The ideological divide between sexes

I would like to talk about probably one of the biggest challenges the world is facing: the ideological divide between sexes that is accelerating the depopulation.

A couple of days ago a Gallup poll found that a new global gender divide is emerging: young guys (age 18-29) become slightly more conservative while girls way more liberal

Why is that happening?

And it’s not just a tiny change. It’s massive. And this isn’t just happening in the West, like the US or Europe. It’s everywhere – South America, Korea, Japan, and lots of other places too. It’s pretty shocking and sad to see.

So, what’s causing this? Some might blame the media, but that’s too simple. This is happening all over the world, with different kinds of media everywhere. It’s too widespread to pin on any one culture or media outlet. It seems more like demand driving this – are girls getting more into woke culture and wanting more of that content, or is it the content influencing them? But, given how widespread this is – from US to Japan to Korea and South America – it’s hard to believe that all these shows are just shaping girls’ views all on their own.

We can argue tha this is about women being more likely to go with the crowd and being more emotional, especially when it comes to things like climate change or racism. This could make them more receptive to certain messages. But if women are generally more agreeable, why are they only agreeing with each other or the media, and not the more conservative men?

If being agreeable means you should be getting along with everyone, including conservative men, but instead women are leaning liberal, then being agreeable doesn’t explain their media alignment over personal relationships.

Maybe it’s because the media and institutions hold more influence or power in society than individual men do. But why would women listen to these entities over the men in their lives? Could it be a lack of men or a sense of community in their lives? Yet, this shift is happening even in places with strong community ties, like churches, which used to be conservative strongholds. So, the lack of community doesn’t fully explain it either, since it’s also happening where community and shared conservative values are strong.

The problem isn’t about western individualism because if that were true, then strong communities should be fighting this trend. But it looks like both individuals and whole communities are facing the same issue, so individualism alone isn’t the root of the problem.

There are places with strong Christian values and tight-knit families where this divide between men and women is still happening. So, it’s not about families falling apart, because even in areas where families are close, this issue persists. This is a big deal, maybe one of the biggest challenges our societies face. With women leaning left and men leaning right, dating, relationships, and having children might all start to decline, which could lower birth rates even more. Especially since there’s a lot of talk against masculinity, making women less interested in men, and if people start doubting each other, that’s bad news for relationships.

But we need to figure out what’s common across different places, because this is happening in collectivist societies like Japan too, not just in individualistic Western cultures.

An argument could be that men and women are different, and they react differently to messages aimed at them, depending on whether it hits a particular weakness. Women might be drawn to whatever holds more cultural sway, while men are questioning whether the current trends will lead to anything positive. Men see that things have gone too far to the left, like everything’s turned upside down, and they’re quicker to question it than women.

However, both men and women can be influenced by different types of messages. It’s not that one gender is more immune than the other; it’s more complicated than that.

Another angle could be about having kids. A lot of women under 30 don’t have children, and many might not plan to. We know that women naturally start off more liberal and become more conservative as they marry and have kids. So, the issue might not be the messages about being liberal but rather messages about not having kids.

But then again, even with lots of messages and propaganda encouraging higher birth rates in places like Japan, Korea, or China, it’s not working. No society has managed to increase its birth rate significantly, no matter how hard they try with their messages. So, if the problem was just about cultural propaganda influencing women not to have kids, then we should be able to change that with the right kind of messages, but that’s not happening. So it’s not just about the propaganda.

To be continued