What are the politics of modern young women?
We know all about the edgy 'manosphere' bullshit that teenage males basically get shoved down their throats these days and gladly suck up since they don't see any alternatives, but what about women?
eat hot chip and lie
Beat me to it
im a stalinist
As you should be
There is a division between millenials and gen z
Millenial women are all about butt mogging zoomers and the zoomers, they get butt mogged
generational power dynamics
Real talk, material conditions. Young women support legalizing abortion and free healthcare. Posting this for a few friends of mine
UK perspective. Unironically socialism with feminist characteristics. More women support socialism than men, that translates in reality to succdem for the most part but it also translates to actual support for actual socialism as well. Entries into radical politics are typically feminist oriented, equal pay, equal holiday, time off, bodily rights, personal space/sexual assaults, etc etc.
The big trend I see on tiktok among younger teens is girls posting videos of the catcalling and car horns they get. Some of these girls are sort of posting it as a cutesy "this is what it's like walking around dressed as an alt-girl" type video for views and algo... But in a few years time those same girls will not look at it as cute anymore they will hate it and talk about how much they hate it and how much every grown ass man overtly sexualises 14 year old girls walking around the streets.
This behaviour later translates to getting actually groped and inappropriately touched by gross and scarily intimidating men in nightclubs and their transition to overt feminism happens fast as fuck. I've known a number of pretty regular basic ass girls that, upon having their first experience of a complete and total strangers they're not even dancing or doing anything with thinking it's appropriate to put their hands on and in their privates unannounced in a nightclub start their path into politics and activism real quick.
I don't think there's anything for women that is anywhere near equivalent to what manosphere shit is to young men. Most young women I know are some color of liberal or radlib to varying degrees. White feminism is big among white women. I think if there was anything to compare, it would be trad stuff or that sort of new age granola fascism (unsure of what else to call it). But these are extremely niche, I only know a bunch of weird new age reactionaries due to a horrible former job. Ultimately these people are rare and most people will maybe know or know of like one woman like this. Most young women are more likely center left or radlibs. Meanwhile a man does not even have to be really explicitly into manosphere stuff for that rhetoric to have seeped into his subconscious it's become so common in male circles.
I firmly disagree with that. Toxic feminine discourse is just as prevalent for young women it's just that because of the shrinking categories of masculinity (basically down to be rich or be buff or both because it is about an air of protection), there is a wider range of 'acceptable' feminine behavior. And that is besides the point that if you are a woman and you choose to default towards perceived masculine behavior that is socially acceptable outside of the the most conservative circles. And as you say, because of this freedom most women are either radlibs or libs.
That said, there are two forms of generally feminine toxicity that I see from online that are translated into bar culture. The first is generally libertarian feminism, or 'girl boss' mentality, who are incredibly destructive to anyone around them for the sake of personal gain, but generally fight their own battles. The second is the opposite which is a 'helpless' mentality where they either act like they can't do anything or shouldn't have to do anything, or literally go out of their way to antagonize others so that way they have to be constantly 'saved'. And these behaviors span both avowedly liberal and conservative women because the vast majority in the U.S. do not have an actually ideologically consistent political worldview, so attempting to assign them one is a fool's errand. They are all libs insofar as they are picking and choosing from the buffet of ideology.
Yeah I actually did consider bringing up the gatekeep gaslight girlboss mentality in an edit to my comment, however I decided against it since I don't think it can really be equated to the manosphere. It is absolutely toxic, but the manosphere represents a whole multitude of extremely socially regressive stances and attitudes, whereas girlboss mentality is mostly just capitalist ideology, and even can in some instances represent some socially progressive stances. And ultimately the girlboss is probably center right to center left (as you say), and I think is more likely to be cautiously radlib than embrace the weird esoteric fascism of the manosphere. I think you're spot on with the causes.
I don't really understand your second toxic mentality point. Is this the same as the tradwife, the desire to be some 50s housewife with her husband as the breadmaker, or do you have in mind something else? I sort of understand what you're saying, I just can't really picture this person in my head as a "type."
edit: the other reason I didn't bring up gatekeep gaslight girlboss is because it didn't seem as prevalent to me. It absolutely is a common type, but to characterize it as the young women ideology seemed wrong. I know a lot of women who buy into it, or at least its sister, that sort of women-centered hustle culture, but I know just as many women who reject it and make fun of the girlboss. Whereas with the manosphere, I talk to my male friends and even being pretty basic liberals they'll say shit that makes my ears perk up as I can hear the manosphere attitudes seeping into their thoughts. And there's less explicit rejection of that stuff. So manosphere attitudes just seemed more prevalent among men, whereas there was nothing I could think of with a similar prevalence among women (although I am a man and have more contact with men so maybe I'm just not in the know). This wasn't to dismiss any toxic attitudes among women, just that none of those attitudes seemed as prevalent nor did I feel they occupied the same extremely socially regressive space as the manosphere.
Hot chip? Lie?
shopping 😂😂😂
This was considered the funniest joke of the 1990s. A truly terrible time to be alive.
i don't think americans have coherent politics regardless of gender. They probably have sympathies that bend in certain directions, like a solid majority of women seem on board with abortion rights. But otherwise everything's so atomized and exists as a consumer identity that no one knows what the heck is a politics.
My niece is early 20s. She loves Trump, hitting her dab pen, is staying off of harder drugs now, gets roped into MLM shit every so often, is going back to community college "next semester" for a couple years now.
She comes to me and my partner for advice knowing we don't have the same values, then proceeds to not take the advice she sought out. No fucking clue what's going on in her head.
Next oldest niece is still in HS, but her parents are very wealthy libs... She's going to be a lib.
Is it still laughing at salads? Is that still what media pushes on young women? It used to be laughing at salads
They ate too many hot chips and it fried their brains now they're laughing at salads, it's worse than you think.
You don't win friends with salad...
They claim to not be racist but then marry the most racist man alive
Lol, what?
gatekeep gaslight girlboss
We know all about the edgy 'manosphere' bullshit that teenage males basically get shoved down their throats these days and gladly suck up since they don't see any alternatives, but what about women?
I think they mostly get to choose between tradcath or liberal virtue signaling.
Where the fuck does the tradcath shit come from? As a person who grew up catholic, who would want to do that?
"I dont know you, thats my purse"
if you mean the average young cis women, it's keeping amabs out of the tenement and then going out to the "rave against fascism" with the progress pride flag in hand or mild despair with a side liberalism (my material analysis is vibes, don't quote me on this)
if you mean the average young cis women, it's keeping amabs out of the tenement
why
I mean I know why when it comes to other men in general, but I'm not a piece of shit I swear
In my country they're either radlibs or DemSocs
Depends on who Taylor Swift tells them to vote for and it better be for Biden if she wants to be on the right side of history.
The Shogun? Women will die for Tay Tay
If we're talking analogies to manosphere brainworms I think the whole true crime / pathological fear of crime thing would be the closest analogy
For full transparency, I'm a guy and I do recognize that there's real issues there to be talked about, solved, but in the same sense that at the core of grievances that lead you to go manosphere is probably true - like it gets to be lonely to be a guy ( / it is unsafe to be a woman) - but it prefers to solve this via basically traumatizing yourself; never talk to or have any connection to another human being / lock yourself down in your house or car as there's international gang stalking rapists waiting to take you at every turn
A family member listened(s) to these for years and she's terrified of going outside now.
In my experience in America, mostly light radlib/socdem.
It depends who you know. I seem to encounter a lot on the verge of the 14 words whatever that says about me.
Didn't the Tumblrverse skew heavily female? I would suspect that if there's any good answer, this is maybe a start or a correlate.
I think that zone was loud more than numerous. Think leftist shitposter guys on twitter, there's an endless stream but that's because you're where they hang out.
Georgism
Outside of cities, I have no idea, but in the big cities, my observation as a guy is:
Libleft to left. I feel like there's a high baseline tendency of libleft. I think it's hard not to be that way these days because there's so many issues affecting women that are blatantly the right's making and maintaining.
I think within libleft, there's often a support of redistributive strategies, and an interest in intersectionality. It's of course well meaning, but often within 'ultra-normal' types (you know what I mean) the interest comes and goes in an Instagram infographic. I think people are a bit over cynical about that sort of thing and it definitely comes from a place of misogyny, but it is also somewhat of a trend. They usually reveal their fleeting interest through a vague anti war post, calling for peace wherever. Violence = bad, is their throughline for geopolitics, so they get caught up in liberal news cycle trends. For a fair number of people it seems to be an aesthetic, but that's much better than nothing at all, or being right wing, like most men I meet.
The word decolonising will come up if they're a person of colour or a person who attends university.
In terms of actual socialism, it seems that most local orgs and Marxist events are majority straight white guys. The women are usually people of colour, and if they're white they seem to often be she/they or trans.
In terms of actual socialism, it seems that most local orgs and Marxist events are majority straight white guys.
weird how that works out
I think it's because straight white dudes are most likely to be caught up in extreme politics on the left or right online. Feel like a lot of young leftist men went down the right wing pipeline first and then awakened - you've got that political sense activated and use it to backlash on the ideology that you now find so abhorrent.
Also I think they're most likely to be secular where I'm from, whereas other ethnicities seem more likely to have some sort of religious community to find a place that they belong, or they naturally fit into a community of people of a similar cultural background. (In my city the population is very diverse, so these groups are easy to find)
On the other hand white dudes don't have that same sort of culture or tradition, so they end up having to create and find their own form of culture, especially if theyre secular.
In anti-police protests I've seen, a decent amount of the black bloc-ers appeared to be women, seen many a woman waving an anarcho-communist flag or the hammer and sickle, at least where I've been young women seem more politically active in general, and I tend to be in more left areas so I've seen plenty of true left women.
They're all Jacobites now
I'm glad Bonnie Prince Charlie still has support among the youth.
In my experience women are just a little bit more open minded than men because they’ve been victimised more often. So they will be a little bit more progressive while being very similar to men otherwise. Most white women will support lgbtqia+ rights and abortion, but still behave like they are superior to minority groups while acting like they care (white saviour type shit). They are slightly more class conscious than men in my experience and often anti capitalist but still oppose communism on the same grounds as any liberal. They believe in slowly changing society by voting and by encouraging the people around them to behave better.
This is from a mostly European perspective though.
Collapse Feminism by Alice Cappelle goes into some of the competing narratives/forces in this realm a bit.
There have been various trends in recent years. for example recently "Trad" stuff has been surprisingly effective in flipping the script on liberal feminism and channeling frustrations into "retvrn" right wing directions, but its hard to say if it's achieved the same reach as manosphere stuff, I'd say no probably
I'm not convinced the "trad" stuff for women is real at all. It seems to be an online persona type of grift. It's a way of getting eyeballs on instagram pages by showing a woman walking through a wheat field and talking about having babies is much more pleasant than working. I'm pretty sure the target audience for that kind of stuff is men, not women.
I don't think that's entirely true, I know at least one woman IRL who's gotten into it a bit and even converted to christianity and shit, and even if it's not really taking off wildly, it does present a challenge that liberal, choice-focused (rather than liberation focused) feminism doesn't have great responses to, namely "what if I freely choose a traditional, even subservient role?"
anyhow I'm sure theres an ebook of it around somewhere I'd love to hear criticism of the book tbh, I just read it late last year
in my experience, hexbearism
Liberalism, same as in town.
Generally further left than older women and similar age men, but it's not like they're all communists or anything. I know Trump supporting young women and I know radical young women that are in orgs.
Social Justice Warriors a lot of them. IdPol
Same as modern young men.