Women Make Better Leaders Because They're Less Likely to be Sex Offenders

Help me fight the abusers. Upgrade at 30% offHello Friends,Last week I received some gentle but surprising pushback to a comment I made while doing an interview. I’m used to fielding challenging, hostile, and even threatening comments. But this pushback caught me off guard because I was speaking to a group that I felt mainly consisted of allies.Live interviews are always challenging because you don’t have the luxury to pause and assemble your thoughts. Sometimes when you’re speaking passionately, it’s possible to make poor word choices that obscure your meaning.To be honest, I live in fear of that. It’s very easy to make a word flub that suggests the exact opposite of what you intended to say.The statement I made that proved to be controversial was the suggestion that we need a political system where absolutely every seat of power is occupied by a woman.For some context, I have a wife and two wonderful and intelligent daughters. I see how compassionate they are and how hard they work and study. Over the years, they’ve helped me to process some deeply rooted assumptions which I now see were always completely wrong.I grew up in a community that valued the kind of toxic patriarchal mindset which is largely responsible for our current anxiety-inducing reality. The idea that men should bury their feelings rather than process them is the type of thinking that leads to a wasted life of misery.For example, it wasn’t until I watched Inside Out (2015) that I finally understood succumbing to tears makes you feel better. I’d always dismissed crying as unhelpful and a sign of weakness. Why did I think that? Why was I so certain of this ludicrous belief that I suppressed tears when I felt them come?Inside Out is right, when you cry you feel better. I can’t explain why, but I don’t have to. Who cares if you don’t know how it works? I don’t know how a cell phone works either, but that doesn’t stop me from wasting countless hours on one.Just quit fighting the current and give yourself the occasional moment to cry.I didn’t understand that until I was 40. That’s kind of heartbreaking when you think about it. These days I make a deliberate effort to allow myself to cry and it helps level out your worldview considerably. It has about the same impact as giving up drinking. If you don’t respect your emotions, they’ll control you.The women in my direct proximity are the best people in the world. So, it was kind of jarring to say, “I’d like to see every seat of power occupied by a woman” and have people reply with, “Come on now, there are women out there who are just as bad as men.”This fits into a kind of self-defeating argument that comes up often. The same thinking compels people to say, “It’s too late to resist,” or “What good would a recount have done?” or “There aren’t going to be any midterms” or a variety of other examples of surrender.During the interview, I kept glancing at the comments as I was trying to formulate my thoughts. That takes a lot of brain power. I noticed one statement from a person I respect who said “That’s nonsense Walter.” That kind of shook me up and made me feel as if I had to either rethink my position or that I’d expressed myself so poorly that the audience had gotten the wrong impression.The truth turned out to be something else entirely.I reached out to this person after the talk for clarification, and she said, “I meant to say that it is nonsense that women are currently excluded. I was agreeing with you.”That was a relief.Still, it’s always a worthwhile practice to walk through your own statements and look for ways to express yourself with greater clarity.I find it odd how often people will hold up a few statistically irrelevant examples and use them as a justification for making widespread generalizations.While it’s true that you can name a few women in politics who have done awful things, by and large women are statistically less likely to succumb to corruption than men. You can find evidence of this in a variety of ways. One example that seems particularly relevant today is how unlikely women are to become sex offenders.After evaluating arrest statistics from a variety of countries, one study found that only 2.2% of reported sex offenses were committed by women.Now, obviously you can try and poke all kinds of holes in that statistic. It’s well known that many sexual assaults go unreported. But we should also consider how many of those 2.2% of reports were malicious. After all, we live in a society that has normalized the idea of “fake” accusations against men. It’s only fair that we acknowledge there might be fake accusations against women as well.Somehow that thought never seems to get any Oxygen, but hey, maybe every accusation against women is fake?But that’s argumentative. The more important takeaway is that we shouldn’t overlook data that shows 97.8% of the reported sex offenses of this study were committed by men. That’s a significant number and it’s irresponsible to reject it out of hand. In fact, you could accurately say that the number of women who are abusers is statistically irrelevant.So yes, while it’s true that there are examples of women who are as bad as the men in power today, it’s also true that if you look at a statistically relevant sample, you’re much safer with women than with men.We know this already. Why do people try to trick themselves into arguing that it might be otherwise? What mechanism is at work?Maps that interpret election data suggest that a woman-only vote would have elected Harris by a large margin. I think many of the combative comments I receive are part of a larger social issue. Apparently, the general public is incapable or not well-versed in the practice of dismissing statistically irrelevant data.There’s a tendency for the public to become fixated on the actions of two or three women in politics and adopt the belief that all women would act the same.Everybody conveniently forgets how political funding works. False operators who support an extremist agenda get huge checks from shadowy sources. The right-wing extremist in politics who are women didn’t get there on their own, they were put there.Not all women are like them. In fact, it’s a statistical oddity that so many extremists are in politics when there are so few of them in the population. Women are less likely to be sex offenders, and women are more likely to vote Democrat. The behavior of these right-wing mouthpieces is an outlier.Therefore, it’s reasonable to assume that if we had a government where every seat of power was occupied by a woman, there’d be a greater statistical likelihood that those representatives would be kind, compassionate, and decent.In short, the exact opposite of what we have now.Currently, we have a system where only the most ruthless people are able to get their hands on elected positions. One major issue with our representation is that the people in office do not reflect the values of the electorate. So, it’s inherently dishonest to look at that small sampling and say, “See, they’re just as bad! Do you want more of that?”It’s also important to point out that some of the absolute best political figures working today are women. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jasmine Crockett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson come immediately to mind. Yes, there are a handful of women who are rightwing extremists. But of the elected officials who are women, a lower percentage of them are radicalized than you’ll find among the men.Voting for a women gives us a greater chance of voting for sanity.As we look around the decaying landscape of our society, a couple things become clear. One is that our nation is not serving the people. Another is that the only way to get out of this is change.Rather than stand pat on the lazy assumption that, “Electing women wouldn’t make a difference,” I suggest that we reserve judgement until after we’ve done the experiment. There have been times in American history where every seat of power was held by a man.We’ve seen where that got us.Having women in every seat is something we haven’t tried. Maybe it will work.Don’t be so quick to assume women wouldn’t do any better. I think there’s quite a bit of evidence to suggest it’s impossible to do any worse.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.Upgrade at 30% offUpgrade at 40% offUpgrade at 50% offUpgrade at 60% offI'm so happy you're here, and I'm looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.My CoSchedule referral linkHere’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe