It has long been the case that American women are generally more liberal than American men. But among young Americans, this gender gap has widened into an enormous rift: According to recent Gallup polling, there is a 30-point differencebetween the number of women age 18–30 who self-identify as liberal and the number of men in that demographic who do the same.
That’s largely because young women have gotten much more liberal, while young men have stayed ideologically more consistent—or, according to other analyses, become more conservative and anti-feminist. (Of course, not every person identifies as a man or woman. But gender roles still play a big part in shaping our lives and politics, and in the context of this column, I am focusing mostly on the vast majority of Americans who identify as one or the other.) It’s not happening just here either; the political divide between the sexes is a trend that researchers are observing in some other countries too.
I’m as left as they come, if you’d like, look at my comment history. I just don’t like that there is this big culture war issue that repaints an abusers and rapists vs. decent, normal people issue into a men vs. women issue, thus dividing people and forcing a wide swathe of men who are simply being crushed by the system into the right where they will be fleeced and exploited.