The Alternate Realities of Boys and Girls
Will world-view differences spell deeper breakdowns between the sexes?
In a piece published by The Hill today, the headline reads: “High school boys are trending conservative”:
Daniel De Vise makes the point that this in some way operates against the well received narrative of the future being liberal. Though most 12th graders do not consider themselves “political,” when they do, they are more likely to be conservative. Jean Twenge notes point in the article: “Young women, too, are trending liberal. Women ages 18 to 29 are more likely to identify as liberal now than at any time in the past two decades, according to Gallup surveys. Young women are almost twice as likely as young men to claim the liberal tag, a widening gender gap in political beliefs.” That is quite a gap.
I wonder what a 12th grader means when they use the word conservative. In the wake of the Trump-disruption, many have opined on the topic of “what is conservatism.” My guess is that conservatism to a 12th grader is probably a bit different from what a 50 year old self-professed conservative may believe.
But perhaps the takeaway here is just more simple: 12th graders are alienated from the mainstream center-left and activist left narratives. The firehose of activism in the wake of Covid lockdowns in conjunction with the eerily intense and coordinated DEI formalizations in schools and media to the “mostly peaceful protests” are driving this reaction. Temperamentally, the boys seem to have a sense that they were targeted by these efforts. When you are called a sinner and given no mechanism by which to atone, it has a way of activating you inner barometer of bullsh*t. They have lived through an intensive cultural revolution in a back-to-back events, and they’ve had enough.
My guess is that this uptick in 12th graders identifying as conservative is more a “barstool” version than some kind of coherent vision of “retvrn” or other such varieties of conservatism that have emerged post Trump.
But the real issue for me is the divergence noted in these two graphs:
So as many girls actively identify with being liberal, while nearly the same number of boys actively identify with being conservative. And look at those spikes! Things remained relatively steady until 2016 or so. That this was the beginning of the era that broke everyone’s brains is old news. But what is new is the divergence. The same events shared by boys and girls in the same cohort were experienced in very different ways. Girls became more liberal and boys became more conservative.
Why?
I do not know, frankly. But my guess as mentioned above is the response targeted the sexes differently. So while all the headlines and tweets talk about the male spike to conservative self ID, the ramifications are more important. Being told on repeat about “toxic masculinity” has a way of sounding different to boys’ ears and girls’ ears. This will do nothing but exacerbate a growing trend, and leaves me with a question that has been bugging me:
How will boys and girls learn to get along?
How will they form relationships, geared towards long term commitment and marriage, and provide a stable base for having and raising children?
We are teetering on the edge of massive, systems-wide breakdown of our most fundamental institutions. We need to figure out a way to see the same reality in at least somewhat similar ways. The charts tell a different story. I’m worried that this divergence will spell more distrust and less relationship building. We are all familiar with the meme “opposites attract.” I have my doubts. Complimentary perspectives are one thing, but alternate realities are quite another.
So while I’m happy to see the boys not buying the narrative they been fed with a firehose, I’m worried that boys and girls are going to be stuck alone and alienated from one another, and this will be catastrophic for long term family formation. Will differences in world-views precipitate an already fast-moving decline?
The so-called “Mating Market” is already frought with grifters and cads, fueled by apps that exacerbate the Pareto Principle in devious and destructive ways, leaving a generation alienated in profound ways.
We need to figure out how to get the sexes to get along, and we have not yet begun to even look squarely at the problem.
I don't have any solutions but one prerequisite for any possible solution is to make it cool to reject digitally mediated socializing, aka touch grass. I work with kids and the most socially adept ones simply don't use their phones in the same way others do.
Back in the 70’s, in the middle of the ‘do everything, accept everything phenomenon’, I learned the phrase, “ if you were not a liberal when you are younger, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative when you’re older, you have learned nothing.” Our media has ridiculed males for the last 50+ years in the bumbling male depiction in many TV shows. After a while, the “crying wolf” joke gets recognized and is ignored. I do hope young men recognize their value as warriors and protectors. Perhaps recognizing that protector role will save women from the lies on gender transition that so many have bought into and has resulted in the decimation of opportunities for women in sports.