In response to my posting on Mastodon a “Nature Magazine” editorial which included the following:
“The evidence from science is getting stronger: distributing power between genders creates the kind of world we all need and want to be living in. ... Gender equality leads to better outcomes across the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, but is not factored into most of the goals themselves, notes a Nature editorial. … Health outcomes, ending poverty and greening the environment are boosted when power is shared between the genders”
a user responded:
“The Dalai Lama said women need to run the world because we have a natural compassion that would make everything better.”
It is a nice sentiment, but it is wrong.
Firstly, I want to make clear that the comment did not say or infer all men lack compassion, but for any people who may be inclined to “think” that, I would ask:
can anyone doubt the compassion of Dr. Martin Luther King (Jr)?
I’m going to set aside the inference that gender is binary, although that too is wrong (I’ve written about that in many other posts / blogs / etc.), and move on to my main point for this post:
there are women who lack compassion
Some women commit violence - including sexual assault [Content warning for that link: sexual assault, including CSA].
Some women are bigots - including racist/white supremacist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. Conservatives in the USA include quite a few examples, but we have quite a few here - as do other places.
There was the vile, notorious, society-destroying Maggie Thatcher - see here, here, here, here, and here.
And from my personal experience, the female cop who attended a death by suicide that a friend found was lacking in compassion and increased the trauma, but the male police officer wasn’t and didn’t.
Now, there is definitely a trend towards more women having compassion, and often being more compassionate, but the pretence that all women are compassionate is a problem, as it gives the cis-women who are child abusers, bigots, and rapists a cover - a way to escape justice, and that delays the world becoming a better place.
It also enables spiritual bypassing.
Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:
- there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”;
- I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below, and there’s also Instagram and Mastodon.
Vote Yes for the Voice in Australia - see this backgrounder.
Finally, remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, and to mind our Mӕgan.
