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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.
"Notice that these discussions were not serious intellectual inquiries about the past, they were more of light topics when you shot out random questions."
This is the basic issue - for women and frankly, many minorities, the past before, let's say, 1980 is not a light topic. Like, yes, even as a left-wing dude, I have thoughts about going back to random time x, because there's entertaining possibilities or thoughts about changing the past, even though, rationally, I know I'd be dead of a disease or whatever fairly soon. But, it's still a nice fantasy.
OTOH, for 99% of women, even well-off educated women, what's the thing they can fantasize about doing in 1740's France, Sweden during the Viking Era, or the height of the Roman Empire?
Women couldn't get credit without their husband or father co-signing until the 70's. It's not shocking that they have no great fantasies, outside of a bodice ripper or two, about going back to the time x.
I think people look back and romanticize about kings and the like, but reality for most people, male or female, was pretty rough. Hell, even when people look back to the 1950's, they think they'll be in Madmen and not someone working in an asbestos factory. Yep, that factory worker was able to buy a house and have a family... He also died slowly and painfully.
Yes, many injustices were done. That's human history, it's weird to act like one group of people has a monopoly on it.
Here's the difference - yes, life was rough for men as well, but there were actually "mad men"-style accountants, there were brave slaves who became powerful in the Roman Empire, there was even the occasional peasant who became a knight, and leaders of worker's revolutions, and such. Sure, it was not incredibly likely, but it was still a much greater chance than anything happening for women.
Meanwhile, with women, unless you were born into power until basically last week historically, you weren't going to be much of anything, no matter how much some people try to push, no actually, women had secret power in the past within families - ignore the part where they had basically zero legal rights.
Does it just not occur to people anymore that maybe women don't want the exact same things out of life as men?
I find it interesting that the historical female figure that is perhaps best known and fantasised about by women is Cleopatra. A figure who has entered the public conciousness as a master seductress and manipulator of men (albeit one that met a tragic end).
Why is it so many women today adore and imagine themselves as Marilyn Monroe, and very few as Madeleine Albright?
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