Women ruined everything. In the most watch talk ever given at NatCon and a follow-up viral essay for Compact,

Helen Andrews makes the case that the secret to the rise of wokeism is what she calls the great

feminization. The theory that cancel culture is simply what women do whenever there are enough of them in a given

organization or field.

Whokeness, she says, arose around the same time that many important institutions tipped

demographically from majority male to majority female.

As more females entered the workforce through the 80s and 90s, the era of political correctness,

a pre-woke work culture, also took off. Gender parity was achieved in many fields in the 2010s

and the early 2020s. Women overtook men among college-educated adults. Law schools hit 50-50 male-female. In 2017 to 2018,

women made up 50% of enrolled medical school students. The rise of women in the workforce,

the feminization of everything, according to Andrews, is both when and why all hell broke loose. Everything you think of, she says, as woke

involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine, empathy over rationality, safety over risk,

cohesion over competition. Andrews explains that wokeness is just how women as a group are

hardwired. We bury conflict in layers

of compliments and listening sessions, and then we work behind the scenes to isolate and ostracize

our social enemies. Feminine woke behaviors, she theorizes, optimize the female of the species

to protect our offspring and hearths. But it also,

she says, makes women deadly to the institutions that uphold civilization, especially the law. So it

seems like she's on to something. Men and women are as groups different, undeniable. Our institutions and professions

are moving toward or are already majority female. Facts. This demographic shift coincided

historically with the rapid decline of the West's foundational institutions, yes, agreed.

But does that mean her conclusions are valid? Not necessarily.

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