Our society institutionally discriminates against men. The more than 100 federal feminist “antidiscrimination” laws alone institutionalize systemic bias against men. But so what? If men want to re-assume their responsibilities as leaders of homes, churches, cultural institutions, and government, they cannot take Adam’s line, “The women made me do it.” God didn’t accept that excuse in Eden, and we shouldn’t accept it now. Leadership means taking responsibility, not scapegoating (even if women share the blame for the mess, which we definitely do!). Men need to shed their internalized transgender roles just as much as women do.

Writer Helen Andrews turned a viral speech into an essay for Compact that’s been driving the Internet wild since it published Oct. 16. She argues woke culture is the inevitable result of women taking over the majority of academia and other pivotal industries such as law, media, and medicine: “Everything you think of as ‘wokeness’ is simply an epiphenomenon of demographic feminization.”

“Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition,” she writes.

As usual, Andrews bravely makes some countercultural points with enjoyable flair, and a lot of what she says is true. Everyone should read her whole article. Rather than simply replicate what she gets right, however, I would like to argue a few finer points. First, I don’t think it’s accurate to claim we have a “feminized” society. Second, I think Andrews applies her thesis too broadly, arguing it can explain more than it actually does.

Our Society Isn’t Feminine At All

It seems obvious that decaying Western societies are in fact not femininized, because our societies do not champion female hallmarks. The top exhibit for this is the lack of babies. The vast and troubling Western fertility crisis would not exist if women were feminine, because it is feminine to naturally seek children.

Yet 64 percent of American women younger than 50 say they don’t want kids, according to Pew Research last year. Not feminine.

Our culture has also become incredibly immodest, another rejection of a primordial female trait, as Wendy Shalit memorably explained in the late ’90s. Some of the most conservative families I know, who homeschool and strongly affirm defined sex roles and male leadership of homes and churches, allow their beautiful daughters to wear “workout” shorts cut like boxer briefs and crop tops. And this has been true since I was a child.

Trump-supporting female celebrities celebrate each other wearing skin-tight, butt- and breast-baring bodysuits that get the notice of New York Magazine and The New York Times. This is not feminine either.

An essay comprehensively chronicling our culture’s rejection of femininity could get very long, so let’s conclude this observation for now with just one more hallmark example. Our culture’s cold indifference to children — the worst form of hatred — is also the opposite of feminine. Women naturally put children first. This is why women prioritize empathy, cohesion, and safety — because children are irrational, risky, and an obstacle to competition, yet we innately understand their value transcends these male criteria.

Despite rhetoric claiming the opposite, our culture systematically puts children last. The Covid lockdowns sacrificed children’s futures for (largely female!) adult psychoses. Abortion, invitro fertilization, and contraception mass murder children for adult pleasure. Democrats will shut down the government to feed the welfare state that cannibalizes the young’s economic stability, and Republicans help them. It’s not feminine to put the children last.

As I wrote in a speech delivered a year ago to Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, “are we really experiencing a cultural ‘overfeminization?’ It looks to me like, instead, we have a swap. We have feminization where there should be masculinity, and masculinization where there should be femininity. Our women are pushed to act like men, and our men to act like women, and the resulting social transgenderism makes everyone extremely unhappy, not to mention dysfunctional.”

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