. That will never change. Female empowerment is an historical blip and won't last. A couple decades at most.
Power among the weak is unstable. What if men decided women were no longer allowed to vote? Then women would lose the vote. Deep down all women know this.
The world would be a better place if females ran it.
In western culture, too much labelling has been given to the nuances of life....Pink is just a color, whether men wear it or women wear it, just doesnt matter! Everything is a state of mind!
Whippman, with a wonderful name out or Dickens or Pynchon, makes perfect sense to me. Practicing what she preaches, her scourge seems made more of velvet than of barbed wire.
Yes! Yes! Yes!
and thank you Ruth Whippman for so concisely stating the truth of our crazy social and political reality.
1
This would be a more useful and thoughtful piece if it didn't buy into the very gender dichotomies it claims to be opposing. Assertiveness isn't a fundamentally male trait. Reflecting and listening and apologizing aren't fundamentally female traits. It's insulting to everyone's intelligence to pretend as if they are, and it's certainly counterproductive if you stated aim is to get men to behave in a different way.
Telling a man to be more reflective is one thing; telling him to be more reflective because oh-by-the-way-but-not-by-the-way-that's-how-women-are-and-and-you-should-be-more-like-them is unlikely to increase your chances of persuading him.
4
Okay? This article strikes me as very weird. Sort of I get it, and sort of I understand I may not because I'm a dude.
Still, there seems to be a prejudice here? Is that wrong to say? From a male point of view, it seems to be a bit of an 'overcompensation.'
Isn't that a guy thing? :D
I am reminded of Ursula Le Guin writing, “Can women operate as women in a male institution without becoming imitation men?”
Our species and thinking result from who won the argument over which male was to investigate the growling noise outside the cave. It was assertion and confidence that remained to breed.
I’m reminded of the Nobel prize winning work by Kahneman (and Tvesky) who identified no correlation between confidence and skill.
I wonder if our politics and corporate structure aren’t founded on caves.
And I’m reminded of when the author Ian Mckellen spent a full day in a park giving away many books from his library. After giving them all away and returning home, he remarked to his wife that without women, he’d be broke as an author. Not one male had accepted a free book.
The cave remains for now.
Many many women want men exactly this way.
Assertive, brazen, unapologetic.
Not to outcompete or step on other women.
No. To outcompete, beat, and ultimately win. Over other men.
2
Yes. An explains Why so many smart, educated women vote Republican.
It is probably not too hard to find a man out there who would like to NOT have to be the breadwinner or the competitive and ambitious one. And wouldn't it be nice if he could just stay home with the kids, or be nurse, or a 2nd gradeteacher and not raise eyebrows, or feel like he was somehow failing to live up to masculine standards. That he would have the freedom to pursue choices like that without feeling like a failure. And if women could, too!
I would say both fashion and baseball can qualify as branches of philosophy...
I'm old enough to remember women's power suits. Aggressive/assertive enough to have been told I'm intimidating (I'm 5 feet tall).
I'm smart enough to have deliberatively avoided working for women because I perceived they were too hyper-something, trying to prove their worth in a male dominated corporate culture. I would rather work for a sexist, secure male executive. That I can deal with better.
When I pointed out that the traits I was being told intimidate my male colleagues, even those "several levels above you" (pleeze the hierarchy nonsense), I pointed out 1. If I was a man, I would be congratulated on being effective and 2. You can't encourage me to aggressively pursue goals than ding me at review time for being intimidating. The senior executive conceded I have valid points and dropped it.
Stick up for yourself whatever gender you are. If you are a woman, just be who you are. Do not apologize nor accept nonsense double standards but most importantly, just be who you are.
As a mother of 2 sons, I have most definitely encouraged "stereotypical female character traits." I've always believed we need more kindness, respect and caring as a species.
PSA: Stop lumping all men together! You can't make a blanket statement about mens behaviour when so much has changed with men in the past 2 generations! A 35 or 45 year-old man today is way more woke than a 65 or 75 year old man, but the women's movement continues to treat both groups the same. Instead of always blaming men for your shortcomings, maybe you should raise a glass to the ones that have stepped back to make room for you for a change.
2
You are, of course, right that we men can be aggressive bores, or worse. Far worse.
But it certainly is not true that no attention is being paid to this: I would note, for example, the campaign of recent years against sexual harassment and exploitation, as practiced by powerful men (though curiously, many women voted for chronic molester Donald Trump).
Society has long worked to control the aggressive nature of men, from banning dueling to making little boys sit still in class.
But ultimately, men are not women, any more than women are men.
The ultimate problem here seems to be that we are trying to degenderize society, to efface instinctive differences between the sexes.
We are perhaps more malleable than walruses or bears, but push this too hard, try to dress men in petticoats and have women smoke cigars, and you will fail.
1
Nearly every weekend there are a couple of columns on why men are morally despicable. Many men discuss it and some have cancelled their subscriptions even though the Times does vital investigative journalism at this dark time for our democracy.
Such a pattern of demonizing a group would never be accepted about any other group, but somehow blatant male bashing is acceptable and, in fact, lauded.
Yes, there are an awful lot of angry men (and women) out there. But do we need to constantly publish them?
3
I’ll ignore the regrettably cliched stereotyping of this piece and credit the author for its dead-on thesis: business is male genderized, and that has fooled women (most profoundly executives) into believing that they need to out-male their male counterparts to get ahead. In my experience of reporting to female professionals for about 20 years, they are every bit as competitive, cruel, close minded, imperious and boneheaded as the worst male managers I have experienced. Female executives apologize? Are you kidding? No. They are merely aping the least common denominator that they see working around them. They are politically adept and almost grossly self-interested. Now, some might think this a success story: men and women equally awful in the workplace. Of course it’s not and if women can resist the impulse to perpetuate “male” behavior and instead replace it with something else (“female” behavior heretofore buried under expectations?) then I’m all for it.
Sounds like a lot of the wonderful Canadian men I know.
"But really, isn’t a person with a “high threshold of what constitutes offensive behavior” just a fancy name for a jerk?" Outstandingly accurate way of reframing the question! I'd suggest "bullying jerk" - but that's a quibble. The social science articles you quote say the data "suggest" that men, taken a group, have a lower threshold for offensive behavior than women taken as a group. But they offer no proof to support that sexist assertion and I don't think it's true. What's true is that a relatively small group of, yes, almost entirely men, do feel it's perfectly fine for them to trample all over everyone else's rights and legitimate interests so long as they get what they want. Often they reframe "what they want" as "what my family needs". I'm suggesting there's a lot more room for cooperation here between a large majority of men and women than the op-ed seems to have considered. Women, honest question, when you look at men do you truly see us ALL acting as bullies or do you see a relatively small group of men acting as bullies? Towards other men as well as women? In fact towards anyone or anything that gets in their way, or impedes their misguided urge to "win" the zero sum, totally competitive, non-cooperative, battle to the death competition that they mis-perceive life to be?
1
"If parents were giving their children virtue names today, as the Puritans used to do, nobody would choose Charity or Grace or Patience." - Ruth Whippman (author of this piece)
Of course not. They would choose Whip-Man. Praise be.
Gender stereotyping. It's a social science.
Gender bias is real and men who perpetuate it will go out of their way to deny, blame, or claim to be victims themselves. Just read the replies to the opinion piece!
But as a woman manager in a tediously competitive boys club I can say NO ONE benefits from the boring and useless aggressive behavior from (mostly) intellectually limited males.
Cheers to the author for pointing out some realistic steps to make this a better world.
3
hey, guess what? There are no norms that are inherently female. Gender is socially constructed. Did Tony Perkins ghost write this column? This is rubbish. The message here is stay sweet, humble, and always defer to others. I really laughed out loud when I read this: " because until female norms and standards are seen as every bit as valuable and aspirational as those of men, we will never achieve equality. Promoting qualities such as deference, humility, cooperation and listening skills will benefit not only women but also businesses, politics and even men themselves... " Okay, women, remember that compliant domesticity equals equality. Really, was this column intended for publication in the NYT or a evangelical newsletter?
they are socially contructed.
2
YES, indeed! Great article, I agree 100%
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I a man and I'm sick of all the talk of competition, assertiveness, and all the "fake it till you make it" when there is enough for everyone if we choose as a society allocate it fairly. We have enough jerks, let's not make more of them and instead let's take them down a notch or two.
As an aside "fake it till you make it" is ordinarily for the desperate or for charlatans, what does it say about us as a society when it is the mantra of our educated young professionals.
All I can add is, amen to that.
Just last week I had drinks with a graduate school friend (male, Indian) who, though he commonly jokes about american mis-use of English, decided to point out how I was ending some sentences by pitching up my tone. He then shared that it indicates a lack of confidence and that his last boss in the tech industry in SanFran (female) did the same thing and it was really a shame since it communicated a sense of insecurity.
While I took issue immediately (insisting that I'm clearly in a comfortable conversation over pisco sours in Lima, Peru) it took me a solid 12 hours to put my finger on the issue. Women shouldn't have to change everything just to be perceived as confident. Maybe some women just speak like that!
This subtle display of misogyny chilled me to bone. I've already adopted all the trappings of a neo-feminist - a firm handshake, I look dead in the eye, a confident public speaker, I can small talk and chest puff with various levels of transcribed male egoism, I slay in a black pantsuit - and yet it seems there is still more to change to be acceptably male enough to be taken seriously by some (male) people.
I'm 35, a boss of a small team, launched a successful start up, a mother of two, a world traveler environmentalist, utterly unstoppable in home improvement projects, and you know what? I'm fine with the way I talk, bruh. Lean out out old friend. Lean out. Change YOUR idea of confidence, make room for mine.
1
You should listen to the way men talk to each other! Yet, most men take it as a game of wits. Some women know how to play the game, but many don't--and they then take it as a form of harassment and abuse. This is what Men are From Mars etc. has morphed into today.
Don't lean out, in, or sideways. Stand straight up and do the right thing.
Are we now restricted to a quick and neutral handshake and sterile smile or just a cold and dispassionate head-nod. Do we only bow like the Japanese people do, but then who bows lower.
Outside of work, are we now afraid of offending, touching, or giving a hug? After our Al anon meetings, there used to be hugs all around for all genders. Now.... no so much.
From the article:
Pity the human resources manager trying to sell a deference training course to male employees. She would need to paint all the PowerPoint slides black and hand out Nerf guns just to get started.
My reaction:
Isn't there a way to critique male behavior without placing us all in a homogeneous group and then infantilizing us? I guess men weren't intended to read this? Sort of like telling a sexist joke at the water cooler when opposite sex co-workers aren't around? It's not a good look when any gender does it.
1
Imagine for a second a man posting “We should be training girls to aspire to men’s cultural norms, and selling those norms to women as both default and desirable."
If a patriarchal society has previously operated with this mindset, and it’s flawed, re packaging it is flawed.
1
"..we have a “lower threshold for what constitutes offensive behavior.” This is almost exclusively framed as an example of female deficiency."
----Isn't it, though?
Wow! Thank you, Ruth Whippman! I hadn't quite put my finger on my annoyance with the "Lean In" thingy. But you have encapsulated it perfectly. On the other hand, there can be a bit too much "Sorrrry!" happening with women. "Sorry, I'm feeling fat today." "Sorry I'm not living up to all of your expectations." "Sorry I offended your dog by thinking it was a cat," etc., etc., from the ridiculous to the sublime. Also, I find pleasant but direct assertiveness refreshing and ethical. It's good to let others know where you stand, so you can have fair relationships, and avoid beaucoup resentment. After all, we can't expect people to read our minds. Honestly, I have been fortunate in my dealings with men. I have been abused by a few, but mostly respected and liked by them, including the two stand-up, feminist-leaning guys I married, "real" men with the good sense and grace to "lean out" of overweening male privilege. But as an active feminist, I know that jerks abound, everywhere. This article should be circulated - everywhere.
44
Thank you Ruth. I largely agree.
Leaning in doesn't have to be fist pumping feminism. I know successful women CEO's and senior managers, and they don't come across as overtly feminist. They exhibit many of the traits of a successful male executive - they are smart, business-savvy and assertive. If you want to stay in business, you have to be.
2
As someone who has worked in both STEM and education, I've severely tired of the narrative that we need more women in STEM. Somehow feminism translates simply into wanting more women in high-paying jobs.
No one bothers to consider that female-dominated jobs like education, social work, and k-12 teaching should be valued more and paid much more! Or that, as the author noted, we should want more men in these socially valuable professions, not in soulless finance and CEO jobs.
Feminism should mean adopting feminist values, not reinforcing our current shallow focus on wealth and power. It should also mean looking beyond upper-class feminism (hence not just focusing on gender equality at the top of the corporate ladder).
We need to invert the narrative and goals of feminism in labor.
4
Yes, I am an old white guy, and there's not a lot I can do about that. But for years I have been at odds with the "classical male" way of behaving in management / leadership positions. I'm a person and leader with flaws, I know that; but I have been trying to "lean out" for many years, trying to further the interests of others - especially women and persons of color. This has brought me a lot of derision from men but - sad to say - from women also. No, I'm not looking for sympathy.
I applaud this piece. Yes, we all need to look hard at the balance of leaning in and leaning out that we want from our leaders.
6
I have found that coming from an Italian family where women were revered helped a lot later in life dealing with female colleagues. Largely as a result of that, I usually have good relationships with women. A sense of humor and genuine caring will go quite a ways,but will not solve every problem. Many years ago working in large companies and offices we tended to develop relationships beyond work and I feel that carried us over a lot of rough patches. Now those relationships have faded to almost nothing, and without that social context we tend to import the societal conflicts into our own narratives. This is just my own personal observation, but if the person across the table from you represents a certain demographic rather than an individual human being, the tendency toward argument and conflict and domineering behavior will just increase.
2
My boss has has sometimes chided me for not contributing much at meetings where my all-male colleagues equate volume with insight and no one can finish a thought without being interrupted. When encouraged afterward to jump in more, I've simply said that I find it unprofessional and, more important, unlikely to lead us to a meaningful solution on the issue being discussed.
3
@Lady Edith
What I "hear" from your comment is that you are in the wrong position and do not have ideas, answers or solutions that will solve the problems at hand. Professionalism died when employees stopped being valuable assets and became cost centers. Play the game or find a new job if you can.
I have long envisioned a workplace embodied more by flow and less by push. Imagine if we went to work each day prepared to contribute, rather than to do battle. I love this article, thank you so much for putting it into words.
15
I'm old, but my impression is we do not train children to become human, we train them to become employees. Girls seem to get the largest share of concern from parents traditionally, while boys get the least. We should raise our children to be human first, that will include the desire able behavior.
15
I was so excited for this article but you left out something truly important to workplace equality ....I’m back to work after taking 5 years to be home. What I’ve realized is equality in the workplace would naturally happen if we allowed men to feel they can raise their kids too. Paternity leave should be the same length as maternity leave and men should take it. Flex schedules should be offered to men just like women.
My husband just started a new job and not once was the issue of flexibility raised throughout the interview process. My first interview, that’s all we discussed and I was coming back to work full time. Until a man is culturally expected to raise his kids equally with a woman, there will never be gender equality in the workplace. I gave birth 3 times and 3 times I had to give up my clients and start over upon my return. Throughout his career a man never has to do that. I don’t want to miss out on my kids lives and my job understands that, because I’m a woman. The jobs need to understand that men don’t want to miss out either.
28
I so agree with Ms. Whippman that telling women to lean in is both degrading and ineffective.
I agree that the assumption of toxic competition clawing to to top as the natural and preferred order is flawed.
But I don't agree that the problem is male vs female. Most men opt out of the toxic culture as well. It is only the most toxic of them who rise to the top - the ones who play the game the right way.
The problem is the self-fulfilling prophecy that this personality type makes a great leader. The Washington Post concluded that 20% - 1 in 5 - of our corporate leaders were sociopaths. Our model is to find and promote the people who are least empathetic and most self serving; people who want to rise up mimic the behavior because humans like other humans who look, think ad act like themselves.
This is not an issue of feminism, although it profoundly affects women. This is a central issue of our culture - how do we recognize and ignore the tendency to sociopathy and promote empathy and team leadership instead?
It's a real question, when you look at the nation, and think for a moment about who we elected to lead us.
15
I like former President Jimmy Carter's book, "Call to Action". We are not asking men to not do their best or to be less male. We are asking men to behave and to be fair. Women can't make men behave. Only men can make men behave. And we need "real" men to make sure other men step up and be "real" men. What's a "real" man? Read the book.
14
My mother just turned eighty-six.
Women of her generation were wives, mothers, daughters, sisters.
They worked jobs outside of the home and were the primary caregivers as well. They cooked and cleaned without complaint. In our household, all the men pitched in and pulled their weight.
As an underwriter, she periodically expressed discontent with some co-workers--both male and female--that a supervisor was unduly strict or that a colleague was not pulling her weight.
At her last job, all of her co-workers were female. My mother's observations of the workplace did not change much. Most of her commentary had to do with workplace politics and unproductive workers, some of whom were promoted.
My mother taught piano after work to earn extra income, often snatching a five-minute meal between students.
She can still play the piano with ease and sings beautifully.
She can mop the living floor from a squatting position and elevate without the use of her hands.
Now, that is sexy--and empowering.
If you were to sit her down and explain to her the difference between "leaning in" and "leaning out," she would probably look at you uncomprehendingly and suggest that women had very little to do these days.
6
That women and men are different is inarguable.
That women and men deserve the same opportunities is inarguable.
That aggression or assertion is more valuable in direct competition is inarguable.
That cooperation is more valuable in teamwork is inarguable.
That women and men compete in a male defined world is inarguable.
3
Great article!
Men of color, in Corp America, often encounter many of the same challenges that women (particularly white women) in Corp America encounter. As a black man, on my own professional journey, most of the negative feedback that I have received parallels the feedback that this article generally portrays as being made toward women.
While the recent focus on diversity & inclusion may have begun slightly moving the needle on gender disparities in the workplace, the group that has benefited the most from these movements has been white women. I am concerned, for people of color (specifically black men and black women), that this will only mean that we are experience a swap in prioritization, between black women and black men, at the bottom of the proverbial “barrel” while the race (as a whole) makes anemic progress, at best.
11
I agree that one side of the scale holds "entitled, toxic" men (mainly). It's just that the other side of the scale holds non-entitled, non-toxic (mainly) women AND men.
3
My partner and I both work full time and when my requests for him to share some of the emotional and physical labor of keeping the house running, it was often met with deaf ears. He couldn’t understand how much I was doing and recently when I shifted from a full time career to starting my own business, he felt that since I ‘wasn’t working’ I should do more around the house.
I took about an hour and wrote up a list of everything I did related to common household duties. It was over a page long, single spaced and involved not just tasks such as taking the trash out but all of the associated tasks including collecting all of the trash in every room the night before, replacing the bags, emptying the kitty litter and taking the trash out the night before so that the early am trash collection happened. Monitoring the bags and purchasing more at the store etc.
He finally seemed to get it and is helping more. Parents, please make sure your children of both genders are given household tasks to be responsible for as they are growing up. It will help them in their future relationships!
10
@Tracy
Here's the deal, common household chores need to be evenly distributed across the household members. Some will have physical and other limitations that need a work around. It is also right to post requirements for that task. But honestly, life is not a balance sheet. We need to be able to do everything needed to run a household by ourselves and understand there may come a point where must taken other peoples' chores. Kids need to know this too.
@Tracy that’s not a gender issue that’s your husband. Most men I know help out around the house and with child rearing.
I am a nurse and a man. I came to nursing from an industrial setting that was, at that time, all male. Nursing is 90% female. I brought with me certain attitudes about myself and "work". For many years, I saw my female co-workers staying home with sick children. Fine. That was the cultural norm. Fast forward to me having a sick child. I was very uncomfortable with idea of laying out of work for childcare. The nurses I worked with were fine with it but I did get pushback from the female nursing supervisor. Pushback that female nurses didn't get. She and I shared the same work expectations of me. I pointed out the unfairness of her criticism. She understood and apologized. I'm almost sure that wouldn't have been okay on a construction site.
Some commenters have suggested that breeding out aggression and other such "undesirable" traits in men is a good idea and could be accomplished quickly. Humans are fond of conflict and I doubt that a hand wringing wimp is who you want to be with when assaulted in the mall parking lot.
Neither gender should need to parrot the behavior of the other. But the rule book exists and the path to position and status is known. Changing that takes time which is the source of frustration for people alive today. We get one life and we want to max it out. We don't want to accept that our hard work benefits us a little and the following generations a lot. Think sexism, racism, or child care.
5
Every phenomena is pressed into a grid of oppression and victimization—that’s the narrative of the modern feminist. They say they want equality, but listen to their narrative and note that they want a much more robust for of chivalry backed by government, commerce, society at large. The largest supercomputer in the world could not calculate all of the nuanced permutations regarding how any given random comment or innocuous act could contorted into some form of oppression by the modern feminist. Wish more of them read Mary Wolstonecraft and less Marx.
6
It’s disappointing to see the author conflate “equal” and “identical” here.
The path to equality does not run through the elimination of differences, whether those be across gender, race, religious belief, or any of the other things that make humanity wonderful and interesting.
There’s much to be said for teaching a more comprehensive and thoughtful form of masculinity. Parts of that might even resemble what the author suggests. But to suggest that the objective is equality via identicality is to grossly misunderstand what makes men and women different, as well as the value of those differences.
7
"Leaning in" is an idea adopted from Sheryl Sandberg, the CFO of Facebook.
I have not read Ms. Sandberg's book, nor do I intend to.
On the face of it, Ms. Sandberg is a high achieving executive of one of Silicon Valley's most successful companies.
The reality is that she is implicated in what Facebook has become, an octopus of a website that covertly mines people's private data and sells it to companies for profit. Facebook produces nothing. It sells information it should not be collecting in the first place.
Based on her silence and unresponsive to these issues, Ms. Sandberg seems unable or unwilling to influence the culture of this undeservedly iconic company. What counts is the bottom line. Facebook rakes in so much revenue through advertising that a five billion dollar fine can be shrugged off as part of operating expenses. How many companies generate this much money in revenue?
Beyond this, Facebook has become an instrument of trolls and propgandists to spew their vile discourse and is harmful to youth--especially young women--and the political process.
One of the major problems with this essay is that it does not recognize that differences among men are as great as differences between men and women.
7
Thank for for taking this up and expressing it humorously and with eloquence. For me, this question of leaning out goes beyond our interactions. If we had made a value out of leaning out more would the 2008 financial crisis have happened quite the way it did? Would climate change be as advanced? I see those two problems, for example, as caused by extreme forms of leaning in. There's no question in my mind that we would all benefit if we could value leaning out more.
5
I appreciate the point but not the framing of the point. The point is we need to examine our values. I don't think it is helpful to characterize some values as male and some as female. I agree that all forms of thoughtfulness are woefully lacking in our culture. Empathy and consideration are missing. In all aspects of American life, these values need to be revived.
That is not to say that assertiveness is automatically negative. It is a valuable skill in leadership. But it should not be considered male. And humility in a leader should be far more in demand by those being lead. Humility should not be considered female.
The idea that poor values are being sold to feminists as the path to success is spot on and accepting them degrades the feminist cause. I understand feminists to be actually humanists, in a sense of advocating better values for all of humanity.
11
Thank you, Ms. Whippman, for phrasing it so well. I was nodding through the article the entire time. I'm tired of needing to be aggressive to be listened to and then labeled as being intimidating in the workplace. I don't want to be like that in the first place, but if I'm empathetic, I'm labeled as not voicing my opinions and therefore being bypassed. I love cooperating and helping each other but these to get you nowhere in the work place. loved this piece so much.
9
Greta Thunberg represents a new approach to gender behavior. She is sticking with the facts relying on current social media tools and international protests to enact global change regarding the planet’s endangered environment. At sixteen, she has managed to speak to the United Nations. Nancy Pelosi and her allies, both male and female, are taking on a president who scorns the Constitution and the citizens who support it. These women point the way: fight with the facts and the rule of law. Everyone can understand what Martin Luther King Jr. stated long ago—the truth will set us free. No apologies needed.
9
@Rachel Kaplan she’s accomplished nothing but self promotion with stunts
I love this and I can relate from my experience. As a woman, a scientist, and a university professor in a male dominated field, it has always amazed me how we think less of our abilities, and how men think more of their own. Many men (though by no means all as some set an amazing inspiring example) have that degree of absolute certainty that just cannot be right. Because to examine things at the deepest levels one needs to question all the time even one's own thoughts. I always thought that the problem is not that women need to become less of who we are, but that more men need to have more of the characteristics of women. The men I can relate to I have always described as having some of what I call the feminine in them. So I say yes to a little bit of doubt and uncertainty and more of empathy and sharing, and I agree no to more assertiveness, but more to being like women!
11
It’s pretty much a prisoners’ dilemma. Men and woman can both lean out, and everybody is happier. But since leaning in, even just a little bit, can yield individual success, everybody is driven to lean in.
6
Hear hear. The world would be a better place if more of us all sat back, listened, thought before acting, and acted decisively when the time came to act. And apologised. There's no greater power play in human relations than saying sorry, simply and calmly, when you've been wrong.
9
Thanks for this encouraging essay. I’m a woman in tech, and there’s constant pressure to be more assertive. For example, I hardly ever can speak in meetings except by interrupting men - men who drone on forever, repeating themselves, thinking aloud, meandering. I don’t want to be more like them: I don’t want to become a jerk. Your essay gave me just a little validation, sorely needed. <3
27
America would surely profit from a week without men, starting with police, fire, and other protective services. Also customs and immigration, transportation services, infrastructure workers, and sanitation. See how well things go when men decide truly to lean out for a week.
7
@Snowball
I'm pretty sure the residents of Manor Farm would currently be well aware that this very scenario is on its way, if current trends in robotics and A.I. continue, and for a lot longer than a week. Then what?
3
Did you read the article? At no point did it indicate we don’t need men. It just points out that we are constantly asking women to value qualities typically associated with men but we don’t ask men to value qualities more typically associated with women.
4
I think we would also profit from actually reading the article and not being so defensive.
1
Life is nasty, brutish, and short. And we are only 150,000 years beyond being apes without language. That’s only 7,500 generations - think about it. Our prefrontal cortex is a marvel of evolution and has put a thin layer of restraint on top of a wellspring of malevolence wielded freely - just look around the world to see the numerous and widely spread cracks. The female of the species (and we have significant biological differences in many systems) has been evolving faster for thousands of generations due to various factors and is far ahead of the male in many significant ways that, if men were similarly evolved, would solve a lot of significant problems in society without a doubt. I honestly don’t know if there are ways to get the male to evolve faster; I fear not. The optimist would say it’s better to try than accept.
6
@Evan I don’t think, no I know, you have zero understanding of evolution or biology
1
So, let me see if I understand the point. Men are toxic therefore whatever they have been in the past must be erased and the people who must do the erasing are men themselves? They must cease trying to make contributions to their workplace, their communities, their nation, move over and let women have the dominant role. They must negate their own beings?
If this be not madness writ large, what else?
Life is a struggle. It is a struggle for men, women, children, old people, everyone. There are those, and I would guess at a higher percentage of males than females, who see that struggle in terms of defeating the aspirations of others. There are also social forces that have tended to keep people "in their place", to lessen their ability to realize their full potential and make contributions. This applies to men as well as to women although the culture of continual grievance as established, to general agreement, that this applies more to women than to men. Yet, who is to speak for the aspirations of women in the entire? Do all women want all men to assume a subservient role? No one person, including the writer of this op-ed, has any inherent right to speak for all.
Many of the social disruptions of recent decades can be directly traced with the asserted imperative for change, "orders" that were given without a full understanding of their impact. There is no perfect world. If you want to destroy the contribution of men in our society, everything of value would be at risk.
9
The fact that you think there should be a subservient role in the first place outlines the problem. No one said all men are toxic. You are interpreting it that way. To act with occasional humility is not subservient. It can be valuable. Also an opinion piece is just that opinion. She’s making observations and conclusions. It is not an attempt to speak for all women, but what she says does resonate with a lot of women.
3
You don’t have the point. Nobody is being told to “negate their being.” The author is merely suggesting that instead of women being told to act more like men, perhaps our society would be better off if men stopped being rewarded for the worst aspects of stereotypical “male” behavior and made some changes themselves. It’s not that radical, outrageous, or threatening.
1
I agree. But it makes me beyond sad- frustrated and angry -- to read this. ALL of this was said by at least some of us in the field back in the 80's and 90's and maybe before. None of this a new idea. Why do people think it is? Why must the wheel be reinvented? What happened? Books were written back then to "teach" women how to talk more like men at work (e.g., never say "I think" or "maybe"). We, who were coaching and developing leaders and who were focused on human behavior, diversity, gender awareness cringed. Instead we helped people understand when it was appropriate to be "iffy" and when to speak more assertively. Balance. We helped men (and women when needed) to say things like, "help me understand," "correct me if I'm wrong," and "what did I miss?" We tried to help them understand that pronouncements often come across as a form of bullying and can be intimidating, off-putting and they might not get the best ideas by being too assertive. , And by the way, "maybe" they are wrong anyway. We applauded books by people like Deborah Tannen (1990) that explained different communication styles. Instead of trying to make women communicate differently, the idea was to help the genders learn to listen, embrace and understand. Wasn't that when "parental" or "family leave" vs. "maternity leave" began? It led to greater appreciation as well as crossing gender roles. It was supposed to get better. What happened? Why is this "new?" Why does it need to be said again?
12
Because we haven’t come very far since the 90’s. In case you haven’t realized that was nearly 30 years ago. It’s not unreasonable to expect more progress.
2
@KV
In the few years since #meetoo I have seen a huge leap backwards. PEOPLE have been taking documented non-criminal harassment to HR and have seen positive results for decades. Criminal complaints were taken to the police, not HR. This system was not perfect but it is so much better than the current system of no evidence, decades after the fact, trials in the court of public opinion.
1
“The energy we spend getting women to stop apologizing might be better spent encouraging men to start.“
No, it’s not zero-sum. But Ms. Whippmann is hitting at something here. As a relatively unassertive cis male, I have watched as seemingly less capable people have leapfrogged me, playing the game, scoring the promotion, buying the house. Yes, I blame them for being willing to play the game; I no longer blame myself for being “passive.”
And although it wasn’t expressly discussed in this piece, I feel as though I am closer, after reading this, to understanding why spending an hour in so-called progressive so-called spaces on social media leaves me feeling so drained.
3
As in the 1970's when we had a generational war ("don't trust anyone over 30"), I fear we are now approaching a gender war. Men who feel disenfranchised by women's success in the workplace and their greater recovery from the great recession are struggling with traditional ideas of taking care of and supporting their families. Women's success is a strike against traditional manhood. From the incel movement to outspoken sexual assault from the president, a cultural shift and outrage against women is in the making.
5
Only men who hold on to this outdated idea of male support are threatened. I do think we’ve broken through a lot of that with younger generations of men.
First, I agree with a great deal of what's in this article, and also the many experience-based comments here, especially from women. Lifelong I've heard about the same kind of experiences from my mother, my sister, my wife and a great many female friends and colleagues. We men need to wrap our minds around this and respond appropriately.
Secondly, I currently live and work in Japan, where the vast majority of both men and women are trained to be, and are, deferential. This makes much of daily life here very pleasant and free of conflict. However, in the workplace it leads to the few who are assertive riding roughshod over everyone else, with a real plague of bullying, harassment and even "karoshi" (death by overwork). Given that, my wife and I have to advise our daughter to be robust in her self-advocacy. She has already faced down at least two incidents of harassment as a female, pursuing her rights through the system in ways that surprised the other girls around her, and certainly surprised the boys and the men in authority. But it worked and we're proud of her for changing not only her own situation, but maybe that of both the girls and boys around her--who knows, even the system itself, at least locally. It has to start somewhere.
A world of deferential, respectful people is the right goal, but to get there from here we'll need to do some self-advocacy along the way. The balance between resolving conflict and perpetuating it is so very difficult, but try we must.
20
Is this a male-defined value or a business-defined value chosen because it has been found to lead to business success?
3
@allentown
Logically it could be both, so that possibility needs to be part of the way the question is framed.
We should also, logically, consider the possibility that business success could be achievable in more than one way--and in some ways may lead to success for the few, even the incompetent bully, while in other ways may lead to success for many more, in more equitable and sustainable ways.
Last, but not least, "business success" that leads to failure of society--and treats that larger issue as an "externality"--is not what we need, if "we" means all of us.
7
@V.B. Zarr Excellent response, very well said. We need to step outside the box in our definitions.
Women and Men are different, physically, emotionally, physiologically. This is a good thing, not a bad one. Stop trying to make one into the other and celebrate the difference "Vive la Difference," as the saying goes.
To me where the problem lies is in not recognizing that each sex has built in advantages to their make up and finding a way to leverage those differences to the organization's advantage. To me an organization that insists that everything be run on a male centered model is leaving a lot of opportunity on the table. People, both men and women are the most valuable asset of an organization. One of the central tasks of any organization is to find a way to utilize all of the strengths that are present in the company. Failure to do so is to give up a serious competitive advantage.
7
We are not that different. I’m sorry you live in a world where gender is so defined. I don’t. The men and women in my life are not wholly occupying these separate spheres and therefore there is no need to adopt a separate but valued set of beliefs. Oh and vive la difference is often touted by men who benefit from the status quo.
3
@KV
If men and women were as close as you suggest, this article would have never been written, nor would several hundred books.
Finding how to work with those difference is the key to success.
A tough sell but "Hear Hear". This is an important piece to solving the equality puzzle.
7
While I agree that the world would be better off if there was more cooperation, kindness and listening, I am struggling with how this article classifies such traits as “female”. I don’t find myself or my female friends to have more of these characteristics than men do, other than what is socially expected from us. But I agree the world would be a better place if less value was placed on aggressively behavior.
7
I have some perspective on this. Thirty years ago, our company, a large airline, promoted me, less on my considerable experience than on their belief that I would fix the toxic environment created by two “lean in” women.
Back then, at that company, almost all women who were promoted embraced the worst aspects of male managers — autocratic, workaholic, intimidating— thinking that was the path to further advance.
Soon after arriving, men and women streamed into my office, complaining, usually tearfully, about the two toxic women. After building an extensive written case against the pair, I wanted the company to fire them. Instead, they were reassigned, free to torture more. But we claimed victory — team members were no longer crying at work.
6
I agree about the value of "...deference, humility, cooperation and listening skills..." to the business, and most people know about those, women as well as men.
Aside from that, this article is a huge load of sexist victimhood.
No, we don't need people to act "more like men" or "more like women," we need people to work with their colleagues in an atmosphere of mutual respect in seeking value for the company.
What's missing from this article is sexual dimorphism: the fact that, if women and men weren't in general differentiated, none of us would be here because the ancestors of humanity would have died out several hundred million years ago.
Today, women have the power to do the greatest thing a single human can do: make another one. Men don't have that power. (Even if some of them can buy it, that's the exception.)
Women can marry, drop out of the work force, make people and depend on the man to support them all. That's sexual dimorphism today. Men generally can't do that.
3
@Astrochimp
But when women do that they should be equally compensated for their role. You can only work because they stay at home caring for your children. They’ve earned half of your pay but we still aren’t there yet it seems. Since when did it get decided that money trumps effort. A long time ago regretfully.
Raising children while someone works is equally if not harder than going to the office. A cake walk, not.
10
@Whatever Equal compensation for equal work sounds good, but it really works out as an advantage for women. For example, suppose I ran a tech company and was hiring. There are two candidates for a position, both in their 20's, and equal in every way except one is a woman and one is a man. The man is worth more money to the business because he's much less likely to leave to have a child, and more likely to work hard to support a family. The woman might decide to get pregnant while an employee which represents a huge business cost. That is sexual dimorphism in business value.
1
Women give birth more often then men. Genders are equal in all ways. Birth is biased again men because of female dominance.
That is the logical absurdity the author purports to proffer, seriously.
Institutional silliness cannot explain the disregard of logic, reason and accountability. Except in liberal academic circles, where science is settled (I do not think you know what science means) and opposite genres should be the same.
Reason is the rejected science of the left.
3
Probably common to all genders is the desire that others change.
4
What worries me is that a majority of white women voted for Trump in 2016 and many still favor him today. Can someone with a whole lot of degrees explain that to me ? That an admitted user and abuser of women gets so many women supporting him ? Once we get an answer to that we may be on the way to solving the conflicts described by the author.
5
andy,
That’s a myth. Support for each was dead even. Clinton won a majority of college educated white women. Trump won a majority of white women without college education.
1
I appreciated this essay very much. I think there are some well-mannered men out there but obviously not enough. To me the author is really calling for a renewal of a code of manners that once served society well until it became common for people to abuse it by being insincere. Thus we came to the sixties when the entire system had to be jettisoned to expose the phonies. Now I think it's time for society to rebuild.
5
By following the right think orthodoxy in this piece, there are going to be many unqualified, undeserving people losing their jobs next week when they go in and demand promotions and raises they don't deserve. The way to success in a hostile or unfair environment is to so outperform the competition that the organization can not get along without you. Or you can quit and start your own company. All this stuff about changing "perceptions" to bring about some kind of social utopia is nonsense.
1
Amen to this article. I hate the "Lean in" movement, and refuse to feel an ounce of guilt for taking a job, though I know I will be paid less than my male counterparts. It is on society, not me, if I am paid less. Society will feel the shame of this one day after I become too old to care anymore. I just have to do what I have to do to pay the college debts and car repair bills and eat PBJ's. I am not contributing to the problem simply because I need a job to survive.
7
The male-defined value system is the value system of competition, and in any competition between value systems, it is the system that wins. This does not mean that competition is inevitable, just that it will happen in the absence of something that inhibits it. But to the competitive value system, anything that inhibits it is bad. If multiple people are assertive in a meeting, the most assertive one should and does win.
This way of operating has obvious drawbacks. But it will tend to take over unless limited by some external force. If people in a meeting disagree, the one with the best evidence and logic should win, and should not have to shout or be assertive to do it. But try telling that to Trump.
2
@sdavidc9
There is more than one way of being assertive, eg, logos, pathos, ethos (and of course plain old dirty tricks and/or intimidation). Also, the outcomes of many meetings are decided before or after the meetings, by smaller sub-groups, and the meetings are simply theater. If only it were the case that the best evidence and logic always win in such competitive situations. There are good and bad forms of assertiveness and competition--and that's the thorny puzzle we really need to sort out, in business and everywhere else.
1
Men and their values have been in charge for 4000 years. Do we really need to say more?
6
20 years ago I noticed that the women managers being hired functioned just like the men, ie they displayed the same dysfunctional managerial practices as the men they replaced. As a woman, I was so disappointed that the women didnt bring a new, collaborative perspective to leadership.
8
Business-owning mom here. Whenever someone tells me to lean in more, all I say is that at this point I will literally fall down if I do so. Great article. I am so thankful to my sisters who came before me and fought for the rights I benefit from each day. My generation now must pick up the fight and figure out how to advance this in a way that is workable.
17
Best piece on feminism I’ve read in a long time, and there have been some good ones recently! Thank you for this brilliant essay.
14
I saw two related phenomena in my years as a consultant at a leading tech firm where I left as a new partner. First, the old boys network meant that plum assignments that led to promotion went to men more readily despite equal skills. Second, partners (both males and females) valued confidence and assertiveness over analysis and thoughtfulness to the detriment of women who were highly but quietly competent. Add to this that women are often hired for a lower salary so that an equal percent increase in pay with a male colleague that increases the real dollar wage discrepancy and you end up with wage descrimination.
10
I'm a 76 year old mother and grandmother so maybe my experiences are slanted toward the older generation. But my experience has been that the men in my life have failed as fathers and grandfathers in part because they seem unable to pick up the feelings of others in general and of their own children and grandchildren in particular. They don't know, they can't feel the loneliness or the fearfulness or just the general vulnerability of their young children. They seemingly can't read body language or facial expressions. As a result, they don't spend the time children often need to be with their fathers and grandfathers. So mothers and grandmothers not only address the emotional and even the physical needs of their children, but they also compensate for the hurt that the indifferent fathers/grandfathers inflict. I found this situation exhausting especially since I worked just as hard and long as the fathers/grandfathers did and earned almost as much money.
28
#truth
I've worked in two hierarchical systems most of my adult life- the military and law firms. In neither, in my experience, is "assertiveness," as that terms seems to be used in this article, much valued. Rather, teamwork, selflessness, diligence, and above all, integrity, are the virtues that are rewarded. I never asked for a raise in my life, but got them steadily. Unfortunately, I recall a female attorney whom I mentored, and of whom I thought highly, sabotaging her career by acting ungracious and sullen about her raise, even though it was among the most generous raises given that year.
5
Curious, was her generous raise on a salary equivalent to her male coworkers' salaries? Is it possible her check was still subpar?
8
It is distressing and depressing that the points made in this article have been made by other authors many times over the last 50 years. It demonstrates that no progress has been made in that time. (See Marc Feigen Fasteau’s book: The Male Machine, published in 1974.)
9
I love this!
I believe the biggest benefit to average people, if people take the advice given here, is that they can avoid being called biassed or worse, misogynistic, when they reject annoyingly forceful personality traits at work just because of the gender of the perpetrator.
I would say that most people do not intend to discriminate against woman, but that perhaps mostly those who make it to the top, those with annoyingly forceful personalities, are commiting the lion's share of discriminitory acts.
The best corporations recognize and foster the careers of talented people because it's the right thing to do.
There are certain careers, such as sales, that might demand an annoyingly assertive personality, but it shouldn't be required in most positions.
3
Cf. The Iliad. Boys become men when and only when they can demonstrate they can behave morally, not selfishly, and they do this through empathy for the Other. If they do that, they end up getting all the honor they were pursuing--badly--in the first place.
4
@Perry Klees
Nope. Boys become men when testes say so. Biology beats literary blather every hour of the day.
My only real objection to this piece is that the author fails to acknowledge that the "lean in" initiative and the "assertiveness movement" are led by WOMEN, not men. Apparently, men and women value the kinds of behaviors the author does not like.
2
@I dont know Or, did this movement arise because the women realized that copying this behaviour is the only way to progress in a career in the current system? I agree women and men value the same behavior; I doubt whether it is the aggressiveness they value. I don’t think it makes anyone happier (in the end) regardless of gender.
3
Yes, thank you for this article! I have often felt this recent feminism, while groundbreaking in some ways, doesn't seem to be about true strength of character; but more about a gutsy assertiveness straight out of the (male) Harvard Business School model.
18
Yes! As a woman with a traditional job (in a marriage with a traditional division of labor), I've often though how interesting it is that the work women have traditionally done--pregnancy, labor, breastfeeding, infant and child care, childrearing, elder care, cooking, cleaning, shopping, driving, organizing, tutoring, community-building--is not considered to be 'real' work with 'real' value. I can't count the times I've been asked, "Do you work?"
The answer is, no, I sit at home and order my staff around, and go out for lunch, and have my nails done twice a week--on my husband's dime. Really.
15
@Comp indeed. I’ve made this comment twice already. Everything a woman does at home while her husband works can merit half his pay, otherwise he would have to do both the work and the home...which if you think about it, many women do all the the time.
We may be a long way from this but people in more equal marriages get this.
4
In other news, universities are designating safe spaces to which only people of color have access. It’s a traditional division of races.
Easy solution entirely in women's control: only date men with the traits you want to reinforce in men. Men who won't be able to get dates will find themselves unhappy and in low social status, and will either have to change or be that way indefinitely. Date the good listeners, the empathetic ones, those who wouldn't think twice before doing half the daily chores around the house, will do them unasked, consistently, and well. And many, many other things that some do and others don't. It's called sexual selection, and it has been part of evolution ever since sexual reproduction came on the scene. We humans are in the unique position to use it in a consciously directed way to achieve a specific goal instead of only obeying instincts.
13
Humans are also among the slowest to evolve because of long gestation and maturation periods. What should do women in the intervening epochs while they’re waiting for men to be transformed through evolution into collaborative partners?
12
"What should do women in the intervening epochs while they're waiting for men to be transformed through evolution into collaborative partners?"
Since it's well-known that women are sexually fluid, they should have relationships with other women.
Celebes,
If non-homosexual women can’t find any good non-homosexual men, they don’t have to get married. No one is holding a gun to their heads.
1
Gay men should be allowed to be assertive BECAUSE they are stereotyped as passive.
Feminism needs to be restrained until it admits and criticizes gender essentialism -- not EVERYTHING is about women, ladies.
9
The entirety and totality of the point of feminism is that not everything is about men! Women are just trying to claim half, an even bloody share. That is exactly the point. You have stated it perfectly. I think we don’t need anymore feminist manifestos or delicately and persuasively argued feminist screeds because you’ve put your finger on the point so simply and beautifully. Only, in a classically paternalistic way, you’ve just failed to see it from any perspective other than your own.
It is not, in fact, all about men. Perhaps now you can understand why women are so irritated.
Good article, valid proposition. But sounds like another attempt to shame us into ignoring human nature and pretend we don’t respond deferentially to a show of “strength”. The quotes belong there because many in this country, which elected a crybaby as president because of his phony “alpha” qualities, have no idea what real strength is. And that’s the point- all the articles and writings in the world won’t stop us from having natural reactions to a pretense of strength. It’s in our DNA. So, no, we can’t advise people to lean out.
4
Strength had great value when early people battled aurochs. These days, not so much. It has great value on Saturday and Sunday afternoons in the fall, though.
3
Some of we men, particularly those of us who worked in corporate structures, have thought for some time now -- decades in my case -- that Sheryl's blather about "leaning in" was a ersatz male wolf pretending to be a guide for female sheep.
Aside from expressing this sentiment to the women deeply embedded in my life, I have never stated the issue as baldly as Ms. Whippman. I would have been accused, and found guilty, of mansplaining.
Not to worry: I have found other ways to support the women both in my workplace and in other parts of my life -- with or without Sheryl's approval. Many, most, of them are leaders in life (with or without my approval).
11
I wish men I work with thought like us. Instead they get offended (really!) when I make a good case for a substantial raise during annual (excellent) reviews. Simultaneously my female coworkers and I are told if we were more aggressive we would get better visibility, leading to all the good things. But these gentlemen play it both ways to ensure the status quo. And they think they're so corporate-hip...
3
@L The problem is that they are, indeed, "corporate-hip." That's not a compliment.
I completely agree with your premise that female traits should be valued as much as male traits, however, it is necessary to look at why this problem exists. Why are there dozens of books about "Women who..."? Why are did someone take the time to develop an anti-apology app? Why are girls bombarded with "anything a boy can do" messages?
I would guess that it is because we as women are receptive to these messages. "Women who..." books sell; "Men who..." probably wouldn't. Can you even imagine millions of men buying and reading and internalizing a book like that? They aren't going to do it. Nor are they, in general, going to download a pro-apology app.
I believe that rather trying to push these traits onto the male half of the population, it would be more productive to focus the message at the people who are already listening, the women. We need more social messages about the ways that female-associated traits are powerful and beneficial to us personally and to society at large. We need more how-tos about ways to use our female strengths to get ahead. As society sees the benefits, perhaps men will be less likely to feel humiliated and more likely to listen.
I believe that there is a balance between blaming the victim and empowering the victim. Men have more power in this country than women, but we still have some power. It is enough. We can figure this our for ourselves without needing the men to do it for us.
Let them be men. We are women.
6
Preach!
While we’re at it, we can use that intrinsic female power to raise our sons to appreciate it.
1
It's about time people start pointing out that maybe American male traits like over confidence, swagger may not be optimal. That combined with lack of apologies leads to a litigious society, not to mention crisis like the subprime and housing meltdown of 2008. Yes, men and corporations should seriously consider picking up women's traits.
18
"As a rule, anything associated with girls or women ... is by definition assigned a lower cultural value"
What definition? This is simply your opinion. Many do not share it. Who assigned the feminine lower value? Notice how the sentence is written in the passive voice, so there is no subject mentioned, as is always the case with these arguments.
One can choose to view the masculine and feminine aspects of life with appreciation or disdain. Conceptually, they should be celebrated as wonderful and equal. I strive to, even as I'm sure I have plenty of bias.
Some aspects of the world, like sports and hedge fund management, are naturally competitive. If that falls into "masculine," then perhaps men would have an advantage.
Meanwhile, nannying and modeling might be seen as "feminine," and women would have a market advantage. But no one mentions the "modeling" wage gap for men.
Finally, these articles routinely fail to mention the elephant in the room. In the heterosexual dating world that most of us are exposed to since high school, we learn that most women are attracted to assertive men. I am a man, and when I have dated even self-described feminist women, most will readily admit it while others secretly admit it. They want high incomes, confidence, and height.
With women judging us on these characteristics, is it any wonder that we "lean in?" No NYT article will change culture until women on the whole are attracted to the man who "leans out."
14
I can think of three factual examples of women being valued less than men just off the top of my head:
1. Paychecks/pay gap
2. Auto safety design
3. Pharmaceutical testing/medical standards
Not to mention phrases “throw like a girl” and “run like a girl.”
I don’t have the time and the comment block doesn’t allow enough space to list all of the ways women are less valued than men in our society.
It’s not just the writer’s opinion.
10
Thank you.
As with most aspects of our culture, it's more important to change the game than change ourselves to fit in as players. I know a lot of men who would be happy for a game change, too.
7
The notion that assertiveness is more important than deference is part and parcel of the Great American Myth: the idea that competition drives progress, that heroes make history, that visionaries create all wealth.
Humans are more like bees than wolves; it is not competition, but cooperation that is the key to the success of the human race.
11
Can someone please explain to me the meaning of "mansplaining[?]"
Also, a "capitulation pose[?]"
The problem with essays such as this is that it relies on gender and cultural stereotypes that are fifty years old. Without these archaic stereotypes there would be no essay. Talk about a straw man.
It is also quite problematic that there is no discussion of ethnicity. White females are socioeconomically and culturally more alpha than most ethnic males.
Among the Democratic Presidential candidates, there is little to choose from among them in terms of politeness and diplomacy. Pete Buttigieg and Andrew Yang are among the most relational. Biden, Warren, and Harris consistently receive the most air time.
What gives with this essay?
7
Both the author and several commenters make the inaccurate claim that it's "feminism" that urges women to adopt masculine traits (e.g., "It drives me crazy that feminism holds traditionally male traits as the standard to strive for."). Um, no. First, there are many, many different feminisms. Most importantly, the debate over seeking male rights & privileges versus re-valuing traditionally feminine activities and behaviors is a FALSE dichotomy. I strongly urge Ruth Whippman to read more than Sheryl Sandberg. There's a long and diverse history of writers who've examined these issues with far greater clarity and acumen than she does in this op-ed.
8
I love this article! The problem is that, as a society, we reward the stereo-typical male traits. Thus men have no desire for the self-help books like, Men Who Don't Care Enough, as much as it would be great if they did.
9
I'm in a traditionally male dominated profession, law, and this Op Ed hits the nail on the head. As I become more senior, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the men around me see every email, every team meeting, and every client call as a contest where they want, nay need to fill the room with their voice and be the first and most confident one to respond. This often happens to an obvious and counterproductive degree. And god forbid they give someone else credit for an idea. Astoundingly, the superiors (almost always male) seem receptive to this behavior. So maybe I haven't experienced inappropriate touching or overt sexist comments, but this is just as much a part of toxic masculinity. Thanks for addressing it. Now let's change it.
24
@Dulynoted88
As of 2016, female law students nationally are in the majority. This is part of a broader pattern of more female than male undergraduates matriculating at American universities.
Especially noteworthy is the disproportionate number of black female law students to black male law students--at a school such as Howard.
One among many omissions in this sweeping essay is the answer to the question, "What is happening to the black guys?"
The change you desire is already well under way, if you assume that greater representation of women in the law is instrumental to change.
3
@Dulynoted88
The only way to change masculinity is castration and most of us will not submit to that.
Men are designed by nature to be how we are. It's science!
I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of gender, anger & rage lately, & how we as women, as Dems, need to reclaim it & use it as a catalytic force in 2020. This article is spot-on. Just like white privilege, we are defining gender based around hetero-masculinity, instead of setting it outside of our pivot zone. I also have a 10 year old son, & I’m seeing a natural gender fluidity among all of his friends, boys AND girls, both in their style but also their manner. It is awesome...the big question is can the grown-up men in their lives honor it.
6
Great article. I think more importantly we should all, men and women, learn to appreciate and respect our differences and the different values we all bring to the table. This might involve a little more leaning out on the part of over-confident men as noted in this article, but it involves all.
I’m not sure the apology thing is the best example of something men should do more of. Apologies are inefficient and get in the way of getting things done.
3
This article gets it half right, in an insulting way. The half it misses is the more interesting one by far.
By and large, men are not assertive and aggressive because they are jerks who enjoy it, though of course some are, just as with women. Men are assertive and aggressive because they spend miserable lives alone if they are submissive and passive.
So, Ms. Whippman, while you are castigating men, please ask women to start finding submissive men appealing and romantically compelling. It's a long way from here to there, but, like climate change, it's a fundamental transformation that we need.
We can start with our mythology; a new spate of novels and movies about strong, smart, successful women who largely dominate yet adore their smaller, weaker, submissive but very supportive male companions. The difficulty we face in imagining such a couple in any detail shows both the difficulty and the importance of the task.
Ms. Whippman is right in that the hyper-aggressive, risk-indifferent young male that served humanity so well in past times (defending the tribe from predators and other calamities, indifferent to even mortal danger to himself), is in a post-industrial human society a dangerous liability we cannot afford. Indeed, far from being a savior, such a male is now the biggest risk to humanity. But, as some wag once remarked, if women decided they'd only mate with men who were upside down, in a generation or two all of us males would be walking on our heads.
17
Hilarious that you read being considerate and thoughtful as being submissive. Such a reading couldn’t be more stereotypically masculine. It takes courage to admit you’re wrong, apologize, recognize others ‘ contributions. It’s the insecure who need to constantly promote themselves, talk over others, have the first/last say. Those who have the nerve to pick their moments are the strong/confident leaders. And a lot of women DO choose men who recognize this.
The one place you’re right is that Hollywood promotes an incredibly teen-male perspective of desirable masculinity. The problem is that while many women figure this out in their twenties, so many men never do. Another reason we would all benefit from more women in positions of leadership in the film industry.
17
I disagree with the notion that the truly strong male is the one who can admit he's wrong. This is the story women and some men tell themselves to perpetuate the myth that men should be strong, by redefining 'strength' to mean what you'd like. We need to get past this. Plenty of men who are undeniably objectively 'strong' have lots of stereotypically male problems, including admitting fault.
I repeat, we as a society need to start seeing submissiveness as an attractive male trait, or we're done for.
Also, starting a debate by characterizing an alternative view as 'hilarious' is almost always a really bad idea. It's akin to needing always to be right, a stereotypical 'male' failing, though I've seen it at least as often in women.
4
@CelebesSea
"The one place you're right . . ."
Sounds like mansplaining to me.
You might have said, "The one insight that I agree with is that Hollywood . . ."
See how silly this discussion has gotten?
Good article. And a good start. Perhaps sooner than later we can move into a place where attributes are not assigned gender tendencies or preferences at all. Where healthy humility and vulnerability are seen as strengths. And where aggression is not conflated with healthy, non-alienating assertion.
Where padded shoulders and lowered voice pitch aren't seen as necessary statements. And where it's seen as unnecessary and ineffective to have compensatory girl-power chants like, "Who run the world?! Girls!" We'll get there. What are we going to do about the "complementarian" Christianists and other misogynistic traditionalists, though?
5
Let's not tell anyone whether they should lean in or lean out. Let's let people decide for themselves.
12
Just a little philosophical point as the author mentions the virtues grace, charity and patience.
Of the three only patience could be considered submissive. Grace means God giving an exemption to sinners and charity is certainly not submissive.
It's interesting that Christians give virtue names only to girls but I don't think it's to designate them as inferior.
1
Well, as a male nurse working in various healthcare settings for near 15 years now, I can assure you that boorish, socially aggressive, psychologically brutal behavior is not purely the domain of the alpha male of business and commerce. Believe me, females are all too capable of toxic, self serving, back stabbing, self aggrandizing and intensely controlling behavior. The old school feminism deifying “female” traits while demonizing “male” traits is as out of date as it is estranged from the true nature of things.
36
An interesting essay, with an Aristotelian flaw. As did the famous philosopher, Whippman (what a last name!?!!?) assumes only two possibilities and then argues which one is correct (or, best) while in fact there are more than the two she posits. Casual observation (at least mine) shows clearly, indeed starkly, that some people of both (or however many we decide there are) genders are too shrinking and others too aggressive; I would think that the behaviors (not the gender of the imperfect ones) should be identified by some common sense consensus and that extreme examples of each should be taught to be sub-optimal for everybody. I acknowledge that it may be politically useful to talk about gender, but as Whippman says, that's sexist and not the way to go if we really want progress in the best directions.
btw this is absolutely nothing new; I can't recall the source but I do recall reading something with exactly the same argument some years ago.
3
So the female"standard" is the new norm and men should change to meet it? This "women good-men bad" nonsense has been going on for years. My wife has been in retail for over 3 decades and she will tell you it is always the female customer that is demanding, rude and never apologizes. The men are generally kind and considerate. Does this mean "men good-women bad"? Of course not! Men act assertive in situations where it pays off, such as corporate culture, and women will do the same where it pays off for them.
As for your idea of asking boys to act more like girls; for god's sake leaves boys alone and let them grow up without guilt. Most will become strong and compassionate men--which we all know is what a women really wants, despite your feminist philosophy.
22
Ms. Whippman,
The irony here (and I make no judgements here, about whether your opinion piece is right or wrong), is that if you want men to start leaning out (as you put it), you and other women will most likely have to lean in aggressively, until we feel compelled to do so.
On the whole of it, I think this is unlikely to happen, and I think that if the playing field between our two genders is every going to be levelled, it's the assertiveness of movements like #me too that will get results.
2
I sort of agree with the author, however where did the supposedly "feminine" traits (humility, deference, etc) start? Pre-historically? Are they really "feminine" traits or are they traits that developed from male dominance in all ages and then from the Bible? There were dominant female Greek gods, right? Egyptian? I believe the Bible didn't help women later on. But I really wonder at the root of the issue, not being a student of anthropology or ancient history or women's history.
4
@Mel M
Males apes are more physically aggressive than female ones.
I think the challenge posed to feminists is to distinguish what is attributable to the human condition from what can justly be laid at the feet of paternalism and the many egregious behaviors of men as a class of people. I'm pretty confident that in the end the women will win, if only because the 'y' chromosome is gradually shrinking out of existence. Of course, this hoped for outcome is a long way off--in the mean time, a clear eyed view of what constitutes 'unfair' from 'different' is probably called for. Unless, of course, there are no differences....
1
My parents were way ahead of their time. I learned to do every household chore and did so regularly. That included dishes, dusting, cleaning bathrooms, making beds, doing laundry, and all kinds of other things Like mowing lawns, pulling weeds, and helping my dad fix things. This was the same for my sisters and brother, meaning that there were no gender-only roles in our house. In addition, I learned how to be part of a team / family and put others needs first. As a result, I grew to be appreciative of all roles and capable of them as well. And I grew to be independent and able to draw from soft skills as well as those that required determination. This hybrid approach to parenting left us well prepared to balance lean-in and lean-out elements which has resulted in both a fulfilling career and home life while being very active in parenting, housework, cooking, etc.
I’m very grateful for my parents intentionality for my upbringing. I’d recommend something similar for anyone who is looking to raise well-adjusted and adaptable kids who will be the same as adults.
12
@BradG Kudos to your parents. Essentially these are life skills. I find it interesting that in the context of the home, chores are gendered, yet many skills and responsibilities are also learned and required to even get through basic training in the military.
I was raised in a household where the females did just about everything. My sister & I were expected to spend our Saturdays helping clean the house. My dad & 2 brothers were free to do what they wanted. Sleep until noon, watch tv, play in the backyard, etc. When we moved, girls were to pack boxes while the males were nowhere to be found. Consequently, they are in their 50s and multiple divorces later, and have very few life skills.
I married by all appearances a traditional male - football scholarship, assertive...but he also cooks, grocery shops, does laundry. His grandfather was a Commander in the navy and was the one who taught him to sew on a button and mend ripped clothes. He was also taught how to fix things around the house, an extremely valuable life skill for any person. He taught himself to cook. Sometimes these skills develop out of necessity - children of divorce, those who take care of younger siblings, are forced into the caretaker role. They view it as just apart of life. As my husband says, “I just see what needs to be done and I do it.”
I wish some of the male commenters here would let go of their hang ups & outdated definitions of masculinity and just be open to new ideas.
3
Lots of hurdles to get past in this piece.
Consider:
(1a) Aggressiveness, assertiveness, self-confidence = male traits.
(1b) Their contrasts, being yielding, deferential, and humble = female traits
(2a) It is often not all that great to be aggressive, assertive, or self-confident, and better to yield, defer, and be humble (to "lean out").
(2b) It is often not all that great to yield, defer, or be humble, and better to be aggressive, assertive, and confident (to "lean in").
(3a) Better to act like a man.
(3b) Better to act like a woman.
(4a) If a trait is undesirable, it is typically gendered as feminine, its antonym masculine.
(4b) If a trait is typically gendered as feminine, and its antonym masculine, it is treated as a lesser trait, as undesirable.
Notice that both (2a) and (2b) are the only ones in the bunch that are non-gendered. Moreover, which of the two is more appropriate seems vary from situation to situation, making both kinds of traits valuable to cultivate.
Besides other problems (e.g., 4a and 4b seem to be false), the rest of these statements, because they are gendered, seem to court trouble. The old-style objection: they are "essentialist." Another problem: they feed into the very stereotypes that seem to generate prejudicial attitudes in the first place.
Perhaps it is better to elevate the importance of each of these listed traits, and in which situations they are appropriate, and de-elevate the gendering?
5
Lots of defensive responses here, generally from men.
The definition of deference is: courteous respect for another’s opinion, wishes, or judgment. What is so emasculating about practicing that? What is so difficult about giving women the same respect that you automatically extend to other men?
A handy definition of respect from the Belmont Report:
“An autonomous person is an individual capable of deliberation about personal goals and of acting under the direction of such deliberation. To respect autonomy is to give weight to autonomous persons' considered opinions and choices while refraining from obstructing their actions unless they are clearly detrimental to others. To show lack of respect for an autonomous agent is to repudiate that person's considered judgments, to deny an individual the freedom to act on those considered judgments, or to withhold information necessary to make a considered judgment, when there are no compelling reasons to do so.”
9
Whether or not you agree with the author’s argument, depends, I suppose on what you value most in life. It points to feminisms grounding in our capitalist meritocracy. The masculine qualities women have been encouraged to aspire to are those that are needed to be successful economically in a highly competitive corporate and political culture. Insofar as one believes that dominance in this area is important to live a fulfilling and satisfying life masculine traits are essential to cultivate. But this perspective it seems is a very myopic view of success and places a burden on men and women alike. It need not be stated explicitly that there is much in life of value other than material wealth, power or accomplishments at work, and it could be argued that an emphasis on achieving the latter may well lead to a stressful and unhappy existence. There are many of us who do not become corporate executives, administrators or highly paid professionals who nevertheless lead happy and satisfying lives. Much of true success in life depends on what you value. Unfortunately our culture places too high a value on the achievement of career and material goals placing pressure on all of us to succeed in this arena and to measure our worth on its terms. In my view we would all be better off if men aspired to be more like women rather than the converse.
8
Some interesting comments on this come from people who have transitioned from one gender to another. One woman who was a biologist transitioned to being a male professor. He noted that he overheard someone once commenting "He's much better than his sister" (mistakenly thinking that he was the brother of his former self). One man who was a CIO transitioned to female and found some interactions very surprising. She was boarding a plane and some man was sitting in her seat. She told him he was in her seat and he argued with her until he finally checked his boarding pass. She said that as a man she would simply have assumed that the guy would check his boarding pass right away and realize he was in the wrong. She made the interesting comment that she realized why women had a lot of self-doubt because men were always telling women that they were the ones who were wrong. (This is on YouTube btw although I don't remember the name.)
9
There's a game theory problem here.
Men don't apologize because we know, and it has been proven through numerous sociological studies, that apologizing tends to end badly. Apologizing weakens you among your supporters who see you as wavering, and gives your enemies fuel and justification to attack you further. We see that people who don't apologize, or at least not in a significant way, tend to get better results out of life. See: Donald Trump and Ralph Northam. Those who apologize and take meaningful action, like Al Franken apologizing and resigning, tend to get bad results, especially financially. Andthese results are not just for them, but for their families who depend on their income.
So, women to ask men to start apologizing is kind of like asking one party in a nuclear arms race to unilaterally disarm, because men fear that other men will continue to not apologize, and gain career wise from that, while they are seen as weak and lose.
6
@Ken -sorry, no. What is your definition of weak? Showing vulnerability, compassion, and empathy are anything but weak. “Weak” is a person so scared of being called weak that they project that fear onto other people. They end up looking even weaker because they are so threatened by changing ideas and gender roles. Women can sniff out weak men a mile away - and it isn’t the ones you think turn that them off. Sure, no one likes desperation. But stubborn clinging to a gender roles that were popular 50 years ago is kind of pathetic. Your fear of change winds up making you look the weakest of all. And you don’t even know it. So you continue to “act tough” and not budge an inch.
Believing a “real man” is the strong silent type who hates showing emotion for fear of being weak - it’s pretty sad.
Fundamentally, to not bend from these beliefs, is to show the world that you’re terrified of natural, inherently human traits. You were not born being “manly.” It was spoon fed to you when you were too young to know better. You internalized the belief. You do t question it. So you stay in your box, where it is safe.
Oh, and those who don’t apologize are resented like crazy. Absolutely NO woman wants to be with someone who is never wrong. If you avoid apologizing, you’re just a jerk. Not tough.
Let's all lean in, gender aside, to remove Trump from the Presidency, whether through impeachment or the election next November. Look who is leading the charge - a woman who has defined herself as powerful, despite the headwinds. Superb!
10
I note that the author is working on a book about how to raise boys. I hope she will try to actually understand boys and men and accept the fact that whether they were created by God or Time and Chance, they are what they are—for good and evil. This doesn’t mean that men cannot be more sensitive when appropriate or more romantic to their girlfriend or wife. But their essential nature is not going to change just as a woman’s essential nature is not going to change. So, e.g., colleges should understand that if they thing that teaching young, testosterone filled young men the evil of fate rape, don’t use role play because it will have the wrong effect on those young men. And remember on a stormy night where the power lines are down and you are waiting for the almost exclusively male linemen who are out risking their lives to turn the heat and electricity back on, the same maleness that inspires them to do that work is what keeps them from being the sensitive, listening ear women want. We are flawed but so are you women. We both can do better, but effectively emasculating men is not the way to do it. And, btw, most women want real men, even with their flaws and shortcomings.
11
You assume you know the “essential nature” of men in the absence of centuries of pop culture images/mythologies that reinforce a male power structure. The weight of uncounted repetition through the ages has so brainwashed us into thinking we know what is “essential” gender behavior that we don’t even credit the myriad examples all around us every day of men being tender and women being aggressive. We simply judge men and women as attractive or not based on their compliance to our ideas of “gender appropriate” behavior. None of us knows what is “essential behavior” because we’ve never seen anyone behave uninfluenced by their millennial-old cultural training.
In fact, that’s the point. The author is pointing out that culture-reinforced paradigms have so grooved our thinking that even as we try to adjust gender roles in our society to be more equal the very effort is hindered by how completely we are enslaved to them.
You’re entire answer proves her point! Brilliant!
1
Ummm, WHAT? Are you actually saying that colleges, by attempting to teach young men not to rape, are responsible for creating more rapists?
And to say that this is part of men’s essential nature? Men, how does this statement sit with you?
How is it that if a feminist said men are inherently rapists, they’d be called radical man-haters—but when men and gender traditionalists say that men have an inherent tendency toward rape, it’s supposed to be some kind of explanatory “boys will be boys” defense?
Come on, men! Aren’t you better than this?
PS: The more you insist that you aren’t, the more we’ll believe you.
1
Its interesting that men who dare to question or challenge this opinion piece are labelled as "defensive". If you cannot brook criticism and argument and will only accept complete agreement then who is being "defensive" in this situation? It seems to me like there's plenty of defensive behavior on both sides when we talk about gender issues.
9
@Jordan You're just being defensive and deflecting.
It is basic human nature to assign credit for success to one's own self and lay blame for failure on others. The vast majority of comments on this forum prove just that. Every "successful" commenter attributing their success to their own talent and hard work, and every commenter who went through hardships laying blame on others. It's surprising how people are completely oblivious to this fundamental trait of the human mind.
2
This makes so much sense. Thanks for articulating a perspective that should be obvious but isn’t.
10
(Yawn). The writer writes: "The energy we spend getting women to stop apologizing might be better spent encouraging men to start." Really? Why the hierarchy, that changing men and boys is more important than changing women and girls? Changing both is urgent, and vital. But women can't wait for men to change. That's why they're working on themselves.
3
Spoken with true condescension.
How about we stop labeling traits as male or female and instead identify traits that are helpful to achieving success and encourage all to strive to have those traits. It is simplistic to think all men have certain traits or the reverse.
10
I have been feeling this way for so long, so glad someone finally articulated it so well.
7
Amazingly insightful piece.
In the workplace, I have always felt uncomfortable "emulating men" to get ahead.
I came into the workforce in the early 70s, and, as the first "girl" management trainee in a New Jersey bank, was told not to fraternize with the secretaries and to be sure to wear "real" suits--ie where the jacket and skirt were of the same fabric.
But, mostly, I was expected to be a better, smarter version of the men--never "boys--in my same trainee tract. One male colleague told me "I don't know why we hire woman loan officer trainees. You are just going to get pregnant and quit."
Fast forward to 2019. In my amazing, family-centric neighborhood, many dual-career couples share parenting. Both find a place in the gig economy where they can both work from home and take turns walking their kids to school or the bus stop, coaching their kids' sports or volunteering at school event. Dads SO miss out when they don't understand the sheer joy (yes, and frustration) of raising kids actively. Being a parent should be a team sport.
Women should not emulate the male masculinity trip that
9
While I agree with some of your points, I disagree with others.
I am a naturally assertive and direct woman who prefers to work with other assertive and direct people, both male and female.
After working in co-ed industries for 20 years, I've spent the last 5 years working in a mostly-woman industry, which is full of backstabbing, under-the-bus-throwing, and passive-aggressiveness. Needless to say, as the assertive/direct one, I am most frequently the target of these stereotypically female manipulation behaviors, and I am frequently punished for being assertive and direct (note: I am assertive, not aggressive).
Everyone benefits from direct communication--no one benefits from passive-aggressiveness and backstabbing, which are what people do to get their needs met when they are afraid to be direct.
I find the all-female work environment to be significantly more toxic than any co-ed environment I ever worked in before.
18
@Maia i could have written the exact same comments.
It's also disappointing to read so many comments from women who are stereotyping women. It was an interesting article, but can't we just treat all people as individuals.
8
Sure. When women get equal pay for equal work, and the same opportunities as male “individuals.”
1
I could not appreciate this article more. I have long been frustrated by the push for women to adopt more masculine behaviors to get ahead in the world. I don't want to live in a world more aggressive than it already is. I wish, from the bottom of my heart, that all would adopt more "feminine" behaviors – gentleness, thoughtfulness, reflectiveness, compassion, cooperation, accommodation, graciousness, quietness, softness. I believe the world would be substantially more delightful, joyful, and whole if these qualities were regularly embraced and practiced by all. Thank you, Ruth Whippman, for this wisdom.
13
Though well-intentioned, god help the boys that might be raised under Ms. Whippman's tutelage.
Start with the blatantly incorrect statement that all things relating to females are assigned a lower cultural value. Really?
As best I can tell, most fair valuations would suggest that women, not men, are by far the dominant sex in terms of cultural valuations. Look at pretty much any commercial on television. They are at least 75% geared towards women, whatever the item being sold. Why? Because they know that most 'normal' relationships, the buying decisions/power come largely from the woman, not the man. In terms of luxury items, especially, the vast majority of marketing is aimed at clothes, style, jewelery, exotic expensive vacations, etc., etc. Women's issues are prevalent in modern medicine: reportedly, 262 million goes into researching breast cancer (annually it seems) than the 55 million for prostate cancer, a ratio of 5-6:1.
Most companies I know fall all over themselves to comply with non-discriminatory (to the point of reverse discrimination) practices.
Meanwhile, most of the heroic female politicians I can think of (Barbara Jordan, Ann Richards, and Nancy Pelosi, to name a few) would neither accept gaff nor, the worst, whining.
Stop the whining, please.
8
Not enough people know about Barbara Jordan. To think of what she might have accomplished had she not been taken so young.
Great article, I just wish the companion image wouldn't have been in hot pink. This could have been chosen more strategically. Aside from men who already get it, I'm not confident a pink graphic will get the attention of the audience that I truly wish would read this.
Many men suffer no less than women do at the demand to be assertive, competitive, unemotional, and so on. Women celebrate these characteristics no less than men, as is demonstrated by how women respond to two men, one of whom is confident and assertive, the other mild and self-deprecating. Finally, I especially admire the paragraph that asserts that "we should be training men and boys to aspire to women's cultural norms," but would only point out that the practice of these norms as described by the author is exactly what Stoic philosophy teaches. Perhaps both women and men should read and practice more of that ancient philosophy. Perhaps our contemporary obsession with gender blinds us to ancient wisdom: Stoicism, Buddhism, Confucianism. They teach just what the author would ask men (and women) to practice more of: "To be more deferential. To reflect and listen and apologize where an apology is due (and if unsure, to err on the side of a superfluous sorry than an absent one). To aim for modesty and humility and cooperation rather than blowhard arrogance."
6
This essay focuses far too much on superficial behaviors of both genders. Take apologies. 99% of them are compromised and insincere. Whether made by men are women, virtually all of them include a BUT, a downturned eye, or crossed fingers behind the back. You can value them or devalue them, but the overwhelming majority remain insincere. Valuing what women do over what men do is all well and good. But you don’t change people by changing their behaviors. You have to change what is in their hearts and minds.
Women will never train men. Men will never train women. The dif? I don't think that many men have the need or desire. Life is a struggle. When one plateau is reached, another one looms inthe distance. Easier to focus on how one deals with individual challenges, and exploiting ones inherent strengths, rather than to expect that the underlying social order will be changed.Women will never train men. Men will never train women. The dif? I don't think that many men have the need or desire. Life is a struggle for both. When one plateau is reached, another one looms in the distance. Easier to focus on how one deals with individual challenges, and exploiting one's inherent strengths, rather than to expect that the underlying social order will be changed.
I think men would be happy to "lean out". One problem preventing that is many women are still raised to expect men to be the primary or sole earner in a straight relationship. Even feminists harbor this expectation, and it is particularly common among the upper middle class. Women continue to be raised with the expectation that it is ok to be financially dependent on a man, particularly after having a child, so they are asked the question "Will you continue to work (full time) after the baby comes?" Men are raised to expect to work and earn. They are NEVER asked that question. When women come to accept that they should be responsible for 50% of the family income, men can "lean out", and will happily do so. But presenting the issue as if men are the obstacle, while over 70% of women in straight relationships (according the the Pew Survey) expect men to be the primary earner, is nonsense.
6
FINALLY! Yes, in all caps. Thank you Ms. Ruth Whippman. I have had more discussions about this topic that end with me being dismissed as simply not understanding the "new" mindset. The truth is I understand it all too well. Again, thank you.
10
To those arguing that the author perpetuates gender stereotypes by referring to assertiveness as a masculine trait and so on- It is not sexist or heteronormative to point out realities of the way we as a society conceive of gender. Would I love to live in a society in which assertiveness and politeness are not gendered and are simply human traits? Absolutely! But that isn't the world we live in. The fact is, many people do consider there to be masculine and feminine traits. The fact is, people of all genders are negatively sanctioned when they exhibit traits that don't match their gender assigned at birth. If we don't acknowledge these biases, we cannot begin to address them. So no, it is not sexist to point out that society genders certain traits, or to point out that "feminine" traits are undervalued while "masculine" traits are overvalued. On the contrary, it is not possible to deconstruct sexism without first acknowledging this reality.
16
As I once tried to explain to HR:
( which pointed to assertiveness training when I brought up lack of attention to some smart women)
if the person chairing the meeting ignores the correct answer said quietly, and instead focuses on the incorrect direction asserted loudly with table pounding, it is the company that loses
Instead of saying, "she has to speak up" if she wants to be heard, why not say, "if he doesn't sit down and let others speak, we are not including him in future meetings"
35
Economic equality: that is a great goal. Economics, not sex or sexual orientation; more, a basic equality of condition. When do speak of that? And, of course, that won't happen without taxes on the rich and closing all the tax breaks and loopholes and off-shore havens they've created. To be rich is our goal? No, that is our greatest sin, and that includes both sexes.
Yes! It’s like that foggy feeling of “why is this so difficult?” has been pulled into focus. It’s difficult because we’re doing all the heavy lifting. Men, time to take a good hard look at your attitudes and behaviour, and do some changing. I don’t want my daughter to feel like she has to dominate others to lead a fulfilling life.
13
Name me the book written by a man that is instructing your daughter thus?
Having worked at two hyper-competitive, 85%+ male companies since graduating college this article really resonated.
This challenge of "Leaning Out" reminds me of a Chinese Finger Trap. If the environment is overly assertive and competitive, leaning out will likely leave you trampled over and marginalized. It only works if both sides/everybody is on board.
As I think about my own career, I think it's more about finding a company with the right culture rather than trying to find balance at a place where it doesn't exist.
This article makes me excited as I'm currently in the job search! I'll be curious to approach the search with a new lens: what type of companies are out there that are women owned and/or majority women? Maybe I'll find something good!!
8
Yes! Yes! Yes!
The devaluation of "traditional female" behaviors and choices devalues us all. Years ago, I was talking with a friend who was home raising four boys. And what did she have to say for herself? "I feel like such a sponge. I wish that I could contribute financially to our family." As if raising kids well was without worth. Culture has worth, the intangible has worth, raising the next generation well has tremendous worth. Until we are ready to admit that the traditional female behaviors and choices have equal worth, women are going to keep on thinking that doing what the men do, the way the men do it, is the way to be free. And all of us, women, men, and children lose so much when what is most prized is to be, or act like, a man.
7
@Connie This is the reason I support a universal basic income of $1000/month. It would help us start recognizing the value of women (and men too) who focus on parenting.
3
@Mark "Partners Without pay" should probably be some kind of battle cry, but would a universal basic income of $1000 a month really make a difference in all but the poorest communities? I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that without starting to get serious about the value of parenting and the other "unpaid" skills, that we are in big trouble.
Throughout my career in education and high tech the overwhelming majority of my managers have been women. Most of them were not assertive (in males it's called aggressive) or competitive. My current two bosses are women-- they are patient, humorous, very smart, and supportive.
My worst experiences with women in the workplace have usually involved office drama (amongst themselves), and occasional harassment (when I wouldn't give them the right attention)-- those women never were promoted, thankfully.
My worst experiences with men have been huge egos, hostility, and incompetence-- they were managers.
Everyone needs to lean out a little.
3
When I entered the business profession in high tech in the 1980s, the prevailing sentiment, articulated by men, internalized by women, was that one's performance had to be "as good as a man." I suppose because so few women were in roles outside HR, marketing and secretarial at the time this seemed like a rational train of thought in any other functional area, more certainly in management. Hierarchical organizational structures reinforce the intensity around assertiveness to prove one's mettle upward. I do know that, as a women, in those days, leaning in might mean getting one's head chopped off. The author's observations can spark even deeper reflections on what really a productive work culture is about? In a world of work that's more global, multi-cultural and increasingly complex to manage, it seems to me that listening, observing and learning are where it's at.
The author assumes career choices are completely cultural. If that were the case, the more a country pushes for gender equality, then we'd see more male nurses and more female petroleum engineers.
Turns out the exact opposite happens. When given a choice, including easing the care giver penalty with nearly free childcare, women and men are even more separated in career areas. This has been called the Scandinavian gender paradox. More sexist societies like Algeria and Russia have higher percentages of women in STEM than in Sweden and Norway.
Net net, on average men ad women have different interests. This exists across every culture. For Feminists trying to rub out gender differences, the problem is not with society, but biology.
Telling women and men they're doing it wrong won't change that.
4
The fact that women in certain countries flock to STEM fields in much larger numbers than in other countries defeats the biological argument and proves the cultural one. Biological factors are universal and are expressed to the same extent regardless of culture. There are extremely few complex practices that are universal in all countries and human societies throughout recorded history. Pair bonding is one. Gossip is another. Job choices - no, those are heavily cultural, hence the differences we see in different countries.
4
This is a great article and we absolutely need men to be less aggressive in the workplace, but I think there are some subtleties that are missing in this analysis. While there is definitely a correlation between the personality traits of confidence/assertiveness and poor decision making/aggression - they aren't actually the same thing.
Confidence can be used for many things. You could use it to bulldoze a colleague in a meeting, or you could use it to remain comfortable holding your opinion back while others air theirs.
You can use it to remain comfortable in the fact that you don't need to be the loudest voice in the room to ensure your voice and perspective is heard. You can use it to understand that you don't need to be afraid of the opinions of others - and that you can safely let them be heard. Confidence lets you apologize when you're in the wrong (or even when it's ambiguous) because you understand one mistake doesn't define you or make you any less valuable.
In fact, in some ways, aggression is a sign of a lack of confidence in my opinion. It's just enough confidence to be dangerous.
I could go on, but the point is that confidence is not the same as aggression. (and that is not to say that aggression is always bad either - but I don't think it has a place in the workplace in any circumstance)
All these traits are tools, and can be used to make the world a better place or tear it down. Each of needs to decide.
6
Great article. Just adding a thought from the UK - besides a push for girls to enter science there has been a big push here for boys to join the NHS to train as nurses. And it has worked! More young men than ever have applied and will begin training this year.
5
I love this article. I am a man, but have always felt much of what is said here is true. The expectations of male behavior are truly suffocating. The sentiments expressed here would equally benefit men, in a truly equal society we all benefit.
6
It's hard to read an article that lumps 3.5 billion men into a category and attributes a set of characteristics to them. The broad generalizations and vague"research" results negate much of this article. In any case, the so-called solutions offered here are impractical and half the globe, population is not going to pivot because it has its own needs and desires to take are of. Thanks for trying.
9
Absolutely right... assertiveness and disregard for risk worked great for us men 10,000 years ago, at the mammoth hunt - a few men didn't return, but we provided meat. Circumstances changed (a few 1000 years ago), but we don't seem have the introspection required to understand these are now hazards - not just for us, but for our families, countries and the planet. Biden, Sanders - and Trump, Johnson, Putin, Xi - lean out! Solutions to complex problems requires listening, discussion, compromise - skills which 90% of male leaders don't have. It may already be too late.
3
There is nothing wrong with assertiveness, in fact it is a positive quality. Those who do not have it, whether its at the individual level, the corporate level, or the national level, are destined to be surpassed with those that do. It has nothing to do with male or female and should not be confused with aggression or abuse. I would not advise anyone take advice on raising boys from this author.
9
Equal pay for equal experience and equal pay should be the law, and those who violate the law should be punished. Some of the hang-ups of today revolve around experience. And in most situations being a mother doesn’t count, and it shouldn’t. 5 or 10 years of being a stay at home mom is its own reward, at the cost of 15-30% lower salary. That’s fair. Generally as a hiring manager I preferred to hire women, and I was usually rewarded by getting jobs done right and on-time.
3
@Shillingfarmer equal pay is the law. Ironically, your bias in favor of women when hiring is not.
I had a deep conversation with my husband about this (we are both professionals in the same field). He said that he always speaks up at meetings, even if he doesn't even have much of relevance to say - but it's expected for him to speak up. He admits that often he doesn't have any data at all to back up his opinion. But the point is to register an opinion.
I said that I have been conditioned, after 20 years, only to speak up when I have vetted my facts, I know I'm right, and I can cite incontrovertible evidence. The result is that I speak up less often, because my barrier to entry of the conversation is much higher than my male peers, who can just speak their opinions without evidence. And the ultimate result is that organization misses out on data-driven evidence a large portion because it regularly rewards loud men instead of competent women.
26
There are two basic models of behavior: the competitive and the cooperative. For reasons mired in the most distant past, we have chosen the former as preferred, with the latter as an eyerolling also-ran. Why is that? It seems intuitive that cooperation will produce preferred results. I say that as a man, who has been as baffled as any woman at some of the ludicrous behavior that emerges from competitive efforts.
8
Ms. Whippman, thanks you for the thoughtful essay on female/male value systems. As a male, I'm acutely aware of the limits of traditional male attached values. We are not expected to show compassion, seek cooperation and equality over control and dominance, or favor gentleness over shows of strength. You wrote "until female norms and standards are seen as every bit as valuable and aspirational as those of men, we will never achieve equality. " I'd like to amend that to read: until female norms and standards are seen as every bit as valuable and aspirational as those of men, neither gender will be allowed to achieve their full potentials.
6
Geert Hofstede has written about this for decades. We can try to create fairer schools and workplaces - ones that nurture and benefit from tendencies defined as feminine as well as those defined as feminine, but unless we take into consideration the basic patterns of our culture, we're fighting a strong current.
1
This is brilliant and spot-on. Couldn’t agree more.
8
I can hypothesize that aggression-based (generally, male) hormones probably served a crucial purpose when human tribes' survival depended on warring with other tribes for limited resources. Also, compassion-based (generally, female) hormones probably equally served a crucial purpose of sustaining the tribe, by bearing and raising the offspring.
Fast-forward 30,000 years: we still have the same tribal hardware, but can we re-wire our big brains to benefit our enormous "tribe" of humanity, with all its diversity?
A respectable engineer or economist would look at the state of the workplace and ask: "How can we maximize our talents, while optimizing the workplace to meet the needs of our workers?" I think that we focus too much on the maximizing, while we disregard (to our peril) the optimizing.
2
Yes. Thank you. I have been trying to tell people this for years: apologies do not mean we're weak and mutual respect instead of competition does not put us at a disadvantage--or wouldn't except that constantly we are being taught this is the case. Subjugation to traditional men's cultural norms does not make us freer or stronger or more equal.
5
I am currently debating whether to send it to my manager who calls me difficult, arrogant, cold, distant, or a former manager who said I should be more assertive when expressing my opinion but also learn not disagree with others. Of course, I won't. I will just continue straddling this impossible fence until the day I retire, occasionally saying "I am sorry" as I always have.
3
Since there's a self-reflective strain of masculinity that goes back to Socrates, this article makes me curious why "deference, humility, cooperation and listening skills" are the exclusive province of mature females? OK sure, Socrates was a man-splaining machine, but the method he commends to my mind transcends gender -- they're moral virtues in any and every human being.
3
Well said!
From my experience, I would say that statistically women have more empathy than men.
And I would say men are statistically more alpha and competitive than women and it is about winning without asking if what they are winning is worthwhile.
I would like to see men improve in both these areas.
1
it starts with parenting and that usually involves both parents instilling values and character, whether by acts of commission or omission. so blame mom as much as dad - or is it the corrosive effects of mass/modern "culture"?
YES. I have been saying this for years. I'm in a male dominated academic discipline. Women in the discipline are constantly chastised (by male advisors but also by women trying, ironically, to get more women into and keep more women in the field) for a million ways in which we supposedly don't act sufficiently confidently or assertively. But the women who are so chastised are infinitely better colleagues than are the men (and women) they are encouraged to emulate. The discipline would be so much more pleasant and egalitarian if we didn't take a particular, culturally specific, masculine pattern of thinking and behavior as our model.
I
5
I remember the "Assertiveness Training" fad during my college years, around 1980. People were trained to walk up to strangers and say, "I am an assertive person!" The first few times I was a bit perplexed about the point they were making, and my attempts at vague agreeability generally received a snippy response. Eventually an aunt announced her assertiveness in the same fashion over my parents' dinner table around the holidays. Having had a year or two to think about it, I replied that assertiveness was neither good nor bad: it depended on what it was that someone had to assert. The look on my aunt's face could have etched glass but she said nothing further. The years have shown that assertiveness as a lifestyle choice generally encourages what in elementary school we used to call "fighting." I am pleased to read Ms. Whippman's analysis and only wish it had come about thirty years sooner.
3
Thank you. This exact point has been frustrating to me for years, and you’ve expressed it to a broad audience much better than I ever could have.
But I do think it’s going to be an uphill battle. Arrogance and overconfidence have been working well for a lot of people (mostly men, of course) for a long time. Some people even find the qualities attractive in a partner, for reasons I will never understand.
7
powerful piece. each paragraph is worth reflecting on before moving to the next.
8
Am I experiencing déjà vu all over again but didn’t this excellent essay appear in these same pages at least a month ago? Well worth revisiting, but nevertheless unusual.
While I agree in general that men need to value and internalize so-called female traits like deference and compassion, the article fails to acknowledge how racial dynamics affect leaning in. How an assertive black male with a sense of justice is perceived is wildly different from a white woman exhibiting the same behaviors. Because the author does not explicitly address race, she renders black men’s and women’s experiences invisible. All that is visible is the white experience. That is hardly a feminism we should seek to perpetuate.
4
Thank you! This is what I’ve been thinking for years, succinctly put.
7
Getting men to act more feminine is not, in my opinion, going to solve gender issues in society. Getting people to act more humanly is. Women have often been socialized in a way that perhaps hurts their economic standing, men have often been socialized in a way that perhaps hurts their emotional standing. We shouldn't aspire to replace one with the other but instead should hope to create non-gendered ways of communicating that promote all facets of our shared humanity.
A few unnecessary provocations aside, this article is an excellent example of one of the many million ways gender theory can help men. I think your occasional slide into snark perhaps hurt your case - although judging from the volume of the comments that might not be true - but there's a real chance someone male could read this and suddenly understand the human cost, to himself and to those around him, of blindly following the patterns society set up for him. Thank you.
4
As a man, I firmly agree with all you say here. Everything I see being promoted as moving women forward is based on a male view of the world, and men are bing pushed aside with it at times (often rightly so but what's that teaching our young men?). Thank you for saying this, and letting people know that teaching men women's values and ways of interacting with the word is as valid and more so. Men need to wake up!
10
The whole 'lean in' thing insults older women, who've been 'leaning in' for generations. Enough already with the advice to women to change themselves.
What needs to change is the thinking of those men who still largely control hiring and promotion in the workplace.
Until they accept women as equal colleagues - not just as subordinates - nothing will change.
12
As a young woman in the 1970’s I thought that feminism and the other social changes of that era would result in men espousing some traits usually associated with women- nurturing, compassion, affection. I got it backwards, women aspired to traditional male traits- competition, aggression, dispassion. Is this better?
5
Your criticism towards us men is well taken, as it is constructive, and we have a lot to atone to. And some humility, if not contrition, may go a long way, for the little we know. In truth, the woman-man interrelationship, one of opposites, ought to to be seen as mutually fulfilling and complementary. Our differences must be seen authentically equitable, to be shared, and to be thankful for the joy of our mutual embrace. What's so difficult to understand?
2
Excellent article, appreciated it even if it falls down in its emphasis on behaviour, rather than the need for structural change, i.e. gender parity in the workforce, etc.
"Tax dollars are poured into encouraging girls to take up STEM subjects, but no one seems to care much whether boys become nurses."
This is very true and worthwhile. I strongly believe that most of the negative male behaviour you see around/experience is linked to boys not not seeing men in what might have been called "nurturing" roles in the past, as teachers in primary schools and afterwards; or as nurses, and caregivers.
While issues women face in workforces dominated by women (poor pay, or perhaps issues with career advancement - for whatever reason those in managerial roles still tend to be men) would be ameliorated if equal numbers of men worked alongside them.
Even though it's important for women to move into male dominated professions, this movement means very little if there is no real support for them when they get there. It's no fun being the isolated exception in a sea of men (maybe men feel the same way in professions where they are out-numbered by women too).
I grew up in a culture that was very macho male-dominated to live in one now that is male-dominated in different ways. The introspective, cultured version in Paris is easier to live in, but the same problems exist here in general. Society only changes when there are laws demanding it. This still needs to be the focus.
5
Reading that many women still see a lack of empathy, collaboration and compassion in the men they live work with makes me feel sad--and that I'm back in the early nineties. Many people have chosen friends, work and community that value these attributes in men. The dynamic, the experience I refer to generally is one in which people are not putting affluence and comfort above other values.
Aggression itself is strong in men because of where we all come from. It's slow to go for good reason, and quick to help where misogyny "ain't in it". Also, it's still quick to hurt in its toxic form. Aggression is entirely within the capabilities of women as well, given no alternative (often despite it).
Nothing lives in a vacuum. No life without balance. Don't chuck out the baby of masculinity with the bathwater of violence. I don't think anyone would really like life without it.
1
I don't know if its so much male defined as capitalism defined. Corporate America has a vested interest in making peiople believe they should stay as tied to their places of work as possible.
As a male who does not agree with this social manipulation by moneyed interests, I can safely say I've never wanted to 'lean in' to my job - its mostly a means to an end, that being a better more fulfilling life outside of work.
5
I'll agree with absolutely all of this on one condition: that society deem breadwinning an equally shared responsibility. Because as long as it falls on men by default -- which it does, despite the anecdotal exceptions that will pour in -- demanding perfect workplace symmetry is, sadly, unrealistic.
4
"Perhaps some capitulation poses in the bathroom before a big meeting might help."
Trump apparently did this before his call with Erdogan.
Interesting article. The problem is that society rewards aggressive, often over-confident, jerky behavior. People of both genders enforce this.
7
Would be helpful if you fortified your "assertions" with some facts, perhaps some studies you could cite. This seems to be the problem with today's feminism. Feminist expect to make an assertion based solely what they are feeling in the moment even it is not based in reality. Often this result in baseless accusations and boardroom drama. It is getting to the point were women and men don't want to work together period. This reckless movement is destroying society.
13
Americans are PROPAGANDIZED to have bad, stupid, unhealthy, destructive attitudes. Consumer products (and politicians) are sold with this PLOY!
7
Thank you so much for writing this article, Ms. Whippman. I have had quite similar thoughts. Why are girls and women always being told to be more like men in order to make it in a man's world? Let us share the world, please, and let us value what are more commonly women's strengths and what are more commonly men's strengths equally.
7
As an outlier and an out-leaner I agree with the premise here. Humility should be held up as a foundational virtue for all of us.
We should teach kids that ambition is great, but only if it is focused on a worthy goal, that leaves the world a better place.
8
Yes! Yes! The author is spot on here. Working in male-dominated tech and startup worlds these last 20 years I can attest to the stark lack of humility and boorish overconfidence I regularly see in my male colleagues. I'm always especially annoyed when I see HBR and other outlets with articles that discuss qualities like emotional intelligence and self awareness as being so precious and important to senior management and business success. If that's the case, why aren't there more women in senior leadership roles? I think we've debunked the myth that it's a pipeline problem. Sadly, as a female with 20 years of experience and an advanced degree, I could go up against a white bro college dropout with no experience before a jury of our corporate peers and accurately predict who is going to be listened to, favored, and assumed more credible than the other.
19
Very telling. Thanks
If you can’t overcome obstacles, perhaps you don’t deserve that promotion.
6
@Adam. Just one side of the story, though.
Over-assertiveness has had detrimental effects on part of the population. When a culture believes women who assert themselves are trouble, there is unbalance. Wars and violence derive from the abuse of what is believed to be the inherent and deserved assertiveness of men.
Tech advances did advance us. To a certain point. And lots of women fought for the right to even exist in the tech world. But the abuse of power by those presently heading up the tech world and their need to be “disrupters” has obviously caused a huge ripple of dangerous and preventable problems in the world.
Yes, agreeableness has led to better social cohesion. But not always for women. Being agreeable in an environment where respect is the norm is fine. But that isn’t reality. Too often women tends toward the kind of agreeability that stems from being ridiculed or punished for speaking out.
In an ideal world, one gender would not feel the need to dominate the others. One race would not need to dominate the rest. Sadly, we aren’t there yet. These discussions are essential to continuing on that path. Unfortunately, those who want to regress society in the direction of inequality don’t want to budge.
1
Perhaps traits associated with women are OK the way they are, and traits associated with men are OK the way they are.
Assertiveness has led to technological advancement and better standards of living for all of humanity.
And agreeableness has led to better social cohesion.
Money is not the measure of one’s worth.
6
Exactly. I never understood why it was “empowering” to cast women in violent super-hero roles. We get to shoot guns and karate chop our way to equality, in heels, walking backwards. No thanks. Masculine “norms” are destroying the biosphere.
13
As a woman who assumes that I can do whatever men do and lead as well as men, gender roles played an important part in my work experience. In a non-traditional job in an oil refinery, when I refused to work on a nuclear-powered pump without any training, all hell broke loose. My male colleagues had been doing this for years. They stopped speaking to me . My female colleagues demanded that I shut up. Eventually the union agreed to take up the cause and it was revealed that the workers who had been working with these pumps were mostly likely exposed to high levels of radiation that might have also exposed their families. The pumps were removed overnight, however, I had to live through death threats, becoming the object of violent pornography and snubbing.
I later became an educator. Women still have to fight to get administrative jobs and face condemnation and harassment for assuming our right to be leaders. This harassment, for me, was less life-threatening than in the oil refinery. Also it was not my dominant experience. I worked alongside many men and women who appreciated what I had to offer and gave me every opportunity to lead and to be my best self.
The demand should be that all our ideas about gender be examined to give everyone a chance to be our best selves.
349
In other words, you WERE assertive and DID LEAN IN at your oil refinery job and while the responses of your employer and coworkers was hostile, you took the high road and your initial action was far superior from the standpoint of integrity and adherence to best practices.
What makes you so sure the response would have been any different if you were a man? It’s not like managment hostility and coworker shunning was invented when women joined the workforce.
12
@Diana Scalera I'd never heard of a "nuclear powered pump" so I googled it. Doesn't exist anywhere including theoretically (they do have water pumps around nuclear reactor cores, but they are electrically powered or use turbines).
Perhaps your co-workers found your objection to be silly given you'd made something up. Or more likely, you didn't get close to any pumps there.
5
@Diana Scalera
Women can't do all that men can do. You can't kill someone and feel OK about it. Men do it all the time, in uniform and out, and that's why they will always rule. Women, on average, just do not have the same will to power. Of course individuals vary and there are physically and psychologically strong women (mentally, physically is quite rare) and weak men.
Evolution cares about reproduction, not fairness.
Many young and single women just do not understand. The knowledge seems to be more common among married women, older ones, and, especially, mothers. I will of course acknowledge women often run things at home, as is their right.
OTOH females live longer and are much less likely to be murdered. You got that going for you.
2
Excellent! Thanks so much. Looking forward to learning more about your current book, which I hope will be translated into Spanish, if there's to be even a sliver of light at the end of the self-destructive tunnel of machoism. And please make your next book about our world's current female leaders and why men better learn from them. And fast. History will prove this, but why learn to fly when you've already stepped off the cliff.
4
This is a great essay and long overdue. Toxic masculinity hurts both sexes. If you don’t believe that try being a high school teacher. I see so many boys afraid to be seen as kind and deferential. And if a make teacher fails to live up to their toxic views of masculinity, he’ll certainly be ridiculed behind his back. Making humility a norm would change our society for the better on nearly every level.
But please avoid over apologizing. Humility does not involve self-abatement.
7
If men did not overstate their confidence levels, we would never have landed on the moon or pushed the boundaries of space and science . Isn't there an old saying about reaching for the stars......
4
@Sipa111 Let’s not forget that it was theee women of color who were crucial to the advance that led to putting a man on the moon. Neil Armstrong is a household name. The women in “Hidden Figures” are not. The fact that the movie title is “Hidden” figures explains a lot.
Those women had to work harder than everyone else, were at first underestimated and then well-respected. But they had gently edge their way into it. Assertiveness was not their right in that context. Only when they became invaluable to the space program did they gain the respect they deserved. And it took almost 50 yers for their story to be told.
16
@Ruby
And let’s not further forget that males have taken the lead and the public setbacks for millennia. Women haven’t founded the Romes or the Harvards, or preached the great religions, let alone built the cities which allow for columns of dubious veracity like this one.
An element of what is lurking beneath this is asserting sexual desire. This is the proposition that seems to be the terror behind the scrim of all this other stuff -- in a world where girly girls and manly men are still the seeming norm of what is conditioned by everyone but Gillette and the LGBTQ center. The terror is men asserting their desire for women, which at the moment, women have no script to deal with, and which at the moment both men and women are woefully miserable actors, their abilities either never learned or atrophied from swiping left and right, or clicking "send."
In other aspects of culture men get little respect unless they can take a risk of some kind; with women it seems to vary by situation, with a specific prohibition on asserting oneself for a sexual purpose (conflated with sluttiness of various kinds). In men, asserting sexual desire, or even the mere notion that they are, is being criminalized to the degree where even being accused of desire is tantamount to being accused of being a predator.
And this is happening in a world where, over and over (according to my teacher Joe (we can check citations) women across the cultures are sexually attracted to the strongest men; the best fighters; the best dancers; the most manly among us.
6
The author’s solution is not the best. Deference implies one who one is deferring to— the one with more power.
The answer is mutual respect, which is outside the norms of the two traditional genders.
It seems as though anger is driving the author’s views. Set the anger down, find forgiveness, and then think about what you want to write a book about because it shouldn’t be about how to raise boys with this chip on your shoulder against men.
I’m sorry.
5
@WomansTruth : what's wrong with deference? Not everybody can be in charge.
2
How about deference to the one with the best ideas/experience? Not always the one with the most power...
1
@WomansTruth. Deference is bad and implies one has power over another? No, deference can also imply politeness, or efficient cooperation. Giving up your bus seat for an elderly person is deference. Holding a door open for the person behind you is deference. Taking turns is deference.
2
Having lost many opportunities to women using flirtation and occasionally sleeping with decision makers - I long ago learned women are the most vicious of opponents, in their own way.
No amount of “leaning in” can combat a beautiful woman using her gifts to entice.
6
@Experienced
Bravo! A little black dress and a push up bra will get more praise and promotion than hard work and competency. Women want it both ways ... pun intended.
OMG I could not have said it better. Absolutely true and necessary to improve the workplace and society for us all!
4
Wow what a great paradigm shift! Jus like revisiting Maslows hierarchy of needs. He puts the individual at the top possibly a masculine view? I put community! He placed that below the individual. Good time for us to rethink what is the right way. Maybe there are many paths!
2
Articles such as this are why I favor open borders - for females from other countries who appreciate American men.
5
I love my daughters dearly and will always be at their beck and call for advice, support and rescue ( as an alpha Dad ? ). However, at their formation years and beyond I treat and train them to be alphas too. Teach them all the tricks of the trade of life in the real world. Stiffen their resolve in objective ways which are not truly gender derived and try to steer them away from emotional reactions when struggles occur.
4
I’ll “lean in” to your baseball as philosophy line and play the stereotype.
Today’s game is about swinging for the fences, because fielding has become so good that it’s harder and harder to put the ball in play. It’s changed the game, and there are tons of strikeouts because the swing needed to hit it out is higher risk. It’s less fun to watch. It’s the 12th straight season setting a league strikeout record.
But all teams do it, because it’s a dominant strategy for maximizing run scoring. If some teams moved away from the strategy, it’d only make it easier for those deploying the strategy to win.
Now - assertiveness in the office. It’s simply the dominant strategy. We might not like it, but those people are going to advance at a faster rate because the competitive nature (both internal and external) of business. It’s just a match for assertiveness. So, feel free to defer, but keep in mind that there’s a reason all baseball teams play alike these days.
7
I appreciate Ruth Whippman’s article as it highlights a recasting of feminism that should be scrutinized.
However, in our quest as humans to better ourselves, I think we err when looking at a particular gender for the standard. Using either gender as our standard pits one gender against the other when both actually embody healthy and unhealthy tendencies. In reality, the issue of our shortcomings as individuals is not primarily about our gender, rather our human nature.
I suggest an unpopular notion: that we look beyond the male gender, beyond the female gender, beyond our human nature to God for our standard of healthy, impactful, fulfilling, upright, reflective living.
Shifting the focus away from male or female gender to one of God and humanity is a wise starting point because the author of life is highly relational. How he communicates, how he fosters creativity, how he brings dignity to humanity, how he listens, how and when he chooses to speak, how he models and seeks relationships is recorded in the Scriptures for us and is pertinent to the age in which we live.
2
I completely agree that we look at gender differences from the wrong end of the telescope in America and don’t value women’s strengths. I would point out that living in Japan and working as an intercultural corporate trainer, the global business men in Japan need assertiveness training as much as business women to communicate their ideas to their global counterparts, westerners.
Generally speaking out and leaning in are discouraged in Japan. “The nail that sticks out, gets hammered on.” Communication issues are not just gender based but cultural.
7
Yes, yes, yes! Thank you, Ruth Whippman, for this clear articulation of a fundamental obstacle to the real change we all need. Also problematic: 1. Manspreading of male-typed terms to "include" women while burying the female-typed version. E.g. actor and actress. Calling women actors just reinforces the idea that the female version (of the word, the role, the people referred to) is lesser. Next time we need to cover everyone with the same term, let's call the men by the women's term. 2. In popular culture, female characters taking up arms as male ones traditionally have done. Someone has to promote peacemaking, or we are all going to die by the sword. Let's elevate the stereotypically female traits of conflict resolution without weapons. They involve courage and strength too.
3
This! Love this article so much. Thank you for so poignantly pointing out something I've known and felt for so long.
It's time to let the feminine ideals and traits shine as the strengths they truly are. Women do not need to act like men to be successful. But it would serve us all if men could dial down the bravado a tad.
8
Awesome. Refreshing. Made me think.
4
Oh, lookie, another NYT gender article. And surprise, surprise, it lauds women and chides men and paints with a broad brush.
28
@Rockaway Pete -- Yep. I have a comment to this effect that has not been published.
4
I’m not sorry. I have dreams, ambitions and a family of my own to look after. I’m going to play the game as best I can to secure the resources I can get. I’m not going to bow out or exercise restraint to pave the way for you, regardless of the social narrative in vogue at the moment.
Life is full of such competition. You won’t win by insisting that others hold back. If you want those things, you’ll need to look inwardly to get them. Use your own gifts to your own advantage. Read the room and act accordingly.
236
@Chris I think I read a book like this. It was called Lord of the Flies.
263
@W Jones I'd planned to reply, but you said it so much better! Thank you.
40
I don’t think you understood the article.
140
Not going to happen
amen!!!
Great article.
Good luck!
I work in tech. Just this week we were participating in a meeting where an engineer from another organization felt it was appropriate to loudly and pointedly question the competency of a female colleague. This woman is his senior in technical knowledge and experience, but that didn't stop him.
So for my male tech peers who think it's not necessary to 'lean out' I would suggest taking a long, hard look at gender dynamics in the workplace. Misogyny still runs rampant, and we have a responsibility to consider every possible method to address it.
997
@Eric Miller
Sounds like a jerk who did that. What does this person have to do with me or any of the males in my life who have zero characteristics in common with this. It's a stereotype. A false one. Self confidence, assertiveness, STEM interest, "leaning in" if you will does not equal jerk, bully, rude, sexist, condescending. No I will not lean out.
32
@Eric Miller
As a woman in tech I get this too, more often from vendors than one would think. When they discover my title and project importance after I push back, they fold.
81
@Eric Miller So what you are saying is that it's not okay to question, disagree, or point out engineering flaws?
27
This is an interesting article, and I agree that much of male behavior that is considered normal, even admirable, is actually toxic. I know this article is about workplace behavior but I’d like to add a rebuttal from the perspective of dating. I’ve had multiple women tell me that the quality they find most attractive in men is confidence. They love the man who is able to suavely strike up a conversation, who is able to look a woman straight in the eyes and say “I’d love to take you out.” So of course men are assertive. If we aren’t, we are, crudely speaking, weeded out in Darwinian fashion. So if we really want a more equal society (as I very much do), maybe women can be more assertive, at least in the realm of dating. My favorite dance in high school was always the Sadie Hawkins dance as it relieved me of the agonizing pressure of asking women out (and being turned down a lot). To take a cue from this article, I apologize if my comment is sexist. I really didn’t mean it to be.
4
Thank you, @Vince. You make a good point about the rules of dating. While no woman wants to be with an unconfident man, there is a difference between confidence and arrogance. Arrogance can easily be confused with confidence. But arrogance is borne of tearing down others. Confident men don’t feel the need to one-up based on their own insecurities. Moreover, arrogance is just annoying.
I think if you took a poll, most women would agree that kindness, honesty and empathy go a long way. As much as I agree with the evolutionary and biological roles of male assertiveness and for women to choose suitors who will protect the family, the dating world is besotted by misconceptions.
It isn’t true that women ultimately want the “bad boy” over the nice guy archetype. Maybe at 19, or if they tend toward self-destruction. But as for choosing a long-term mate, not so much.
8
What you are describing is clear and straightforward communication. That is not what this article is about. Read it again.
@Vince Women don't like confidence. They like not having to take the risk of asking men out and enjoy having men do all the work of having to entertain them. Not relate and connect with them, entertain them. Sometimes women do finally try being assertive and asking men out on dates. They get the usual response of rejection, and wimp out of ever trying again. Supposedly because men don't like getting asked out and it's the man's role. Which is false, men love being asked out. Just by women they like. They don't have to endure the oppressive male role of knowing no one will ask you out, so you have to repeatedly ask women out and get rejected just to get a date.
Women don't want equality. They want high status male careers. While reaping the benefits of men being still expected to act like men.
3
From a biological point of view, if women picked less aggressive men as partners, eventually the aggressive SNPs will be evolutioned away!
Contrary to commonly held belief, directed evolution can change the gene pool quickly!
135
@GV And we know from anthropology that women want to breed with the aggressive fighters.
15
@Eric Francis Coppolino Our "choice/free will" is truly a choice under very narrow circumstances. Our biological predispositions can override deliberate choices if circumstances change relatively quickly. So the best way to "eliminate" aggressive behavior is to remove it from the gene pool. It has wider implications on criminal justice, which is just retributive currently.
5
@Eric Francis Coppolino No, we don't. I'm a trained biological anthropologist, and this simply isn't true. This is extremely culturally dependent and doesn't take into account constraints on who may marry whom, or whether women even get to choose who to marry, in many of those cultures where it IS true--which not all of them, by any means.
46
Men, do not give in to whining women. The playing field of the universe is always level, and if women can't compete, that's their own problem.
8
@Kim
Wow! I don’t want to compete or live in in the world you seem to describe.
Whining? Winning? Gender roles are pervasive, fairly rigid and consistent. If a woman’s assertive she’s angry and that’s not okay. If a man cries he’s a sissy and that’s not okay. Neither trait is male or female but socially constructed that way. Most of us don’t even realize how much we follow and live by social constructions to our own detriment. We are not fully human , we’re half human driven by what we are taught is ok or not.
Thank You!
1
I really wish people would quit writing easy commonplace pieces like this, and go after the horrible state of our cities, country and world and how to work on them.
This man/woman stuff is so yesterday. The world and our country are in danger. Man/woman. Snake eats tail, endlessly.
11
I’m glad my grandfather was assertive when he jumped out of an airplane over France to fight Nazis. I hope the writer knows that only beta males will fall for this tripe. It will make it easier for men that have no problems going after what they want and saying what they want to get even further ahead.
12
Tiresome article. Just try to treat people how you would like to be treated. Take it from there.
19
Thank you Thank you Thank you!!!! Yes to all of this.
I'm 6 years into motherhood, as one-half of a dual career couple. My husband and I have both partially "leaned out" of our careers, both working reduced schedules and giving up a more aggressive career track. What shocks me, though, is all the resources geared toward teaching WOMEN how to balance it all, as if we are to strive toward being high-achieving executives as well as mothers. It is so rare to see people encouraging men to lean out.
The result: women are the ones trying to do it all whereas most men just do what they always did, except they now also have someone else contributing to income. A raw deal for women.
But also a raw deal for men. Many men want to spend more time with their families, but feel a ton of pressure to climb climb climb at work.
It drives me crazy that feminism holds traditionally male traits as the standard to strive for. Traditional women's work--like caregiving--is so important and should be valued as such. Traits like empathy and compassion and collaboration are also important, and men would benefit from being encouraged more to adopt these traits.
506
@Itsy
Actually feminism doesn't hold traditionally male traits as the standard to strive for. In the second wave we called that being "male-identified". You are quite right. The traditional male role is indeed a raw deal for men. And the women who have to make it work.
41
@Itsy Great points and (after 25 years of being a working mom) I feel much the same way. For the most part, I also loved this piece. Reminded me of Carol Gilligan's "In a Different Voice," which really opened my eyes about the unequal value we place on traditionally male vs. female roles when I read it many years ago.
Valuing "women's work" has been one of the central themes of feminism over the last 50-60 years (maybe longer?), though you wouldn't know it from the way the term "feminism" is used these days. There's been quite a bit of feminist research, writing and activism focused on this very topic -- about getting people to value those roles and characteristics that are traditionally associated with women and about acknowledging men's capacity in those areas and encouraging men to embrace them too.
Unfortunately, in popular culture, that message ends up getting drowned out by all the "self-help" and "self-improvement" stuff targeted toward women and the anti-feminism stuff -- but I think you'll be really pleasantly surprised if you dig into it. If I weren't so tired right now I'd be able to give you some recos beyond the Gilligan book! ;-)
28
Good points. I mis-used the term feminism for sure (and I consider myself a feminist!).
I just keenly feel this issue right now as I navigate the world of working and being a parent. I see a lot of men that are very successful professionally but are privately really unhappy with the stress and hours of their jobs, and who would absolutely love to have more time with their families. But so much of current discourse implies that this is something Women should strive for?! And my husband once confided that he’s envious of my “working mom” social media groups, books, articles etc and pointed out he has very little of the same for working dads that are actually trying to be a hands-on parent.
29
I was a professional ski instructor for long time. Without fail - when a couple showed up for a lesson together she would under estimate her skill and he would over estimate his. I always had to grade on a curve when making an assessment before I could actually see them ski. Typically, she would be the better skier but he would believe he was. It was a source of amusement to me because it was so consistent.
759
@Pdxgrl I recall an episode of "Hidden Brain" in which they discussed studies showing that men typically overestimate their abilities and women typically underestimate theirs. Also, in discussing entrepreneurs, the statistics were that men were more prevalent because they didn't mind failing. They might typically have 3 failed ventures, but would (over) confidently try for #4. Women who failed once generally thought of themselves as failures and quit. It's all very interesting. Maybe it's why so many men succeed as salesmen -- they believe their own hype.
49
@mbhebert And maybe that is not entirely why they succeed at sales. Regarding how failing (or rejection) is tolerated, yes there is a gender difference. And it is not the only one.
8
@Pdxgrl Yes, exactly this! I was a computer/business software trainer in the 80s and 90s when Apple computers were becoming ubiquitous in the business world. Without fail, women would wait until something was explained to them in complete depth, I had asked them to try it themselves, and they felt they'd be able to do it.
The men would bash away at the keyboard while I was still explaining the feature, and exclaim "why isn't it working?" Not for one minute did they associate the so-called wrong result with 'failure' or how they felt about themselves. Never forgot that lesson and I've tried to have the same attitude my whole career.
35
This article is spot on.
The business world is full of individuals who have advanced not purely due to competence, but their over-embrace of stereotypical alpha-male behavior - and the fact that others embrace them for this behavior as well.
I've spent in time in organizations where it's sadly true that the two most effective ways to be heard is to hold the right title, or two raise one's volume. It's stupid, and leads to bad decisions because the people with the most knowledge of the subject may be neither the highest ranking nor the loudest voices.
The changes in attitude the author proposes aren't just good for women, but for everyone that values competence over shameless self-promotion, and leaders listening/asking questions instead of pretending/assuming they know the answer even when they don't, this would make the world a better place.
Until we can change workplace cultures, however, I fully support women who strive to "lean in" in order to have their voices fully heard.
194
What @John wrote is sexy!
9
@John Yes, when in Rome...while (hopefully) Rome's culture gradually changes.
As runt middle of 3 BOYS at 5’10” now almost 7 decades old I see my flaws clearly and too late.
I tried to SAVE 2 wives both abused by their fathers. Later raped long before I met them.
Took me years to understand what had happened and how angry they still were.
I still love and miss them both years after divorce and their passing.
Sometimes I think violence is passed down through centuries.
Now Sad, alone and seeing my role was also predestined.
I “...rage, rage against the dying of the light...”
83
@Lost In America
LIA, I feel like you are the male version of me.
Now in my sixth decade of life, I have a history of trying to save men who were deeply damaged. The last one passed away just a few months ago. Very sad. I just hope he's in a better place.
I too look back and feel that my role (and life in general) was predestined.
At this stage of the game, maybe the best course of action is to resolve to be as gentle with ourselves as possible. Sometimes easier said than done, I find.
19
@Lost In America Be gentle with yourself. And forgive, yourself too. Apply this to yourself as well: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle." - Ian Maclaren I'm working on these.
3
@Lost In America Your pessimism is bracing, friend ... I'm raging too -- maybe whimpering is more like it on most days :o -- but we can still be mostly grateful for each day we rise, n'est-ce pas?
It seems that people know where they stand in terms of the tone of the argument, but is there a consensus for or against a course of action? Is there even a shared definition of the problem? And how sure are we that there is one, across-the-board Problem, and not many different individual hassles?
I ask because I would like to be able to say that I either agree or disagree with the author, but without knowing what problem they are trying to address, and what course of action they are proposing, I find myself unable to say.
The subtitle and at times some of the sections are on-target. But has some of the usual problems with now-so many articles in the Times: Over-generalization. No matter how many times I point it out, it continues. By it's very nature, it is inaccurate at the individual level--which used to be considered important, as well as hurtful, with signs it is now leading to reverse discrimination--which benefits the re-election of Trump. But there is almost never any acknowledgement of that built-in error. If it were done about any other group other than men, or usually more specifically, white men, or even more so, older white men, your standards editor wouldn't allow it. But here, it's OK. On other things, why don't we go further and say assertiveness when it slides into arrogance, discourtesy, and even too much confidence are obsolete when we have wicked problems to solve for which no one knows the answers! Instead, we need to prioritize humbleness, co-learning, active listening--by any and all genders! Agree on the feminine qualities point here, but less certain about what masculine qualities even are at this point and find people reluctant to talk about it. Perhaps if we did, we could define which are still meaningful and important. We'd probably find that, they too, can be shown by any and all genders, but not sure. This article goes in the right direction, but we need to go further. Also, hope we aren't discarding charity, grace, or patience. They are still needed as well.
5
I loved this essay. THANKS.
For years, I have been trying to explain (unsuccessfully) to my colleagues that STEM is not only information technology and engineering. STEM also includes medicine, biology and clinical psychology which are actually much harder to practice than ICT because health professions deal with complex human beings and require superior skills (including higher-order STEM skills).
PISA data clearly shows that across the world both genders are equally interested in STEM careers albeit in different fields of STEM. Why are we saying to our young women that their STEM professional choice is not as worthy as that of their male counterparts?
I am concerned with the suggested remedy though: Make men less assertive and more like women. This doesn't make any more sense than the idea to promote male assertiveness among females. Both approaches are wrong. Why not let men be men and women be women? That's the beauty of nature.
Instead of the Freudian (psychological) approach, why don't the US follow the example of the far more successful Marxist (economics-based) approach to gender equality practiced in Eastern Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall: equal pay, free day-care centers, paid maternity leaves, job security, etc.?
Furthermore, "women under Communism enjoyed more sexual pleasure." See this piece from the NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/opinion/why-women-had-better-sex-under-socialism.html
2
@Vladimir
Sorry, Vladimir.
Women in the old Soviet Union were not equal. They worked as hard, yes . . . and contrary to your impression, they got paid less. And then they did ALL the housework and caring for elderly parents.
1
I loved this essay. THANKS.
For years, I have been trying to explain (unsuccessfully) to my colleagues that STEM is not only information technology and engineering. STEM also includes medicine, biology and clinical psychology which are actually much harder to practice than ICT because health professions deal with complex human beings and require superior skills (including higher-order STEM skills). PISA data clearly shows that across the world both genders are equally interested in STEM careers albeit in different fields of STEM (about 24% v. 25% of all 15-year olds). Why are we saying to our young women that their professional choice is not as worthy as that of their male counterparts?
I am only concerned with the suggested remedy: Make men less assertive and more like women. This doesn't make any more sense than the idea to promote male assertiveness among females. Both approaches are wrong. Why not let men be men and women be women? That's the beauty of nature.
Instead of the Freudian (psychological) approach, why don't the US follow the example of the far more successful Marxist (economics-based) approach to gender equality practiced in Eastern Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall: equal pay, free day-care centers, paid maternity leaves, job security, etc.?
Furthermore, "women under Communism enjoyed more sexual pleasure." See this piece from the NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/opinion/why-women-had-better-sex-under-socialism.html
2
There are a lot of jerks in this world, male and female. And it's true that in certain roles, jerks can do well. But this idea that you have to be an assertive jerk to succeed professionally and financially is nonsense. There is plenty of space in this world to do extremely well while being a good, kind, thoughtful and well-liked person. And being that kind of person also has its own rewards. Like being loved and having friends and respect.
13
Let's not forget that men act like jerks because too many women enable and indulge them inappropriately. What that has to do with assertiveness, I'm not sure.
8
I was so excited to read the title and subtitle of this article, only to be disappointed by its simple substance. I think society has moved beyond isms into one big ation and it doesn’t matter what you can fit into your name tag anymore or how you use it. We need to focus on the science and technology to save our humankind. By the way Ruth Whippman, cute face.
Yes...of course.
We have lived in Bizarro World quite long enough. Male values have brought us every single grotesque and painful problem in every single human society. Male culture is an orgy of self congratulatory arrogant exhausting and unrelenting jockeying for position.
Women are not as afflicted with ruthless biology. It would be a kinder gentler more self-aware world.
4
@Sallie. Whoa, whoa, whoa. “Male values” and “male culture” are bad? Now you DO sound like a man-hater, and a very bitter person. Every group has good things and bad things about it.
Men off earth now. We get it. Sheesh.
9
@David Landrum Your comment reminds me of a dynamic that happens with my husband and me. Whenever I try to discuss something he’s done that’s hurt or offended me, or even when I want to discuss something I see differently, particularly in terms of parenting, his immediate response, without fail, is to feel criticized. Actually I’m only guessing that’s how he feels, because he doesn’t articulate it. What he says is, “I guess I’m in the doghouse.” Or “What did I do now?”
That, then, becomes the subject. When I try to return to the topic I want to discuss, he’s being harangued. And what I want to talk about is COMPLETELY erased. I guess the doghouse is a great place to hide.
We’ve been married for over thirty years because he’s got other wonderful qualities. I don’t want him in the doghouse, and I certainly don’t want him off the planet. I just want him to acknowledge my perspective. Likewise, despite your thinking you “get it”, that the author wants you off the planet, I think she would probably prefer that you really read the article and consider her perspective.
18
@Jeanie. Absolutely. There are many men - even the good ones- who are so sensitive to criticism (even the constructive kind), that their knee-jerk reaction is feeling accused. Then they shut down and further conversation is pointless. They are uncomfortable being vulnerable, so the default is self-pity and making a woman the villain. Women unfortunately have to find ways to tiptoe around this insecurity and find a way to be extremely gentle in these types of discussions. We have to do the work. It isn’t enough to just express our wishes and hope for reciprocation, we have to alter our approach to accommodate them. That is , if we want to make any headway at all.
The gentleman to whom you responded is obviously a “cover his ears and scream “lalalalala” so loudly he can drown out anything he doesn’t want to hear. Rather childish, actually. But seeing things through the lens of black and white is ultimately a sign that, at base, they are afraid. No way this kind of person is ever going to be open to new ideas. Shut it down. “Lalalalala....I cant hear you!” There, they sure told us!
I just don’t understand why these folks even read these gendered issue pieces, much less rush to comment with such narrow-minded sayings like “We get it. Men bad. Women good.” If they have nothing to add to the dialogue except a cliched quip about how all women hate men, then they should move on to the next article. Or perhaps go to 4Chan instead.
Yes...of course.
We have lived in Bizarro World quite long enough. Male values have brought us every single grotesque and painful problem in every single human society. Male culture is an orgy of self congratulatory arrogant exhausting and unrelenting jockeying for position.
Women are not as afflicted with ruthless biology. It would be a kinder gentler more self-aware world.
@Sallie McKenna
So you can dispense with the telephone, the automobile, air travel, computers, etc., etc. and basically return to the Stone Age.
For some reason I am reminded of this gem from Monty Python:
http://learningenglishcanbefun.com/monty-python-what-have-romans-ever-done-for-us/
3
@rella Can we simply dispense with social media, smart phones, and an app for every company?
1
Acting like men is hard for women, so men should act like women instead.
8
Be our guest, you first.
Sure. Nothing world-threatening there, I don't think.
But the fact is that a lot of men's pushiness and overassertiveness comes from, and is bolstered by, their tendency to be physically bigger and stronger. You don't have to go around actually hitting people to get the benefits of that - just ask any sub-beta male. The threat doesn't have to be made explicit to be intimidating. It's always potentially there.
Look at male bullying taken to an extrerne in Islamic countries.
I suppose, ideally, male non-jerks would stand up to the bullies. Or possibly there'd be a campaign for women not to breed with them, gradually eliminating them from the gene pool. A bit long term though, if it could even work.
1
“Overassertiveness in men”...no, that’s called aggression.
4
Haven't men been feminized enough by modern society?? Where does this end? Do men have to actually castrate themselves to placate the feminists?? Enough already. Being a strong, tough man is something to be admired and not demeaned. Men fight wars. Men are protectors of their families and in many cases providers as well. Here's to letting men be men. And BTW I am a woman who misses the days when men were men.
6
Bully for you. I would love to see how well all these tough manly men you mythologize about would handle things like menstruation, labor/childbirth, domestic violence, abandonment by partners who leave them to fend for themselves while caring for multiple children—I could go on and on. Yes, there are many strong, protective men in the world. But there are also plenty of women who’ve earned their own form of combat pay—but the men in charge fail to see it that way.
2
@K. Edwards "Haven't men been feminized enough by modern society?? Where does this end?"
With women wondering where all the good men have gone.
Baseball is about a stick and a rock.
5
Confused- I thought medicine was a STEM career?
2
"Sell the female standard as the norm."
This is as funny as heck.
Women, having tried to ape men and failing, now want us to ape them so we can fail too. But then we'll all be equal.
Oh joy!
4
Wonderful.
Ruth, you lost me on "mansplaining." This word is a sexist slur, try not to be that way.
I was born a man, have always been a man.
8
Imagine if you were a boy who was forced to read your article. Let me restate it clearly: We want you to be less assertive, to apologize more often, to defer to powerful women and to "lean out." After you have learned to do that, we won't give you a good job or a promotion. You will serve women, but no one will marry you. No one wants to marry a loser.
13
@ColorsofAutumn Losers are the ones left behind because they are closed-minded and threatened by women, and not because they dare to adopt feminine qualities. Things are just not that black and white. So before you speak for someone’s preference of whom to marry, perhaps realize that your comment is misguided.
I don’t get it - actually I do - centuries of conditioning - why are feminine qualities bad? Understanding, cooperation, empathy, and the desire to be heard are just signs of good character and maturity. Possessing those attributes doesn’t make someone a loser. Civilization wouldn’t have survived this long and we wouldn’t have won wars without cooperation and empathy. Sadly, those traits seem to be dwindling.
3
"But really, isn’t a person with a “high threshold of what constitutes offensive behavior” just a fancy name for a jerk?" Quote of the year...
7
My “Women Studies” Class In 1982 had a phrase I rarely hear when solutions for a more equitable life between genders:"Female Dominated Child Rearing ". I still see nothing suggesting we go there. It’s always a zero sum game in the area traditionally favoring men. Lets open the dialogue to include all of a life. I do dishes, laundry, cat barf,baby butts, cook, etcetera, still I’m portrayed as a silly “Homer”. I would have loved to have been able to stay home with my twin boys when they were brand new.
4
Yes, yes!
-white straight male, 53.
4
Let’s tell all humans to do whatever works best for them. There are no rules — you can be aggressive one day and modest the next. Trying to put everyone in a narrative is just a certain type of narrative grift to sell books.
I prefer to think of men and women as two sides of the same coin, working together to achieve success. Not all houses are built the same, because every house has a different purpose in life.
6
@Jaime Q
Spot on! 100% in agreement with this comment.
The author states:
"As long as the threat of emasculation is a baseline terror for men, encouraging them to act more like women still instinctively feels like a form of humiliation."
...and it always will!
While there is a great deal of overlap in a Venn diagram of gender behavior, the idea that gender is strictly a social construct is pure ideology, or, as the writer I.F. Stone once said, "the triumph of cherished belief over observable fact."
I know what any farmer can tell you: never put the more than one stallion out with the mares or they will kill one another or the people trying to handle them. That is why we geld most, for their safety and ours. Horses have little pre-frontal cortex to allow them to believe in anything so abstract as "gender constructs."
Fortunately, humans do have the capacity for abstract thought, and that makes possible the idea of the "gentleman," who has been trained (yes trained) to regulate his natural impulses. Think B. F. Skinner and self-control! Chivalry and all that, so we men do not have to become eunuchs to preserve social order.
But trying to turn the average little boy into the average little girl is a fool's errand, and modern feminism's insistence on doing so is both ahistoric and unscientific.
Allowing for great individual variations (I, for example, am gay), the tragedy in trying to turn boys into girls is that those boys are shamed twice, once for being what they are, and again for failing to become what they can never be.
10
@D I Shaw
Apparently some boys are not being "trained to regulate [their] natural impulses" or we wouldn't have fraternity boys (and Supreme Court justices) thinking it's perfectly OK to assault young women.
4
Many vary valid points here, but "lean-in" is not a synonym assertiveness. I always took "lean-in to mean throw yourself into your work, put in the best effort, ask for more challenging assignments and demonstrate your worth. Assertiveness is only a small piece of that, if any.
That is a bunch of garbage too of course and simply results in more work and less life-balance, without many rewards.
I lean-out at work. I do well and put in effort on the work I do have but I never ask for extra, even if I have down time. Recently I was still identified as a top-performer and given a raise out of the blue without asking for one. Many of my male colleagues who "lean-in" and take on heavy workloads and answer emails all weekend are not going anywhere despite those efforts, because the results are not impressive.
My philosophy is to use my skills well at work but also to guard my work-life balance jealously and to not be afraid of being assertive by saying "no" more often.
6
This is so brilliant and bullseye, right on target. My memory may be wrong, but I seem to recall that in the first episode of House of Cards (in 2013), Clare Underwood told someone, “My husband never apologizes.” And I thought, that’s interesting - neither does mine. We’re divorced now. But I am patiently, persistently and gently trying to steer my three sons - late teens, early 20s - to a paradigm shift - a different way of talking to, treating and thinking about women. And being willing to accept in themselves feelings and behavior they were not modeled and were told were feminine (which was a bad thing). I hope it works. Thank you for this article.
313
@BPierce I'm divorced from that guy, too! I once asked him if he ever apologized. He considered it thoughtfully and said "not that I can recall, but if I were wrong, I would." Geez.
50
@BPierce and @mbhebert
Be gentle in your evaluation of that guy. I'm female and I never apologize either. Why? Because in the family I grew up in, apologizing was seen as weakness, and the person apologized to would pounce on it every time. Your husbands may have grown up in the same sort of environment, in which he must never admit to being wrong, because the person in power would then take it out on him.
15
@Nikki I think the 45th president grew up with the same family dynamic. The fortunate thing is that we can be self-reflective and make changes to ourselves. I grew up with a different dynamic where I felt I needed to apologize for things that were just regular existence and uptalk to make all my statements questions. I agree with the article that "female" attributes such as patience, empathy, and consideration of others should be valued more, but also think the reality is the full spectrum of attributes are useful for different situations.
8
How delusional and overly-safe and over-protected and privileged your life must be to think that making everyone weaker and gentler will result in a better world? Competition exists whether you like it or not.
8
there's nothing wrong with being gentler or encouraging men to be more aware of their behavior. the traits the author describes are not weaknesses. it's possible to be competitive without being obnoxious or a jerk.
7
As an introverted man, I've had to learn to become more assertive in the workplace. There are many women colleagues that are naturally more assertive than me. Stop making everything about men vs. women.
12
I have no intention of following any of the advice in this column, for myself, for my daughter, or for my son.
It's rank nonsense.
8
Thank you, Ms. Whippman.
2
Since my first daughter was born 5 years ago, I’ve had some friends and family that are adamant about not giving her anything pink, frilly, or otherwise girly. But why? She looks great in pink, loves frilly dresses, and love dolls and glitter and all the rest. Yet these friends and relatives insist on getting her gender-neutral clothes, trucks, and anything “boy”.
Why is being girlie bad? I certainly wouldn’t force it on her, but I’m not going to tell her it’s bad either. Pink it up!!
6
@Itsy I think you missed the point.
Get the kid what she wants.
1
We certainly need more men teachers, but we will have to pay teachers more. This is good.
5
If you are a pedestrian hit by a car in the crosswalk, and break your leg, it is not demeaning or victim-blaming to tell you to go to medical treatment and physical therapy. You don’t have to be morally deficient or culpable for the wreck to take responsibility for what you can control. Make the best of your situation. Use your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses. Man up, we say to our boys. If you want to be treated just like men do in the workplace, enough with the special pleading. Perform. Win. If your feminine values make for a better organization, build it, lead it, profit, prosper, and leave the knuckle dragging men in the dust.
Now, if you want to be treated differently, and appreciated in a different way for a differentiated set of contributions? Well, we are going to have to find a new feminism for that, one that acknowledges equality of value, inequality of outcome, and inherent differences between men and women that demand respect.
1
What a fantastic article. Thank you, Ruth Whippman, for articulating this reality which is such a pervasive reality that it's hard to even see.
7
I feel the message is valid but could have been presented better.
Men are not women. Women are not men. Rather than acting like each other, the key is to understand each other and treat each other with respect.
3
@Iman Azol You completely missed the point.
Rather than lean in or lean out, perhaps we can teach our children and ourselves to practice active listening. To practice active listening is to take your ego out of the conversation and by default, provide an ear filled with empathy. And the best part, if we are listening, we are not interrupting.
4
The author makes a good case for encouraging men to apologize more. If Judge Kavanaugh had simply said, “You know, like many I drank a lot in my student days. As a result there are some gaps in my memory. Dr. Ford, if I did what you say I did, I AM DEEPLY SORRY.” How different -- and healing -- the conversation could have been. Instead he lashed out at her.
18
Overall, I agree with Ruth Whippman. However, she seems to be confusing aggression with assertion, which is an aspect of emotional intelligence. Deference is another aspect of emotional intelligence because it involves humility. Overconfidence is a form of lack of self-awareness and self-awareness is the very foundation of emotional intelligence.
While I agree with Whippman regarding the importance of apologies, she’s lumping all types of apologies together and that’s inaccurate. There are different types of apologies and each type has a different meaning. The different types of apologies we discussed were as follows: (1) Regret Apology; (2) Remorse Apology; (3) Social Harmony/Empathy Apology; and (4) Harmless Error Apology. Apologies differ, depending upon whether or not the person apologizing believes the hurtful behavior was wrong and whether they acknowledge that their behavior injured another. Unfortunately, it’s true that there is apparently an anti-apologizing crusade and that many people have jumped onboard. However, not all apologies mean what she says.
In any event, what I understand Whippman to be saying is that women (as a group) tend to be more emotionally intelligent than men (as a group) and that the world would be a far better place if more men worked on developing their emotional intelligence. Replacing assertion with aggression, all of the qualities Whippman desires are related to emotional intelligence.
4
I worked for years as a civilian with the Marine Corps. I would frequently be the only woman at the conference table with colonels and corporals. I was always, always treated with respect. When a question rose in my area of expertise, all eyes turned in my direction and after I responded, whatever I advised happened. No equivocation, no second-guessing.
I was able to function with autonomy and authority. I am not complaining but I know I wasn't treated the way they treated each other. I guess I wanted to be 'one of the guys.' Was that wrong?
6
Ok, so on the one hand: this is a refreshing Gestalt-shift, for the duration of the article. But on the other: there's rather more heat than light. Irritated by the continuation of patriarchal norms by other means? Okay, check, we get it. But simply inverting a toxic norm is not going to result in something more nuanced, or functional. How about, first, we acknowledge that assertiveness and conciliation are both behaviors we evolved for good reasons, and ask what they help us do, and from that what their best scope of application is? It might turn out that they are more sensibly contextualized by problem to be solved rather than along gender lines. Is doing the right thing unpopular in your social group? Be assertive. Has a member of your group been injured by your action? Conciliate. This is really not so hard.
Taking the issue of an assertiveness norm more seriously could mean having a more democratized power structure in organizations rather than (or somehow hybridized with) a top down hierarchy (which I suppose inherently promotes individual assertiveness over coalition-building).
It requires an insistently charitable reading, but I'd like to think the author might agree that boys need to learn when and why to restrain themselves and apologize -as much as- girls need to learn when and why to be assertive...whatever their personal inclinations. But if that was the message, a sensible signal got buried under all the snark & flip-the-script noise.
6
There was a mention in an earlier comment about being a gentleman. Your comment describes part of what that means. Thank you. Another word I had hoped to see was civilized, missed it so far. Maybe we could even introduce respect, but that seems to be mentioned only when someone is complaining about not getting it. Oh well, descended into snarkasm, but not apologizing.
1
Okay, contemporary Feminist writers - you keep re-inventing the wheel. Back in the Seventies, we radical Feminists thought we could teach men how they were being oppressed and then all of us would go forward into a divinely neutral and anti-capitalist future. Do I need to write more???
3
@Mary Sojourner If it sounds like we're a broken record it's because things haven't changed enough. Would you actually advocate that these points are not worth making? Still relevant.
2
@Betty ,
Yes, we Second Wave feminists did the best we could. But women in every generation after us should continue fighting this fight. I have a 30 yr old daughter who has recently taken a tenure track professorship in a male dominated field. She used to joke about my "feminist rants" when she was a kid. No more. She has seen some of what I was talking about, 45 years later, and knows I was speaking about far more than "rants". But this Second Wave feminist supports all of you young women.
3
@Orion Clemens Thank you. Perhaps it is time for us to also take a close look at who makes money off misogyny; and who makes money by keeping their mouths shut.
1
This column is mostly right on. But we need to be sure that we don't conflate characteristics that are seen as "male," and that men are rewarded for exhibiting, as inherently male, any more than pink is inherently female. There are plenty of men who worry too much and love too much and think too much. Most of us, however, bury these things and find they are expressed in different ways. Like our fellow humans of the opposite sex, we've been taught well through a powerful incentive system. Opening up the lens on what it means to be human for everyone is more important than trying to "balance" these supposed "male" and "female" qualities. Women in power can be just as self-aggrandizing and abusive as men, because those things are human qualities. Woman can lie, cheat, and steal just like men. And why not, they're humans! Nurturing and caring don't have to be "female" qualities, based on some mythical difference between hunters and mothers. We can choose to learn and grow. We can find parts of ourselves that society tells us to hide. We can see each other and respect each other as individuals, not mere representatives of our gender.
4
There is another side to this story. It is described in the documentary movie "The Red Pill" which can be viewed on Amazon Prime.
2
Exactly what we need: more women telling men to stop being men and start being women.
4
Adjusted gender pay gap is ~2%. Payscale.com/data/gender-pay-gap. This survey, if anything, is biased in favor of finding a gender pay gap. Sexism in the workplace is real and it is a widespread problem. The author is being intentionally provacative, and rightly so. So-called "feminine" values are underappreciated in the workplace. There's plenty of common ground that we need not continue to pedal lies.
3
YES, indeed! A quality missing from so many of our leaders today is HUMILITY. The best leader is one who understands that they are eminently replaceable, and works hard for the benefit of all who depend on them. When I look at our so-called leaders...people like the POTUS, other (mostly male) elected representatives, corporate pirates like Jamie Dimon, one thing they have in common in arrogance/hubris. Never held accountable, never admitting mistakes...that's the last thing you want in a true leader. Excellent piece, Ms. Whippman!
4
I don't expect this to get through, I think women review these.
More than half of educated white women in this country voted for as an anti-female a person as was likely to be found.
It appears to the casual observer that these women care nothing at all about any of the issues enumerated.
It appears they want to be told how they must be and sacrifice control of their bodies to people who don't know a thing.
Everything written here is laughable. Until women are willing to really take account for themselves equality will evade them. Because equality is taken not requested
3
Amen. I have been saying this for years. Men, stand down already.
3
How about women , stand up.
Another amusing attempt to use current buzz words and imagined gender stereotypes to support the trendy belief that the problem for all women is male enforced hierarchy.
7
Just another woman telling men that they are generally just wrong and ordering them to change. Tuning out.
8
Fun fact-this is what first-wave feminism was about.
Let us all remember that women are “leaning in” because they are rewarded for it - with money, power, etc. Women typically don’t “self-improve”, to ape the usage from the author, simply out of social pressure. The author is positing men are forced to do things they don’t want to do. Feminism is that about forcing women, as far as I can tell; it’s about inspiring. feel free to inspire men to be deferential and “good listeners“, but shaming and cajoling men to act more like women hasn’t worked yet, and I doubt it will work now.
2
I admit to disagreeing in an often-knee-jerk fashion with anyone that identifies as a feminist. I will not apologize, and I am not likely to change my ways.
The shrill, abortion loving, promiscuous, loudmouth, pink hat political ladies that think there is something wrong with men need to look in the mirror. The ones who want to use government or business policies to coerce men outside their own family are even worse. At the very bottom of the heap are the male toadies who kowtow to feminists - in and out of the bedroom, and in the state legislatures. Mandatory employee sex indoctrination is worse than China.
If being a feminist is good for women, the opposite of feminist – a masculinist, should be good for men. It is not. Men are diverse and just fine with their diversity. Some apologize a lot and others don’t. Some like football and others spend too much time writing comments to the New York Times. It is women that are divided between feminist and non-feminist, Trump haters and Trump-supporters, good mothers and bad.
All men have a right to procreate and become head of their family. Feminists are making that harder everyday and it is reflected in the dismal marriage statistics. At the President’s State of the Union Address, the white clad feminists amazingly stood and cheered for President Trump when he announced that women were getting 57% of all new jobs. Somehow, I heard them cheering that young men were only getting 43% of the jobs.
6
Well, speaking as a mother of a young son who spends much of his day in a place where what Ms. Whippman calls “female norms and standards” generally prevail - it’s called elementary school - I have to say, I would not say promoting those “female” values as more to be aspired to is any more of an answer. For girls and boys.
6
We’re inching our way toward a time when all personality styles are ok.
2
I'm no incel or men's rights lunatic, but rarely in my over half-century as a heterosexual male have I noticed women over-apologizing. Women, like men, also lie, cheat, start wars, throw their weight around, manipulate, etc., et al and so on. I'm in the music racket and I can tell you horror stories about some very successful women managers and publicists.
There's undoubtedly a social imbalance, there's sexism and misogyny. But women are as eminently capable of being as problematic as men. There's a phrase for this -- it's called being human.
13
At first I thought, "Oh no, another one of THOSE op-eds..."
Then at the end, I realized this has been one of the most thought provoking perspectives on this subject that I've read in a long time. So obvious, yet so....never spoken.
Ms Whippman has stirred the pot really well with this one.
5
All this sounds like is a woman who has an unadressed problem with men on a personal and emotional level.
7
@Rnady in Brussels
All this sounds like a man who has an unaddressed problem of projecting his unresolved issues onto women on a personal and emotional level.
6
@Ruby kudos!
Yet another article treating both women and men as though they were monolithic groups.
It's just as wrong and harmful as when the same false narrative is based on skin color.
8
Gee. I'd be happy if serving staff stopped saying "Hi Guys" to me and my female friends. That'd by a start.
Imagine servers saying to 4 men and 1 woman, "Hi Gals!"
And btw if someone has a "guys night out" -- it does not include women.
So let's just use the word "folks". "Hi folks" is fine.
2
Re: "Ruth Whippman, the author of “America the Anxious,” is working on a book about raising boys"--when you write that book, incorporating the great comments here, I'll give it to every male and every parent I can!
Ruth Whippman? Whats in a name, but am I the only one to notice her last name? Whip man? Are you Kidding me?
There's a reason boys don't like apologizing. They don't like being told what to do and neither do men. Boys are not malfunctioning girls and should not be treated as such.
4
@JoeG - that is a stretch, picking on a surname.
“There is a reason boys don’t like apologizing.” Not talking about boys. Men at home with themselves don’t see apologizing as a sign of weakness. Boys shouldn’t either. Stubbornness and rigidity are signs of weakness.
“There is a reason they don’t like being told what to do.” Yes, it is because they often think they know better than women, which is the entire point of the article. Thinking that womens’ progress comes at the cost of men’s “strength” is pretty ignorant. Listening to different perspectives and not assuming you’re the smartest person in the room should not be threatening.
“Malfunctioning girls” Not even sure what this means. Talking about grown-ups here. Women (or girls) with opinions aren’t malfunctioning, quite the opposite.
Amazing how the men who dismiss discussions like this one in such an immaturely reductive way think they look tough and strong. You are just outing your extreme insecurity and fear. I feel sorry for you.
Why are men so scared of women’s voices? Boggles the mind.
Everything in this article—and I do mean everything—consists of sweeping generalization and evidence-free assertion amounting to stereotyping of both men and women. “A fundamental unwillingness of men to apologize”? Really? Where’s the evidence? The article is more a window onto the writer's tortured mind than a convincing account of reality.
11
@Ed Of course she uses generalizations. What kind of statement could she make detailing each and every kind of male and female? What type of evidence would you like? This isn't a trial. It's an opinion based on life experiences and observations of generalities about men and women. How do you get a "tortured mind" from this? Seems you may be making a generalization that all feminists must be "crazy women". You may want to come up with a more compelling argument next time.
4
@Ed. Ask any woman who has had a relationship with a man, worked with a man, been on a subway with a man, etc. They will give testimony to something you call an over generalization. Men generally do not defer to women. Women are constantly underestimated by over-confident men who see nothing to apologize for when they are dismissive. So they don’t apologize.
There have also been many studies on this particular issue and they have corroborated the evidence, time and time again. Men apologize less often.
4
i am so sick of being considered "angry" when expressing an alternative opinion
11
Best part is, once all this gender (re) engineering is accomplished to everyone’s satisfaction it won’t matter. Unless they need it on the new planet we’ll all have moved to, by then.
2
ME TOO! Brava, Whippman!
1
That the female gender persons would seek relevance that are attributed to male gender person mean that there are jinx and boundaries that such female gender activists want to break. Why seek readjustment if nature has bestowed the female gender these level attributes of men?. Its a natural thing for men to behave like men, and women like women. I could perceive in my instinct you are contemplating the fact that the male gender persons don't own the right of any behavioural trait that shows superiority, well, let me reiterate, it is what nature endorses.
1
why not start with turkey apologizing to the kurds, and vice versa? and tehran apologizing to riyadh, and vice versa?
lean out? why not stand down?
but the tribal, ethnic and religious-based animosities and violence and (mostly male, mostly undemocratic) leaders tend to get in the way.
then there is that burqa/hijab thing.
3
If you don’t know that nursing is STEM....
5
Men and women are different.
3
Thank you for this!
“Lean In” is the #1 most nauseating phrase of the past 50 tears. Makes my gorge rise.
3
So men should be copies of women - No I don't think so.
4
imagine being an introverted timid boy who could improve himself by becoming more assertive and confident but is told by feminists that on the basis of his sex he needs to cringe over his existence even more. the author of this article is more interested in “feminizing” men than in improving human beings.
7
imagine being an introverted timid boy who could improve himself by becoming more assertive and confident but is told by feminists that on the basis of his sex he needs to cringe over his existence even more. the author of this article is more interested in “feminizing” men than in improving human beings.
4
I hate all the self-help books specifically geared to women. I hate when I hear of courses such as 'Financial Planning for Women' or 'Car Repair for Women' (as if to imply that women need special handling or to be spoken to in a different manner_? I also hate therefore that so many women fall for this, and actually buy such lame books, or sign up for such courses.
I also hate that so many groups which were created out of a care or concern for children and youth have 'Mother' in the name, as in 'Mothers for Gun Control' or 'Mothers against Drunk Driving'.... as if to imply that only mothers care...and/or that dads simply don't care quite 'as much' as mothers? Oh sure, the group founders will say that dads are always 'welcome', but the very fact that their group names only mention 'mothers', speaks volumes. Otherwise, why not name the group 'Parents for or against this or that....'?
Often, women are their own worst enemies, perpetuating sexist beliefs about themselves vs men.
4
@Lisa - this is about the presumed exalted status and infallibility of the matriarch - particularly things like MADD. Note, there is no matriarchy.
1
@ James, Toronto, CANADA.
I have little doubt that many of the men I have had the displeasure of working with over the years, failed kindergarten.
3
@M.J.A.
If they were schooled separately would it be so?
1
Doing the hokey-pokey here, Boss.
1
Waiting for an essay in this paper by an incel/MGTOW type moaning about how women are just not going out of their way to please him or other men like him and about how women are too demanding for incles like him who live in their mom's basement.
I just hope that the author will not be one of the boys raised in the way *this* author would recommend.
2
THANK YOU for this.
MLK asked us to judge people by the content of their character. Today's woke leftist judges people en masse by their race or gender. Irony is not a strong enough word.
4
@Teal
“Woke” definition: alert to injustice in society, especially racism.
Injustice must be a-ok with you. Justice is so darn offensive!!
“leftist” I remember a time before name-calling like this wasn’t just an easy way to pit “us” against “them.”
Quoting MLK - now THAT is irony, considering he is a prime example of wokeness (see definition above.”
I've been waiting for this! Thank you. All that lean-in, be assertive, ask away -- come on, really???? Starts with being yourself.
Sigh. Male commenters saying “But not all men!” - please catch up. Your knee-jerk responses were played out 2 years ago, completely miss the point & are their own problem. You may mean well, but you wind up sounding clueless & defensive. Same with the “please don’t over generalize” folks. You miss the point.
This article isn’t about the sensitive guys who don’t act like jerks. You’re not on trial, so relax. The problem is the men (& some women) whose egos have run amok. The toxins seeped into our collective consciousness & belief systems. More of a superiority & entitlement problem. The false belief that those who aren’t like them are “less than.” Women, LGBTQ, people of color.
The issue is that many enlightened men aren’t as enlightened as they thought. So many men were shocked to find out what women have experienced for millennia. That most of, if not all, women they know have been sexually harassed or assaulted. How could they not know? Because women have been aware forever that speaking up about what has happened to them is usually met with punishment or discrimination towards them. Something that is uncomfortable for men to hear is damaging to women. Women want change. Good guys: understand you, too, have internalized the toxicity & were unaware. Toxic masculinity is real and sometimes dangerous.
The article is but a fraction of the complex, evolving conversation about gender discrimination & bias. We played by your rules forever. Be open to ours. THAT is the point.
5
Bravo!!!! Best read in a long time!!!!
3
how about we all just be humans and quit the gender games in general.
4
Can't I just lean back?
2
I just loved this whole article. I read it twice! Thank you, Ruth Whippman!!!!
1
How about the possibility of positive assertiveness in all, independent of gender?
Women raise both boys girls. My mother (mother of 5) observed: “Mothers worldwide hold incredible, untapped power in shaping equality, shaping perceptions, shaping the foundations of self-worth and assertiveness.” We might not yet be ready to tap into all that power, but we are getting there. It might take several generations, and some vicious backlashes of misogyny. But we will get there.
1
Ms. Whippman: I get that promoting a "lean out" culture has its benefits. But it can also lead to groupthink, which can lead to, among other things: Vietnam, Iraq, the financial crisis, and the 737 Max. Assertiveness and Accommodation are only tools you should have in your toolbox. Knowing when to use them depends on tactical and strategic wisdom, based on the particular organization, person, and situation you're dealing with. But this is much harder to explain, teach, and learn than simple bromides.
1
I keep coming back to the writings of Brene Brown. Men would benefit from reading her thoughts on this subject. “Dare to Lead” is a good start:
Brown states:
“Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential.
When we dare to lead, we don’t pretend to have the right answers; we stay curious and ask the right questions. We don’t see power as finite and hoard it; we know that power becomes infinite when we share it with others. We don’t avoid difficult conversations and situations; we lean into vulnerability when it’s necessary to do good work.”
Here she uses “lean in” in a different way. Not “lean into” the past and current system of endless striving. Lean into vulnerability and openness, cooperation, and ditch the pathological need to one-up everyone else.
More suggestions: “Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead,” and “The Power if Vulnerability: Teachings on Authenticity, Connection and Courage.”
Now before commenters go off on how these are fluffy self-help books, understand that Brown has studied these subjects for a quarter of a century. She knows her stuff. The content is relevant to men and women. Basically anyone open to new perspectives.
4
I don’t think Womens assertiveness and men’s inability to pipe down are mutually exclusive. I think women have every right to take up more space. I do think we should teach our boys to lean out, but until they grow old enough to be in the board room, empowerment and assertiveness is the name of the game!
1
Sorry ladies, the working world is one of competition. Men are generally more aggressive than women, and in our culture a man’s entire identity, status and self worth are based on his career. That’s why there’s a pay gap. Deference is a wonderful quality in life but it doesn’t work very well when you’re trying to get ahead.
4
@Max can’t tell if this is a sarcastic comment but you left out “ so sit back and take it.” The entire point of the article is that is ONE way society can be. We tried it for a long,long, long time. Look where it has gotten us. Now let’s give another way a try. If you can’t digest “leaning out” then kindly try bending once in awhile.
4
A lot of people are bristling at the author's embrace of "male" and "female" gender roles, but I don't think that's her point. The fact remains that we live in a world where these roles exist and they condition our experience. If you haven't ever felt that, well you are fortunate but you are also a genuine exception. For most of us, though, they are a daily part of existence even if we know that they are not fully accurate.
9
Interestingly, if men did choose one traditionally female profession -- elementary school teaching -- then we know boys would be less likely to be pushed to the margins in school because of perceived behavior problems. Studies show this -- that male elementary teachers help with boys' performance, and it's particularly true of young men of color. Here's the problem, though: men who would make great elementary school teachers often don't choose that profession because it doesn't pay enough.
I'd suggest an alternative to the author's thesis: we can tell men to be kinder and less assertive, but we should also start paying female-dominated fields (childcare, nursing, teaching) more competitively. Women would do better financially, giving them more leverage in the workplace, and men would be more willing to pick nurturing fields, where their presence is important as well.
12
Wonderful. An apology needs four things:
1. What I did, at some point the pronoun "I" and the word "wrong" as an adjective/noun/adverb/verb (preferably all four).
2. How I think it must have affected you.
3. What I will do to make amends.
4. All said with words and body language of contrition. In frank terms--I truly mean it.
It took me a long, long time to learn this and I still can't get the four parts right, but I am better than I once was.
4
@Mike Good for you. A real apology does not start with “I am sorry that you....” That relinquishes the “apologizer” of any wrong-doing.
Sincere apologies are hard for everyone. But men in particular are hard-pressed to fathom how some behaviors the perpetrate are truly offensive. If a man doesn’t think he did anything wrong when he actually did, where is there to go?
Bravo!
The whole "lean in" obsession made me crazy - pushing women to be more like men and overlooking individual variation within each group and the overarching structural gender power dynamics that you describe. (And it's worth a mention that Sandberg, author of "Lean In" turned out to be a pretty disappointing role model!)
Your comments about freeing men from the constraints imposed on them jibe with many men I know who are painfully aware of what they've missed or felt denied of in an overly machoistic masculinity.
With gender fluidity/continuum becoming more widely understood, there's more hope that people will rethink the overly simplistic binary categories that aren't even relevant to self-identified "women" and "men" let alone those who don't see themselves in those categories.
Come on guys - wake up to the larger possibility that awaits you by "leaning out."
349
@Dee Frank About Sandberg: If you're going to 'lean in' what you lean in about is important.
2
I began practicing law in the 1970's. I'm female and an ethnic minority. When I tell young women about the kinds of comments and treatment I received for the first 15 years of my practice, they are shocked. They have no idea what men's "every day" conduct was like then -- sexist and humiliating conduct that we women were simply told to "put up with".
The number of sexist comments I received from male lawyers, and even some judges, were too numerous to count after my first year of practice. But going a week without such comments would have been considered unusual.
An older male at a law firm where I worked in the late 70's made a habit of grabbing my behind whenever he saw me. I made the error of reporting him to human resources. The result of my reporting this? I wasn't a "team player".
This column touches on many of the issues I faced. As a litigator, I had to be aggressive, but not too aggressive. I had to be personable, but not "too nice". In essence, I had to walk an extremely narrow tightrope all those years, just to be able to do my job -- a tightrope that men have no idea even exists.
The "just right" Goldilocks measure is forced on all women who enter male dominated professions. We cannot be too much, or too little of one trait or another. We know this. We pay the price when others have found us not to be "just right".
849
@Orion Clemens - How exactly do you know that men don't also have narrowly-defined expectations from their work leadership?
8
No doubt they do, Steve, but I doubt men have anything like the degree of gender based/biased expectations addressed in this article.
79
@B The kind of abuse that males inflict on males is sometimes very severe. For example: direct head-on attacks replete with demeaning words and expletives. The traditional male-dominated work culture never allowed such behavior towards women. It was considered "unmanly". Even today such explicit aggressions are mostly directed at men and rarely at women. The dynamics of power dominance submission and such are far more intense and vicious among men.
14
Wouldn't it be lovely if all behaviors weren't seen as "male" or "female," "high value" or "low value," but simply as "appropriate" or "inappropriate" to the situation? Sometimes assertiveness is appropriate. Sometimes deference is. Both should be equally valued, because both play a role in the success of the enterprise, whatever it is. If you're an assertive person, you get the jobs that require that, if you're a collaborative person, you get the jobs that require that, and both jobs are paid as if they both contribute equally to the success of the company or group - because they both do. Just some thoughts I've long held as an old-school feminist.
7
I worked at a female dominated insurance company before retiring in 2007. My supervisors and managers were all highly competent leaders who knew how to listen, lead and problem solve. I thought I had died and gone to career heaven. The workforce was approximately 75% female and 25% male. The men who worked there acted like men I had worked with before initially..then, over time, they saw how the cultural workplace they were in was different from the professional environments they came from. And they flourished. We all did. My work was well compensated but the work environment was just mentally healthier and more conducive to achieving a work life balance. No one needed to lean in or out....it was just sensed over time how to treat each other. Respect, courtesy, dignity and humor...
1041
@Harley Leiber
I agree. All of my best bosses have been great female leaders because of their high emotional intelligence along with their superior technical skills. No bravado or posturing, empathetic, and assertive. None of men I've reported to have even come close to these women.
103
@Heather Leiber
Yes, your experience exemplifies the author’s statement that,
“Promoting qualities such as deference, humility, cooperation and listening skills will benefit not only women but also businesses, politics and even men themselves, freeing them from the constant and exhausting expectation to perform a grandstanding masculinity, even when they feel insecure or unsure.”
It’s a positive for everyone to have a more balanced workplace communication style.
42
@Harley Leiber So what you're saying is the men adapted to the environment and didn't expect everyone else to change for them. Imagine that.
60
Ms. Whippman needs to investigate her own sexism.
Assertiveness is not a male characteristic or a female characteristic, it is a human characteristic. Some men are assertive, others are not; some women are assertive others are not. And all assertiveness is place and time specific; there are times when assertiveness serves and times where it is perceived as inappropriate. Truly, the skill is not simply being assertive, it is being assertive at the right time and place. (its not just asking for a raise, but asking for a raise in the right time and in the right way)
The characteristics that society rewards are varied and context specific; women who wish to succeed in a context where assertiveness and risk taking are rewarded, need to be assertive and willing to take risks. If that is not their calling, there are contexts where collaboration and introspective work are rewarded.
Pushing women and girls (or men and boys) into inappropriate contexts for their personalities is a poor effort at social engineering.
206
@OneView
"there are contexts where collaboration and introspection are rewarded".....
Oh really!? And just how frequent are these and how well-rewarded are they compared to the "assertiveness" contexts?
I think that was the point.
And many, perhaps most, girls and boys are pushed into "inappropriate" contexts from birth.
80
@OneView "The characteristics that society rewards are varied and context specific; women who wish to succeed in a context where assertiveness and risk taking are rewarded, need to be assertive and willing to take risks. If that is not their calling, there are contexts where collaboration and introspective work are rewarded."
The point was not that women are never assertive and that men never unassertive; the point is that men are encouraged to be assertive and women are encouraged to behave more like men. That's not sexist: it's an accurate observation about our cultural climate. Let me guess, too, that you have never had the experience of trying to assert yourself only to find that your femaleness made that a liability for you. If you did you wouldn't be able to presume the neutral status quo you describe in your comment.
50
You missed the whole point of the Author's assertion. It's not about competition, but what traits are valued as good vs what is considered undesirable. Read it again.
47
Let me tell you, it’s tiring being a guy. Aggression is a waste of energy unless you’re going to take your neighbor’s food or territory. The stereotype hidden in the prose is unfortunate, as I’m not so sure that women, as a class, are any “nicer” than men, but I’d agree that the whole world would be better off if we were more polite to one another. I’m happy to let women lead on that one. By the way, fellas, part of being strong is to follow courageously.
13
Every gender discussion seems to be focused on stereotypes. There are general differences between men and women that go beyond anatomy, but there are plenty of exceptions to these generalities. I don't think we will ever eliminate the words him and her from our vocabulary because both men and women are so hopelessly attracted to these differences. I've had a lot of female bosses in my career and in the end I detected no real differences from the way they managed from the men.....and this includes a tendency toward sexual abuse of their chosen underlings. Once they assumed those roles they acted just like the men who filled those roles before them. The job defines the person far more than the gender. This is what we call class and in the end most people are more loyal to their family, their tribe and their class than they are to their gender.
2
I've been a pretty non-assertive male my whole life, a feminist married to a wonderful ladyboss. But I must confess, reading this made me want to say: "lean in, lean out--how about you just back off?"
4
Yes! It's long past time for this. I am so beyond tired of "like a girl" being an insult. I am tired of men who act like it's OUR problem if we get upset about their boorish and sexist comments and behavior. I'm tired of seeing our institutions, like the military, and especially the executive and legislative branches of government, excuse and even encourage insensitive and daft conduct by their members. It's the root of homophobia and transphobia and hate crimes, sexual assault, bullying, and other forms of violence against both men and women, including actions that feed physical health problems like cardiovascular disease, mental health struggles and suicide. We need a more nurturing and accepting ethos. On this Coming Out Day, let's see traditionally masculine men bring their less assertive and aggressive nature out of the closet, that they've been forced to hide in ever since they started being acculturated to the gender police demands. It would be freeing for all of us.
6
All I know is, the world of public education is strongly designed against boys' finding ways to express their active, curious, competitive, team-joining selves without being shot down and compressed into treatment with various forms of amphetamine.
The other side of this equation is that men are slowly being selected out of education for offenses such as looking at women who - Sorry! - often DO dress in ways to encourage men to look at them as women.
I remember one time a young female teacher apologized to a young male teacher for accidentally flashing ''serious''' cleavage during a moment of correcting girls in a middle school hallway.
How many times across the country would that exact same event have found the man GONE and boys being stgrongly cautioned against looking at their role models as attractive?
Throughout history, hypocrisy has been the cause of endless conflicts, and today hypocrisy toward males in endemic in education.
2
You can say there is a wage gap 10k times but saying it over and over doesnt make it true. The academic evidence is overwhelming, have you looked? Or as an aside, for 25 years I have asked a simple question. " where you work do men make more than women?". I have never ever received a yes answer to this. Share with us specifically where this place is, since the disparity quoted for years and years , " 77 cents on the dollar, if true would be ubiquitous and everywhere we look yet where is it? When you repeat this falsehood you advertise that your information is " received" as opposed to discovered.
4
"As a rule, anything associated with girls or women — from the color pink to domestic labor — is by definition assigned a lower cultural value than things associated with boys or men." Um, not these days. Quite the opposite.
1
What an ill informed piece. I don't know what is more troubling, that it was published or that I see readers fawning over it.
1. On apologizing, here's the rule for men and women - Don't apologize for anything that isn't your fault or responsibility. I've met plenty of women who apologize as a verbal tick. It's so frequent that it loses all meaning. This is what is trying to be corrected with apps.
2. As far as men being overconfident, it is probably correct, we frequently write cheques our butts can't cash but that's coded in our DNA. We are hunter gathers, providers for our families. It required us to aim for high risk/high reward. It's how we passed our genetics on for millennia. Maybe you're not going to convince men to "lean out" and sit on the sidelines in one generation. Maybe that's a horrible idea all together come to think of it.
3. As far as encouraging women to take up STEM, sure have at it. Why do we need to encourage them? Here's the dirty little secret... not as many women want to write code as men do. Just like not as many men have interest in nursing.
However, on the topic of women in STEM, I'd like the author and many of the women's studies grads to embed themselves in a veterinary practice and observe a workplace that is 80-90% female. Then come back and tell us about the assertiveness, the obnoxious behaviour, and the competition amongst an entirely female staff. I think it might throw a wrench in some of these gender theories.
6
@Talbot Perhaps you’re the one who is uninformed? If so, it seems you’re in good company among many male commenters.
1. The problem with your theory on apologizing is that most men don’t realize when something actually IS their fault. The argument only works when men can admit they have erred and THEN apologize. The right way. Not “I’m sorry if...”, but “I am sorry for ...”. Yes, women do reflexively apologize. We were socialized to be aware of others’ needs before ours. It is no accident that there was going to be some backlash when we realized how pervasive (and usually unwarranted) our “sorrys” are.
2. Many men posture as overconfident even if they’re not. Truly confident men aren’t threatened by womens’ confidence, to the point that they need to over-project their own. As far as DNA - to a certain point, yes. The rest is socialization. Hunter-gatherer societies worked because women ran everything else while the men did their part. The whole was more important than the individual.
3. As to your dirty little secret - very uninformed. Data?
4. Ok. Veterinarians- a bit of a different setting than the succeed-at-any-cost office/corporate environment, but ok. Now, go to a hospital. Talk to any nurse, male or female. Male doctors, especially, are notoriously condescending to nurses who often know more than they do about a particular subject. A small vet’s office full of women with the negative qualities you portray: that’s on management.
1
Here’s some data you asked for: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/02/does-gender-equality-result-in-fewer-female-stem-grads
I know you just want to argue for your ideology at any cost but the facts aren’t on your side. Men and women are different. Boys and girls are different. And it’s not nearly as socially constructed as you want to believe. Both common sense and having both a daughter and son just reinforced this for me. My kids are exposed to the same toys, the same books and the same TV shows and yet the differences expressed even before age two without suggestions from adults are staggering. My daughter wants to draw, read books and play dress up in princess costumes and my son wants to play with trucks and make roaring engine noises. He is naturally far more aggressive than she was and she is naturally far more emotional and prone to caring for her stuffed animals than he is.
Furthermore I think you glossed over my point about a female dominated field like vet medicine by brushing it off as quaint and not as serious as human medicine. One might not realize it but these are multimillion dollar practices for the most part and they are owned and managed by - wait for it - women. These people have to be deadly smart to get a DVM and the competition in the field is not for the faint of heart. Again, like I said I’d LOVE for the gender studies crowd to embed themselves in this profession to see if their theories about women in the STEM workplace and femininity hold up.
1
Thank you for a wonderful article telling us once again how awful men are and oppressive society is toward women and, and, and ...
... And once again I am confirmed in my expectation that I will be voting for Donald Trump in 2020 despite my intense loathing for him. As destructive as he has been to our country, the stream of such articles in the Times absolving everyone except white heterosexual men of their faults I consider to be far worse. So, unfortunately: Go Donald Trump 2020!
1
@publicitus Me too! I'd much rather live in an autocratic state where white supremacists---emboldened by their white, heterosexually promiscuous president---are gunning people down in the streets on a regular basis, than having access to a free press that publishes articles I find annoying but that nobody forces me to read. I'll choose the destruction of our country and our democratic institutions any day over having someone who doesn't look like me or think like me peacefully express their opinions. I'll vote for someone whom I know is morally rotten to the core because, like him, I find it easier to follow my own basest instincts than to strive to be a better person. I'm fine with jeopardizing our very democracy, because as someone born and raised in the US of A I've never experienced true autocracy and have no idea how truly fragile democracy can be. I'll vote for someone who is in bed with the NRA and pays lip service to addressing gun violence, even if it means that one day my own child will be the victim of a school shooting. After all, unlike my kids, my pile of AR-15s don't need feeding and diaper changes.
Go Donald Trump 2020! MAGA!
7
@somebody Brilliant response. Bravo!
3
Maybe sometimes we see bad things because we are looking for bad things. When a man compliments a women and it’s called harassment that’s a bit to far.
3
@Tom W It really depends on the situation. A compliment about appearance from a boss to an employee is different from a compliment from employee to employee. Also, a general compliment such as "you're looking great today" is different from "you look really good in that skirt" or "those heals make your legs look very nice". An employee should not have to listen to specific and overly analyzing remarks about appearance from a boss. It creates an atmosphere that detracts from the work at hand. But you know this...everyone knows this...but people who feel they may have crossed the line like to make overly simplified statements such as "you can't even compliment anyone anymore"
5
@Kris Agreed. When a compliment comes down to body parts, that’s a bit too far.
But of course, that is the woman’s fault for being uncomfortable with objectification. Dammit! Why, some men whine, can’t I act like a creepy uncle who stares at your chest?
2
@Ruby This is the problem poor communication. My comment was not specific enough but you think my comment implies that it is ok to act like a creep.
"Certainly many emails I have received from men over the years might have benefited from a Gmail plug-in pointing out the apology-shaped hole." Ha ha ha Such a good idea!
1
This woman is out of her gourd. Her ideal world of non-assertive milquetoasts would be utterly steamrollered by the first person to take Alex Baldwin's speech from "Glengarry Glen Ross" to heart.
P.S. Never apologize. Your friends don't need it and your enemies won't accept it. And absolutely never apologize to the Internet Hate Machine. They don't take apologies as a step towards repentance. They take them as an admission of guilt and they *never* let you forget it.
3
Personally, I've never wanted to occupy the C-suite; those guys (and gals!) work too hard. But if YOU do, the last thing you should be doing is listening to jerks, deferring to their wishy-washy views, cooperating in their ruinous plans, or ever admitting that YOU'RE not the smartest gal (or guy) in the room.
For the rest of us competence, conscientiousness, and going home by five (or taking a year or two off to bring up baby) will be satisfaction enough.
2
The real issue is that lean-in feminism is about succeeding in our capitalist system, which leaves little time for any pursuits outside of work, from raising a family to having fulfilling relationships or hobbies to meaningful civic engagement. This has worked well for those at the top and has been disastrous for pretty much everyone else. If we're going to start teaching men to lean out, let's focus on taking family leave to take care of infants and elderly family members and on adopting flexible work schedules so they can be more involved in the day-to-day running of their households. We women are sick of leaning in at work and being leaned on at home.
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The linked paper on women’s raise-asking behaviors is on data from Australia. I won’t go into some of its other limitations, because all single papers are limited in what they can say definitively about anything. As a social scientist, it’s generally disheartening to see media people use evidence in an unjustifiably authoritative way. But, linking to a study from the opposite side of the world when speaking to an American audience, when you know they are thinking of this issue in an American context and will see the word “research” in blue letters and not even question that it might not be from that context, that’s downright misleading.
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Why doesn’t the author propose a solution that women create and run businesses using “feminine” values (whatever those may be)? If such businesses are successful, then her thesis would be proven true. I don’t believe there are any laws that prevent direct implementation of feminine (or other) values as a proper culture for an enterprise.
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@Bill Bluefish Plenty of female founders (Whitney Wolfe Herd, Emily Weiss, Steph Korey + Jen Rubio) are proving Ruth's theory to the tune of billions, while their male founder counterparts (Travis Kalanick, Adam Neumann) are being run out of buildings they've set on fire.
I remember seeing a massive study a few years ago that showed a positive correlation between profitability and the number of women in the firm's C-Suite. Women continue to prove themselves every day, it just seems that some men refuse to recognize "such businesses".
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@Bill Bluefish Women do create "businesses" using feminine values. They are families. They are more than 50 percent of new small businesses. They simply are not valued by men (and some women) who only see what men do as important.
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The premise of the article is the tired stereotypes of what men and women are like as a group. Talk like this abounds, but it simply doesn’t reflect the tremendous diversity and complexity of people in the world. This sort of simplification and putting the genders into tidy little boxes is fun, or perhaps convenient for the writer but I hope we as a society can aspire to treating people as individuals and stop with these boring and old fashioned generalizations.
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"Tax dollars are poured into encouraging girls to take up STEM subjects, but no one seems to care much whether boys become nurses. Girls are routinely given pep talks to be “anything a boy can be,” a glorious promotion from their current state, whereas to encourage a boy to behave more like a girl is to inflict an emasculating demotion. Female hobbies, careers, possessions and behaviors are generally dismissed as frivolous, trivial, niche or low status — certainly nothing to which any self-respecting boy or man might ever aspire."
This seems to me, as a male, to be the nub of the problem. In the field of romance women still praise, admire and date men who are doctors and NOT nurses. Men will keep on being overly assertive as long as women keep on valuing male doctors over male nurses. I strongly agree with Ms. Whipple's general analysis of the problem, but until women take responsibility (I can hear the blowback already) for changing whom they value in the love market this problem will persist.
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I think this analysis catches an aspect of the problem that the article failed to
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Ruth, I am sorry and apologize for being born a male and grew up to be a man.
I am truly sorry that as a young person I played competitive sports where there were winners and losers, good players and bad players. I'm very sorry for working such long hours away from my family and striving to compete and succeed. I foolishly believed the marketplace was competitive and I needed to work harder, smarter and longer than others. And if I am ever in a meeting with you and cannot hear what you are saying I will not ask you to speak up...I'll defer and nod agreement with whatever you said.
We are going to need to relook sports entirely. Instead of a Superbowl ring possibly we can hand out Superbowl participation trophies. Instead of praising the ball player with the most home runs, we can honor those with the most at bats.
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@SEGokorsch
What if constantly rewarding the person who competes the hardest and works the longest does not yield the best person for the job? What if the need to work long hours away from one's family was not necessary, thanks to more cooperative/collaberative forms of working. What if workplaces accommodated job sharing for people who wanted part time work?
Why should the workplace be viewed as a competetive one when lots of times employers want workers to collaberate, cooperate and support one another?
I get that you like a system that plays to your strengths. But just because it works for you doesn't mean it yields the best results.
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@DebbieR, but what if it does? What if the business that stays open 24 hours a day makes more money than the one that stays open 14 hours? What if the tennis player who starts at age 3 like Serena Williams wins more titles than one who starts at 4? What if the more practice a surgeon has at a challenging operation, the more likely it will be completed successfully, and gets more patient referrals as a result? What then?
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@SEGokorsch are you inferring that women don't do any of these things too? That they don't grow up playing competitive sports, working hard, and striving to be the best? They do and they are rewarded less for it and labeled as abrasive, toxic and selfish. Sports are great for building character as one of the first things all boys and girls are taught is good sportsmanship, but it sounds like you were too busy to learn to be fair and to treat your fellow players with respect.
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Finally, someone's caught on. How much better the world would be were "feminine" values given equal weight. Kindness, teamwork, nurturing, deference — these form the social grease that makes a workplace culture truly functional. Combined with "masculine" assertiveness, "feminine" values have driven great social and cultural developments throughout human history.
It's time to decouple such values from their gender associations altogether. Both men and women exhibit them anyway, and a more complex and connected society demands persons who can do both.
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This trend of telling women to act more like men has been bothering me too. I think having an awareness that other people have feelings, I make mistakes, others can teach me things...those are assets in the work place, not flaws.
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Changing men’s behavior assumes the dominance of nurture over nature. Nurture is how society progresses. But living within us all is a set of traits we were born with and cannot simply be wished away. Should we dismiss nature outright, do so at society’s peril.
For the record I hate pink (on both men and women). Baseball is philosophy only to people who have never studied philosophy. I apologize to people who bump into me and have seen plenty of men do the same. Until this article I never knew that this was understood to be a feminine trait. I thought it was just a lubricant we primates employ to diffuse conflict.
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"...rather than women being under-confident, men tend to be overconfident in relation to their actual abilities."
Yet another example of men suffering from the 'Dunning–Kruger effect' - a cognitive bias in which; people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the meta-cognitive ability to realize it.
The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority.
This leads to the perverse situation in which less competent people rate their own ability higher than more competent people.
It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence: because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding.
The miscalibration of the incompetent (illusory superiority) stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent (illusory inferiority) stems from an error about others.
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I’m a 60 year male old computer engineer and couldn’t agree more with this article. I believe that what I’ve called ‘computer macho’ for a good 40 years is root of both the lack of women in my field as well as the rampant ageism that exists.
If you enter a room of engineers you don’t know there is an immediate fight for pecking order. Knowledge of the latest buzzwords for the same concept that existed 40 years ago is part of the currency and you’re expected to flaunt it. If you don’t play this macho game you’re toast. Older people might not know the new buzz words and women see that they’re required to play this game... and even if they were into computers previously are turned off.
I’ve read two things here in the times that have bolstered my reading of this interaction. One was an article specifically about women seeing this on their first interview... and the second about how Google invested in trying to engineer the perfect team and failing. They knew what constituted a perfect team... that everyone FELT that they could contribute... but found that they couldn’t predict how to assemble a team where everyone felt this way.
Over the years I’ve learned to play this game well... and can hold my own. But it’s disgusting to have to play it.
My advice is to put the bully programmer in his (almost always ‘His’) place rather than force women to play this game
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Ok, yes it turns out female values are important too, but having raised a boy to manhood and watched my neices grow up - all college educated and 2 mothers, let's acknowledge that there remains a mysterious difference between men and women and accept it. It was not primarily men telling women to act more like men, but women telling women to do so (in order to succeed).
I am curious if the writer has any experience of a real workplace that is neither a college or involve writing. In many places, we men do listen and collaborate. The world of work does not look as harsh as this writer imagines.
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As a middle aged white male working in corporate America for the last 35 years, the only problem I ever had with Affirmative Action was that the corporations used it to higher people with the same flawed value systems. I accept that there was a benefit in this approach to sharing the wealth and that’s good. However, as the article well explains, we need to change the norms. Good article.
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Couldn't agree more with the imperative that men should take on more deferential and apologetic behaviors.
However, fashion is vain and shallow. And baseball is not a branch of philosophy.
5
Yes. This piece is straight from the heart, and uses emotional tactics instead of facts. Right idea, destructive approach.
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I’m still recovering from the Land O’ Lakes ad teaching that farmer’s wives are... farmers. I had to rewrite several nursery rhymes for my grandsons. That led to reworking other songs. Why should the king be in the counting house counting all the money while the queen is in the parlor eating bread and honey? After reading this article do I need to revert to the original versions? Isn’t it better to eat the bread and honey after all? I’m exhausted. But I love this article. Great message.
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I agree with the premise of this article, however the over-generalization is a bit much. The line “baseball is almost a branch of philosophy”, while meant to be humorous, is also annoying in that it assumes many or most men give a hoot about sports. Plenty of us could not care less about any sports (I am happily sports-blind).
I’m certainly cis-gendered and norm-defined, but I’m also a psychologist so have a hyper-awareness of these issues. There isn’t a single study of “men”. We are as different from each other as women can be from men. I often challenge people to look past “men do this” or “women do that” kind of generalizations and instead focus on the person they’re dealing with in particular, or to focus on why they’re having such a negative reaction anyway!
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@Kevin Kulic Well, then, I challenge you to look past the "men do this" and "women do that" generalizations Ms. Whippman uses to illustrate what society values and instead focus on the ways in which you perpetrate those values.
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@Kevin Kulic Well, then, I challenge you to look past the "men do this" and "women do that" generalizations Ms. Whippman uses to illustrate what society values and instead focus on the ways in which you perpetuate those values.
@Kevin Kulic Well, then, I challenge you to look past the "men do this" and "women do that" generalizations Ms. Whippman uses to illustrate what society values and instead focus on the ways in which you perpetuate them.
(And apologies to the moderator for the spam.)
We often hear of parents raising their girls to do everything boys do, but rarely if ever do we hear of parents raising their boys to be able to do everything girls do. I was raised mostly by my mom and grandmother and it is their values and ways of being I want to model for my sons. I encourage my sons to be kind, gentle, caring and reflective—what a revolution we’d have if these qualities were in greater favor in our society. I think this is a brilliant piece of writing.
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I have two daughters, 17 and 20, and since they were little I worked with them on advocating for themselves. Whether teacher, peer, friend, coach, manager, etc., the sex of the person does not matter. Both men and women can be difficult, lack deference, and be arrogant. Really, it all comes down to the person.
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@Sharon Saying that "it all comes down to the person" does not acknowledge a vast history of institutionalized sexism, from voting to credit to employment to child care and so, so much more.
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Some problems with this piece. First, nursing is STEM. Second, the idea that women apologize and men don’t is a harmful stereotype. In my experience—heck, in my very household—men often apologize a lot more than women.
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@Martin Nursing absolutely is STEM. Except nurses (mostly women) are treated like handmaidens and forced to take on way too much responsibility but afforded little authority or control in their workplaces. The decision makers in healthcare certainly do not understand nursing as STEM. And given the rising rate of violence against healthcare workers, especially nurses, patients and the public don't understand nursing as STEM either.
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@Martin In a one on one relationship with a woman forget ever hearing an apology
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@Martin
i doubt this and even if it’s true let’s not mistake your anecdotal experience for sociological fact. if you can’t perceive the systemic nature to which the author speaks this article is exactly for you. take the note.
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You lost me as soon as I read this:
"As a rule, anything associated with girls or women — from the color pink to domestic labor — is by definition assigned a lower cultural value than things associated with boys or men. Female hobbies, careers, possessions and behaviors are generally dismissed as frivolous, trivial, niche or low status..."
This sort of exaggeration is simply self-pity on a grand scale. What is it about claiming victimhood that seems to make everyone feel so good these days?
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"This sort of exaggeration is simply self-pity on a grand scale. What is it about claiming victimhood that seems to make everyone feel so good these days?"
I know, right? Seems to be working wonders for Trump and his supporters.
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@Andy Trezise It's funny. Any time I post something that is not considered a "liberal" view, someone responds with something about Trump, even when the comment has nothing to do with him. As if they assume I'm a Trump supporter, which I am so very much not.
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@Rich so, you think that (for example) crafting and playing handball are considered equal, socially speaking? A man who had a sports date scheduled and was therefor not available is not considered more inviolate than a woman who has a scrapbooking group meeting? Really?
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I was set to hate this article and its author. But I couldn't agreed more wholeheartedly. The only issue I have is that she could go even further. Girls are disadvantaged by this insistence that they must be more assertive. But how about the boys who also don't want to be assertive? My conclusion is that there is nothing that hurts girls that doesn't also hurt boys. Most people, male and female, don't enjoy being too assertive, or even assertive at all. But as girls are discouraged from it, boys have it beaten into them--often literally so. We would all be better off if we started treating all genders equally...and gently.
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@Mickeyd There is a difference between assertiveness and aggression. Assertiveness is kindness and courage. Aggressive is courage without kindness. In my book, there is nothing wrong with speaking up and out for yourself if it is done with respect for yourself and the other person. When you are mean and self centered in your exertion and you hurt the other person, like in bullying, that is aggressive behavior.
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@Mickeyd Wish I could "recommend" this post to the top of the page!
Oh yes. Yes please. It boils down to men having incredibly poor object relations capacity - everything and everyone is seen as a an object. Apply this to interactions, to relationships, to parenting and you get...a classic male profile: I'm great. I do more than you do. I do not have to talk. I do not have to clean, wash, take care of. My job is more important, etc. ad nauseum. We must object, object and object, loud and clear, the valuation of male aggression over reasonable interaction. And for God's sake, ditch the pink, which was pushed by marketing forces in the 1940's.
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@Nnaiden Not sure if you generalize more about men or hate them more.
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Thank you, thank you, thank you! We need more voices espousing traditionally regarded "feminine" traits and values as valuable. I gave up trying to measure up to patriarchal ideals. I hated the Lean In movement for making me feel like my choice to stay home to raise my children and maintain a household was a failure. As much as I would enjoy the external validation that a successful career brings, and I would, my Ivy League degree has not been wasted. My children are wonderful young people and our household is a haven from the chaos of the world. I am not running myself ragged trying to be everything to everyone. In an ideal world women like me wouldn't have to choose. But men will need to step up to embrace domestic work for that to happen. Currently, many believe it can all be outsourced to uneducated workers (nannies, housekeepers etc).
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@Exile In
Go out get a job, with your ivy league degree, that pays on a level with your husband's, and allow him this level of freedom
I honestly have never met the stay at home dads that we are told actually exist. However, I know many women who have chosen to remain at home while their husbands are trying to hack a living out of an ever less rewarding .
No one is trying turn women into copies of men aside from other women. If you can't figure out how to compete with the grown ups, don't insult those that are given no option to do anything else
"Take apologizing, the patient zero of the assertiveness movement. Women do too much of it"
If my nonagenarian mother ever apologized to anyone anytime, I am not aware of it.
Perhaps that is her secret to longevity: she is the mother not only of sons but of assertiveness.
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There's been plenty of feminist writing, research and activism centered on putting a greater value on the work and characteristics that are deemed "traditionally female" and encouraging men to embrace those roles as well. (Even stuff geared for kids! Remember "Free to Be ... You and Me"?)
Ms. Whippman's core argument here - that we should stop pathologizing everything "female" and maybe look at what men can improve about themselves too - is incredibly important. It's just a shame that she reduces the whole of feminism to the idea of "leaning in."
We've got enough misogynists out there oversimplifying feminism and bashing feminists. Would have been nice if she'd praised and amplified some of the feminist work being done on this very topic instead of jumping on the anti-feminism bandwagon.
7
I love this article so much for succinctly summarizing yet another way that the onus for working toward equality is thrown onto women rather than men.
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Somewhat ironically in relation to this essay, twice today in my college classroom, while moving about the room to help students, I accidentally kicked the back of the chair occupied by a woman. Both times they apologized to me. I made a remark, like you're apologizing to me when I kicked your chair? I'm the one who should be apologizing to you. Another student apologized for sounding aggressive in her essay, while simply stating a fact. The force against them is strong.
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@Bradley Bleck -Last year, I cut in front of a woman at the salsa bar in a local Mexican food restaurant. She apologized to me. I pointed out that I was in the wrong - and, not so hard to believe, she apologized to me for apologizing. What happened to the Feminist values so many of us fought for in the Seventies and Eighties? Cui bono?
8
Depends on where you are. In my experience, whenever anybody accidentally bumps into someone else in Sub-Saharan Africa, ‘Sorry’ is the near universal rejoinder.
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@Mary Sojourner Maybe the lady was Canadian?
2
From my perspective, masculinity and femininity have admirable traits and values. Masculinity to me is about hard work, drive, focus, competence, strength in the face of adversity, sacrificing for others, and fatherhood. Femininity is about warmth, kindheartedness, listening, and empathy. I work as a teacher, to do that well you have to portray competence and strength, but also patience and a willingness to listen to students. These are just good human traits. I think they are often associated with the masculine and feminine and that's okay, as it is nice to have an ideal to strive for. To see my long hours of work and focus as something positive and manly. But all these traits are positive and all people have masculine and feminine to some degree.
Moreover, I find masculinity and its expectation to have a career and be ambitious oppressive.
Which is why I am not a feminist. What I admire most in people are things like kind heartedness. As a man, I find that sexy women. I frown upon things like naked ambition and bossiness. I don't understand why all the women my age (in my 30s) are strong ambitious career women who lack warmth and a human personality. I don't understand why masculinity is called toxic. Is fatherhood toxic? It is wrong to promote either the masculine or the feminine over the other. Or to bizarrely call masculinity toxic while promoting ambition and assertiveness.
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@James
"Masculinity to me is about hard work, drive, focus, competence, strength in the face of adversity, sacrificing for others, and fatherhood. Femininity is about warmth, kindheartedness, listening, and empathy."
Very "Épinal print". And a good example of how tradition enforces values.
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@James
Masculinity, to me, is about helpfulness, reticence, tractability, and beauty. Femininity, to me, is about intelligence, usefulness, practicality and ingenuity.
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@James You value traits that are both "masculine" and "feminine," you recognize that all people have both to some degree, you recognize the oppressive expectations associated with masculinity - I think you might be a little bit of a feminist!
"Masculinity" and "toxic masculinity" are two different things. Masculinity is positive in many ways. But "toxic masculinity" refers to those oppressive expectations placed on men and the unhealthy behaviors towards self and others that are the result of those expectations (violence, aggression, inability to empathize with others or express vulnerability, etc.).
In the same way that a lot of the traditional expectations of women were toxic, there are still a lot of toxic expectations of men. Feminism is actually about dismantling toxic gender expectations and expressions for both men AND women.
I can't say for sure about the women you know in their 30s, since I don't know them, but I have known more than one who took the "lean in," "be more like men," "don't show emotions," "don't be soft in any way" messages to heart - so much so, that they ended up basically adopting toxic masculinity for themselves without realizing it.
We'd all do a lot better if we abandoned the idea that "the male way" is the only right way to do things, because it's unbalanced and leads to more toxic masculinity. What we should be doing is encouraging healthy traits - both masculine and feminine - equally.
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Training (like animals?) men to aspire to women's cultural norms - or rather, shaming them out of being masculine - is something that's been going on for quite a long time and it has been devastating to the well-being of men. However, listening, etc. as mentioned in this piece is not a 'cultural norm' exclusive to women.
15
@YaddaYaddaYadda I guess we need to figure out what do you mean by "well-being of men"? Is it that sense of superiority that men feel just because they are men? If so, I don’t think it is a big loss, after all why well-being of men should be on expense of well-being of women?
13
@yulia
Not in the slightest. If we want to talk about the "well-being of men" we could start with the much higher rates of addiction, mental illness, homelessness and suicide among men. Despite all their talk of "equality" I don't think I've ever heard feminists discuss these particular gender disparities in any meaningful way.
10
@Aaron They do, though. Those discussions just don't get the same news coverage.
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Why do we keep viewing nonbiological traits as gender-binary?
From birth, behavior is viewed in the context of what could help or hinder that gendered child's social advancement. Hypersensitivity to—and from some tyranny for—crossing gendered lines, laughter to shunning or harassment of peers not wholeheartedly aligned.
Are they picking up society's signals or is society enslaved by atavistic instincts? The many who aren't this way—credit psychological and emotional maturation or just immunity?
Your opening. Religious purists sacrificing to flee to the new world to build insular, homogenous communities were, in a way, communist, part of their faith that they'd always find a place and purpose in their modest midst for the virtuous.
Capitalism, like sports—or right wing politics—worships different virtues: swiftly confident action from team players who stay in position win or lose.
It's the same place that vilifies legislative compromise, pushes fossil fuels, opioids, nicotine while decrying renewables, regulation, rights. Lockstep purism over informed substance or respect for others.
More women Republicans in Congress than ever, and that party is worse than ever. I guess it's kind of like marrying an ISIS terrorist, maybe they had no choice given where they're from and how they were raised but now that they're there they're not letting what you might call their feminine sensibilities inform their choices because neither sense nor choices are what that existence is about.
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@J T "Why do we keep viewing nonbiological traits as gender-binary?"
I think it's a weird cultural thing. People are weird, get over it :-) Also, I think there is a set of "masculine" traits that men are encouraged to express and lean towards expressing more than "feminine" traits. But you are right, masculinity isn't just one way of being, it's a whole class of ways of being. And most men express both "masculine" and "feminine" traits. I think most people understand this.
2
@J T, if you want to loudly hate your assigned political enemies, then just hate them.
You do radical progressivism no favors when you simply blame your enemies for EVERY single problem with modern life, then throw in the capitalism that has made life here the best in the world, and then try to make it all a gender issue.
My own thought is there sure are a lot of assertive, semi-informed people in the typical work environment. Most,, but by no means all, are men. Some are truly toxic. Most of them are longer on drama than on producing value for the enterprise or providing meaningful assistance to the client.
Next time you are in a meeting, pay attention to the person (usually a woman) who is taking notes and who will write them up. In a few months that person's narrative will be the whole story.
I'm a man who has been through the mill. I've been called a woman because I take careful notes and know how to write them up.
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