Love in the Time of Political Warfare
As more women lean left and men lean right, are we losing the middle?
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I collect vintage WWII posters. They remind me of a simpler time when men and women with differing political ideologies united for a common cause. Today, politics no longer makes strange bedfellows. Politics make the bed cold and strange.
A 2020 Pew Research Center poll frames the political divide. The survey found that 43% of Democrats won’t date a Republican, while 24% of Republicans won’t date a Democrat.
Let’s stop and think about that. Almost half of Democrats won’t even sit down and have a cup of coffee with a Republican. If you feel the same, ask yourself — would you have felt the same ten years ago?
Of course, political views change. One hundred fifty years ago, the Democrats were the conservative ones, sporting metaphorical top hats and monocles while passing down a legacy of Jim Crow laws. Until the 1980s, more women voted Republican while more men voted Democrat. Today, more women vote Democrat.
But despite the revolving door of party identities, the liberal-conservative split is the fault line where political cooperation dies a slow, dramatic death on a Reddit board.
Unfortunately, our current political divide reflects the growing chasm between women and men. Today, men lean right, women lean left, and no one meets in the middle. Marriage rates have dropped, and singlehood is on the rise.
Are differing political ideologies to blame or a symptom of a bigger problem?
Recently, Al Jazeera’s Stream invited me to participate in a panel discussion about why young women are becoming increasingly liberal while young men are becoming increasingly conservative.
Despite the TikTok drama, recent Gallup Poll Data, surveying over 12,000 participants, found that liberalism has increased in mainly two groups since the 1990s — young women and senior women.
Overall, a moderate/conservative U.S. has grown more liberal. Liberalism increased slightly in American men aged 30 to 49, from 17% to 22%, and also in men aged 65 and older, from 12% to 18%. For men aged 18 to 29 and men 50 to 64, their ideologies have remained the same.
The widening gap in political ideologies occurs in only one age group—18 to 29. Out of the 12,000 participants, 40% of young women identify as liberal, compared to only 25% of young men.
However, men are not growing more conservative. Women are adopting more liberal views, while men’s views are not changing.
With so much riding on voter turnout, the political divide in Gen Z may predict election results. Typically, conservatives vote Republican while liberals vote Democrat by a wide margin. A 2022 Pew Research Center Study found that 96% of conservatives vote red and 98% of liberals vote blue. So, while political ideologies do not always equate to partisanship, the percentage of outliers is small.
What’s more important is understanding the traits that lead men toward conservativism and women toward liberalism.
Let’s unpack how we got here.
Republican men identify with masculinity more than liberal men.
I suspect another reason young men identify with conservativism— it is conflated with masculinity.
Research will back me up. The American Perspective’s Survey found that 55% of conservative men place importance on being seen as masculine, while only 30% of liberal men felt the same.
The extreme liberal narrative is that men identify more with conservative ideologies because such views benefit men more than women. It’s the ole’ “make me a sandwich” Mad Men mentality.
While 1950s marriages might have had more perks if you wore the pants, men also experienced drawbacks. For one, traditional marriages put pressure on men to be providers. Many researchers suspect that men’s deaths of despairs — suicide, alcoholism, drug overdoses — are higher than women’s due to these pressures. It makes sense. When you equate your value with your net worth, you are headed for an existentialism meltdown.
Today, traditional expectations of masculinity are being questioned, leaving many men uncertain about their place in the world. Like the “hollow men” in T.S. Eliot’s poem, many feel emotionally and spiritually empty. They have become shapeless forms grappling with an outdated definition of masculinity that encouraged them to pursue rigid ideals like stoicism, dominance, or material success — the same ideals liberal women no longer value.
Conservative boys are not okay.
The international research agency Glocalities surveyed over 300,000 participants and found one personality trait correlated with conservativism — despair. Simply put, conservatives are more likely to feel a sense of hopelessness.
Watch any Trump rally, and you will see the despair etched on their faces. Jordan Peterson would tell these men to go home, shower, and clean their rooms.
We are well past that advice.
Unfortunately, the rise of the radical right has found fertile ground among white men, partly due to their feelings of being left behind by society. According to the White Men’s Leadership Study, about 70% of white men say they feel like DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) efforts have left them out in the cold. This sense of being “forgotten” is why they aren’t as gung-ho about DEI initiatives as liberals.
If you are a woman or a minority, you might grab the tiny violin. Men are at the top of the heap regarding leadership positions and decision-making power in the U.S. Until 2023, more CEOs were named John than female CEOs.
Unfortunately, the people at the top don’t always reflect the experiences of the masses. Men’s despondency is valid. Men are falling behind in education, economic prosperity, and mental wellness. Unfortunately, when people don’t feel part of a conversation, they will turn to the most extreme voices to be heard.
Feminism has a branding problem.
Equimundo recently surveyed 2,022 men aged 18 to 45 across the U.S. They asked men a tricky question — “Has Feminism made America a better place?” Surprisingly, 47% of men gave feminism a thumbs down.
But if the Gini index, or Gini coefficient, could talk, it would beg to differ.
The Gini index is a handy measure of income inequality that tells us how evenly (or unevenly) wealth is spread across a population. Scores range from 0 (where everyone’s bank accounts look the same) to 100 (where one person has all the cash). The Gini index is a pretty good indicator of who’s winning and losing in the economic game.
A lower GINI score suggests that wealth is spread more evenly, meaning that both women and men are more likely to have access to similar economic opportunities. Statistically, the GINI quotient equates to better access to healthcare, education, and social services, which helps everyone live better lives — men included.
Now, liberalism, at its core, is all about equality — equal rights, equal opportunities, and a fair shot for everyone. And since feminism is about fighting for income equality, you’d think the message would be crystal clear. But somehow, it’s getting lost in translation.
“We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.”
You can’t tell people whom to love. Politics not only divides men and women into different moral camps but has become central to one’s identity. It’s one thing for a couple to disagree on what color to paint the bathroom. It’s quite another to disagree on abortion rights.
Essayist and novelist Robert Jones Jr. best summarizes modern love; “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” The problem is that most people can’t get past the disagreeing part to determine where their ideologies are rooted.
In essence, identity politics has become a shortcut to rejection. With so many artificial and expendable connections, we are a society that looks to reject before we accept.
There are no easy solutions, but perhaps next time your fingers are itching to swipe left on that Republican or Democrat, you could take a moment to speak to them.
Carlyn Beccia is an award-winning author and illustrator of 13 books. If you enjoyed this article, please share this publication with friends. Wednesday’s article is always free. Sunday’s article is available only for paid subscribers.
I saw a child hood friend post about communication between people over the past decade plus and how it is going down. Care to guess when the major inflection happened?
2016.
My comment, which got no responses as I expected, was what happened in 2016/2017 to toss the apple cart?
People decided to make politics a core part of their identity (i.e. similar to a noun) instead of the adjective at best it should be all about.
Women (especially heterosexual/bi-sexual) have to test, test, and test male partners because the saying that men worry about women laughing, while women worry about men killing them. So, in the perfect litmus test, push for liberalness and openness, and see how a man responds.
It is almost too perfect to be able to see the boutique of red flags come forth, with a simple ask of Democrat, Republican, Liberal or Conservative (or hidden conservative [cough cough Libertarian]).
To request and ask people to come to the middle requires "safety" and "safe spaces" -or- a stature of power and wealth to accept the hits.
So anymore people do the math and realize it isn't worth it, and who can blame them. You have people that fail to do simple research and don't understand "anything" anymore. It is all about feelings, and as you know with love ... if one can't be vulnerable and open? There is no love and intimacy "ever", just trauma bonding.
The elections are so simple anymore, especially in the era of Trump. If a person can't see the charlatan and cult of personality around him and the GOP and so called conservatives (who aren't ...), then do you think that person will be able to have the nuance and attention span to know how to make their partner happy?
No, and not even in a broken clock sort of way.
There are compassionate conservatives out there and there are illiberal liberals, and no person can overly be "generalized" into buckets; however, the simple litmus tests can be applied and one should "always" trust their gut instinct.
In the cess pool of X, you should see the shit I get to deal with and honestly the filters filter out most things since it is negative. I have a profile out there which represents me, but man does it trigger people 'epically'.
And you know what ... it is good to know because I want to see people lose their shit and for others to see who they are ... because frankly, I don't want to waste my energy on them.
You for example ARE a person worthy of energy and time ... always. So in this instance I get why there is no middle and why women lean left and men cower in their own fears and pearl clutch the image of fake masculinity of the right.