Mar 10, 2023·edited Mar 10, 2023Liked by Christopher F. Rufo
Remember when your kid would go into dramatics over a slight fall? Imagine that instead of of giving them a quick kiss and telling her to go play again, you pick her up, put her in a blanket, give her a sweet snack, and tell how terrible it was that that little fall happened to her. She would turn into a neurotic monster within a month.
This is what these college counselors are doing at a mass scale.
Very insightful. Of course making things even more difficult is the risk of being called sexist for merely suggesting systems could be gendered. We have a continuation and acceleration of Blank Slate censorship. From the purging of Harvard's Lawrence Summers for even commenting on gendered disparities in STEM to today's gynocentric victimology. This is what happens when intersectional feminism is subsidized by the state. Rufo actually understands the problems
—“In reality, it was fake empathy utilized as a left-wing power strategy.”
This. All the talk about “being kind” is really just a way to manipulate people and use them to get more power and control.
I find this post of particular interest because I remember after the Floyd riots, some of my very well-off educated left leaning female ex-friends (apparently I was not “empathetic” enough about Covid or the BLM movement, meaning I was skeptical and asked questions they didn’t like, so summarily ejected from the friend circle) made hysterical posts on social media about feeling marginalized. I found it incredible that these people, who had more advantages (as did their children) than the vast majority of people in this country, were saying things like this. Then I realized after some reflection that they knew deep down they were *not* disadvantaged, so they had to identify themselves with a group that was, presumably in order to assuage their guilt at being successful and having it so good, or perhaps also to make it seem as if they weren’t quite as advantaged as it appeared. This really seems to fit well with what you’ve written in today's post.
Thank you for this thought provoking and well written piece!
One thing I'm studying today is what is referred to as FDIA or Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another which is the DSM-5 definition of what used to be referred to as Munchausen syndrome. If you explore further upstream into the home, it is mothers needing attention who are causing this current hysteria that is altering education in the USA.
Yet again you have a perfect score here. Having worked in Higher Education for 40 years I have seen the very careful and insidious rise of this whole thing. The only jobs that government produces are those that spring up to support whatever absurd rules and regulations they have created.
Currently the largest field in the academic and corporate world is DEI. There are almost as many DEI administrators as there are students. That needs to change immediately if academia intends to stay alive. Universities are more concerned with policies and rules than they are about educating indecently thinking adults.
In fairness we can't lump all female administrators into the Mean Girl Club because I have worked with very brilliant and talented administrators that are female. Rather this whole mindset seems linked to the Marxist idea that everyone is oppressed and those individuals will right all the wrongs etc. when they get into power. Once in power they have been given unfettered control without any oversight or accountability. It's a very adversarial relationship to say the least. Now add the whole mental health aspect to this recipe and you have the current state of affairs.
As for the Provost that had the stones to try and bully you with safety, I surely hope that they are enjoying the private sector, namely Walmart greeter. These people have no respect or empathy for anyone that isn't in their special club.
Chris, keep grinding and fighting. Once unmasked they wither, so we must keep fighting for our children's futures and our national sanity.
"In conclusion, I’d like to say also, to be very clear: this is not a problem of women per se."
No, it's a problem of women in leadership. This is probably too third-rail even for you to touch, but I'm more and more convinced that the biblical pattern of men in leadership is there for a reason and conforms to reality. Not that women shouldn't have any influence at all of course, but when the balance is tipped toward women being in charge, things don't seem to go well.
Thank you Christopher for promoting care and reason as well as Heather's well written article.
I work in Mental Heath/ Substance use disorder education and have been in this field for decades now watching the "soft" sciences be reduced to little more than witchcraft and neurosis peddling through all inputs and outputs. It seems that this trend is not one that comes from lack of good or reasonable scholarship but through the advancemment of a small group that claim to speak for the discipline as a whole and the disenfranchisement and negation of those who question the " victim/ trauma" approach.
A clear issue is the "soft" science university pathway for many students as a less difficult more theory driven major. Many young women are exposed to the facile pop psych stuff online as they develop and then follow through in the university. Rigor in many of these departments has been removed in the service of ideology and the outcomes of more mental health problems are not acknowledged, but, having more dependent mental health clients produced through the ideological capture will keep these graduates employed for the foreseeable future.
The convention of care to those experiencing behavioral disturbance should be the practioner working as responsibly and carefully with the individual to assist in their independence from treatment. Putting ourselves out of a job with each person we work with should be paramount. Instead, there are growing numbers that feed the continuous care model at the peril of individual functioning. It's truly disturbing and gives me little hope that this ship will ever right itself.
Rufo almost goes far enough but not quite. Good, masculine leadership creates novel approaches, values creativity and structural evolution, places scientific method over empathetic pleas, demands competence over niceness. Masculine leadership is good when balanced against feminine demands for kindness and recognition of the worth of everyone. The Claremont McKenna example is obviously a dereliction of masculine leadership by men in exactly the same way as the UCF situation he cites. Competent female university leadership must recognize and make as its primary function creative essentialism that male leaders demand. Empathy though important to the central mission of incubating the fulsome greatness of developing young minds can only exist in support of that function, otherwise the university will cease to exist as the primary source of scientific innovation and learning and further devolve into a waste of time and resources.
Naval gazing has rarely advanced societies throughout history. Rigorous, academic searching has.
There are a lot of different theories about what caused the Woke Tsunami and the waves leading up to it. More generally there are efforts to explain America's left/right split and to identify the causes of political ideology in general. There are theories from the left/center like George Lakoff, who explain by pointing to a cognitive level of constraint, to metaphors of thought. Or Haidt, who explains more in terms of moral sentiments. You can also try to take a more long-term ethological approach that looks at deeply-entrenched patterns of male and female behavior. These kinds of explanatory efforts are very interesting. Personally I'm interested in the history of structuralism and why it made such a surprising comeback in the form of "structures of oppression", etc. But understanding the proximate and ultimate causes of the critical social justice movement will not substantially help diminish the growing power of this movement. If you think that the principles and policies of this movement are wrong and/or harmful, I think the best course of action is to find a place where you can assume leadership in your local context and then implement better principles and policies. That is what is being tried at this university. But the only way to make substantial progress will be if this type of effort becomes more and more general.
There is something very pouty about the left that invites everyone to contemplate the paternal order Rufo broaches here. When Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes were saying "gay gay gay gay.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exa_ux5kQAs
they come across as defiant children. That is also unsurprisingly part of their comedy. "We are going to use all the naughty words Daddy told us not to".
It is seen as empowering to the left to defy all paternal order. This may be one reason why so many woke moms are bringing their children to be baptized by drag queens. The whole genre is defined by trying to make a regular dad pay attention. The men are just completely absent or neutered when it comes to woke child rearing. Like Rufo said in the video: we need a balance. It is no coincidence people like Matt Walsh bring a very masculine quality of reason to the gender mania. Many Americans crave that groundedness. When it is absent.. mania and depression skyrocket. For all the reasons Rufo outlined. I can't help but think the broad demonization of "toxic masculinity" is part of the larger zeitgeist.
We could use language as bait so the left goes crazy, as they did with "Don't say Gay Bill".
The term "Paternal Order" is going to trigger them to no end, and if you just use that as a descriptor in legislation it could make the conversation go superviral. The gynocentric media will end up with egg on their face once again as laypeople debunk their hysteria. If you really want to get wonky and bring in Peterson to connect it to the expression of the big 5 personality traits five broad personality traits: extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. I think the nation welcomes the chance to partake in a conversation about how female dominated institutions are faring for everyone.
Clearly while White Women fomented many of this, as expected (by everyone but them) they are next on the chopping block and are now being pushed out of these sinecure positions at universities and government agencies. That is one reason why you see an increase in WW pretending to be Latina or Black or whatever. That likely has been going on a while. Also, expect many many more whites to start claiming Hispanic heritage (particularly because the legal/fed requirements are very wide and not clearly defined...anyone with a SINGLE ancestor from Spain ["Spanish culture or origin"] can claim it.)
It's dismaying to see that the more females who congregate in large numbers in institutions of higher learning, the more anxious they become.Having managed several teams with all-male, all-female and mixed sexes, the most stable and cooperative are the mixed. Men and women behave better in each other's company. I'm a woman so hold up on accusations of misogyny, please.
Critically positioned with facts, insightfulness and persuasion to at least Move thinking and authentic minds closer to reality and achievement type Leadership for successful living. Thank you.
Remember when your kid would go into dramatics over a slight fall? Imagine that instead of of giving them a quick kiss and telling her to go play again, you pick her up, put her in a blanket, give her a sweet snack, and tell how terrible it was that that little fall happened to her. She would turn into a neurotic monster within a month.
This is what these college counselors are doing at a mass scale.
Very insightful. Of course making things even more difficult is the risk of being called sexist for merely suggesting systems could be gendered. We have a continuation and acceleration of Blank Slate censorship. From the purging of Harvard's Lawrence Summers for even commenting on gendered disparities in STEM to today's gynocentric victimology. This is what happens when intersectional feminism is subsidized by the state. Rufo actually understands the problems
at a very granular level.
—“In reality, it was fake empathy utilized as a left-wing power strategy.”
This. All the talk about “being kind” is really just a way to manipulate people and use them to get more power and control.
I find this post of particular interest because I remember after the Floyd riots, some of my very well-off educated left leaning female ex-friends (apparently I was not “empathetic” enough about Covid or the BLM movement, meaning I was skeptical and asked questions they didn’t like, so summarily ejected from the friend circle) made hysterical posts on social media about feeling marginalized. I found it incredible that these people, who had more advantages (as did their children) than the vast majority of people in this country, were saying things like this. Then I realized after some reflection that they knew deep down they were *not* disadvantaged, so they had to identify themselves with a group that was, presumably in order to assuage their guilt at being successful and having it so good, or perhaps also to make it seem as if they weren’t quite as advantaged as it appeared. This really seems to fit well with what you’ve written in today's post.
Thank you for this thought provoking and well written piece!
Doesn't this "language of the therapeutic" come directly from the big pharma business model?
More grist for the mill can be found on Jon Haidt's substack. Specifically the data on why liberal teenage girls depression has exploded since 2012.
https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/mental-health-liberal-girls
One thing I'm studying today is what is referred to as FDIA or Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another which is the DSM-5 definition of what used to be referred to as Munchausen syndrome. If you explore further upstream into the home, it is mothers needing attention who are causing this current hysteria that is altering education in the USA.
Yet again you have a perfect score here. Having worked in Higher Education for 40 years I have seen the very careful and insidious rise of this whole thing. The only jobs that government produces are those that spring up to support whatever absurd rules and regulations they have created.
Currently the largest field in the academic and corporate world is DEI. There are almost as many DEI administrators as there are students. That needs to change immediately if academia intends to stay alive. Universities are more concerned with policies and rules than they are about educating indecently thinking adults.
In fairness we can't lump all female administrators into the Mean Girl Club because I have worked with very brilliant and talented administrators that are female. Rather this whole mindset seems linked to the Marxist idea that everyone is oppressed and those individuals will right all the wrongs etc. when they get into power. Once in power they have been given unfettered control without any oversight or accountability. It's a very adversarial relationship to say the least. Now add the whole mental health aspect to this recipe and you have the current state of affairs.
As for the Provost that had the stones to try and bully you with safety, I surely hope that they are enjoying the private sector, namely Walmart greeter. These people have no respect or empathy for anyone that isn't in their special club.
Chris, keep grinding and fighting. Once unmasked they wither, so we must keep fighting for our children's futures and our national sanity.
As a woman, I wrote this several years ago. It has become orders of magnitude worse since then. Men need to take the reins back: http://thinkingbing.blogspot.com/2015/07/girl-power.html
Another example of how we're set up for men to lose no matter what they do: http://thinkingbing.blogspot.com/2013/01/fairs-fair-after-all.html
"In conclusion, I’d like to say also, to be very clear: this is not a problem of women per se."
No, it's a problem of women in leadership. This is probably too third-rail even for you to touch, but I'm more and more convinced that the biblical pattern of men in leadership is there for a reason and conforms to reality. Not that women shouldn't have any influence at all of course, but when the balance is tipped toward women being in charge, things don't seem to go well.
Thank you Christopher for promoting care and reason as well as Heather's well written article.
I work in Mental Heath/ Substance use disorder education and have been in this field for decades now watching the "soft" sciences be reduced to little more than witchcraft and neurosis peddling through all inputs and outputs. It seems that this trend is not one that comes from lack of good or reasonable scholarship but through the advancemment of a small group that claim to speak for the discipline as a whole and the disenfranchisement and negation of those who question the " victim/ trauma" approach.
A clear issue is the "soft" science university pathway for many students as a less difficult more theory driven major. Many young women are exposed to the facile pop psych stuff online as they develop and then follow through in the university. Rigor in many of these departments has been removed in the service of ideology and the outcomes of more mental health problems are not acknowledged, but, having more dependent mental health clients produced through the ideological capture will keep these graduates employed for the foreseeable future.
The convention of care to those experiencing behavioral disturbance should be the practioner working as responsibly and carefully with the individual to assist in their independence from treatment. Putting ourselves out of a job with each person we work with should be paramount. Instead, there are growing numbers that feed the continuous care model at the peril of individual functioning. It's truly disturbing and gives me little hope that this ship will ever right itself.
Rufo almost goes far enough but not quite. Good, masculine leadership creates novel approaches, values creativity and structural evolution, places scientific method over empathetic pleas, demands competence over niceness. Masculine leadership is good when balanced against feminine demands for kindness and recognition of the worth of everyone. The Claremont McKenna example is obviously a dereliction of masculine leadership by men in exactly the same way as the UCF situation he cites. Competent female university leadership must recognize and make as its primary function creative essentialism that male leaders demand. Empathy though important to the central mission of incubating the fulsome greatness of developing young minds can only exist in support of that function, otherwise the university will cease to exist as the primary source of scientific innovation and learning and further devolve into a waste of time and resources.
Naval gazing has rarely advanced societies throughout history. Rigorous, academic searching has.
There are a lot of different theories about what caused the Woke Tsunami and the waves leading up to it. More generally there are efforts to explain America's left/right split and to identify the causes of political ideology in general. There are theories from the left/center like George Lakoff, who explain by pointing to a cognitive level of constraint, to metaphors of thought. Or Haidt, who explains more in terms of moral sentiments. You can also try to take a more long-term ethological approach that looks at deeply-entrenched patterns of male and female behavior. These kinds of explanatory efforts are very interesting. Personally I'm interested in the history of structuralism and why it made such a surprising comeback in the form of "structures of oppression", etc. But understanding the proximate and ultimate causes of the critical social justice movement will not substantially help diminish the growing power of this movement. If you think that the principles and policies of this movement are wrong and/or harmful, I think the best course of action is to find a place where you can assume leadership in your local context and then implement better principles and policies. That is what is being tried at this university. But the only way to make substantial progress will be if this type of effort becomes more and more general.
Karentocracy: government by the neurotic, for the neurotic. https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-coin-a-term
There is something very pouty about the left that invites everyone to contemplate the paternal order Rufo broaches here. When Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes were saying "gay gay gay gay.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exa_ux5kQAs
they come across as defiant children. That is also unsurprisingly part of their comedy. "We are going to use all the naughty words Daddy told us not to".
It is seen as empowering to the left to defy all paternal order. This may be one reason why so many woke moms are bringing their children to be baptized by drag queens. The whole genre is defined by trying to make a regular dad pay attention. The men are just completely absent or neutered when it comes to woke child rearing. Like Rufo said in the video: we need a balance. It is no coincidence people like Matt Walsh bring a very masculine quality of reason to the gender mania. Many Americans crave that groundedness. When it is absent.. mania and depression skyrocket. For all the reasons Rufo outlined. I can't help but think the broad demonization of "toxic masculinity" is part of the larger zeitgeist.
We could use language as bait so the left goes crazy, as they did with "Don't say Gay Bill".
The term "Paternal Order" is going to trigger them to no end, and if you just use that as a descriptor in legislation it could make the conversation go superviral. The gynocentric media will end up with egg on their face once again as laypeople debunk their hysteria. If you really want to get wonky and bring in Peterson to connect it to the expression of the big 5 personality traits five broad personality traits: extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. I think the nation welcomes the chance to partake in a conversation about how female dominated institutions are faring for everyone.
Clearly while White Women fomented many of this, as expected (by everyone but them) they are next on the chopping block and are now being pushed out of these sinecure positions at universities and government agencies. That is one reason why you see an increase in WW pretending to be Latina or Black or whatever. That likely has been going on a while. Also, expect many many more whites to start claiming Hispanic heritage (particularly because the legal/fed requirements are very wide and not clearly defined...anyone with a SINGLE ancestor from Spain ["Spanish culture or origin"] can claim it.)
It's dismaying to see that the more females who congregate in large numbers in institutions of higher learning, the more anxious they become.Having managed several teams with all-male, all-female and mixed sexes, the most stable and cooperative are the mixed. Men and women behave better in each other's company. I'm a woman so hold up on accusations of misogyny, please.
Critically positioned with facts, insightfulness and persuasion to at least Move thinking and authentic minds closer to reality and achievement type Leadership for successful living. Thank you.
Whatever "gender" they are they're all wealthy privileged ivy league brats. They run the world. I'm marginalized, exploited and oppressed by them.