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Notes -
I recently saw a provocative bit of 4chan greentext concerning politics and gender. I'll reproduce it here as follow -
As far as analysis goes, this is obviously not especially sophisticated or historically grounded. However, it does pose an interesting problem, which is perhaps better framed in more general terms, since it applies as much to Red Tribe and Blue Tribe as it does men and women.
Imagine that the electorate of a democratic country (call it Exemplavania) comprises two political groups, A and B, constituting 40% and 60% of the electorate respectively. As a result, Exemplavania's government is run largely in accordance with the interests of group B. However, group A is significantly more powerful than group B in terms of its capacity for violence. Under what circumstances is this arrangement sustainable?
It seems to me that it's not trivial that it's unsustainable. In particular, a sustainable model might involve the following: (i) the ongoing costs to Group A of Exemplavania being run by Group B are low. (ii) the one-off costs of Group A enacting a violent revolution to enfranchise their own power are high. (iii) all members of the polity do some form of temporal discounting. In this case, members of Group A might rationally conclude that it's not worth the hassle of an uprising.
Nonetheless, I do worry a bit that political polarisation along gender lines is unsustainable. Notably, women's suffrage in most Western countries was not the result of women using violence to coerce men into accepting them as political equals. Rather, it was the result of successful ideological persuasion of male franchise-holders, achieved in no small part via the critical contributions of women to the collective industrial efforts in World War 1. Insofar as women's political tendencies remained broadly aligned with a large proportion of men (or powerful enough men), as they have done more or less until now, this arrangement seems pretty stable. However, if we see continued political polarisation along gender lines, as we've seen in South Korea for example, and this leads to political outcomes that are strongly disfavoured by a large majority of men, then at some point the decision to enfranchise women may be in jeopardy.
Curious what others think!
The 'solution' to keeping your more-capable-of-violence group A under control is to keep them incapable of coordinating violence. And if possible the Group B's should keep a smallish sub-population of Group A that are loyal to Group B for whatever reason.
Thus if Group A is capable of immense violence, but they can't coordinate around shared goals or under a unified leader who can direct them against the most high-value targets, then they'll probably retain the status quo, especially if the conditions aren't too intolerable, even if it becomes increasingly obvious that Group B is incapable of preventing a violent incursion if one were to occur.
Especially with technological advances, where 3 guys in a tank are more powerful than 50 guys with rifles. Just make sure that the Group A guys in the tank are loyal to Group B!
So yeah, Group B can dominate so long as they can keep a large-scale physical confrontation off the table.
Now think about how atomized young men have become, with most of their 'friendships' being online.
Also think about how ANY male-oriented group or activity (Boy Scouts, anyone?) gets infiltrated and forced to allow in females, or crippled to a shadow of its former self.
Same for any sort of right-wing group that might actually be able to form a formidable enough front to enact serious violence if they wanted (Proud Boys?)
It COULD be interpreted as PRECISELY what the current society does. Keeps males from organizing around their capacity for violence by giving them endless distractions and disrupting any person who might be able to rally a significant number of disaffected-but-physically-capable men to his cause.
In which case, the only outlet these males would have is individual acts of semi-random violence against random members of the population. Can we say we're seeing more of that, these days?
See my thoughts here.
My basic thesis:
Unmarried women are a potent political force, but an incompetent military/martial one. If your political coalition is dependent on tons of addled females voting for them to maintain its support, it is ALSO dependent on NEVER allowing the other side to bring organized violence against them since those same females would fold instantly.
So expect a LOT of political capital to be expended on efforts to keep males from coordinating enough to actually fight back in any meaningful way.
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