Why Young Women Moved Left While Young Men stayed Sane
- Jan 26
- 1 min read
I found this article genuinely fascinating! not because I agreed with everything in it, but because it pushed me into unfamiliar territory. It really made me think again.
What stood out most was the multi-causal framing: the idea that no single explanation can account for where we are, but rather a tapestry of social, technological, institutional, and psychological forces interacting over time. I was also struck by the point about universities and the risk of ideological monocultures narrowing the conversations (something I hadn’t really thought about that deeply before - in the context of universities).
I must admit I often hesitate at claims that lean too heavily on biological determinism, particularly suggestions about women’s inherent weakness, which I don’t recognise at all. Still, even where I disagreed, the piece helped clarify my thinking.
I’m not taking away one clear conclusion so much as two main observations. First, that global technologies interacting with human psychology at scale can produce outcomes none of us fully intend or control. And second, that institutions designed to educate, protect, or connect can, over time, narrow thought rather than expand it.
Yikes. I must admit I wasn’t able to get through this. I think the title hints that that filtering out reasonable people and feeding an echo chamber was the point though. It could have been called “Why Women Moved Left While Men Didn’t” but that wouldn’t screen critical thinkers as well. I stopped reading because some factual red flags (“millions of years” of conditioning for women when humans have only been around for 200,000 years) popped up giving me the impression that this theory probably wasn’t well thought out. Feel free to let me know if I’m wrong.