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Among the most arresting statistics that floated out of last Tuesday’s elections was this: 37%.
That is the number of unmarried women who voted for Democrats. Increasingly, the Democratic Party is made up of unmarried women. For these women, dare we say, abortion is a vital issue, perhaps because they fear pregnancy as single parents, or perhaps because they have had abortions and do not want to be judged as baby killers.
The cohort in question, labeled by Scott Greer as AWFL, stands for affluent white female liberals. It does not merely define marital status, but has a consistent world view. Mary Harrington defines it as: progressive moral piety, self-righteousness, hypocrisy and unexamined class snobbery.
If you have noticed more women in more positions of power and authority, you have not been seeing things. If you suspect that these newly empowered women are trafficking in more feminine values, as in climate change over and against industry and energy, you would not be wrong.
One might imagine that men and women are fundamentally the same. And yet, the more women occupy certain professions, the more we see them bringing a uniquely feminine sensibility to their work. To be rather obvious, today’s invariably female therapists traffic in empathy and infantilize their patients. They care about feelings, not about action in the world. And they have no use for traditional roles and rules.
Harrington explains:
But as female graduates have embraced professional life across knowledge-economy and bureaucratic roles, and their influence has compounded over time, this shift has redrawn the political map in important ways — not least by tilting visible public discourse Left, in ways that only ambivalently reflect the electorate overall.
Women graduate from college and tend to occupy professions that involve cultural norms and education, the media and HR:
At undergraduate level, women are especially heavily represented among arts and social sciences courses – topics so overwhelmingly progressive that only 9% of undergraduates vote Republican. These overwhelmingly Left-wing female graduates then cluster in the institutions that set and manage social and cultural norms, such as education, media, and HR. In American nonprofits, for example, 75% are female, while HR, the division of corporate life most concerned with managing the moral parameters of everyday working life, is two-thirds female.
And also,
... 76% of American teachers are women. Inevitably, given that all US states require teachers to hold at least a bachelor’s degree, these are also uniformly drawn from the female demographic most likely to be very liberal.
And this means that abortion is an existential issue. The only real obstacle they see to their career success is pregnancy:
So such women are structurally dependent on medical interventions to keep their bodies free from the rigours and long-term obligations of pregnancy, childbirth and dependent children. In other words: for AWFLs overall, abortion really is an existential issue. And making the midterms a referendum on that issue appears to have paid off. For suburban women, and indeed the electorate overall, it seems gas prices remain some way downstream of the tech-enabled reproductive “freedom”that knowledge-class Clinton feminists routinely frame as a precondition for personhood as such.
So, what conclusions are we to draw from this dichotomy? The first and most obvious is that America’s social fabric is torn and tattered. One needs mention that America has more children growing up in broken homes than does any other country on earth.
In principle, there is nothing wrong with a society that allows two different sets of rules, the one involving competition, the other involving caring and compassion.
The problem arises when the agents of compassion, now involved in more of the business of government and business, decide that there should only be one set of values, theirs. They will set about crippling and regulating industry, shutting down energy production, the better to save the planet. And they will declare themselves to be the final arbiters of groupthink, the judges of whether your thoughts are right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable.
At that point, we are dealing with tyranny. And eventually, with warfare.
4 comments:
Reminds me of a post from the (sadly no-longer-active) Italian blogger who called herself Joy of Knitting:
The Spinsterization of Western Culture:
"We’ve often heard about the feminization of Western culture. I would propose instead to talk about the spinsterization (or spinsterification? I do apologise to English speakers everywhere) of Western civilisation. I mean here spinsterhood as a state of the mind, and as such pertaining both to men and women. Forget about the inner child. It’s the inner spinster, the one that lies dormant inside all of us, that has surfaced with a vengeance. The ferocious do-goodery, doing good works all around whether they are required or not. The eternal preaching. There’s a homily for every occasion and an occasion for every homily. The prim, tight-lipped disapproval of about everything (actually, nowadays it’s rather a pout to show off the lips, plus the flaring nostrils). Loving animals and hating people. The moralising fury against small pleasures, like smoking, drinking, red meat, etc.. The constant “now look what you’ve done” look of reproach meant to unleash guilt trips that will last forever, taking as the official excuse concern about the third world or the environment. The tearful sympathy for the oppressed that quickly turns into loving the criminals and despising their victims. The ill concealed resentment against the rest of the world that becomes sympathy for those who want to destroy it. The hatred against men, especially white men, who are always dead and/or stupid. The revenge against Westerners who have a good life, and the attempt to make them wretched and miserable so as to smother them with condescension and good works. Preaching peace while relishing carnage. Seeing opponents as demons from hell. Using one’s own virtue as a battering ram in order to take control. Despite saintly words, absolute power is the spinster’s ultimate target and worthy causes are nothing but means to an end."
In fairness, I have to note that relatively few women that I have known in business fit into the AWFL and/or the Spinsterization descriptions. I suspect that such creatures mostly gravitate to academic, govenmet, and 'nonprofit' organizations.
How this eventually resolves itself:
First of all, we have already reached peak higher education. Many institutions are closing their doors, affecting the female-majority student body to a greater extent than the remaining men. Most of the latter have gotten wise to the scam, and have bolted from college enrollment. Why spend $200K for a degree you might not even get to finish if you are expelled from school after “traumatizing” some co-ed by asking her for a date? Despite the faux complaints of women regarding the lack of men on campus, most feminists regard this as a feature, not a bug, as it clears the pipeline to positions of power and influence from male competition.
Second, the market for jobs requiring a degree is hardly growing. Cf. this piece, written in 2013:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w18901
I would find it hard to believe that the massive layoffs at Facebook and Twitter are limited to straight white males only. What are those girls affect going to do now? There simply aren’t a whole lot of jobs with six-figure salaries in corporate America for “critical queer studies” majors as “coordinators of diversity, equity, and sustainability”, or such other nonsense.
Third, male withdrawal from society is one thing as long as they’re left alone. When pursuit of female companionship is criminalized, more of them might react violently. Cf. Eliot Rodger, George Sodini, Marc Lepine, et al.
Fourth, the feminist state still requires male muscle to enforce its policy preferences, and men are withdrawing from this as well, as evidenced by shortfalls in military and law enforcement recruiting. Why should one put his life on the line as a soldier or a local cop when all the chiefs of police/sheriffs are female (many of them lesbians)?
Fifth, the perfection of reasonably priced sexbots in the next ten years will provide previously desperate men with an alternative. While such men would obviously prefer the real thing, substitutes will be a welcome relief, and that is why feminists react so viscerally to their adoption, because they want to demonstrate their sexual power by keeping as many men frustrated as possible. That is why you have the likes of Kathleen Richardson:
https://campaignagainstsexrobots.wordpress.com/
Sixth, expect more men to game the system by claiming membership in two newly privileged classes: gays and trannies. More Tootsies, more Chucks and Larrys.
Finally, in the long run, the barren feminist state will die off as it doesn’t reproduce, while more patriarchal societies—Muslims, Mormons, Orthodox Jews, survive and thrive. And note that the women in those communities are not precluded from pursuing professional careers. Those societies simply require family and children first.
Until all of this happens, one can only wonder how many lives (men, women, and children) have to be shattered in the process?
Replying to David Foster --
AWFLs do flock to certain parts of the for-profit sector. In particular, a very high percentage of the women I know in for-profit entities in the arts, media, the entertainment industry, book publishing, public relations, and increasingly law and medicine, are AWFLs. I expect there are other for-profit industries with high percentages of them, but these are the ones I'm most familiar with.
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