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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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This was my first thought, too. I haven't read much of Marcotte ever, and certainly none in the about 10 years or so since Scott Alexander himself had made a blog post that referenced her by name, but from what I recall of her writing, she seemed to slot into a type of female 3rd wave feminist writer who tends to project all her own beliefs and insecurities onto men. One of the most well known bits of such projection is when it comes to dating, where some 30/40+ career woman seems confused why her great financial success and maturity isn't translating to romantic attention from high quality men and concluding that men must be so fragile as to be threatened by her success, instead of recognizing that, for the vast majority of heterosexual men, unlike for the vast majority of heterosexual women, a potential mate's career success counts for close to nothing relative to her looks, youth, and even her personality, which are things a middle-aged woman who spent most of her effort making it in the workplace hasn't been able to work on very well.

In this case, Marcotte seems to be projecting her own obsession with keeping the people around her politically/ideologically pure onto men, who she believes have even more power than her because of male privilege, without recognizing that this obsession with ideological purity, to the extent that they'd coerce them to agreeing with them, of their partners is not quite as common in men as it is in women*.

* This part is not proven and could certainly be wrong; I'm going off my own anecdotes and stereotypes, but I think this is a common observation by many men nowadays.

I think it's more of a Russell Conjugation, where actions that benefit the Democratic party are positive, while those that benefit the Republican party are sinister.

I remind my husband about all the bad things about Trump. He berates his wife about how terrible the libs are. I emphasize to my partner that if he really loves me, as a woman, he won't vote to take away my rights. He threatens to leave his girlfriend if she doesn't vote how he wants. I fortify my husband's resolve to vote against Trump when he gets tempted by bad arguments. He bullies his wife into voting against her own interests.

I'm not going to say I've never in my life seen a woman say something innocuous only to be snapped at by her husband who brusquely informs her that "we" don't believe that. But the idea that it is a crisis is just silly.

That sounds like probably a better explanation than there actually being any sort of difference in rates between the sexes. My own perception of difference between the sexes is also probably reflective primarily of my own social circles which I'm guessing is ideologically not too different from Marcotte's. It also occurred to me that this could be subculture-based rather than sex-based, where enforcing ideological purity of one's partner is important in Marcotte's social circles, and she's projecting that onto all Americans, including male Trump voters.