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Notes -
Because my nitpick topic is the intersection between politics and gender/sex, in the last months since 7 October I began a very unscientific analysis of the social media content, especially on Instagram, of my friends, acquaintances and other people I follow. (Context as always, European middle-upper class, intra-national environment, very EU-based)
I cannot emphatise enough how much the driven behind pro-Palestinian content is driven exclusively by women. Between the thousands of people I follow, there is a core of around 50 people, all women apart one anarchist guy, who are hard Palestinian-posters (And remember, there is a lot of interests in politics in my environment, it is normal to see all these people interested in stuff like this). And I am not talking about random posting, I am talking of months and months of posting, all inserted in a moral framework of "do not touch the children" or "Israelis are racists". Having followed the process since the beginning, it was fun to see how it took at least one month until the start of the pro-Palestinian posting, as if they were checking where it was the consensus in their group before beginning to post.
The question I ask the community here, why a topic that is so far from our location and interests (again, we are no Columbia University or Middle East, we are far away both ideologically and physically) is so interesting for women, that makes them post about id dozens of times every week, for months straight? And I am talking about a very intense interest, is not rare to see online meltdown of suffering, death menaces or simply histrionics directed towards obscure metaphysical forces.
Again, my observation are reinforced from what I saw in the US and Europe about the universities and campus protests; the protestors are overwhelmingly women, and the most desperate are women.
For me the question rotates around two different forces;
Thinking about the past, it makes me smile how much it was common to hear, until twenty years ago, that women are very uninterested in politics, unlike men. For my generation, this idea looks absurd. Men do not care about politics at all.
I can't speak to women, but I can say one particular woman has been driving me fucking insane with her news coverage of Palestine.
I'm a long time fan of Breaking Points, but Krystal Ball has resorted to the most ghoulish, amoral dead baby calculus to justify literally anything Palestine has done, is doing, or will do. It's all "If Hamas killed 50 babies on 10/7, what does it say about Israel that has killed hundred of babies in their operations in Gaza?" She literally starts crying on air, choking up over "all the little babies starving to death in Gaza." Her entire argument is just babies and tears, and she beats that dead baby horse for hours a day.
I've taken to skipping all her coverage of Palestine. Ryan Grim, the other progressive host on their network, generally does a more informative, dispassionate job when he assumes his duties on Wednesdays.
Her name always makes my mouth curl into a slight smile whenever I see it. I mean, the memetic potential of it is next level and were I her I'd be leaning into it a lot more e.g.:
The Virgin Cassandra vs the Chad KRYSTAL BALL...
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Funny - you could say this about both the left and the right regarding abortion today and not be wrong in either direction.
Politics is often silly.
Basing politics on emotions isn't exclusive to any one group.
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This is the exact person that came to mind.
These Crossfire shows seem to lean towards the female leftist in general (The Hill show Ball used to be on is now dominated by a Bernie Bro with a browbeaten libertarian in a corner). But it's been incredibly noticeable how utterly emotional Ball is on this and how that impacts the show.
It makes it hard for anything to be discussed because the co-host is not enough of an asshole to really push it. Ironically, this is why progressives used to complain about "white women's tears" ; it stops everything.
Her equally leftist spouse Kyle Kulinski seem to share the exact same (bad imo) opinions without the unseemly weeping in public.
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