Changing fortunes drive young women’s votes left and men’s right

17 comments

1. TLDR news on YouTube had a good video on this, showing that whole women where more likely to identify as “Liberal” and Men conservative, if you asked them their opinions on specific issues, they tended to not show such a divide.

   I’d say it’s more Todo with labeling and social media influences

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3. Only when the operating definition of left and right are defined in entirely social terms. If you get down to material economic politics I doubt the same would be true.

   You can also say the same for the generational divide- Older voters “identify” more right but when you dig into policy you find they are still overwhelmingly in favour of things like rail and utility renationalisation.

4. If this is true, it’s unsurprising.

   White, heterosexual men in the UK (which makes up the largest demographic of men) are routinely provided as the reason for the downfall of society by liberal politicians, activists and commenters. It’s no surprise that young members of that demographic (particularly from the working class) feel the need to rebel against the people that constantly blame them for all the country’s woes.

   Edit: Also, it is far more difficult for young white men to access financial and emotional support services, or housing assistance, either from the UK Government or via the local authority. Young white male teenagers are being left behind in this country, and it’s a crying shame.

5. Does this mean women favour higher taxation and a larger state? Strange, given they are wealthier than they were historically since women can now own assets independently and access avenues of finance that were once exclusive to men.

6. Shock. Discrimination against men causes men to vote right wing.

7. From my experience there’s a lot more active female communists than male. International solidarity is part of a basic ideal for modern women and inevitably that requires freedom from the corporate state. Following any idea of human freedom leads to critiques of capitalism, and the conclusions you arrive at from historical analysis are fundamental to socialist thought.

8. Some variation of this story does the rounds every couple of months. I do enjoy this admission from The Times that right-wing politics caters to aggrieved people.

9. I’d say I generally lean left with a few “right wing” policies dotted in there that I like.

   I think the problem for young men drifting right will be that they won’t actually benefit from any right wing fiscal policies they vote to enact. The aggrieved tend to be asset poor and may be annoyed into voting for very strict social policies that bring with them a slew of economic policies that only cement their place on the hierarchy.

10. Not surprised. I see several people here that disagree there’s a Left media push to compare negative stereotypes to white men. It’s obviously not in your face, but they are set up as the “The Man taking the punches” because they are expected to have the bigger empathy and tolerance than others.

    Calling on the BAME struggles during COVID (aka, non white), the National Rail pandering to culture wars when choosing names for train lines, there’s a lot of subtle comparison on how much attention you should get for being a woman or non-white, and not in a way to elevate everyone.

    The Barbie movie pretty much encapsulates a lot of these accepted wrongs. That movie ended not with equality, but that women should have more rights than men? It’s an internalised disposition that a man could handle this as a joke for being in the position of power, but in the reverse we’ll be offensive.

11. I think most people are missing the point with articles like this.

    It doesn’t matter if white men are “actually” losing out in the current political climate. It only matters that they feel like they are. You can keep telling them they’re wrong, but that’s obviously not working. So we as a society either need to discover how to make them feel more seen and more heard and validated or accept that a large portion of them will continue to vote for right wing extremists.

12. Who the fuck is voting right apart from the mega rich?

13. From the evidence I have seen, its not a case of diverging views necessarily. It is just that while young men have stayed where they are in terms of political views, young women have become much more liberal and left wing over time.

    That is no bad thing, I must add. But its not a case of young men becoming “more right wing.” There have always been a few outliers who are rabidly right wing, but as a cohort the views of young men have not changed that much over the years.

    Also, in my experience at least, the views of men and women tend to generally coalesce over time as they get older. But I have no data to back that up.

14. I agree wholeheartedly with equality of opportunity, and I believe we are about as close to that as possible without venturing into discriminatory action. There were never any blockers affecting my non-white classmates application to university when I was applying. We all got similar grades, and all got conditional offers. We all had our fair share of success and failure with applying to jobs post grad. None of us felt in any way more or less privileged or deserving when we did or didn’t get a job.

    I have personally seen my boss passing up extremely strong male candidates for a less experienced female candidate to fit a quota within our team. I was there for the presentations, and witnessed everything. There were 4 roles available. 20 applicants, around 5 women and 15 men. My boss was a woman. She hired the 2 best men, and the 2 best woman. One of the 2 best women absolutely deserved to be there in the top 4 spot. There were at least 3 other men who had a stronger presentation and experience/qualifications than the second best woman, who ended up getting the job due to the philosophy of equality of outcome.

15. This is why it’s so important to ensure that opportunities exist for young men in society to ‘get on’. There was none of this during the last 14 years and really not that much more during the New Labour years.
    I see acres of young men in dead-end jobs working for a pittance.

    I don’t see any indication that this Labour Party are interested either. Perhaps they’ll surprise me when in power.

16. Since the early 90s late 80s we have been fed the girl power mantra feminism etc etc..

    I’m all for equality… we need men and women to be equal but I whole heartedly agree the pendulum (in some areas) has swung the other way and over compensated.

    Just look at child care (queue the attack on my stance)
    In most cases in a court room.. women are favoured as the main care giver to children.. men have almost no rights and have to fight so much harder to get the sane support and rights women have when it comes to child care

    Men fight and get nowhere and give up and are called absent fathers etc *totally wrong take care of ur dam kid* but can you blame a man who has been told he is only a pay check to his kids from giving up?

    We could jump to pensions next.. women have on average a much longer life. Yet men In the uk have been forced to work much longer for their pensions.. despite the fact a man’s life is shorter and on average his work is more physically demanding (probably why men have a much shorter life span) yet they work longer and we have people supporting waspi women fighting against an equalisation of rights… just a little bit ironic. (Land don’t give me its because they didn’t have time to prepare for the changes.

    They got another 5 years to invest in their pension pot and if it won’t sustain you at 65… its not going to sustain you at 60.

    Then we have paternity leave (one of the main causes of the genuine wage gap) why are men and women not given equal time to bond with their child?

    If both a man and a women got a near equal amount of time off it would alleviate the recoup time for a women after birth and also allow a man time to bind with their child

    I could go on with many more double standards and inequalities pushed on men yet ignored but you combine all this and you can see why men are essentially leaving society.

    One bad man equals all men are bad

    One bad women is just a bad apple.

    Society needs to adjust and soon or we are gonna have some major social problems in the future

    Just an FYI I would still consider myself left leaning and would never vote cuntservatives.. I won’t be sucked into the right wing doom pool. But I can see why it speaks to some younger men.

17. This isn’t a surprise because i’ve always thought that the left (at least in its modern form) and right are basically just expressions of male and female sensibilities anyway. Left = compassion and equality whereas Right = merit, competition and self responsibility. Both are important and a little zero sum, and neither correct in every scenario. Probably there are very useful evolutionary reasons for these differences. The problem is that modern technology has forced left and right to become parodies of themselves. I’m male and I find the left’s victim obsession kind of gross, almost bordering on fetishism, and not for me.