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Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 28, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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A number of times on this forum, posters with right-wing sensibilities have solicited dating advice along the lines of “Every woman I talk to expresses progressive opinions, so how do I navigate around the inevitable political disagreements?” Each time, several posters have asserted that this is not in fact as much of a problem as it may appear to be; if everything else in the relationship is going well and the woman respects you for other reasons, she not only won’t have a problem with your politics, she’ll actually start to mold her own political beliefs to become more in line with yours!

This assertion has always struck me as equal parts intriguing and bizarre. Certainly I’m familiar with much of the copious amount of commentary around psychological differences between men and women, including Dissident Right discussion of the “Woman Question”. I fully accept that aggregate differences in temperament and political reasoning between the sexes are real and substantial. Still, it’s tough for me to wrap my head around the idea that most adult women’s beliefs are malleable to that extent. Perhaps I just haven’t managed to wrap my head around the unavoidable truth that, when it comes to men and women, the inner machinations of each sex’s mind are an enigma to the other sex, and that a regime of healthy relations between the sexes requires both men and women to contort themselves into a mode of external presentation that renders them legible to each other.

Although I am currently in a situation wherein the relevance of this line of questioning is probably going to become significant to me in the pretty near future, I’m not actually asking for advice here. I’m actually more just curious as to how this supposed process actually operates. The claim is that a woman who is in a long-term relationship with a right-wing man will become more right-wing herself over time. How does this work? Is this only true of women who did not express a strong political worldview before the start of the relationship? If the woman did have progressive opinions before the relationship, will she end up explicitly repudiating those opinions later on? (i.e. “I was wrong about that, and you were right. I can’t believe I ever believed that!”) Or will it just be a more subtle shift over time, with the woman beginning to express right-wing opinions and either not noticing or not acknowledging the way in which these opinions contradict her earlier views? Does the shift reflect a genuine change of worldview within the woman’s mind, or is it merely a change in the views which she verbally expresses? (The really alarming and potentially blackpilling answer would be “There is no difference between those two things.”) Also, is this shift only sustainable if the woman does not have a larger social sphere of women who will reinforce progressive views and thus act as a countervailing force against the influence of the husband?

I realize that this is a series of questions and that the subject matter might be too broad for the “Small-Scale Questions Thread”, but it doesn’t seem to be appropriate for the Culture War thread either.

Call me a romantic: Changing or hiding your political beliefs in order to obtain or maintain a loving relationship is the right choice in nearly all cases for an individual person.

A lot of Men and Women both do this, all the tine. The difference is that men who do so typically do so before the relationship begins, or in a general way. Men choose political beliefs all the time based on "will this get me laid?" That can be direct ("I'm going to the pro-choice rally, there are more chicks" or reading Foucault to hit on Ethereal Bisexuals) or general (Nazis/Communists/Georgists/PLO supporters are weirdos, weirdos don't get laid). A great many men pick their politics based on social desirability

Women on the other hand will often meet a man and then change their political beliefs. Because a woman can still be just as attractive despite holding unattractive political beliefs, there are very few situations where a woman's politics will make her more attractive.

Same dynamic, different order.

It should also be noted that the gender split on politics is vastly overstated in greentext comedies about "Women be like...Men be like"

Biden made gains with men, while Trump improved among women, narrowing the gender gap. The gender gap in the 2020 election was narrower than it had been in 2016, both because of gains that Biden made among men and because of gains Trump made among women. In 2020, men were almost evenly divided between Trump and Biden, unlike in 2016 when Trump won men by 11 points. Trump won a slightly larger share of women’s votes in 2020 than in 2016 (44% vs. 39%), while Biden’s share among women was nearly identical to Clinton’s (55% vs. 54%).

Even an 11% difference is barely noticeable or predictive in day to day life. 56-44 means that out of every twenty people men you meet, two or three more will be conservative compared to twenty women. Basically a non-event. The idea of a politics that primarily cleaves by gender is the fantasy of the extremely online.