On Coronavirus, Men Are Calling All The Shots. Really?

Ah, Guardian, on a factual, psychological level, even on the meta level why would people be content with such low perch from which to view the world? Many women spoke out against the lockstep rush to lockdown. They don’t get a mention in Gaby Hisliff’s article, "On coronavirus, men are calling all the shots. We’re seeing why it matters". More on that later.

There is a gender story to be written about the Covid event. There is – if you dare whisper it – research into totalitarian tendencies and how these relate to gender. Let’s begin, like Hinsliff, with caution. She equates caution with lack of action, or pause, followed by the anticipation of an outcome. That is modeling not real life. And it is modeling that got us in this mess.

Caution exists on a sliding scale from precaution to defense to aggression. The female defending her young can be spectacularly aggressive and rightly so! Male battles for dominance are largely ritual and have nothing on the female roused to anger. If a challenger mistakes it for ritual it may pay with an eye.

Tribalism. In social media’s walled city of in-and-out no woman is permanently secure and may constantly be challenged, as Hinsliff knows. Real life can be just as tough on women. In comparison, winning acceptance to a male gang is usually a once-only ritual battle for dominance. Yes, that’s a simplification. Many men in social terms are one-trick ponies. They prefer to be doing things. There are good, natural reasons why women’s behavior can be intensely tribal and, BTW, that also means hierarchical. Authoritarian tendencies among women have the same root as tribalism:

Prior research has found that adopting authoritarian beliefs gives people a sense of connection to others and protection against threats…. If a person is authoritarian, they are more likely to follow what group leaders ask them to do, and to follow the crowd more generally.

I think many people will be surprised to find out that women can be more authoritarian than men,” said Mark Brandt of DePaul University in Chicago, a co-author of the study.* “The researchers additionally found that men are more authoritarian than women when there are lower levels of gender inequality.”

So what about Covid? What drove the tendency to favor authoritarian traits such as ’good manners’ and ‘obedience’ versus autonomous traits such as ’independence’ and ‘imagination’?

It’s not enough, as Hinsliff does, to blame the experts. Those who spoke out against the knee-jerk Covid lockdown included many women. These Hinsliff strangely neglects to mention. I doubt that gender plays much of a role in the thinking of immunologists and virologists. But maybe these female experts balked at taking part in what Dominic Cummings and his friends in British military intelligence were planning.

There is the initiation of the crisis and the quality of advice that led to political decisions. But perhaps more worrying is the way the masses complied with those decisions, even when they changed from one day to the next. When it comes to lockstep human behavior, does education play any role? What about health care? And psychology? The government’s behavioral conditioning programs that were certainly not the work of politicians. These are professions that are overwhelmingly dominated by women.

Just because Britain’s PM is male and his closest advisers look like the fourth reserve, old duffer’s football team – should we not look further? Does the tendency to obey have anything to do with the structure of society. Not black or white, male or female but the traits that society urges us to observe?

One other point, about a male but also a professor of gender studies. One of the 77th Brigade operatives at the heart of government is Rupert Burridge, described as a Lt Col, though he has been in the army for less than three years. Before that he was Dr Burridge, Conventions Manager on Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics. The LSE is the home of the Fabians (for more, search Truthstream Media, Understanding the Fabian Window).

Dr Burridge is a professional academic. He writes on military security, women and global peace. We know little about Burridge – he responds to any approaches by calling the military police – but his former assistant at LSE, Dr Elena Stavrevska, is busy ReTweeting “now is the time to challenge the current system of power & patriarchy… to set a post-pandemic framework based on well being not political gain”.

• https://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report-women-more-authoritarian-than-men-study-1710117