Recent events have made me wonder whether one particular strain of modern feminism may finally have overplayed its hand.I am not talking about equal legal rights or equal opportunity. Those are human rights, shared by men and women alike. I am talking about the broader idea that equality requires us to believe men and women are essentially the same.They are not. They are different, although there is enormous overlap between them.Intelligence provides a useful example. Research generally finds little or no meaningful difference between men and women in average general intelligence, with both averaging about 100. But the distributions are not identical. The female IQ distribution has a higher central peak, while the male distribution is broader. More women cluster near the average, while more men appear at both the low and high extremes.The same principle applies elsewhere. Men are, on average, larger and physically stronger. Only women can become pregnant and give birth. Hormonal systems differ. Research also finds average sex differences in some aspects of cognition, social behaviour, and empathy, although biology, development, and social conditioning may all contribute.Population averages describe populations, not individuals. But differences between populations can still matter when we examine social behaviour.The recent Lindsay Clancy murder trial provides a disturbing example. Clancy admitted killing her three children. The legal question was whether she was criminally responsible. Her defence argued that postpartum psychosis prevented her from understanding the nature or wrongfulness of her actions. Prosecutors argued that the evidence showed deliberation and responsibility.The jury split 11 to 1. Eleven favoured finding Clancy not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. One juror held out, maintaining that she was responsible. The disagreement resulted in a mistrial..What followed interested me almost as much as the verdict that never came.Three female jurors went on television and explained their reasoning. Their comments repeatedly returned to Clancy’s mental illness, her history as a loving mother, and what they believed had happened to her psychologically. One described the case as potentially becoming a turning point for other women.I do not doubt their sincerity, nor do I deny that severe mental illness can profoundly affect behaviour. But there is a point where understanding why someone acted as they did becomes confused with relieving that person of responsibility.Empathy is valuable because it helps us understand another person’s circumstances. It becomes dangerous when understanding becomes justification.Would the response have been the same if the accused had been a father who killed three children while suffering from a serious psychiatric disorder? We cannot rerun the case with the sexes reversed, so anyone claiming certainty is guessing. There is, however, evidence that female defendants tend to receive more lenient outcomes than comparable male defendants in parts of the American criminal justice system.That does not prove discrimination against men. It does suggest that destructive behaviour may sometimes be judged differently depending on who committed it.The issue reaches beyond one courtroom.Governments constantly make decisions where compassion and reason collide. Welfare policy offers one example. Helping someone in genuine difficulty is compassionate. Creating a system that unintentionally rewards dependency may ultimately hurt the people it was meant to help.Immigration provides another. Sympathy for people seeking a better life is natural. Governments must nevertheless consider housing, employment, infrastructure, healthcare, integration, and the interests of citizens already living in the country..The same tension appears in criminal justice, addiction, homelessness, taxation, environmental policy, and foreign affairs.Good intentions do not guarantee good results.Empathy should help identify problems and remind decision-makers that policies affect real people. But evidence, consequences, and competing interests must then enter the equation. Sometimes the most compassionate decision in the short term produces the least compassionate outcome in the long term.This is where I think modern feminism took a wrong turn. Winning equal legal rights was an enormous achievement. Equality before the law is fundamental to a free society. But somewhere along the way, equality became confused with sameness, and acknowledging average differences between men and women became socially unacceptable.That is not equality. It is denial.Nor should we swing to the opposite extreme and claim women are irrational while men are rational. Men routinely make emotional decisions. Women routinely make analytical ones. The distributions overlap enormously.The real issue is whether we are willing to recognize tendencies where evidence shows they exist and account for them rather than pretend they do not exist.A functioning society needs empathy. Without it, we become cruel. But empathy must operate alongside reason, evidence, and personal responsibility. Once compassion becomes sufficient to override uncomfortable facts, it stops being a virtue and becomes a weakness.Equal opportunity should mean judging people according to their abilities, character, and judgement rather than assuming biology makes everyone interchangeable.Empathy deserves a seat at the table. It should not be sitting at the head of it.
