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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.
I think a part of the issue is that the blinders people put on themselves are precluding them from seeing the reality of the past. And instead always default to ingroup bias. Why is the 'now' better than the 'then'? Well, I perceive that my ingroup is stronger now than then. OK... Is that good, relevant or even true? Is the 'amount' of feminism in the world correlated with the things you like in practice? Or are we just chasing our pathologies and perceptions of what should make us happy whilst actually finding ourselves in situations that don't. Or worse, being so blinded by our perceptions and beliefs that we preclude ourselves from recognizing that they are a part of the problem.
For example, by exalting a mythology of how bad life was for women in the past because they had less feminism and freedom, or how bad life was in the past for blacks because of drinking fountain exclusivity, one is not creating a virtual reality that allows people to experience the reality of the past. One is just creating a victimary narrative that says ones ingroup was being victimized back then. A cogent example of this being the fact that blacks and women today are not modulating their emotional experiences of struggle against the patriarchy or white supremacy based on objectivity. They very much feel put upon. The 'system' is still very much against them. And to any end that it is too obviously not, we just invent new theories and mechanisms to explain and rationalize our victimary disposition. Quite literally, in real time, we invent a new reality. What a 'huge surprise' that it shares total emotional congruity with the alleged old reality...
Part of the observation being made, which I feel a lot of the replies to your post are missing the point of, is that the reason why women weren't choosing to look fondly at the past isn't because it was objectively worse time in the context of what was being discussed. You can still have superior mechanisms and social technology in the past despite not having running water. Pointing to the fact you don't have running water is not a relevant argument against those things. Yet that is what many women are allegedly doing with regards to evaluating everything with regards to 'feminism'. Which, in reality is just serving as a proxy for the perceived interest of the ingroup.
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