“Sugar and spice and all that is nice, that's what girls are made of,” goes an old poem from the Romantic era. The work argues that adult women have different characteristics, but who is the female lead? The poem's author, Robert Southey, doesn't say anything.
But pundit Tucker Carlson did just that.
In fact, he said the “opposite” seems to be true, referring to the idea that “the world would be more peaceful if women were in charge.”
There are no “great successes for female leaders”
Carlson made the comments Monday during a lengthy conversation with commentator Jack Posobiec on his show X. Though it wasn't the subject of the episode, the topic came up when Posobiec said Kamala Harris' defenders would use her “first woman president” pitch to thwart criticism of her.
“We're going to hear the chronic propaganda that's surrounded us: that women are better than men, that women should come first, that women should have all the power in society,” Posobiec said. “Now, here we have the first female president, and how dare you run against the first female president?”
Carlson chimed in, wondering if that point was a bit old-fashioned: “We're yet to see a woman leader achieve great success, and I say that as someone who loves women.”
“Where's the evidence that women rule better?” the moderator later asked. “The idea is that women political leaders will be more reconciliatory. There will be more peace and less war.”
Does having female leaders increase peace?
In reality, Carlson said, “I've seen the exact opposite. The person who actually led the Ukraine war was a woman named Victoria Nuland. Hillary Clinton is the most bloodthirsty person I've ever seen in public.”
(It's worth noting here that in a CBS interview a few years ago, Clinton joked about killing Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, saying, “We came, we looked, and he was dead,” and laughed loudly. Let's also not forget that her administration's intervention in Libya was disastrous.)
There was also talk of the first female Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, whom Carlson said he knew and described as “a total demon” and “nasty.”
He went on to say that not only is there no evidence of peace with women leaders on the planet, “the opposite seems to be true.”
Posobiec joined in, citing a 2019 Becker Friedman Institute study that showed, as the researchers put it, “nations led by queens participated in more wars than nations led by kings.”
As expected, Carlson's comments drew the usual criticisms: “harsh and vulnerable,” “disturbing,” “misogynistic,” “hateful,” “mentally unstable and in need of “therapy.” The only thing surprising was that he was wrong.
Now, some cynics might say that while having a female leader may not lead to fewer wars, it may mean that for the first time in history, we may see a war over something that happened 20 years ago and that everyone else has forgotten about.
This isn't the first time Tucker has said that.
Of course, while New Chivalries prescribes a woke double standard, one might wonder: if it's okay to argue that men are more combative, what's wrong with examining this proposition and suggesting that the opposite might be true? Come on, right? (Note that in 2015, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article that actually stated that “masculinity” is a “birth defect.”)
Incidentally, I recently wrote that women tend to be more violent than men in marriages and relationships, and while it's true that men are more likely to resort to physical aggression, that's not the whole story.
For example, men are also less likely to hold grudges, hence the saying, “No man hath greater anger than a woman scorned.” Revenge, unforgiveness, feminine failings, can be very destructive.
It is for good reason that Rudyard Kipling wrote in his famous poem that “the female is more dangerous than the male” and claimed that Native American prisoners of war feared the cruelty of “female slaves” more than at the hands of brave warriors. As anthropologist Margaret Mead explained, “Historical evidence and comparative studies with other species suggest that women, as fighting agents, may be less likely to conform to the rules that prevent war from becoming genocide and safeguard the survival of all mankind through the use of modern weaponry.”
Differences in reasons for fighting
In other words, men tend to be principle-driven, while women tend to be emotion-driven. This is even evident in children. Little boys tend to be more violent than girls, but when they do it's usually pushing, shoving, grappling, and sometimes punching. They instinctively follow the rules. Girls fight less, but when they do it can involve scratching, hair pulling, and more. It's no limit. Hence the term “cat fight.”
One explanation is that males fight (albeit amicably) to establish dominance or pecking order (think of two rams butting heads), so it is in their survival advantage to be able to “solve the issue” without harming each other. In contrast, females may only fight as a last resort, perhaps to protect their offspring, if they lack male protection. In this case, the survival advantage is to be as aggressive as possible and hopefully avoid killing their offspring.
Women in Power
Yet another factor is that it's not the average woman who rises to the pinnacle of power, which leads to Duke's first rule about women in politics: It's a dilemma.
If women are going to be in politics, they should be traditionalist women. The problem is that traditionalist women are not seeking positions in the House of Representatives.
They are at home taking care of their children.
Lamenting this problem in 2018, commentator Megan Fox quoted the nobleman, Viscount Helmsley, as saying in a parliamentary debate in 1912. “The most important roles in politics are played not by quiet, reserved, stiff women, but by highly combative women, who have brought great stigma and discredit to women,” he noted.
History since then certainly bears this out, and you might be wondering: how well do catfighting mentality and nuclear capability mix?
