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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026

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If you look at a lot of historical feminists, especially the ones further out from the overton window of the time, you often see them abused either by a male partner or a relative. If more women feel maltreated either by male family members or by the romantic/sexual partners, then I think that would drive them to more radical pro-woman identity politics. Given the correlation of divorce and sexual abuse as well as the numerous points women make about the, generally sub-abuse but often criminal, harms they suffer in hookup culture I can very well see a case where women now have more meaningful negative experiences with men than they did in the past.

Writing this, I think it's also important to note that women aren't a monolith and, generally mediated by class, they will have different experiences with men. Underclass women have always had a horrible time almost by definition. I suspect a difference now is that working class on up to even PMC women have a lot more negative experiences with men than in the past, especially if you look at sub-criminal stuff like many hookup culture complaints. If women's collective experience with men is worse than it was in the past, it makes sense they would be more pro-female anti-male.

All this being said, it's a question of margins. I'm Gen Z, and my wife and I voted Trump. There is always a diversity of views and experiences.

How can it be so worse? Practically every law and societal norm has been adjusted in the last 100 years in their favor. You could argue that the sexual revolution was a trap, but that was half a century ago. Or you could argue that most everything is a trap, not because it's a patriarchal conspiracy, but due to second-order effects no one could've foreseen or used as a justification, like suffrage leading to political polarization and normalizing equal pay leading to single-income families becoming unable to maintain the same standard of living.