Republican Dating Claims Go Limp
The claim that they are discriminated against is central to the proclamations of the Republican commentariat. When they look at the world, the thinking goes, they should only see flattering lies reflected back at them, and anyone speaking otherwise is oppressing them.
Applying this logic to the subjective world of sex and relationships actually serves as a lure for men lost in a world of changing expectations and highly sexualized marketing.
On just about an annual basis since The Donald took office, the public hears complaints from upstanding conservatives that nobody wants to date them.
In 2017, The Federalist’s Jerrod Laber took his turn with “Your Refusal to Date Conservatives Is One Reason We Have Donald Trump.”
Erin Gloria Ryan’s response was devastating:
Women refusing to date Trump-supporting men isn’t what caused those men to react and turn to Trump for solace. That women won’t date them is a symptom of their awfulness, like voting for Trump is, among certain populations, a symptom of a specific sort of awfulness.
Heterosexual women might be turned off by a man’s politics, by their philosophy, by their musical taste, by their affinity for talking about gadgets, the most boring thing in the world to talk about. But if the man in question is a nice enough person, if he takes care of himself and treats others with genuine respect, somebody will probably date him. The world is full of lonely people who will let things slide in the name of companionship.
If nobody likes you, the problem is you.
Make yourself great again, and then maybe you’ll get a girlfriend.
Come 2018, and Politico Magazine makes it an official trend with Young Trumpies Hit D.C...and D.C. Hits Them Right Back
When it comes to disclosing their affiliation with Trump, no ground is more fraught than courtship. “Trump supporters swipe left”—meaning “don’t even bother trying”—might be the single most common disclaimer on dating app profiles in Washington.
Washingtonian Magazine dug deeper, interviewing young conservatives who worked for right wing media in Young DC Conservatives: No One Wants to Date Us.
“The political divide has gotten so wide that a lot of younger liberals don’t have any interest in meeting conservatives,” says a reporter at a conservative media company. Working for a right-wing publication is such an obstacle to dating in DC, he doesn’t put his employer on any dating apps and avoids talking about it until meeting someone face-to-face, he says.
“The policies and these things that are attached to the right whether or not you’re a supporter of Trump have been pre-supposed on you, and it’s like a black mark,” says another reporter at the same outlet, who describes himself as a moderate conservative.
He once brought a woman back to his place, and while checking out his bookshelf, she noticed some books by conservative thinkers, he says. “She was like, ‘Oh no. First question: Did you vote for Trump?’,” the reporter says. He told her no, but that he was conservative. “She was like ‘I have to get out of here. I can’t see you,’ and left.”
Now that the Former Guy is not in the White House, the Manhattan Institute's Eric Kaufman penned an essay to crank it up a notch for for National Review: Political Discrimination as Civil-Rights Struggle.
Based on a survey sample of 1,500 female Ivy League students asked whether they would date a Trump supporter, he’d like readers to believe that only 6% said yes (after excluding the small minority of the sample who support the Former Guy).
This reveals the predilection among many young elite Americans for progressive authoritarianism, a belief system that justifies infringing rights to equal treatment or free speech in the name of the emotional “safety” of historically marginalized race, gender, and sexuality groups. In this left-modernist worldview, conservatives’ resistance to racial, gender, and sexual progressivism mark them as moral deviants. As Millennials take power, this generational earthquake is set to shake the foundations of the cultural elite to its core, leading to pervasive discrimination against, and censorship of, conservative views.
There’s just one teensie problem with Kaufman’s numbers, namely that they’re bullshit. Dig far enough and you'll find the survey methodology is bonkers.
https://twitter.com/davidceisen/status/1412765849568661517?s=20
So the problem, as noted above by Erin Gloria Ryan, isn’t so much that liberal/progressive women automatically wish to trample on the rights of eligible conservatives, it’s that the entitlement and delusion worn as a badge of honor by those types are not a turn on. Go figure.
Perhaps the most twisted manifestation in this fool’s paradise are the seemingly endless scandals concerning older politicians and younger humans. To be sure, these relationships aren’t strictly partisan affairs; it’s also about power and ego. But if one were to keep track, the number of right wingers involved is certainly higher and the penalties for getting caught are much less.
In addition to the pity party aspect of the right’s view of heterosexual relationships, the rhetoric serves as an internal justification for the misogyny embedded within the cultural perspective of conservatives.
Aja Romano’s lengthy essay at Vox about toxic masculinity as a gateway drug for male Trump supporters, particularly those identifying with the alt-right, does a good job of explaining this:
The basic idea that “women are getting too out of hand” is the patriarchal common denominator. And it aligns perfectly with male rage against “social justice” activism, which in turn paves the way for white nationalism and white supremacy to gain a foothold…
...While many of the movement’s male-centered online communities may seem to offer something of value to the men who join them, the alt-right movement has never been about helping men cope with low self-esteem, relationship problems, or their personal pain and insecurity. In fact, it’s never particularly concerned itself with building up men as individuals at all. Instead, it’s about maintaining a sense of power at all costs over an ever-expanding list of designated targets.
It’s important to understand that views of sexuality are shaped by the historically patriarchal nature of Western European societies. Preservation of male dominance as a given is key to authoritarian views of the world.
Let’s face it, at the heart of what the political struggles we’re going through are the choices to be made in either expanding democracy to be truly inclusive or using it as a veneer to hide reactionary governance..
***
Also….
https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1413108230105018373?s=20
Another form of discrimination being claimed by the righties involves getting the jab for COVID 19. The same people advocating for criminalizing abortions and restricting access to birth control are saying “it’s my body, my choice” when it comes to vaccines.
There is increasing evidence that COVID 19 is associated with erectile dysfunction, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times:
It would not be surprising if COVID-19 harmed male sexual health, said Dr. Emmanuele Jannini, professor of endocrinology and medical sexology at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, who has written extensively on the subject.
Erectile dysfunction could be a symptom of “long COVID,” he said, an array of symptoms that can last months after the initial coronavirus infection. Common symptoms of long COVID include difficulty breathing, chest pain, heart palpitations and loss of smell or taste.
Were it not for the danger they pose to parts of the population with legit health reasons for not getting inoculated, I’d say let them prove Darwin right.
***
Hey folks! Be sure to like/follow Words & Deeds on Facebook. If you’d like to have each post emailed to you check out the simple subscription form on the right side of the front page.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com
Lead image by Michael S. Helfenbein via Yale News