I predict that political splits will eventually intensify along gender lines as race loses much of its salience (especially among Hispanic and Asian Americans). We've seen a big shift to where Democrats seem to represent "female interests" more while Republicans represent "male interests" more. This also tracks with how women are getting more degrees than men, and Democrats are becoming the de-facto party of college-educated people.
A friend of mine and I have often said that bluechecks of all races actually constitute a distinct demographic that has more in common with each other than their respective races. Of course, "bluecheck" doesn't mean what it used to, but we used it in reference to culture-class elites and those felt included in those groups.
Lmao I was literally about to say, "but I'm a college-educated woman who votes Republican,"
...and then I remembered that after watching the last Republican debate I thought, "Oh, SCREW IT! They're all out-of-touch on every issue except for covid, and that didn't really come up in this debate. At least the Democrats will help with my student loans while neither team is really protecting the rights of the unvaxxed. I'll vote for the lenient student loan repayment plans while the world burns, since it's going to burn with either team in power anyways."
But in 2021, I would have campaigned HARD for DeSantis!
At this point, I want RFK Jr but will settle for whoever is making the collapse a little easier to handle lol. Guess I was only a Republican for about two years and now I'm a Kennedy Democrat? Lol!
Also, the Republicans have to REALLY be dropping the ball rn to lose unvaxxed voters lol.
Exactly. Republicans have been losing college-educated voters for years now, especially after Trump. And considering that women now graduate college at noticeably higher rates than men do, this naturally means Dems will be shaped more by women, which then reinforces the gender divide, and thus turns the GOP in a more male-oriented direction.
Exactly! And it's not just the lack of support for student loan repayment plans that were NORMAL in countries like the UK for decades already, either. It's the sneering attitudes that make it look like they get off on Millennial "failure to launch". Why the fuck would I like or support someone who seems to get pleasure from the Hell my generation went through during the Recession?!
So pretty much the only thing Republicans EVER won me over on was a rare moment of empathy-- when a good number of them did have empathy for people adversely affected by lockdowns and mandates. And-- I feel like this bears repeating-- they didn't stick to that very well and didn't actually do it very well to begin with. There was just an extremely low bar set by leaders worldwide on that one. "I don't want to throw unvaxxed people in campus or starve them to death" was the bar to reach above on that one.
In a way, empathy is considered a "feminine" trait, so I think that also attracts them to being Democrats. I don't think Democratic candidates are really empathetic-- they can be war-mongers and just terrible people all around-- but they put on a better show of empathy.
There's a lot of beating around the bush concerning the brutal realities of a free and transparent sexual marketplace without any ethos of constraint aside from consent. It all turns out to be very exclusionary and hierarchical and unfair, on the basis of characteristics people have little control over. Some people enjoy an embarrassment of riches and thrills while others are deprived of even the most modest desires. Everything is shot through with bargaining power imbalances and mutually exclusive goals, and conflicts of interest, which results in feelings of being trapped, exploited, used, disrespected. When you think about it, the end result feels very Reactionary - a bleak Social Darwinism - and all stemming from a basket of progressive premises! The cognitive dissonance would make any well intentioned liberal uncomfortable, and some people unsurprisingly started to critique the fundamental assumptions that led us here.
You're correct that progressives are in somewhat of a bind about how to address this without giving any credence to right-wing or traditionalist cultural nostrums, but you also identified the solution - a different set of rules and expectations for straight men than for everyone else. If straight male sexuality can be regulated and constrained with new cultural norms, than everyone else's bargaining power for their preferred level of safety (emotional and physical) and relationship dynamics increases.
You can call it a double standard, but people would argue that the status quo has already instantiated a much more problematic double standard in favor of high-status straight men.
Have you ever read Louise Perry's book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution? In it, she says that the sexual revolution has made the vast majority of women miserable for the benefit of a few elite men.
No I haven't! My opinions on this were mostly informed by analysis of the dating app metrics (when they still made it available it to public researchers). All the anecdotal evidence from talking to both male and female freinds tends to confirm it.
I'm pretty sure that most straight men would persue levels of promiscuity similar to gay men (on average) if it were available to them.
One interesting theme that often comes up in talking to my female friends, is that they'd be much more open to casual sex with a wider range of men if there could be some guarantee of both their personal safety and satisfaction. They all feel that none of the dating innovations to come out of the app era have done anything to re-risk the downside of casual sex for women generally.
This is also the reason why a straight man who establishes a reputation as a good lover and a gentleman through the gossip grape vine in a gender diverse social network of sufficient size, will never be at a loss for willing sexual partners.
"Both social and technological progress are the pillars of liberalism's belief in a better tomorrow (e.g. "Diversity is our strength" and "I fucking love science")"
But only sometimes. Liberalism does not like the wrong kind of diversity, such as a PoC that doesn't echo approved dogma, and science is only loved to the extent it can be weaponized against opponents. Otherwise, science is a white male tool intended to oppress minorities and women.
Math and science are both tools of white supremacy... white kids score higher than black and Hispanic kids, therefore math is racist. And Asians score higher than everyone else, which must mean that Asians are white-adjacent or trying to be white.
Not everyone does this, but in my experience, there is a significant subset of liberalism that is basically indifferent to science except when the cons are against it, in which case science is the best thing since sliced bread.
(Sadly, you could replace "science" with 95% of nouns in the above sentence and it would probably still be correct.)
Also, in deference to Chris' Tossed Salad Principle mentioned on this blog earlier, I should also point out that you could switch "liberalism" and "cons" with the appropriate opposite terms without irony. C'est la vie.
Funny, I was about to say the same thing. Neither tendency cares in the least about "diversity" or "science" or anything else, except as it can be weaponized against the other team.
No offense but i find this observation kind of a bit banal. It reeks of 2019 RW twitter observations, because I dont really agree with it. What is more accurate is liberals are partisan hacks and kind of socially repressed so take delight in arguing with moral justification against someone who can represent a frustration they have IRL
No offense taken, but that comment seems to be a string of nonsequitors, not to mention "I fucking love science" really took off as a sign of Team D allegiance during covid, which wasn't really a thing in 2019.
Yea I suppose, but really as much as Democratic voters jerked off The Science, their politicians still handled the pandemic incompetently by saying "this gets solved at the state level", declaring it an endemic to get people working asap and even laughing at the idea of free testing kits. Partisan hacks. Tho I take no offence dont worry and I liked interacting with u
The thing with the cat person story is that the real life story is more interesting. Basically the author took a couple she was acquainted with, e-stalked them then wrote the story and gave the titular Cat Person a bunch of specific bad traits from some horrible boyfriends she had and created a viral story based around hatred for a fictional type of person that is a perfect concoction of everything that is disliked in online progressive circles. It’s a great horror story idea honestly, imagine waking up tomorrow and knowing someone is following you in order to slander you in secret?
I predict that political splits will eventually intensify along gender lines as race loses much of its salience (especially among Hispanic and Asian Americans). We've seen a big shift to where Democrats seem to represent "female interests" more while Republicans represent "male interests" more. This also tracks with how women are getting more degrees than men, and Democrats are becoming the de-facto party of college-educated people.
A friend of mine and I have often said that bluechecks of all races actually constitute a distinct demographic that has more in common with each other than their respective races. Of course, "bluecheck" doesn't mean what it used to, but we used it in reference to culture-class elites and those felt included in those groups.
Lmao I was literally about to say, "but I'm a college-educated woman who votes Republican,"
...and then I remembered that after watching the last Republican debate I thought, "Oh, SCREW IT! They're all out-of-touch on every issue except for covid, and that didn't really come up in this debate. At least the Democrats will help with my student loans while neither team is really protecting the rights of the unvaxxed. I'll vote for the lenient student loan repayment plans while the world burns, since it's going to burn with either team in power anyways."
But in 2021, I would have campaigned HARD for DeSantis!
At this point, I want RFK Jr but will settle for whoever is making the collapse a little easier to handle lol. Guess I was only a Republican for about two years and now I'm a Kennedy Democrat? Lol!
Also, the Republicans have to REALLY be dropping the ball rn to lose unvaxxed voters lol.
Exactly. Republicans have been losing college-educated voters for years now, especially after Trump. And considering that women now graduate college at noticeably higher rates than men do, this naturally means Dems will be shaped more by women, which then reinforces the gender divide, and thus turns the GOP in a more male-oriented direction.
Exactly! And it's not just the lack of support for student loan repayment plans that were NORMAL in countries like the UK for decades already, either. It's the sneering attitudes that make it look like they get off on Millennial "failure to launch". Why the fuck would I like or support someone who seems to get pleasure from the Hell my generation went through during the Recession?!
So pretty much the only thing Republicans EVER won me over on was a rare moment of empathy-- when a good number of them did have empathy for people adversely affected by lockdowns and mandates. And-- I feel like this bears repeating-- they didn't stick to that very well and didn't actually do it very well to begin with. There was just an extremely low bar set by leaders worldwide on that one. "I don't want to throw unvaxxed people in campus or starve them to death" was the bar to reach above on that one.
In a way, empathy is considered a "feminine" trait, so I think that also attracts them to being Democrats. I don't think Democratic candidates are really empathetic-- they can be war-mongers and just terrible people all around-- but they put on a better show of empathy.
Now you've got to write the "dating advice" post that every Substack writes when they've become popular enough.
ABA: Always be alphaing
There's a lot of beating around the bush concerning the brutal realities of a free and transparent sexual marketplace without any ethos of constraint aside from consent. It all turns out to be very exclusionary and hierarchical and unfair, on the basis of characteristics people have little control over. Some people enjoy an embarrassment of riches and thrills while others are deprived of even the most modest desires. Everything is shot through with bargaining power imbalances and mutually exclusive goals, and conflicts of interest, which results in feelings of being trapped, exploited, used, disrespected. When you think about it, the end result feels very Reactionary - a bleak Social Darwinism - and all stemming from a basket of progressive premises! The cognitive dissonance would make any well intentioned liberal uncomfortable, and some people unsurprisingly started to critique the fundamental assumptions that led us here.
You're correct that progressives are in somewhat of a bind about how to address this without giving any credence to right-wing or traditionalist cultural nostrums, but you also identified the solution - a different set of rules and expectations for straight men than for everyone else. If straight male sexuality can be regulated and constrained with new cultural norms, than everyone else's bargaining power for their preferred level of safety (emotional and physical) and relationship dynamics increases.
You can call it a double standard, but people would argue that the status quo has already instantiated a much more problematic double standard in favor of high-status straight men.
Have you ever read Louise Perry's book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution? In it, she says that the sexual revolution has made the vast majority of women miserable for the benefit of a few elite men.
No I haven't! My opinions on this were mostly informed by analysis of the dating app metrics (when they still made it available it to public researchers). All the anecdotal evidence from talking to both male and female freinds tends to confirm it.
I'm pretty sure that most straight men would persue levels of promiscuity similar to gay men (on average) if it were available to them.
One interesting theme that often comes up in talking to my female friends, is that they'd be much more open to casual sex with a wider range of men if there could be some guarantee of both their personal safety and satisfaction. They all feel that none of the dating innovations to come out of the app era have done anything to re-risk the downside of casual sex for women generally.
This is also the reason why a straight man who establishes a reputation as a good lover and a gentleman through the gossip grape vine in a gender diverse social network of sufficient size, will never be at a loss for willing sexual partners.
"Both social and technological progress are the pillars of liberalism's belief in a better tomorrow (e.g. "Diversity is our strength" and "I fucking love science")"
But only sometimes. Liberalism does not like the wrong kind of diversity, such as a PoC that doesn't echo approved dogma, and science is only loved to the extent it can be weaponized against opponents. Otherwise, science is a white male tool intended to oppress minorities and women.
Math and science are both tools of white supremacy... white kids score higher than black and Hispanic kids, therefore math is racist. And Asians score higher than everyone else, which must mean that Asians are white-adjacent or trying to be white.
Not everyone does this, but in my experience, there is a significant subset of liberalism that is basically indifferent to science except when the cons are against it, in which case science is the best thing since sliced bread.
(Sadly, you could replace "science" with 95% of nouns in the above sentence and it would probably still be correct.)
Also, in deference to Chris' Tossed Salad Principle mentioned on this blog earlier, I should also point out that you could switch "liberalism" and "cons" with the appropriate opposite terms without irony. C'est la vie.
Funny, I was about to say the same thing. Neither tendency cares in the least about "diversity" or "science" or anything else, except as it can be weaponized against the other team.
No offense but i find this observation kind of a bit banal. It reeks of 2019 RW twitter observations, because I dont really agree with it. What is more accurate is liberals are partisan hacks and kind of socially repressed so take delight in arguing with moral justification against someone who can represent a frustration they have IRL
No offense taken, but that comment seems to be a string of nonsequitors, not to mention "I fucking love science" really took off as a sign of Team D allegiance during covid, which wasn't really a thing in 2019.
Yea I suppose, but really as much as Democratic voters jerked off The Science, their politicians still handled the pandemic incompetently by saying "this gets solved at the state level", declaring it an endemic to get people working asap and even laughing at the idea of free testing kits. Partisan hacks. Tho I take no offence dont worry and I liked interacting with u
Team D, like Team R, tried to have it both ways throughout the crisis.
Yea its true. I love ur American politics, it’s all very exciting!
The thing with the cat person story is that the real life story is more interesting. Basically the author took a couple she was acquainted with, e-stalked them then wrote the story and gave the titular Cat Person a bunch of specific bad traits from some horrible boyfriends she had and created a viral story based around hatred for a fictional type of person that is a perfect concoction of everything that is disliked in online progressive circles. It’s a great horror story idea honestly, imagine waking up tomorrow and knowing someone is following you in order to slander you in secret?