Sioux Falls environmentalist and retired journalist Van Carter rejects testosterone-addled Charlie-Kirkism and calls for more women to help rule the world:
Now I find that there are actually people who are trying to argue that women’s right to vote should be taken away! Au contraire, I say, it is testosterone that, along with religion, has been the root cause of most of human society’s woes. There is much evidence that the lowering of testosterone levels finally allowed civilization to develop.
So I say it is time for the next step in the evolution of civilization. Let’s reduce the factor of testosterone again. Women have been making steady inroads into the management of human affairs, but there are still too few in charge. There are too few in elected positions and too few running our business and corporate affairs.
As in all humans, there will always be despicable women. All of us can name one immediately. Yet females have proven they are easily as intelligent as males, and then add in the factor that they have been the peacemakers in nearly all our affairs. They have had to survive and negotiate the trials of testosterone throughout history. Being bigger and stronger is no longer a factor in human affairs.
Testosterone has had its day. Our world today is as ruinous as it’s ever been.
Vote for women. Look to women to finally make a better world [Van Carter, “Testosterone Has Had Its Day…,” South Dakota Standard, 2025.12.16].
The ridiculous woman-hater’s club will insist that women’s hormones make them too emotional to make reliable decisions. But the people I see on the highway deciding to gun their engines and swerve and surge and otherwise behave erratically with racing machines of death are making bad decisions driven mostly by male hormones. The same appears true at the international level, where dudes like Tsar Vlad and King Don flex their military muscles to prop up their own masculine images. Let’s get rid of these hormonal leaders and put some more temperate people—i.e., women—in charge.
My party needs a woman on South Dakota’s gubernatorial ticket and candidates from both sides of the river to win.
Therein lies the rub, the very thing that makes women wonderful leaders also tends to be the thing that makes competing for that leadership out of their comfort zone.
Perfect comment, O. Thx …
“Let us put men and women together.
See which one is smarter.
Some say men, but I say no.
The women got the men like a puppet show.” – Belafonte
Gosh which party recognizes women? Ask the women of the other party.
This interested party wanted Vice President Kamala Harris to choose Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer as her running mate because Minnesota was going to vote Democratic anyway.
Regardless of identity, the types of people who assume office tend to be about the same. O made a good observation that can also apply to anyone even if it tends to apply more often to women. Working with young children means I tend to work with and often for women. It’s probably my preference at this point.
Having said that, dtressing identity leads to weaponization (the Republican party has become really good at trotting out people to check those identity boxes) and dissapointment when someone fails.
How we choose leaders and what character traits to look for makes more sense to me. Ranked choice voting would be a good start. Consider that’s how Lincoln got nominated. We’ll see how Mamdani does, but that’s how he got nominated too.
This all reminds me of something a very wise man (who worked in Daschle’s office at the time) told me: Republicans often have stronger candidates because they see running for office as “public service” — something done after establishing themselves professionally; whereas, Democrats who want to get into public service dedicate themselves to careers in public service (teachers, social workers, state employees . . .) and they have NO interest in political office.
I think similar could be said of men and women.
It’s a male run world and there is no way they will allow females access to their control and power. There is a clear division of “gender roles” in every society. And our society has a caste system that most white males in general don’t notice.
I don’t belong to a political party, but I do a great deal of observation as a social scientist. Republicans are less likely to elect women/people of color or to include them in decisions. Democrats will take all of us, no matter what gender, color or creed. If we had a multi-party system, we would have a multitude of women/POC in office.
Religion influences and reinforces gender roles, defining behaviors and even dictating the way women dress. Not to offend anyone, but I’m grateful I wasn’t raised a Catholic. I’m a Liberal Lutheran and proud of it.
There are too many men who believe women are inferior to them, so I won’t see many women elected to major positions in my lifetime. …. we’re being stripped of our God given rights as it is.
It all boils down to workload – domestic and non domestic. Unrecognized time poverty is one on the biggest bottlenecks for women getting into and staying in positions of power. Amongst a few other things of course
as a woman who grew up with brothers, I found women difficult to work with. Way too much passive -aggressive bullshit and I swore I would slap the next woman I heard say “well it wasn’t what you said, it was the way you said it. ”
It’s that kind of crap that drives sane people nuts. Men are much easier to work with.
Earlier I wrote about the male perspective of more women in office. I failed to write the female side of the story.
Many older women around here have a difficult time with women in jobs of authority, and I know they are coming from the patriarchal perspective of their generation.
Younger women are more apt to want women as superintendent of schools, mayor, senator, governor, doctor etc. These gals are raising a family, but they also work and want to better themselves. Much more liberal about gender roles.