Connor BeatonFound of ManTalks | Empowering Men to Build Better Lives, Relationships, and Minds

Richard Reeves: People are afraid to talk about differences because they get weaponized

5 May 2023 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:59

Clip from a YouTube interview (uploaded May 5, 2023 by Connor Beaton) in which Richard Reeves argues that, even under free choice, men and women show different distributions of interests and aptitudes across occupations (e.g., nursing vs fighter pilots). He emphasizes that acknowledging group differences should not imply they apply to every individual or that one set of traits is superior; he links historical reluctance to discuss differences to their being weaponized against women and defines patriarchy as a system that values masculine traits and devalues feminine ones.

Chapters

Under conditions of absolute free choice we're not going to get 50% of nurses are men and 50% of fighter pilots are women we're not right because the overall distributions of interest in and aptitude for those things differ between men and women but if we can establish from the outset that the fact that there are differences doesn't mean they apply to every individual and the fact that there are differences doesn't make one of them better than the other Right Historically the reason people are afraid to talk about differences is because they get weaponized against women it's like the feminine virtues or the feminine traits are devalued in our economy or in our society by comparison to the masculine ones I think that's probably the best definition of patriarchy that I could think of Right It's a term that's massively misused but I think a patriarchy is probably one where there is just like the value is placed on traits preferences, psychology, virtues tendencies of men masculine as opposed to feminine.