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I mentioned here many times that I consider the gender (sex) divide the greatest factor in our model of understanding modern political thought and action.
Background; middle-class male, young, Catholic family, Mediterranean, living in a big, poor city. Moved to Central Europe to work in a big èlite public institution with many young people, especially females. History of belonging to Marxist organisations in the past btw.
As a passionate about history, I normally talk about it, especially in a highly-educated environment where discussions about complex topics are the norm.
What I noticed in the past year it is astounding and moulded a lot of my thought. Every time I talk with women about history, and the topics fall on some past event/political regime/ideology/whatever, there is a lot of disinterest towards it from the women's side. Not disinterest in the sense of "I do not care", because as I said it is a highly-educated environment where being uncaring about this kind of thing is uncool, but disinterest in the sense of:
"I understand that in the past things worked a certain way, but the past is always worse than now because women had it worse".
From there, after it happened dozens of times with dozens of different women, I elaborated:
Women are the true accelerationist.
I could not elaborate or argue about past political or moral issues or ideologies or sovrastructures, because, from the other side, the argument is always that every behaviour or ideology of the past is ontologically evil because it discriminated against women.
I will never forget how when I was arguing about how 19th-century European states had probably a higher state-capacity than contemporary European states, I was accused of sexism because I expressed a preference for a non-contemporary political structure. The same happened when I mentioned how I admire Charles De Gaulle (because Macron, while being bad, is better than him because he is more feminist).
The most amazing moment was when I said to a group of women (yes, a lot of weird moments this year) that the loss of Church participation alienated a lot of people and diminished the sense of belonging and social participation of the community in the public thing. They agreed with me (!) but still for them, it is better now because they prefer a more isolated society but with more feminism.
Women are true accelerationist because the consequence of feminism has been a weirdo para-futurism philosophy but without fascism. Everything that can be conducted to the past is suspected as part of a reactionary plot to be judged on moral grounds. No detached interests in History per se, but only moral condemnation of everything that is not the "current year".
For me, it was fascinating to discover how males and females consider history, especially when the topic of "in which historical epoch would you like to live?" and every woman answer "now".
The biggest consequence of this sex divide is, imho, that a feminist liberal society has a huge gap in understanding the context when society begins to decline after drifting from some past ideology or structure. It is not possible for them that something contemporary can be worse than something present in the past.
I would like to receive some input on my "theory" from the residents of the motte, expressed in the English language which is better than mine.
PS: for people who are curious, I never received any sort of cancellation or consequence for my brazen rhetorical behaviour. Europe is not as woke as the US, and I am a kinda of "high-status male" for several reason, so I noticed that women tolerate way more whatever I say.
How many men do you know that would answer differently? I realise this is one of your weaker assertions regarding gender differences (with the stronger one being "It is not possible for them that something contemporary can be worse than something present in the past"), but to my eyes answering earnestly with anything other than "now" is a mark of edginess: you must either be so dramatic that you refuse to let yourself consider the less-glamorous parts of your value function, or so psychologically deviant from the grillpilled median that you genuinely would trade off arguable spiritual benefits of past societies for all our material advances in technology, medicine, peace et cetera. Ironically, the only people over the age of 18 I know irl who would answer differently from "now" are women in my family: my mother who would return to the Soviet Union per the "dramatic" exception, and her mother who would choose some point in time before 1900 for being a religious extremist.
If you have come to be known as the "actually arguing to retvrn to the past" guy in your social circles, consider that your arguments about more detailed pros and cons of past societies might no longer actually be received on their own merits either. People might not be willing to entertain an "isn't it curious how quickly they could build a bridge or train station in the late 1800s compared to now?" in the spirit of intellectual inquiry if the expectation is that it will be used as ammo for "...and therefore we should restore the hereditary monarchy", and if you are a woman in $current_year, pointing out that the hereditary monarchy entailed wrongs against your gender that are nowadays treated as blasphemous is as convenient a way to shut down the discussion as any. In other words, your problem may not actually be that women are politically qualitatively different, but rather that you haven't found a social circle that agrees with your politics, and it is merely a downstream annoyance that women have a particularly quick and easy way to weaponise the disagreement.
Notice that these discussions were not serious intellectual inquiries about the past, they were more of light topics when you shot out random questions. And men almost always answered with any epoch that you can think of. Obviously anyone put always first the "but the medicine", but that was logical and assured from the beginning, I still have not met someone that likes to die because of the lacks of antibiotics.
This is a weird assumption from your side: I am not the "retvrn guy" neither in my circles nor personally speaking, and my social circle is radically diverse in terms of ideologies and nationalities. And again, it happens also when I met people that do not know me well or very well.
It wasn't clear to me from your original post that you are talking about lightweight low-stakes conversation rather than an attempt to seriously think about questions (even if they may have a whimsical dimension); however, if you are, then I'm all the less sure that anything you observe is indicative of any sort of deeper qualitative difference. It really shouldn't be a surprise that, at the level of "you have 2 seconds to come up with an answer, otherwise the silence will be awkward and your social status will drop", what will come out is our society's cached thoughts, and that our society's cached beliefs include every past era having been terrible for women. Speaking for myself, if you asked me over a drink about my favourite daydream timetravel mental LARP, I might talk your ears off with semi-elaborate plans for how I would go from stranded in the Ancient Roman countryside to having the ear of someone with whom I could bring the timeline of history forward by a bit (I like to imagine I would have gotten along with Varro); but if you instead asked me what era I would suggest my girlfriend to have a timetravel adventure in, I would respond in exactly the same way as the women you are quoting, for exactly the same reasons.
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