I just read that conservatism seems to be built on two deeper psychological pillars: cautious reluctance to change, and an acceptance that some groups are at a permanent disadvantage in our world. Since women constitute a group that has been at a disadvantage, this would seem a male-centric position.
As I understand it, the clincher was, “In your ideal society, what would happen to my schizophrenic brother?” My uncle at the time was in and out of mental hospitals and nearly homeless because he couldn’t refrain from property destruction and causing disturbances during his episodes. For extremely valid personal reasons there was no way my Aunt could take him in. So she’s like, “What? He dies on the street?”
He had no good answer.
It’s a sort of banal point to make in 2023, but this is what the idea of intersectionality in politics is really about. Conservatism is a little male-centric, it’s a lot white-centric, it’s hetero-centric, judeochristian-centric, old-centric, etc. Give me one of those data points and I’ll suspect which way you lean. Keep giving me more and I’ll get more and more certain.
White women broke +11 for Trump. Black women broke more than +80 for Biden, young women +35.
Because of this, the anecdotal success of individual couple conversions is really going to vary depending on who you personally know. Lots of early 20s Trump goofballs in major urban centers get talked sense to by female partners. Relatively fewer divorced midwesterners meet women at church who talk them into the K Hive.
One thing i have noticed is that a lot of the women of my mom’s generation get their news from their husbamds. Some of this is just because of gendered tasks: men have more leisure time in the evening, so they watch the news, read the paper, scroll their phones. Then they talk to their wives about the events of the day. I don’t really think its in any way an intentional attempt to control access to information or conceal competing worldviews, its just spheres of responsibility.
But as news becomes more partisan, it means a lot of women have even less chance to listen critically because they basically are expecting their spouse to have been the filter.
The main pillar of conservatism, the thing they are trying to conserve, is hereditary power and status.
Hereditary power has historically attached overwhelmingly to males, and nowadays that’s the usual case, so it follows that conservative thought orients itself around this.
Everything that conservatives claim to be about – i.e. “smaller government” – reduces to an effort to eliminate claims to power that would compete with hereditary power. But it’s important to note that they’re not always hiding the ball; conservative thought also conserves power in the form of religious institutions, mainly Christianity, of which patriarchy and male dominance is an overt and uncontroversial principle.
The reason conservative women exist is because the easiest way to gain access to hereditary power for yourself and your descendants is to marry into it. When they gain it, they want to pull up the ladder and protect it from others.
I wouldn’t call it the easiest way. In a patriarchy, it may be the only way, or the only way available to most women.
But the “easy way” narrative refelects the narrative that women are the lazy sex, and gendered differences are the result of them relying on the “power of the pussy” to avoid real labor.
Hmm. Well, there’s absolutely a statistical relationship there. But I’m white, hetero, old, and probably most of your etc category. And I’m atheist, but from a uniformly Christian environment culturally. However I’m on the extreme left end of the political spectrum. Certainty is hard to come by when the only information you have is demographic identities. Indeed, that was the root problem.
Just to be clear: you are putting a = between conservative and the Republican party since about Reagan, and specifically the Former Guy era?
Because if that’s the case, then I don’t think I have anything to add. And may I suggest that you make such things clear from the get go. Because, as some posters have pointed out, conservative is a very broad brush, totally dependent on era, location and above else the position the opposing party takes. Context is everything.
Labor doesn’t factor into this at all. People don’t labor their way into hereditary power. It’s either birth, marriage, luck, or scheming (all of which have various degrees of difficulty). Marriage is the easiest of those, but that’s an entirely separate topic from labor.
How is it easier than luck or heredity? Or scheming?
Are you suggesting that changing one’s heredity is easier than changing one’s marital status? I would disagree.
Sure. I’m not claiming to have any special insight into any (or every) individual person’s mind. Some of these are like 60/40 propositions. But I bet total information about your demographic identities would be a lot better predictor than your maleness, nevertheless. I’d be willing to bet that you have an education, for example, and that you did not remain in the cultural environment you’re from. And I don’t have any data on it, obviously, but I wonder what the left/right split for old white hetero male atheists with the degree that you (probably) have is, in the place where you reside.
I feel like it is piece meal.
- Fox news seems like older White people and not a male/female divide.
- Anti-vaxx seems split, even many from the liberal side of life.
- Most of those active in the anti-abortion movement sure seem to be White Christian Women.
- Hands-off Government does seem to be very male-centric. Especially white males.
- Opposing Abolishing antidiscrimination laws doesn’t seem to be male centric, but boy is it white centric.
- Things were better in the 50’s, etc is white-male centric and generally older white males.
I’m no conservative by any stretch of the imagination, but
"Believes in hands-off government - less active government in private or business life" describes my attitude pretty well, especially if one omits the words “or business”. I’m sure I would both feel better and function better with less government harassing me and enforcing sanctions to coerce my conformity.
For the purposes of this thread I think it’s more important to nail down what “male-centric” is, than what conservative is.
If male-centric is equivalent to patriarchy and systemic bias in favor of men and against women (I am not saying it is, though), then yes, conservatism is very much “male-centric”. Particularly the violent machismo that pervades the extreme right wing. That seems exemplify the very worst “male-centric” ideas that anyone could imagine.
Don’t make the argument that there are many female conservatives. The reasons women embrace misogyny are very well known.
Im suggesting its easier to just be born into the elite in the first place.
It really is. I failed the first time and no matter how many times I’ve tried again I’ve always failed.
Well done!
Shouldn’t the question also include the other direction, i.e. whether Republican women wound up voting with their Democratic husbands, and (more interestingly to me) whether Democratic men would wind up voting with their Republican wives?
If the latter is significant but the other isn’t, it could be that conservative thought just forces spouses to (appear to) agree.
I agree, it would be interesting to know all of the above as well.