Every once in a while, some conservative dweeb gets upset at the fact that liberal women do not like conservative men and definitely don’t want to have sex with them. It’s a tiresome trope that the promoters of “solutions” never think through. The latest victim of this nonsense is the editorial board of the Washington Post, who noticed that people with clashing political views don’t want to have anything to do with each other. OH NOES. Society will collapse.
This ideology gap is particularly pronounced among Gen Z White people. According to a major new American Enterprise Institute survey, 46 percent of White Gen Z women are liberal, compared to only 28 percent of White Gen Z men, more of whom (36 percent) now identify as conservative. Norms around sexuality and gender are diverging, too. Whereas 61 percent of Gen Z women see themselves as feminist, only 43 percent of Gen Z men do. It is little surprise that the “manfluencers” — particularly those such as British American kickboxer Andrew Tate who promote outright misogyny — have their biggest following among boys and young men.
The authors are oblivious to what they are saying. Feminism is not comparable to Andrew Tate — one is advocating for autonomy and equality, the other is a criminal sex trafficker who treats women as chattel. These poles in the dichotomy are not at all equivalent in any way. The Editorial Board ought to be deploring the brutalization of young men by Andrew Tate, rather than treating it as just an attitude like feminism, not calling it something as anodyne as a “dilemma” requiring a compromise. No, it does not. Just tell the Tate wannabes to fuck off. Only they don’t.
This mismatch means that someone will need to compromise. As the researchers Lyman Stone and Brad Wilcox have noted, about 1 in 5 young singles will have little choice but to marry someone outside their ideological tribe. The other option is that they decline to get married at all — not an ideal outcome considering the data showing that marriage is good for the health of societies and individuals alike. (This, of course, is on average; marriage isn’t for everyone. Nor is staying in a physically or emotionally abusive marriage ever the right choice. But, on the whole, while politically mixed couples report somewhat lower levels of satisfaction than same-party couples, they are still likely to be happier than those who remain single.)
The marriage dilemma reflects a broader societal one: whether people can find ways to adapt to a new normal of ideological and political polarization, instead of hoping — against all evidence — that it will dissipate. Unfortunately, Americans have not equipped themselves to discuss, debate and reason across these divides. Americans have increasingly sorted themselves according to ideological orientation. They are working, living and socializing with people who think the same things they do. Particularly on college campuses, a culture of seeking sameness has set up young Americans for disappointment. They expect people to share their own convictions and commitments. But people’s insight and understanding about the world often come from considering alternative perspectives that may at first seem odd or offensive.
Oh those crazy college campuses, where young people get the insane idea that they can think for themselves and don’t have to submit to the demands of the olds. You know, if you’re going to marry someone for life, it’s not at all unreasonable to marry someone who shares your own “convictions and commitments.” Why are you dating and spending time with them otherwise?
One might wonder how the Editorial Board would resolve their “dilemma,” and who is expected to “compromise”. Easy. Teach people to ignore these differences.
A cultural shift might be necessary — one that views politics as a part of people’s identity but far from the most important part. Americans’ ability to live together, quite literally, might depend on it.
Gosh. That man who wants to date you, who believes women are inferior and must be put in their place with a good beat-down? Just pay no attention to that minor character flaw. After all, he’s willing to overlook your belief in cooperation and partnership and mutual respect. For the good of the nation, you must have sex with him and bear his children!
I had to wonder what kind of cretins populate an “editorial board” and what they think they’re doing. Here it is:
Editorials represent the views of The Washington Post as an institution, as determined through discussion among members of the Editorial Board: Opinion Editor David Shipley, Deputy Opinion Editor Charles Lane and Deputy Opinion Editor Stephen Stromberg, as well as writers Mary Duenwald, Christine Emba, Shadi Hamid, David E. Hoffman, James Hohmann, Heather Long, Mili Mitra, Eduardo Porter, Keith B. Richburg and Molly Roberts.
The board highlights issues it thinks are important and responds to news events, mindful of stands it has taken in previous editorials and principles that have animated Post Editorial Boards over time. Articles in the news pages sometimes prompt ideas for editorials, but every editorial is based on original reporting. News reporters and editors never contribute to Editorial Board discussions, and Editorial Board members don’t have any role in news coverage.
I don’t know who any of those people are, but I do know that I don’t give a flying fuck about the “Washington Post as an institution.” Buncha entitled assholes is what they are.
For a more amusing take, read Wives In Stepford Increasingly Don’t Want To Be Replaced By Robots.
Well, the Washington Post is doing their part in an important effort to restock the INCEL population.
And proves it by suggesting liberals surrender – always, their views don’t count.
And precisely justifies why I’ll never get that paper – ever – not even to line the bottom of a bird cage, it’s just way too toxic.
As for negotiation tools for any neocon, but especially the INCEL Gen Z, I suggest a digging bar, aka tunneling bar.
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Bon-Tool-Bon-Riverworks-69-in-Post-hole-digging-bar/5000763295
Just so that one can properly beat them back with a proper stick.
Those names—Lyman Stone and Brad Wilcox—sound vaguely familiar to me. I suspect I’m not going to like finding out where I’ve heard of them before.
I wonder what the chances are this was inspired by at least one of the writers having a son who’s into alt right nonsense, and has found the girls he’s into aren’t into that crap. Bonus points if one or more of the girls rejecting him come from a culture he thought made them amenable to being doormats, instead of those horrible white American girls who dye their hair bright colours and think they’re his equal.
“marriage is good for the indivudual”, yes if that individual is a cis-het christian man in the US
The one who is a fundie xian who wants to teach your kids that the earth is 6,000 years old and jesus is going to show up Any Minute Now and kill them and everyone else?
The guy who is an antivaxxer, who wants to make sure the kids have a miserable childhood that they will probably survive but may not?
No way. Not going to try to put two people together that don’t fit together.
It is basically a set up for a short marriage and a future divorce.
What I learned in physics:
Opposites attract.
And then they annihilate.
Jeanmeslier @4
The Japanese seem to have* moved further along.
As I was searching for anime/manga figurines online, I stumbled upon an acrylic figure of a couple getting married. A male couple getting married. It is obviously no big deal, and their popular culture is incorporating these ideas into the mainstream.
*I have no idea if Japan officially recognises gay marriages but the culture is not outright rejecting it.
You see the same thing in Mormonism in reverse.
Supposedly, there are 150 eligible women for every 100 eligible men in Utah.
There are a lot more devout True Believing Mormon women than men. Because men are more likely to leave the religion or mostly just ignore it and live normal lives i.e going inactive.
So some Mormon women end up marrying nonMormon men.
They invariably put huge pressure on the men to convert, aka hormonal conversion.
Some of those marriages work.
Some of them end up as disasters and I’ve seen that.
They end in, to no one’s surprise, divorce.
And if it is in Utah or a majority Mormon area, the courts always award child custody to…the Mormon parent. The men have real trouble having any contact with their own children.
The Mormon leaders say the one of the worst things a Mormon can do is marry a nonMormon.
It’s one of the few things they claim that I can agree with.
Same sex marriage isn’t legal in Japan yet, but they’re slowly heading that way. Polls show the majority of Japanese think same sex marriages or civil partnerships should be legal in Japan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recognition_of_same-sex_unions_in_Japan
Actually, there were studies that consistently showed that, while married men are happier than single men (I suppose because the married men got a handmaiden), single women were happier than married women. Probably that hasn’t changed much.
Also, down through the ages, people very disproportionately married others of the same religion and politics. It’s got nothing to do with today’s people “not being able to listen or compromise”: it’s a trend that’s been in place all of recorded history.
Religion and politics are very emotional issues: they arouse deep intense emotions and it’s difficult, even in a “civil” discussion, to avoid some unconscious dislike of someone who has different beliefs than you. Difference in these area are just a lot more difficult to deal with than if, say, a husband likes football and a wife likes opera. I don’t foresee much ever changing in this area.
Ah yes. The familiar stench.
Situation 1):
Person A: I think people of type X are sub-human and should be dominated and killed.
Person B (of type X): I don’t really want to be killed.
Person C (lover of the golden mean): You both need to meet in the middle, compromise, for the Good Of Society(TM). Also, evidence shows^ that compromising makes you happier.
Situation 2:
“Women! Have you considered NOT being people?”
“We’ve, how do we put this, tried that. It wasn’t fun.”
“Want to do it again?”
{Waggles eyebrows}
“No. Thank you, but no.”
“Humanity will die out!”
“It won’t. We’ll fuck them.”
{Points}
“But THEY aren’t US!”
“Ah! You have arrived at our point.”
Louis
^Cherry picked at best, out of context of the field generally, made up/deeply spurious at worst.
Lyman Stone is a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies.
Brad Wilcox, sociology professor and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, is the Future of Freedom Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies.
Look up the Institute of Family Studies.
mathman85 @2
You may have heard of them before because they’re affiliated with the Institute for Family Studies, a rightwing think tank from Charlottesville, VA that promotes “traditional marriage” strongly tied to christianist male-centric ideology. They are fellow travelers with the Family Research Council and produce a lot of dubious research and writing designed to hold up their ideas of traditional christian marriage, including opposing no-fault divorce. The Post editorial is essentially based on the Atlantic article by Stone and Wilcox and a study from the IFS, which makes the whole thing extremely biased toward their ideology without the Post editorial board bothering to note that for their readers.
Why is it that (usually) women are expected to fuck/marry people they don’t want to, or who will openly treat them as subhuman?
{Rhetorical}
Louis
This dubious statistic needs some context.
How happy are mixed couples where one of them despises the other, the other one being some right wingnut guy who thinks they are inferior but adequate breeding stock?
The divorce rate is after all, 50%.
This is a false dichotomy.
If assortive mating continues, on average the norm in our society, then eventually the misogynistic fascist men will simply die out.
Of course, ideology isn’t inheritable but vertical transmission of culture is a thing.
These editorial writers obviously think this might happen. It might.
Where we differ is that we think it is a good thing and they don’t.
Cultures change and sometimes even advance and they are on the wrong side of history and morality.
If their kind end up single, old, and bitter, I’m not going to care one bit.
They want the worst for me and my kind, so why should I care at all?
Sounds like the old whine, “Liberal women are Hawt, why don’t they want to go out with me?” Maybe if you were less of a judgmental ass. Oh, wait. Then you wouldn’t be conservative. Never mind.
They are forced birthers and female slavers.
This is starting to sound familiar.
Where have I heard this before?
Jordon Peterson says the same thing.
Enforced monogamy is needed to keep violent men from wrecking our society.
Instead, I guess, they can take their violent tendencies out on the poor women that was forced to marry them and stay married.
If you are echoing Jordan Peterson, there is something very wrong with you.
No, we aren’t going back a 1,000 years because a few creepy male incels can’t find anyone who won’t run away from them.
The era of forced births and female slavery are over with whether the Washington Post likes it or not.
My question in the face of all this is… who cares?
So more people end up single. So what? Being single is fine.
They want to be Borat. “The first wife I bought was very strong. She could pull the plough all by herself”.
For the good of the nation, you must have sex with him and bear his children!
It always seems suspiciously as though such arguments are promoted by men who are arguing in effect “lower your standards and have more sex because then I might get some.”
Given climate change, people should be not reproducing at all, unless it’s necessary for some reason, until our population dies back to a few million, which would easily and cheaply cut emissions.
Because conservatives believe that sexual orientation is a choice, mathematics tells us that the objective optimum solution is for 16% of conservative men to choose to be gay and partner with each other. That way, everyone can have a partner and be with someone compatible.
Unfortunately, this requires a few liberal women to act as bisexual or pansexual, if not lesbian, even though it’s not a choice. But if the Post demands it, for the good of society, …
Oh I am so sorry that I don’t want to have sex with someone who is denying me my rights.
I don’t understand why these writers see marriage as a foregone conclusion. If somebody wants to get married and prefers someone with compatible views, s/he will figure it out. I am more than happy to be unmarried and I do not see myself getting married at any point in my life. A friend of mine, however, signed up for dating sites and did eventually get married. When I asked her why she had gone on dating sites, she said, “Because I’m sick of being alone.” Fair enough. I’ve done the dating site thing, more out of curiosity than anything else, and found it at least as intimidating as trying to date in meatspace. Different strokes and all. I resent this assumption that everyone must be the same.
The obvious solution to me is that we just transition a suitable proportion of gen z “men” to trans women and that will take care if the ideology bit and we can have plenty of happy lesbian marriages.
This is a joke….
Amanda Marcotte agrees.
(With our esteemed host, not the WaPo EdBoard.)
They lost me at “According to a major new American Enterprise Institute survey…”. Oh, Washington Post, I grieve for what you have become.
Don’t say “someone” when you mean “women”, whoever wrote this, because we know damned well you don’t expect the men to compromise.
They get so close:
But if they truly believed that, from whence cometh:
They’re pretending that the difference in opinion is on the level of deciding what toppings to put on the pizza. When one of the groups is saying, “I am a fully realized human being,” and the other is saying, “If you don’t worship me, you’re scum,” that is not something upon which there can be “compromise.”
It’s the same old logical fallacy of the middle ground. There are a lot of things in life where you have to give a little to get a little, but there are also a lot of things which cannot be given up or it goes away forever. If one group thinks that they should have the ability to beat their partners when they get out of line, it is ludicrous to talk about “compromise.”
And you don’t get to then say, “But I said that being in an abusive relationship is bad!” Great…why aren’t you recognizing the abusive relationship when it makes itself known? If your partner is into strict “gender roles” and you’re not, do you really want to have a child with them? What are they going to do when the kid comes out as gay or trans? When your potential partner starts talking about how being a White, cis male is somehow the “most oppressed minority,” how is that not a red flag for an abusive relationship?
We’ve seen this over and over and over. “Why can’t those uppity Blacks just compromise and stay in the back of the bus? The back gets to the location at the same time as the front.” “Why can’t those uppity women just compromise and raise the kids? Somebody has to do it.” “Why can’t those uppity gays just compromise and accept ‘domestic partnership’? Marriage means something to straight people and you’re trying to take it away.”
Why is it always the minority that has to do the compromising?
stwriley @ 13
That’s more or less what I’d figured. I was correct not to want to know.
I’m sick of conservatives telling me I need to compromise. Fuck that, try being a little less hateful, a little (actually a lot) less racist, a little less arseholery.
I don’t particularly mind the idea of getting along with people who have different politics. I just don’t see the culture war bullshit as having anything to do with politics. That’s just a fig leaf. It’s the same as trying to excuse mysoginy, racism, and homophobia as just part of your religion. It doesn’t work and no one in their right mind would buy into that.
Also, is it just me or are they trying to appropriate a whole lot of extra conservative people and imply they support the worst, loudest assholes over on that side of things? I’m pretty sure a whole lot of conservatives would have issues with the idea that they might support or be represented by crude scum like Andrew Tate.
Also I remember when the Isla Vista mass shooter’s videos popped up on youtube there were a lot comments about along the lines of women should have put out for him. Anyone who had taken “one for the team”, as they put it, would have been murdered first.
@ 31. lanir :
Certainly isn’t just you. Reckon so as well.
Sure hope that’s the case. Unfortunately I’m a little more dubious but still a lot of them probly, hopefully, most likely?
Sad counter-example here : Trump. Albeit am aware he’s disliked by many in private..
The editorial board seem to have neglected the possibility that white gen Z women may simply look for non-white partners with similar views or is that another bit they are not saying out loud?
How many members of the Washington Post editorial board should go to prison for life without a trial or even being charged with anything?
I’d say zero: no one deserves to go to prison for life without a trial, not even the WP editorial board.
On the other hand, a new poll conducted by the International Institute of Ass-Pulling says 27% of Americans believe that the entire Washington Post editorial board should go to prison for life without a trial or even being charged with a crime.
Clearly, a compromise is needed. Maybe some, but not all, of the WP editorial board could go to prison for life for the good of the country, while others could receive lesser sentences. Maybe they could all go to prison, but we could make ourselves feel better about it by using a euphemisms for prison (such as calling the prison holding them an “internment camp” or “psychiatric hospital.”)
I don’t know what the right solution is, but the point is that those who, like me, support the rights of the editorial board to not spend their life in prison need to be prepared to make compromises.
Do I have to say this entire post is sarcasm?