By Selwyn Duke
We have all heard about the sex gap in voting patterns. This is the phenomenon whereby, in every election, women are far more likely to support liberal candidates than men are. For instance, in 1996, Bill Clinton captured 54 percent of the women's vote but only 43 percent of the men's. And in subsequent elections, the male-female gap has been as follows: in 2000, Al Gore, 42-54; in 2004, John Kerry, 41-51; and in 2008, Barack Obama, 49-56. In fact, even in the watershed election of 2010, during which we heard about the rise of the conservative woman, the fairer sex favored Democrats by 1 point, 49 to 48. The Republican victories were attributable to a sex gap (I don't use the word "gender") that was as wide as ever, ranging from 4 to 19 points.
So, clearly, women tend to gravitate toward statist candidates. And there are many reasons for this. One is that, being the more emotion-driven sex, women are more susceptible to liberals' emotional appeals. Another is that where men are big-picture-oriented, women are detail-oriented. This feminine quality is wonderful when handling young children, whose lives must be micro-managed; the problem is that it also leads to acceptance of a micro-managing government that, ultimately, will treat us all like children. And then you have not just a nanny state (a feminine descriptive, mind you), but what we are quickly descending into: The Harridan State.
Yet there is an even greater reason why women veer left, and it's the one I'll focus on today.
They are the Security Sex.
Did you ever wonder why women are so often attracted to strong, burly men? It's the same reason why they're drawn to men boasting wealth and/or power. It's the same reason why they're more careful investors. It's the same reason why male animals show off and act dominant to attract females. It's the same reason why women are drawn to highly intelligent men (Einstein had many female fans).
Women crave security.
Ideally, they want to "marry up" – up in terms of strength, finances, clout and intellectual capability. And this is reflected in a not uncommon female reaction. When a woman falls for a man who she can look "up" to, she may say to him something such as "You make me feel safe" (I get this from female readers all the time – sometimes one article is all it takes). And from a Darwinian standpoint, this makes sense. For, if a woman's children are to survive, she must secure a safe environment for them.
The cocoon of safety in which woman traditionally was most comfortable – and it is her primary focus – is the family. And it is by necessity a little nanny state; it is, quite appropriately, a very socialist, top-down, command-control institution. Its closest thing to the "people," the children, are controlled and afforded relatively few freedoms; the family is not democratic. And it is a communal place, where everything is shared and the "people" are cared for by the "government" (the parents). To a great extent, its operating principle is "From each according to his means; to each according to his needs."
The problem, again, is when the wider government is made to resemble this family one. It's a danger Ben Franklin warned of when saying, "Anyone who would sacrifice liberty for security doesn't deserve either." Yet women have been sacrificing liberty for security for thousands of years – in an appropriate context. This context was marriage, when a woman would accept a man's protection and his headship (with today's hen-pecked Western man it's different; upon getting married, he sacrifices liberty for insecurity). And this security marriage offers at least partially explains another voting pattern: Married women's tendency to vote more conservatively than their single sisters. The only man the latter have is Uncle Sam.
In light of this, what would you do if you wanted to grow government? I think you would try to remove any hope in women's minds that they could find security through a husband. You do this by destroying the man. You need to make him look weak, ineffectual, feckless and buffoonish. And the more you can actually make him so in reality – through the feminization of boys – the easier this becomes.
Here is how you would proceed: Portray men in sitcoms, movies and commercials as inept, foolish and pusillanimous; Father Knows Best must become Father Knows Bupkis. Make sure these overgrown Hollywood boys are always outshone by female characters, who will roll their eyes at them as they come bear the wo-man's burden. Also ensure that there are at least as many female characters in action roles as men – and don't neglect to make them as hard and as tough, if not more so, than the fellows. And definitely show them beating men up as much as possible. Then men certainly won't seem very strong.
To reinforce this, an explicit "girl power" creed must be instilled in young lasses. Be sure to tell them not only that they can do anything a boy can, but make sure they get the notion that they can do it better. You can even print up t-shirts with messages such as "Girls Rule, Boys Drool" and "Boys are Stupid; Throw Rocks at Them." Also be sure to replace prominent male historical figures in textbooks with women – and if the latter are of dubious accomplishment, just massage the truth a little. And understand the goal here. If a woman can't make herself feel safe and secure, it follows that a man who she sees as inferior to her will not be able to, either. Realize that another way of saying that women like strong, wealthy, powerful, intelligent men is that they like men who seem superior. So the goal is to get girls to believe, at as young an age as possible, that men are quite the opposite.
This perception is far easier to instill if you can actually bring men and boys down. To this end, make sure you feminize the curricula and atmosphere in schools so that boys receive neither the stimulation nor the discipline they need to succeed. And when these little outside-the-box, male creatures' (boys are more likely to be revolutionary-minded, for good or for ill) energies are misdirected due to this lack of discipline, you can pickle their wills in psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin. The idea here is to lower boys' grades and college-graduation rates so that they're less capable of being a family's breadwinner. And then they certainly won't seem very intelligent.
To make this a one-two knockout punch, there must also be institutionalized discrimination against the lads. So be sure to have affirmative action, quotas and set-asides for women. For instance, you can have government aid for female-owned businesses but not male-owned ones; if this is done right, a situation might even arise in which women start four times as many new businesses as men do. The idea is to, as much as possible, work towards a point where men aren't very wealthy or powerful.
Along with this New Chivalry must come the destruction of the old variety. Both sexes must be told that chivalry is condescending so that girls bristle at it and boys don't see their future role as that of protector. In fact, by sexualizing everything in society and presenting girls as objects of pleasure, we can instead make the boys more predatory. Then they will leave a trail of broken hearts in their wake, ensuring that girls' hopes of bonding with a man are crushed; this causes women to harden their hearts to avoid being thus hurt again, which reduces the chances that they will ever truly bond with a man. The value of this lies in the fact that emotional pain can be the deepest of all; you want to make women feel that even more than their bodies or material well-being, their hearts will be unsafe with a man. So the idea is to replace the knight-in-shining-armor dream with a Ted Kennedy nightmare.
The result of all this will be men who seem weak, powerless, unintelligent and who are poor – and often quite ignoble to boot. Women must feel that the only reliable source of security and resources in their lives, the only strong man, is Uncle Sam.
Of course, in my relation of the above, I might have missed a few steps. You'll have to inquire with Screwtape to get the rest of the program.
While many may think I've exaggerated the case here, suffice it to say that withering patriarchy nourishes the paternalistic state. And what could we say about the forces instigating such social change? Well, it's said that if you want to destroy an enemy, cut off its head. Traditionally, men were the heads of households and ruling bodies. And if the civilization in question were some indigenous tribe in a faraway land – if they were targeted by forces that aimed to make their women insecure by rendering their men and boys insufficient – what could we say about those forces? What would you say? As for me, I would not call them friends.