In a recent New Yorker commentary titled “The Battle for the Bros”, the author breaks down how the Democrats (or “the left”) in the US lost a voter base among young men to the conservatives in recent years. In short, the leftist movement of “wokeness” apparently offended so many of them that it seemed altogether more comforting and in line with personal circumstances to vote for the conservative ideology, despite the flaws or tensions that are inherent to rightwing politics. The young male voter is described to be fed up with the perpetual thought-policing forces of the left, the pressure to switch up traditionally common expressions and adopt unfamiliar alternative terms, and the expectation to stay perfectly in line at all times. A single slip of the tongue could land someone in the public light in the dreaded territory of being “cancelled”. It then feels safer to side with the political right, where apparently the blatant use of provocative language and opinions is cherished and celebrated, rather than banished.
The article mentions a social scientist who observes that the Democrats tend to “pathologize masculinity”. An example is the sanctioning of young high school-age boys for exchanging spreadsheets ranking their female classmates’ attractiveness. According to social progressives, this behavior is wrong and toxic for not only the girls inadvertently involved in the scenario, but also the boys themselves. The social scientist mentioned in the article deems this behavior “immature” and “harmful”, but argues that it should not raise alarm among politicians and other public figures, which apparently ended up being the case. To some extent, I agree that there needs to be some reassessment and certainly intervention here, but the responses do not need to be stigmatization or severe social shaming of the young boys, who are already prone to mirroring and parroting for social acceptance.
What I would never sit comfortably by is the notion that young boy should be left alone to engage in this sort of behavior (and the attitude that comes with it) for the sake of politics. Retrospective analysis of political messaging and strategic engagement (such as the New Yorker article) often points towards a more lenient, permissive attitude towards discriminatory, misogynistic, or racist tones, with the aims of avoiding alienating the people who might carry them. Because politicians are so desperate for short-term popularity and their advisors and/or supporters are so keen to endorse this, we grow accustomed to a pattern of brushing things off with a wave of hand, implying that ultimately, wooing voters is a better strategy than having a coherent and convincing vision to fight for.
How can we transform society if we keep weaponizing politics to defend the status quo? This is something I wonder whenever an election campaign accelerates especially in places like the US. We’re swayed so much by the push and pull of politics that many voters end up naming on their ballot the politician whose platform is far from what they want, but voting for them means salvaging a tolerable reality, as opposed to a far worse scenario. This pushes many of us to a passive, almost begrudging, civic engagement. There is a fear hanging above us to not tip the scale towards the radicals and extremists, specifically those who stand on the opposing side of the political spectrum, so we settle for the fence walkers who have no ideals but plenty of ambition and ego. Worse, we justify wrong behaviors for fear of offending or alienating the people behind them. We end up filtering and silencing ourselves even before we speak our values and beliefs out loud.
On the flip side, we’ve also witnessed the repercussions of sending a reckless yet incompetent man back in office, when the strategies of politics go haywire. It’s a double bind where too much progressiveness (progressivism?) and too little could both land us in a conundrum and a wrought reality. I don’t deny that it is a delicate, incredibly high-stake task to devise political strategies and maximize appeal to constituents. Every idiotic statement and decision coming out of the incumbent administration in the US reminds me of how crucial yet deeply challenging this task has been. It feels like every move must have led to a consequential result, and one wrong step could lose a significant chunk of voters. Given how popular Trump’s campaign turned out to be as the election closed, and contrasting that with how disastrous their actual administration has been in its first few weeks, Democrats political strategists’ job really felt like an impossible and fruitless pursuit.
What is clear to me is that, for all of this political strategy for maximizing winning chances, it is a massive load of bull and hypocrisy when the first thought is on “how do I retain political support from these people?” not “how do we, as politicians and responsible citizens, make society better for the victims of these people, and the perpetrators themselves?” I get that it’s always been a big part of politics to focus on guiding the public with curated messages and empty promises, on amassing power through corrupt means and backdoor parleying with interest groups. No wonder the general consensus is that politics is dirty and unscrupulous. But what does this mean for the public who should be empowered to critically engage with their leadership and the process of electing them, instead of being mere pawns for politicians to herd around? Can voters actually be treated with respect and genuine consideration, not a weighing mass to see which demographic groups are worth courting or giving up, based on how much electoral and cultural worth they carry?
Maybe this is it. The key here isn’t to target and fixate on luring specific demographic group over to “our” side. This will be an endless battle in which politicians and their parties resort to petty and superficial tricks, hypocritical and immoral ploys. In the end, they might still end up with a flaky and disloyal support base all the way up until the eve of the election. When I think about what is lacking in the current scene of politics, it’s a party or politician that puts their platform first and foremost, rather than spending most of their energy responding and retaliating against political opponents. It’s becoming increasingly rare to hear politicians talk about their visions for pure, universal thriving. Most conversations and discourses in politics nowadays seem to be all about some hyper-niche demands from interest groups, or incessant attacks (both personal and professional) on political rivals. There is less and less talk about how a policy can lift everyone up, or make the nation and the world somehow more livable and united. Inflammatory language that stigmatizes, devalues, and hurts keeps on drowning out the hopeful, forward-moving visions for a better society for most.
Back to the story in the New Yorker article (which went more in-depth across various examples across domains), I can’t tell for sure what the right intervention is when young boys take on a misogynistic lens, even for their casual amusement . There probably isn’t a single one. But I know for certain that turning a blind eye to it for the sake of appealing to them politically isn’t one of the options. To use a mis-scaled parallel example, but a parallel regardless: imagine attempting to absolve a rapist because he has a bright future ahead of him or because his family promises to return favors to the judge/jury, while flipping off the victim (and potentially even more future victims) in the most ruthless, vicious way. In both cases, it is implied that there is something to be gained from the perpetrator’s acquittal, so we ought to turn a blind eye to his wrongdoing to maximize our chance of being on his good side.
I would also personally not hesitate to label the practice of assessing female classmates’ attractiveness “misogyny”, despite the tip-toeing around wokeness in the current climate. Youth are vulnerable human beings in their formative and developmental phases, but one day they will be fully-formed individuals shaped and influenced by the all steps along the way. How they form thoughts and perspectives about others is not a matter to brush off and cushion as the normalcy of immaturity. What if the norm for boyhood amusement doesn’t have to be at the expense of others? What if it doesn’t have to condition young boys to see their female peers as objects to be assessed for aesthetic or sexual “value”? And from where I see it, this isn’t a loss nor estrangement for the boys, as how political players tend to assume. It can be a step forward for them, for society, towards something more just, respectful, and universally uplifting. It’s a tough climb, and the first challenge is to refuse problem misdiagnosis and the perpetuation of a broken civic participation system.