AMAC Exclusive – By David P. Deavel
Recent surveys show some good news as well as warning signs for people on the right. While both young men and women have historically tended to lean more to the left, newer surveys show this is no longer the case. The good news is that young men are not only not getting more liberal but are trending toward the conservative side. The bad news is that young women are trending very far to the left. And what compounds the bad news about the young women is that conservatives are rarely very good at communicating with them—as the kerfuffle about a recent viral video reveals. The old saying is that Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. The Right needs far less scorn and far more interest in reaching this very important part of the electorate.
As far as the good news, it is indeed good. Writing at the Washington Examiner, Conn Carroll notes that middle-aged Gen-X voters have turned to the right as past generations have. They voted 52-40 for House Republicans in the 2022 election. And among young men, 49% identify as Republicans—an 11-point shift from 2013 when only 38% of them did.
There’s no real mystery as to why young men would be turning this way. Churchill’s famous line about a young man who is conservative having no heart doesn’t fit our age at all. What young man with any heart would respond to the “clear” message sent by Democrats? Carroll summarizes that message as “you are, at best, worthless. Democratic Party programs have empowered women to procreate without you entirely. In fact, most likely you are a #MeToo pervert who needs to be punished, without due process, by a college inquisition board.”
There is much more that could be done for young men by Republicans, but at least they know we don’t hate them.
But what about the women? Surveys show that the percentage of young women identifying as liberal is about 30 points higher than young men. That’s a big gap. Even if, as some scholars have shown, responses to questions about most specific policies (apart from the high-stakes cultural issues) don’t show a massive gap between young men and young women, the reality is that most people don’t vote on the basis of a scientific study of a whole series of policy questions. They vote on a few important issues and, more importantly, on a sense of trust and identification with others.
Some are sanguine, perhaps too much so, about the current divide. Carroll is among those who note that the marriage gap held true in the 2022 election. While women overall vote Democratic, married women vote Republican—in that election by a 56-42 margin. “All Republicans have to do, apparently, to get women to switch parties is find a good man for them to marry.”
That’s easier said than done, especially with the headwinds for marriage these days. But even if a potential matchmaking service (“GOP Harmony?”) were to produce fantastic results (for citizens at the altar and for Republicans at the polls), these results would be a few years off. What can we do in the meantime?
I know what we ought not to do. This week, a Tik Tok video by a young woman who goes by the moniker @supposedlyasystem (reports are that her name is Eliza) went viral, garnering millions of views on X (formerly Twitter). In the video, the young woman complains about working a 40-hour-a-week job to pay the rent on her two-bedroom apartment and having only a few hundred dollars left to cover her food, phone, and utilities. She notes that she is often too exhausted to take care of the chores she needs to do to keep her own life going after work and ends up doing them on Saturday and Sunday. She is almost crying as she cries out: “I don’t know what to do, I’m not made for this! I don’t have the money, time, or energy to enjoy my life outside of work, and I don’t know what to do about it anymore, you know? I’m so tired!”
As with previous videos by young women complaining about the difficulty of being out in the working world, too many people on the Right responded on social media with the kind of scorn that does indeed cause fury. Some called her lazy, whiny, and entitled for her video about how difficult she finds adult life. While many were no doubt correct that her expectations are flawed and her situation could be remedied, the reality is that she is indeed correct: she wasn’t made to live like this.
Modern life is tough on both young men and women. The cultural expectations made by a few generations of increasingly weird forms of feminism and liberal society make for a potent brew of resentments when young women realize that following the current scripts won’t necessarily make you a girl boss—and they likely won’t make you happy. What is remarkable is how the young women in these videos never mention any forms of community—whether familial, religious, or other. Is it any wonder so many of them gravitate toward the left side of the aisle where they are at least told they are valued and given political marching orders that appeal to their sense of being part of something important and taking care of the weak?
What the right needs to do is connect to these young women via influencers online but also real live people, too. Young women need older people to tell them practical things (she might want to get a roommate or two to share rent, food, utilities, chores, and company after work) but also more fundamental things. They need older people to tell them bigger picture things. For one, that they really aren’t made to live for work—and that, yes, marriage is a good thing and not a betrayal of the sisterhood or their own gifts.
Most of all, they need to be told that they are valued. Just as with the young male rejection of the Democratic Party, there are few surprises that many young women look away from the Republican Party when too many conservatives show scorn for them because of their young, foolish ideas rather than affirmation.
Last year a speaker at the University Faculty for Life conference presenting on messaging to young women said that some of the most effective pro-life communication was precisely the most optimistic. Told by the media that if they don’t abort their children, they will ruin their lives, what often convinced them not to were very simple messages like this: “You’ve got this! You can do good for your baby and good for yourself.”
The modern Left tells all young women that things are very screwed up, that they are helpless, and that Democrats will help them. The modern Right too often tells the young women that they are simply screwed up—and says that they don’t want to help them until they help themselves.
It’s much better and much truer to say that there are a lot of things about modern life that are not the fault of young women, but that there are decisions by which they can make things a lot better for themselves. We need to tell young women that they’ve got this, that we like them, and that we want to help them find a better way to live that’s not so exhausting and not so lonesome. Best of all, this message should be easy because it is true.
I was relieved when the young woman made a follow-up video about how mean the reactions were to her plight and didn’t mention anything political. Perhaps there were enough crusty old libs who also gave “get off my lawn” vibes. But I would have loved it if she had mentioned that it was people who were conservative or traditional or right-wing who were most supportive of her.
Imagine what kind of an effect that would have. We are constantly depicted by big media and entertainment as heartless. It’s quite unfair, I agree. But if we’re going to break down that growing gap between right-wing males and left-wing females, we’re going to have to look for the opportunities to show that we have a heart by wearing it a bit more on our sleeves. At the very least, we can show it more when we’re making comments or videos on the internet.
David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, and is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X @davidpdeavel.
