Wokeism

Originally published in 'Masculinity in the 21st Century' – Murray, Lis et al. under the pseudonym Remy Baudin.

Though this is a book on 'Masculinity in the 21st Century', I will not bore you with my own regurgitation of what I believe this pertains to. I leave this to the more qualified, wise and astute. I concur with their fears and share their dreams for renewal. Where I seek to provide utility is on understanding a phenomenon many of us have or will at some stage face down in our respective lives. It comes as follows:

There is a creeping concept, insidiously pervading all forms of corporate and collegiate environment alike, which has grown into a nebulous, all-encompassing doctrine. This pernicious idea has become so commonplace and mainstream, deemed so necessary by establishment do gooders, that entire job offerings, companies, funds and organizations have spawned to serve this manufactured demand. I believe this is of great concern to Men in the 21st Century, and henceforth will focus on the topic of 'Diversity and Inclusion'.

This is something many of you have likely come across, particularly at the hands of overzealous HR administrators and highly perturbed college politicos. [1] Where once upon a day, the Military-Industrial complex was castigated as the hellish doyen of a noble establishment corrupted, so too has the same become of the Diversity-Inclusion complex. I unashamedly view this concept as a negative, harmful one and am hostile to a concept which in contemporaneous progressive thinking, has morphed into a perniciously cultish devotion to an idea with seemingly noble goals, and strictly damnable ends. A concept once previously unknown, non-extant and in total absentia from public and private discourse has underhandedly emerged to breed a slavish mass obsession, pervading the zeitgeist with terms from 'Person of Colour (POC)', 'Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME)' to 'Woke'. The concept has caused some problems, some examples as follows:

• Diversocrats have gone so far in Britain's Labour Party as to charge ethnic Anglo-Saxons a higher wage of entry into an event than their 'BAME' counterparts. [2]
• Job opportunities and internship schemes are allotted by ethnicity, regardless of whether the applicant is a wealthier ethnic minority candidate. In some instances, males are instructed not to apply altogether or immediately disadvantaged.
• Preventing access for white students at Berkeley
• A no-Whites on campus day at Evergreen State
• Granting women in Oxford an extra hour than Men to complete an examination

Among many others.

I raise this topic now in particular, accounting for the political climate we find ourselves in. Heralded as the nouveau darling spearheading the fight for the Diversity-Inclusion complex, is the it girl of the Instagram Democratic base in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a woman of colour (WOC). She's fiery, charismatic, a brilliant marketeer. Those who disdain her political stance would do best to understand, acknowledge and try to sense make of the agenda and worldview under which her, her kith and kin operate, rather than dismiss her. It's this which leads me to pen this Essay, from fascination of the other side, of human nature and behaviour. Of something which I believe is of sheer importance for men in the 21st Century to come to understand and engage with.

I will offer my own theory to be scrutinized by yourself, the reader, in the hopes of stimulating some critical thought on the problem and persistence of the Diversity-Inclusion complex, and some ideas surrounding the challenges which it brings forth.

On Diversity and Inclusion

Conceptualizing Diversity and Inclusion is straightforward. Diversity broadly pertains to the differences between human beings, and Inclusion to the capacity for (in some form) entertaining these differences. As core, fundamental principles these are uncontentious. One cannot but embrace at the wondrous differences between human beings, of maestro programmers, savant strategists, virtuoso artistes, coming together as teams to design mind blowing products and systems which only a short while ago, were the exclusive purview of Sci-Fi books and films. Likewise, nobody likes to be left out. Everybody wants to belong, in some way, shape or form, to a community, tribe, organization, group, network etcetera. Dunbar's Number suggests the mean group size to which we are optimally adapted is around 150 people. I believe the concept of Inclusion hence has some value in providing human beings with a tribe of peers, followers and mentors, something deeply embedded in our psychology which we need. And where once racial disharmony and subjugation pervaded social consciousness, it is indeed a sincere pleasure to witness (for the most part) the peaceful coming together of different ethnicities.

Let me be clear therefore, in saying I welcome collaboration between the unlike-minded and the ethnically diverse. Purism is not something I stand for. Which is why I am so hostile to Diversity and Inclusion. I take Heather MacDonald's definition of what "Diversity" has become as the grounds for my hostility: "socially engineered proportionality" (Mac Donald, 2018). Diversity, alongside Inclusion have metamorphosed into the active gerrymandering of society to correct what proponents claim is a deeply rooted injustice. Diversocrats maintain that, affirmative action and the like are justified solutions to the problems of natural inequality. Likewise, they propose tactics to 'exclude' certain human beings so as to ensure those supposedly excluded in past are now included. The ideologues of this movement however, very frequently shun any sense of diversity in thought, and are often responsible for shutting down events involving speakers with whom they disagree with on campuses across the Anglosphere. Let us examine this problem further.

The Problem with Diversocrats

Underrepresentation of X group in Y field is the most mind numbingly simplistic and banal argument which these Diversocrats pursue.

We need more Women in Technology!

We need more People of Colour in Politics!

Substitute any category of non-white middle-class male human being into the former term in each sentence, and any vocation or academic discipline into the latter and you have the bog-standard argument used by Diversocrats. Yet this is a woefully inadequate position to take.

Firstly, in offering a "band-aid" solution to the problem of inequality, Diversocrats assume systemic readjustment will inevitably occur and lead to a just outcome. They claim to be correcting a wrong by committing a wrong – giving a discriminatory, systematic advantage by claiming to be fighting the oppression of the system. By asserting the insidiousness of the stewards of this system, they seek to perpetuate an active harm against those whose most horrendous crime is existence. Shaky moral foundations at most.

Secondly, the position assumes the inexistence of cognitive inequalities and human differences. As such, it mistakenly assumes equality of outcome is some inevitability. I'll go a step further. Diversity and Inclusion is a schizophrenic ideology which claims celebration of people's differences, whilst assuming away these differences in the case of people's actual traits and capabilities. You might be a great artist, brilliant writer or engineering maven. Your sister might be the centre of attention, the life of the party, whilst you're the deep, introspective, thoughtful one. The hard-working philosopher. Perhaps you're the painter, the architect, the fearless startup founder, the marketing genius or maybe you're following in your family footsteps in the Marines, or Engineering Corps. These are traits and skills which we inherit, or cultivate, careers we build and most importantly – which others don't have or do.

What makes us unique is in scarcity.

Scarcity creates value as we contribute something which others cannot. Diversity and Inclusion is an ideology of hypocrisy because it adopts the 'Unconstrained' vision of human behaviour, where the very existence of 'Diversity' is an argument in favour of the 'Constrained' one. Coined by Thomas Sowell, and the former regards human nature as infinitely malleable, the latter bound by certain constraints. The core working assumption of the Diversity-Inclusion complex is that, with enough effort (or institutional realignment) anybody can do anything. Yet this wholly negates the concept of 'Diversity' itself because it claims people can be anything! The concept fails to acknowledge fundamental, actual differences between human beings through reducing individuals to surfaced components like ethnicity and gender. It proposes the ultimate dichotomy of damnation to be the white male against the oppressed other, ignoring the nature of human beings as complex, with multifaceted identities and beliefs.

In fact, Diversity and Inclusion muddles up the oppression hierarchy completely. Within the United States, those of Western European heritage do not actually dominate as the wealthiest sub-demographics:

This simple story of the dominant White over the oppressed ethnic isn't borne out of facts, but feelings, the wish myth-plex of perpetual discrimination in America and the West more broadly. An artificial construct creating victimhood, so D&I can persist. Reality however, is far more nuanced and complicated. Let's look at Britain. Asian households in Britain are on aggregate wealthier than their White counterparts, with anywhere from 30-38% of these households earning £1000+/week, with only 25% of White Britons earning the same amount. (Family Resource Survey, 2018). Surely no Diversocrat can logically hold that the wealthier are oppressed by the poorer within a free market system?

Yet this is precisely what they claim.

Let's take a closer look at gender. Nobody advocates for increasing representation of women in careers like logging or fishing workers nor does anyone express concerns about the disproportionate level of Male workplace deaths, a staggering 92.5% of all workplace fatalities (see Table 1 below).

Why no Diversity in any of these occupations?

How about increased representation of Republicans in academic or professorial positions in higher education. Surely we need equal representation? (See Table 2 below)

Yet this is not the case. Diversocrats do not wish to amend imbalances which do not pertain to their own side or ideological biases. This hypermodern Kafkaesque Cultural Revolution will stop at nothing to obliterate anything perceived as the old structures of power, which are typically regarded as exclusively White and or Masculine. Hypocrisy or none.

A Diversocrat will manufacture a problem and offer the solution as 'increased representation', even if Women, or whatever demographic concerned isn't drawn to that particular field due to trait differences and preferences or any factor other than discrimination (even free choice). Let us try and evaluate why.

The Gender of Civilization

I believe this entire escapade of 'Diversity & Inclusion' is most grounded upon the game changing evolution in the relationship between the sexes, resulting from the advancement of technological progress. For the bulk of human history, men have provided a protective, caring and leadership role as the figurehead of familial and tribal units across the globe. Women have been the Yang to Men's Yin, providing a nurturing, emotionally warming support structure, inspiring our feats of strength and giving succour to our children (on overwhelming aggregate. Exceptions always exist, yet do not define the norm). Our minds are accordingly adapted to this. However, major social changes have occurred over the 20th Century:

Women's labour force participation has evolved so dramatically unlike any other period in history. However, traditional explanations which source this as a victory for Women's movements, or the steady abolition in retrograde ideology are (I believe) logically inadequate. I wish to take a contrarian approach.

Nothing has affected women's role in society more than the overwhelming progress in, and distribution of Reproductive Technologies.

Reproductive technology is the essential mechanism behind the evolution and adaptation of gender, sexuality and all affiliated issues. 'Diversity and Inclusion' as a system of belief and action, is the latest culmination of ideas emerging from technical progress. Albanesi and Olivetti (2007) raise this fascinating proposition with a series of incisive points:

• Until the early decades of the 20th century, women spent more than 60% of their prime-age years either pregnant or nursing.
• In total, the average women would be pregnant for 34% of the time during her fertile years.
• A typical woman in the 1920s had a life expectancy of 55 years at age 10. She married at age 21 and had on average more than 3 children, with her first birth at age 23 and her last at 33.
• Women would be nursing for 33% of the time between age 23 and 33. Since time taken to breastfeed one child ranges between 14 and 17 hours per week for the first 12 months, this means that 35% to 43% of women's working time was devoted to nursing for a 40 hour workweek.

What this information suggests is this: 'biological demands' have placed a different burden upon women than men across history. These have resulted in difficulties for most women in advancing in a career due to overwhelming time spent pregnant, or nurturing, and much of women's cognitive energy and effort spent on the protection and nurturing of their children. As such, this placed upon men the responsibility to provide and protect during female incapacitation through pregnancy and the nursing of the child. Likewise, our minds have evolved and adapted to this role. Modernity is the exception to the great story of human reproductive difficulties.

This was no patriarchal conspiracy, or the product of human beings locked within a backward schema of ideas. Nor the exclusive desire by those in power to preserve their control at all costs. Feminism did not exist till the 20th Century because women did not have the time nor the energy for feminism.

It is no surprise therefore, that the facilitation of the childbirth process through medical advancements, has had such a breakthrough impact on unlocking women's involvement in the labour force. These include the following (from Albanesi and Olivetti, 2007):

1. Improvement in maternal health, and a decline in time cost associated with pregnancy, childbirth and recovery. These include improvements in bacteriology and introduction of sulphate drugs and antibiotics which dramatically reduced mortality chances from sepsis, blood banking which decreased risk from haemorrhages and improvements in obstetric interventions, bringing trauma during labour to an all time low. Same advancements also led to a fall in stillbirths and miscarriages, hence a decline in number of attempted pregnancies for live births.
2. Development and commercialization of infant formula. An effective breast milk substitute, reducing further time cost and effort associating with nursing.

One can add the introduction of the condom and the pill as further ingredients in the mixture. If politics is the product of cultural factors, and (as Lunacy Now argues) culture is downstream from technology, political ideologies hold some recursive link to the evolution of technology (can one imagine Karl Marx without the Industrial Revolution?). Hence I believe feminism and women's involvement in society at large to be a product of depriving women from the most difficult aspects of childbirth.

The link herein to Diversity and Inclusion is simple. I believe Diversocrats completely misunderstand the nature of human beings, and the ways in which society evolves and is ordered. They have eschewed the reality of different times experiencing different problems and struggles, with the simplistic, ultra-progressive notion of history being a linear progress of ideas, from oppression to liberation. I raise this topic as a counterargument to their assumptions in favour of these such arguments, in the hopes we will recognize that modernity is the exception, rather than the norm.

"The results of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution and development cannot be radically re-engineered by some scheme." (Robert Greene)

The struggle and challenge between the sexes lies herein: reconciling our deeply rooted psychological differences, and preferences for different behaviours as men and women, with the dramatic change in the role of women. We are not dealing with outdated gender norms, but preferences which cannot disappear anytime soon. Our minds are maladapted to the modern world. We have completely forgotten why men and women are different.

Some Conclusions: On Politics and Gentlemen

This is certainly not a new idea by any means, however I hope I have in some way re-emphasized the importance of the process of reproduction in being of crucial importance for dictating the socio-cultural zeitgeist of male-female relations more than anything.

[1] Human Resources.

[2] Allow me to caveat. I am of ethnic minority heritage living in the West. So when I speak of such topics as BAME and POC nobody dare 'slander' me with that tremendously heinous of crimes: to be unqualified as a white male.

Bibliography

Albanesi, S. & Olivetti, C. (2007). (2005). Gender roles and technological progress. National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER Working Paper No. 13179.

Family Resource Survey. (2018). Family resources survey 2016/17. The United Kingdom Statistics Authority, Department for Work & Pensions.

Mac Donald, H. (2018). The diversity delusion: how race and gender pandering corrupt the university and undermine our culture. St. Martin's Press. New York City. New York, US.

Sowell, T. (1996). The vision of the anointed: self-congratulation as a basis for social policy. Basic Books. New York City. New York, US.