Young women are more liberal than they have been in decades, according to a Gallup analysis of more than 20 years of polling data.
Over the past few years, about 4 in 10 young women between the ages of 18 and 29 have described their political views as liberal, compared with two decades ago when about 3 in 10 identified that way.
For many young women, their liberal identity is not just a new label. The share of young women who hold liberal views on the environment, abortion, race relations and gun laws has also jumped by double digits, Gallup found.
Topic:
Women are voting more liberally because they don’t like conservative positions on abortion, guns, and the environment.
Weird dudes in this thread:
“Men are being left behind!”
—-
Wut.
A few of the women I work with who are vocal about their politics, will quite firmly point to how conservatives still engage in victim blaming if a woman gets sexually harassed or assaulted, to say nothing of rape/murder, to their reasons for going blue.
Their reproductive rights being curtailed while men old enough to be their father get viagra covered through their insurance telling them to just shut their legs is just a horrific bonus.
I understand how abortion and guns can/do have a womens exclusive perspective, but how is the environment a womens issue? By environment you mean things like climate change and pollution, right?
I can understand how liberals vs progressives would have different views…but I’m not grasping how men vs women would.
There’s a sense of “Caring about nature is effeminate and for wusses” in toxic masculinity.
Which I find extremely odd, since some traditionally masculine activities are nature oriented. Hunting, fishing, outdoorsy stuff in general. It wasn’t that long ago that (environmental) conservation was a huge component of those activities to ensure continued access for people to those activities. Maybe it still is but I certainly don’t get that impression as strongly anymore.
Burning fossil fuels and polluting is viewed as masculine, whereas caring about the environment is feminine, in a phenomenon sociologists have coined as Petro-masculinity. Think of those men who roll coal in their lifted trucks towards cyclists in lycra, who they view as “gay”.
Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire - Cara Daggett, 2018 - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0305829818775817
People are weird. I see nothing masculine or anti-masculine about recycling, or driving an electric car.
Like…it doesn’t even seem related to how tough you are. If anything the really masculine guy would be the one who rides his bicycle everywhere.
Really built calves. Leg muscles. Able to go 40mph from your legs alone. Isn’t that the real tough guy? Not the guy who gets into a large truck, and slightly presses a pedal downward.
Like I said. People are weird.
Caring about pollution is associated with wimpy electric cars instead of manly trucks, and the not manly activity of taking transit or cycling, and soyboy diets instead of steaks, and omg electric stoves, etc.
And I don’t understand that, because my wimpy electric vehicle will leave your archaic, noisy, pollution belching vehicle in the dust, and will do so in effortless silence
Ok, but what does this have to do with the article? You’re brining up a totally different topic.
Women really need to reevaluate their position on guns. Guns are a self defense tool and a great equalizer that will allow you to defend yourself and your family against a rapist or home invader twice your size and double your strength. Gun rights are women’s rights and empowerment for women.
Imagine being downvoted for thinking women should be able to protect themselves.
The conservative postion literally sees you subhuman … Its the conservative women that amaze me … How?
Because most people run on their personal experiences, and don’t do great when they have to think very far ahead or extrapolate and make connections.
If you’re lucky enough to be born into a conservative home that’s not bugshit crazy, and you’re lucky enough to not be TOO smart, neurodivergent, gay/lesbian/trans/etc. then you’ve probably never seen the full ugly face of conservatism because you were treated nicely.
Lots of conservatives will treat you perfectly politely…if they get to know you, and as long as you look white and clean-cut enough. As long as you give the right social signifiers, basically.
Most of my ex-conservative friends group was driven away from conservative family because we were abused in some obvious fashion, were gay/lesbian/trans, were neurodivergent, etc. We were different in ways that, ultimately, after a lot of pain, forced us to cut ties with family. (It was never our first choice though.)
But a woman who was lucky to be born into a family that treats her halfway decently won’t experience that sort of ugliness until an emergency happens and it’s leopards-eating-faces time.
And it’s VERY hard to rock the boat BEFORE something bad happens to you, when you know rocking it will have really bad consequences immediately. People don’t like to be shunned or kicked out of families, so if they’re not treated TOO badly they’ll toe the line and conform out of fear of the unknown and fear of losing everything they have and know.
They don’t understand that that means inability to get a divorce, not being able to open a bank account, not having the right to vote, etc. The conservatives will say all the polite words like family values which sounds fine.
Shocker, when women lose basic reproductive healthcare rights, their views on abortion legislation and conservative politics change significantly.
Ignoring the annoying way in which liberal has been re-christened into anything vaguely left-wing in U.S. parlance, this seems hardly surprising since the conservative side seems both anti-young, and anti-woman.
I don’t want to ignore it. Calling yourself liberal on the environment and gun laws just makes me think you want more polluting industry and more guns.
Liberal, as in liberty, as in freedom from restriction. Being liberal on abortion means you’re against more abortion laws. Being liberal on guns and the environment similarly means deregulation to me.
Here on Lemmy leftist means communist to some people, but liberal means corporatist Democrat to me.
Progressive or leftist is what I call myself depending on context. If I’m among a group that will immediately think I mean communist, then I stick with progressive.
The thing is, liberal means something rather specific to me - open, against regulations. If you’re socially liberal, I’m probably on board. If your liberal regarding the financial market, we’ll probably disagree.
I suppose someone who is extremely liberal in all regards following this definition would be what most people in the U.S. would call a libertarian.
In the end, shouting at clouds about me thinking that people are using words wrong won’t do much, and generally I’m very open to language evolving, but this one always gets me because it’s one region specifically using it differently than what I learned.
Don’t buy the “tradwife” myth. That’s just six or seven creepy “influencers,” who figured out how to make money from conservative boys dumb enough to think they have a relationship with fake online personalities.
And more than one women who has gone down that route, including influencers, has ended up regretting being dominated by their husband 24/7. Even if you’re into domination, this is a life where there’s no safe word.
https://unherd.com/2024/05/lauren-southern-the-tradlife-influencer-filled-with-regret/
(Note, Lauren Southern is still a horrible right-wing influencer, she’s just no longer into the tradwife thing.)
