Women and Wokeness: Women Less Tolerant of ALLIES Than Men Are of Ideological Enemies

Helen Andrews made a big splash recently with her argument that wokeness is essentially the result of the feminization of society, as it explains much of what we have witnessed over the past couple of decades. 

Andrews is clearly not anti-woman, being one, and is in many ways an exemplar of the increasing opportunities that women have enjoyed in Western society. Her argument is not that women shouldn’t enjoy the same career opportunities as men, but that the growing dominance of women in elite institutions (women now dominate HR departments, college attendance, new hiring in universities, middle management in corporations, NGOs, and have enormous power in cultural elite institutions) has skewed these institutions in ways that have been harmful. 

YouTube is filled with videos of Andrews and arguments ABOUT Andrews, and I wrote my own piece on her thesis not so long ago. While there is no univariate explanation for anything as complicated as trends in human societies, Andrews has certainly put her finger on a key variable. 

There is lots of evidence to back her up, whether it is the dominance of woke blue-haired women in the Maoist brigades, the prevalence of nurses and teachers in the movements we endure, or the existence of businesses like Race2Dinner, where woke women pay other woke women of color to berate them. The biggest warriors for alphabet ideology are women or feminized men, and the Democrat Party is all about estrogenizing our politics. 

The problem is not feminine values; the problem is the unnatural dominance of feminine values or virtues that when they exist in BALANCE with masculine values or virtues are absolutely necessary to civilization. God created humanity in man and woman, and it persists and grows when there is complementarity. 

Aristotle explained this quite simple when he talked about virtue as the mean between extremes. Too little courage and you are a coward; too much and you are reckless. Same type of thing. 

Full Article: https://t.co/4QMHxi6r77

— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole) February 3, 2026

The gender gap in politics has been evident for decades, and the evidence that it has grown over the years is indisputable. This is, one presumes, a consequence of the growing presence of women in the workplace and the increasing political and economic power that comes from that trend. And as institutions become more and more influenced by women, they have become less and less tolerant of discord and dissent. 

Women overwhelmingly value equity and emotional safety over the pursuit of truth and academic freedom. Men are the opposite.

It’s going to take more parents standing up for their sons and fewer CEOs being browbeaten by their wives to stop the feminization of universities and… pic.twitter.com/3SCvtBGu6y

— Heather Mac Donald (@HMDatMI) February 3, 2026

Men are, on average, more tolerant of dissent, even in situations where obedience is required. It would be perfectly normal for an officer to tell a soldier that he doesn’t care what he thinks or if he is unhappy with an order; just DO it. 

The best leaders, in fact, encourage dissent in most circumstances, as long as everybody gets on board when a course of action has been decided upon. 

Women are much more interested in everybody being on the same page, even in cases where the consensus leads to obviously suboptimal outcomes. Dissent and disloyalty are essentially the same thing, which is why women are much more likely to engage in cancel culture. 

So it shouldn’t surprise us that, when given power, women wind up much less tolerant in all circumstances than men, even when they are warring in the name of “tolerance,” as in these ICE protests. 

FIRE has, in fact, found that women are on average less tolerant of disagreement even among their ideological allies than men are with disagreements with their ideological enemies. Even small deviations can generate harsh backlashed. 

While political affiliation makes people more biased towards speakers who share their views, it affects their overall willingness to let speakers speak, regardless of ideology, very little. But regardless of party or ideology, men are so much more tolerant than women that the gender tolerance gap dominates the ideology difference. In fact, men are over 3.5 times more likely than women to be “perfectly tolerant” of opposing views, meaning they would definitely allow any campus speaker.

So why does such a large gender tolerance gap exist? FIRE’s data doesn’t give us a confident answer, but these findings are consistent with decades of literature investigating political tolerance or support for censorship, which show that men are, on average, more tolerant and less censorial than women.

No matter how well-intentioned, we must never ban speakers or silence students.

But the data does rule out a few possibilities. You might wonder, for instance, whether women are more censorial due to being more personally affected by the positions of the hypothetical speakers our surveys asked about. But only one of the speakers argues for a position that disproportionately affects women (banning abortion), and the gender gap isn’t greater for this speaker, so that doesn’t seem to be what’s causing the gap. My suspicion, corroborated by other research, is that women prefer social harmony.

Feminized men often show the same lack of tolerance, which is why you will see examples such as Will Stancil being canceled by his ideological compatriots, or City Journal’s Signal account being canceled for suggesting that protests remain peaceful. 

In a discussion group for the Phillips/Powderhorn neighborhood, I advocated for a nonviolent approach to protest. I was heavily criticized by group members, who asked to have me removed.

“I’m the problem? Not the people who encourage violence?”

“Yes.” pic.twitter.com/rWjnQ0zuiU

— Christina Buttons (@buttonslives) February 4, 2026

Stancil’s cancellation is a work of art, since he is a radical leftist himself, but he ran afoul of the cancel mob for some reason or another and he is spitting fire. 

The truth comes out. Will Stancil tried to stop his new friends from burning his neighborhood and got beat up, so he was exiled from the ICE protest movement pic.twitter.com/A52M7uFvij

— Aleph (@woke8yearold) February 2, 2026

He didn’t want his neighborhood burned. Have to love it. 

Will Stancil is dropping straight fire rn pic.twitter.com/8GPcx1z05U

— Simulator di tutti i Simulatori (@fleshsimulator) February 4, 2026

Aren’t you down with the cause, Will?

I’m a big fan of women, and my wife does yeoman’s work giving me her perspectives and keeping me sane. Men and women working together and combining their strengths build things better together than they do separately. But when “the force is female,” Star Wars sucks. Feminine virtues are not absolute and always better, and when they dominate power structures they make them worse. 

Don’t believe me? Go to any university, which are now basically female-dominated, and try to disagree with people. The drive for consensus is toxic and stultifying. Consensus gave us COVID tyranny, NetZero, cancel culture wars, and alphabet ideology. 

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