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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.
Men and women are both interested in politics if you ask about the actual issues in my opinion. But I’d concede that women are much more susceptible to “it’s called being a GOOD PERSON, GET IT?” reasoning. Women don’t want to be left out of the tribe, women are more willing to show fealty to high status ideas (a man will become a sycophant, will bow to his betters, but internally he is more likely to chafe at this; he won’t do it unless he is certain it’s absolutely necessary).
That’s not surprising since it tracks with extensive research about men much more frequently engaging in almost all riskier behavior. Heterodox politics are part of that.
I have noticed that older women are sometimes extremely skilled at exploiting this tendency to try and fulfil expectations in younger women. I recently talked with someone doing her second PhD (an obvious masochist) and she said that, while her first supervisor (an older woman) had been able to run rings around her emotionally, she now found that female academics were less able to "emotionally manipulate" (her words) her.
The most terrifying chief I ever met was a woman who was mommy, sister, and mentor all at the same time to her direct subordinates and the ladies in other departments. The other would take all their cues from her, and if she ever flexed she could tilt the power dynamic in any direction she wanted. She was fucking shitty at her actual job but she could get anyone to do anything for her and honestly it was kind of inspiring, in that 'I see what you are doing and I cannot replicate it' way. The Mother Hen at full evolution reaches something cult-like in its power and it is kind of impressive to see.
One on occasion encounters women who have at various stages been jezebel (less successfully ‘maiden’), mother and matriarch and it is indeed very impressive, a unique social role because it requires a series of experiences that are (cumulatively) very rare among women.
Would you say that is because the physical presentation of the three archetypes are distinctly different? Physical presenteeism maps pretty cleanly into each archetype, moreso than behavior, and to pull off all three in the same body requires a sort of amorphous age presenteeism. The chief I mentioned and a few other women I know who pull that off all have a sort of 'maybe 20 maybe 40' look to them, mainly due to excellent skincare regimes (which was difficult enough). Matriarch seems to ironically be the easiest to pull off regardless of age, bossy women can be big sister or grandmother to her juniors. I've seen a tiny thai woman boss around girls older than them simply by force of will.
Yes, I think so. To be all three requires a lot of genetic luck, being born beautiful likely into a wealthy family, being intelligent, having the right education, and being both confident and self-aware / humble enough to know when to pivot to the next role or to change your personality. You need to be a very lucky and socially adroit sociopath.
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