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I am convinced that the Sex Divide is the greatest political engine of today, and that a big chunk of the culture war is based on the existance of this divide, and the inability of society to understand that political differences between males and females have an enormous biological basis.
After I finally understood this concept, I began to "notice", being always passionate about politics and speaking about it, that the discourses and the nature of the topic I discussed with people were and are heavily genderized.
Having a political or cultural discussion with a female is, in general, radically different from having one with a male, not only regarding the topics of interests per se (males more interested in economics or raw politics, female more interested in immigration, equality or similar topics), but also regarding "how" to approach a discussion.
I feel way more free talking with males, because I always had the impression, confirmed 95% of the times, that I can be more open and direct with what I felt without receiving a backslash, that can be personal (simply the person screaming at you or hating you) or social (person beginning to talk with other people in your social network) (NB: I am not American and I do not live in a very polarized society). Apart from the political extremists and activists that you can meet, the following things happened often:
Me and the other male have a disagreement, that can be harsh or about an hot topic, but that resolve itself in a shake of hand.
We disagree on a lot of topic, but also agree on other ones, making the discussion constructive in itself.
I discover that the other male have a lot of, uh, hidden opinions that he does not reveal in his network, often because of female backslash.
In general, I love to talk about politics or culture with other middle or low class males, because I always "received" something in exchange after the discussion, something that can be a new reflection on a topic, an earnest discovering of new knowledge, or simply understanding more some concepts.
Meanwhile, apart from a selected group of very close female friends and a selected other few, almost all the discussion with females ended with a disaster. In spite of me trying to move in a different manner, being more gentle and less direct, and understanding that I need to adapt to other people when I talk about something, the discussions simply does not start well and end well. What happens is:
We have a disagreement, and at this point the discussion or close itself ("It is useless to continue, why we should?") or degenerate in a very uncomfortable discussion where the woman put herself as an emotional victim of what we are talking about.
If the discussion does not degenerate but continues, it is always redirected to morality or feeling or about a generic "natural law". At this point if I try to redirect the discussion negating the opposing point (I do not agree with your morality or I do not care about this morality) it simply degenerate again in a morality context, where your worth as individual is put on a public pedestal.
The result of all of this, after years of experience... is that I do not talk about these kind of topics with women anymore, apart from a selected few. When I have this kind of conversation I always strive for earning something, that can be knowledge, human connection or shared experiences. Why doing these with women, when the things that you can earn are statistically negative?
Adding to what I said, I also need to mention that, after lowering down the kind of topics and approaches that I have with women, both my dating life and romantic life radically improved. I do not know if it is a coincidence or not.
I have noticed a similar pattern among people I interact with, but it also overlaps strongly with the divide between those in STEM (especially engineers) and those in more Humanities-adjacent fields.
I like to categorize the patterns of discourse as "n-dimentional social chess". Imagine that you are part of a group of people who together are playing chess against an online opponent. The group discusses strategies for their upcoming move.
"Zero-dimensional social chess": you focus solely on the merits of the proposed strategies in defeating the online opponent. It doesn't matter who proposed which strategy; you evaluate each proposed strategy solely on its own merits.
"One-dimensional social chess": you keep track of who said what. You are doing this to help you evaluate the merits of proposed strategies (like, giving more weight to strategies proposed by people with more experience playing chess).
"Two-dimensional social chess": you keep track of who said what, and how they said it. You are doing this because you are aware that, within your group, people are jockeying for social status. So you keep track not only of who said what, but what that means for everyone else in terms of social status within the group.
"Three-dimensional social chess": you not only keep track of who said what (and how they said it), but also who didn't say what (and how they didn't say it). You are doing this because you are aware that the group members are jockeying for social status, and you also assume that they know that everyone else is doing it too. Therefore you expect to see shifting alliances, communicated subtly through the phrasing of support, or withholding support where it was expected.
"Four-dimensional social chess": you not only keep track of who said what (and how they said it), but also who didn't say what (and how they didn't say it), but also have a good working theory of the level of n-dimensional social chess that each person in the group is at.
I find that (at least in my social circles) most engineer groups (and majority-male groups) tend to play two-dimensional social chess; most humanities-adjacent groups (and majority-female groups) tend to play three-dimensional social chess. People who move fluently between engineers and humanities circles either play four-dimensional social chess and code-switch, or play one-dimensional social chess and are blissfully unaware of the status games.
The trope of a frustrated girlfriend saying "If you don't know what's wrong then I am certainly not going to tell you!" would be my example of a situation where the girlfriend by default plays three-dimensional social chess and can't imagine that others (including her boyfriend) don't. So she's definitively not playing at four-dimensional social chess, since she fails to have a good working theory of her boyfriend's level.
[Edit: Edited the lower categories, upon further reflection. Zero-dimensional social chess is just chess, with some pooling of strategies. One-dimensional social chess takes relative expertise into account, but it's still all about the chess. With n>1, the "social" part becomes a competing goal.]
This reminds me a bit of Ben Hoffman's version of Simulacra levels.
So which of any group routinely plays Four-dimensional social chess?
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I view this as the girlfriend trying to force the boyfriend to maintain a detailed model of her emotional state, and to proactively make sure he knows what he needs to do keep her happy. Simply telling him when and what she's unhappy about is much less work for him, but more work for her, and there will inevitably be opportunities to make her happy that neither will notice unless he's paying attention.
That phrasing might sound retarded, and sometimes girlfriends massively overestimate how easy it is to guess their emotional states, but sometimes I think it's a reasonable bid for more consideration.
I view it as the girlfriend trying to get the boyfriend to make her tell him what’s wrong when she doesn’t want to do it voluntarily for whatever reason.
Heh, could be. I have fights with my wife that go: Me: Just tell me what you want! Her: I can't, because you don't want to listen!
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Or she just wants to go in a fishing expedition to ready the troops when the next discussion (fight) happens.
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