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What do you think of male-female dating dynamics relative to the culture war? I have a lot of thoughts on this but ultimately think the people worth pursuing are not crossing people off their list because they don’t believe in X or Y.
But it might be beyond your control. As an American, I remember swiping on tinder in London and seeing ‘Do not swipe if you are Republican’ but they replaced the word with something called the Tories. Clearly some people will only date people that share the same ideology. Which is fair if you want someone to nod along to whatever you say, I guess.
It gets tricky when you outright pretend to believe things you don’t. It’s not courageous or respectable. Not apologizing for what you believe is paramount to gaining the respect of your partner. Obviously, when I say this, I’m really talking about relatively conservative men dating liberal women. And honestly, except for far left people like Hasan piker that glorify violent revolution in such a way that they do a 360 and put off conservative ethos, I do think men women find attractive aren’t the male feminist, Bernie bro type. It’s almost like a yin and yang thing where you want some tension with your ideals.
Unlike religion, I really don’t see a need to agree with my SO on much of anything (odd to me that JD Vance and Usha married despite this). It’s sad to think that, on the spectrum of ‘not scaring the hoes’ political ideology, you could have a good thing with someone, say the wrong thing, and lose a relationship because of it.
Only thinking this because I’m coming to terms that I don’t necc need to date a based woman who appreciates old Sam Hyde stuff and edgy right wing leaning online happenings. I’d rather not select for political belief, find someone that will lightly argue with me, and has no interest in that stuff. Likewise, I’ll voice my opinion to her but not make fun of her for being on bluesky or whatever
No woman is going to turn up her nose at a man for having different political opinions from her, provided he ticks enough of her other boxes. If a woman says "I matched with this guy on Tinder, but when I found out he was MAGA I ghosted him" – I mean, yes, that's the sequence in which those events transpired. But you didn't ghost him because he was MAGA: you ghosted him because you didn't find him attractive enough (not just physically, but also in terms of charm, sense of humour, financial viability etc.). Claiming that she rejected him for his political opinions is just social desirability bias: she would have been more than willing to overlook the exact same opinions if expressed by a more attractive man.
It may sound like I'm calling women shallow, but I'm really not. Men generally don't pretend to put a big premium on political compatibility with their romantic partner: the social desirability bias in men's case comes from attempting to downplay how important youth and physical attractiveness are to them. Plenty of men will claim not to care about looks and to just want to find a nice, normal, down-to-earth girl they can hang out with, but in practice will put up with a great deal of crazy behaviour from their romantic partner, provided she's young and hot enough.
This seem almost unfalsifiable. I might as well say
Partners and employees are package deals, and rational actors such as woman or companies often evaluate them using scores. Unfavorable traits like excessive outspokenness or an incompatible political foundation can certainly lower your score to the point where they decide that they can do better than you.
And political opinions covers a lot of territory from 'I voted for Trump' to 'I support the establishment of a Caliphate' or 'I am notorious for calling on twitter for the gassing of $outgroup'. If you are a famous and rich Hollywood actor, the median single woman is probably not going to file for divorce if she learns that you voted for Trump. If you are some rockstar programmer, a company might well decide that they will put up with your obnoxious behavior to a degree they would never tolerate from other employees. I am sure that a disfigured billionaire would be able to find a perfect wife who is willing to overlook his unfortunate appearance and see his lovable character instead, but that does not mean that looks don't matter.
Unfalsifiable seems a bit strong, here: we just don't have the data collected to falsify the hypothesis. But that data isn't in principle uncollectible.
Though, it's an interesting question from a philosophy of science point of view: if data that no one will collect anytime soon is necessary to falsify a hypothesis, is that hypothesis unscientific?
To falsify it, I would have to find a single woman (a counterexample) who would never date a man with a given political opinion.
This is either trivial or impossible. To the degree that it is trivial, I pick Greta Thunberg as the woman and "build more coal plants" as the political opinion.
I suppose that @FtttG might say that this is merely because the candidates fail to "tick enough of her other boxes", and if god wanted, she could certainly create a man who is so perfect a partner for Ms Thunberg in every possible way from gender identity to kinks to lifestyle and everything that she would date him despite his fossil fuel opinions. And that would be impossible to falsify.
Thunberg is probably asexual, or at least calls herself that, but if she does end up settling down with someone I'll be sure to ping you. If she does it'll most likely be someone just as autistic as she is.
As @omw_68 notes below me, Thunberg's recent pivot to anti-Zionist activism demonstrates that she isn't really the diehard environmentalist she presented herself as for her first few years in the public eye. I was tempted to say she's really an omnicause activist, and @omw_68 chalks it up to her being a grifter, but I don't think that's quite right. I just think she's an intensely impressionable person, who seamlessly adopts the opinions of anyone in her vicinity she perceives as high-status. As a child, her parents told her that climate change was The Thing, and she took that to heart; having been taken in by a crowd of leftists, she's been persuaded that anti-Zionism is The Thing. What this means in practice is that Thunberg's opinions are entirely contingent on those of whoever happens to be in her immediate vicinity. I don't find it remotely implausible that, in the next few years, she might meet and fall for a fellow Swedish autist who is fervently opposed to Syrian migration, and seamlessly adopt his opinions without any subjective feeling of discontinuity or hypocrisy. I can't imagine she felt any sense of discontinuity when she pivoted from environmentalism to anti-Zionism (because it's. All. Part. Of. The. Same. Struggle, as omnicausers would have us believe).
The other possibility is that she grows up and belatedly develops an internal ethos of her own, her worldview no longer beholden to the vicissitudes of fate and happenstance. I wouldn't bet on it: I think she has at least one more pivot left in her.
@omw_68 That leads into the larger question of why the greater left seems to have suddenly put a damper on environmentalism and climate change activism. This seems like more than just a pivot to a new Current Thing. Environmentalism and climate change hysteria has been the background music of the left for the last 30 years, and suddenly there seems to be a coordinated move to turn down the volume. I’m not sure why.
I don't know either, but my best guess is that there's no real reason, it's a matter of intellectual fashion.
From the perspective of the individual Leftist, there's value in running with the crowd. If everyone in your circles seems to care about global warming, the safe thing to do is to care about global warming yourself (or at least pretend to). Of course, there is also value in being (or tying to be) a trend setter. If you start pushing a new issue, it might convince people that you are a high status trend setter type.
In my opinion, this is very very similar to the way people think about fashion when it comes to clothing.
Of course, with clothing, some years ruffle skirts are in; some years bell bottom jeans are in; etc. etc. Often there's no clear reason for it, it's just an emergent property of a system where there's value in copying others but also value in being a trend-setter.
(As a side note, it's interesting that women seem to me more into keeping up with fashion than men both in terms of clothing and ideology. I would guess this is not a coincidence.)
So my best guess is that there's no real reason for the pivot you mention (to the extent it's real), it's just something that kind of happened.
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Assuming Greta Thunberg has normal female sexuality, I don't think she's the best example. After her pivot from environmentalism to the Arab/Israeli conflict, it became reasonably clear that she's a shameless grifter and that her views are a matter of convenience, even if she herself believes herself to be sincere. I mean, if she genuinely believes that the world is facing an existential climate crisis, why waste time and energy on one of many violent conflicts and alienate potential allies?
So yeah, I could easily see her f*cking or even marrying some coal baron who's tall dark and handsome. Probably she would justify it by saying it gives her the opportunity to gather information and learn about the industry from the inside. Which is frankly a more plausible rationalization than the one she offered for her pivot to the Middle East.
I do agree that there are probably some women out there who would never date a MAGA type under any circumstances whatsoever. But I think for the most part, the vast majority of women would date, have sex with, and marry a man of differing political views provided that the woman believed she would not be publicly shamed or humiliated over her decision. That's just the way women are wired; it's just very very unusual to meet a genuinely principled woman.
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