this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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Interestingly it looks like in 3 of 4 charts men have, at worst, returned to mean. It's the women getting more leftist. And I don't blame them.
Liberalism isn't the same as Left. It's not even in the same political axis.
You can't really read "more liberal" as being the same as "more leftist".
Left would be something like: "I want the greatest good for the greatest number".
Liberalism would be something like: "I want people to have the most freedom to do whatever they want".
You might notice that these two things collide in things like the existence of the super-rich, were for a liberal that's a good thing (they have maximum freedom) whilst for a Leftie it's a bad thing (wealth concentration reduces the access to resources for the many hence it directly goes against the greatest good for the greatest number).
Similarly centralizing control of part or the whole of the Economy (which decreases trade freedom) to achieve greater equality is absolutelly valid within the Leftwing principles and entirely against Liberal principles.
it's only in places like the US, were the entirety of Leftwing is about 4 congressmen, that Liberalism gets confused with Leftwing.
In graphs like these it is very much all smushed together. Otherwise they'd need a 3d plot.
If you want to get really technical too, liberalism and socialism have giant grey overlap areas. Classical Liberalism wasn't just about personal freedom, but also government by the people, for the people. Which is a collective good and freedom.
It's not nearly so easy as labeling one person a leftist and another a liberal. So above I use leftist in it's colloquial meaning of getting less conservative, literally moving to the left.
Yeah, I would classify them as mean
Well, honestly what political positions women have means less in "interesting times" like ours.
They are not strongly pressured by conservative men of their family and surroundings (if they have such), because tribal parts of politics rely a lot on crowd instincts, and those of women don't work exactly the same. They do participate in politics, but with the different kind of emotion.
For men a woman holding different views is usually not an existential enemy. They might ridicule that or dislike, that may look disgusting, but it's a different kind of attitude. It's pretty normal for women from families from authoritarian elites to have publicly liberal views. The dictator daddy won't punish his daughter for reposting something virtue-signalling against what he's doing. He knows it's of no consequence.
At the same time women, of course, see the tendencies around us and their views change accordingly.
But again, in the "interesting times" what men do may matter just a bit more, because there are power dynamics involved where women are disadvantaged due to both different tribal instincts and to men being more represented among people with power. In some sense political views are a kind of compensation.
So it's both bigger incentives for such views (with actual incels loudly talking) and less pressure (that's spent on threatening violence against male opponents).
I'm not an incel. Just thinking.