On politics and gender

I also had other opportunities to meet with conservatives in DC. With a foot in both worlds, I noticed certain social differences that stood out to me. They center mainly around the ways in which individuals perform gender and are worth reflecting on.

When I talk about differences between conservatives and liberals here, I’m talking about people in politics who hang out in Washington. They may work as campaign managers or speech writers, or have jobs in think tanks, journalism, government, or sometimes academia. The following analysis doesn’t apply to San Francisco rationalists, or Brooklyn Hipsters, or rural church folk in Kentucky. And this doesn’t even apply to all conservatives and liberals in politics, but the ones I happened to spend some time with. So the scope of this analysis is limited, but readers will recognize some of what I’m talking about in other contexts.

The women at Abundance dress business casual. I don’t have the eye for these things to be Vanessa Friedman, so I can’t give a sophisticated analysis of what people wear, but the main difference is the degree to which dress accentuates secondary sexual characteristics. Among the MAGA crowd, cleavage lines are lower and skirts higher, with pants all but unthinkable. There is more makeup and the hair is longer. None of the women wear glasses; among liberals they all have very fancy frames. You don’t have to meet many conservatives or liberals to know this. Roger Ailes famously banned female talent on Fox from wearing pants until 2017. He also of course ended up being brought down for using the workplace as a harem, which he probably would not have been able to do running MSNBC.

In terms of behavior, left-wing women discuss their personal lives or ideas. If they flirt, it’s very subtle. Eye contact that lasts too long, a conversation that continues past the point at least one participant would have ended it under normal conditions, standing unusually close to the other party or looking for an innocent seeming pretext to see one another again. Conservative women, in contrast, flirt as their default style in loud, high-pitched voices. “Oh, you didn’t TEXT ME BACK, I’m so sad!!!” “Would you say I’m Low Human Capital? he he he he.” Of course, any particular signal shouldn’t be taken too seriously as an indicator of interest since they are like this with a lot of men.

You shake hands as a default when meeting liberal women, while with conservatives it would be strange to shake their hand instead of giving them a hug, which they will usually initiate. Liberals bring the norms of HR into social life. Anything too forward or that can be interpreted as showing sexual interest is potentially perilous. Meanwhile, with conservative women, men have the option of coming on to them, and then brushing off the rejection if they are shut down.

While not engaging in ostentatious displays of femininity, liberal women will sometimes drop these hints that subtly remind you they are still women. She might have a pixie haircut and thick glasses on, but will find a way to mention that she likes baking or the color pink. I’ve noticed that liberal women like to discuss how their sons are more aggressive than their daughters, which is the opposite of what must go on in the imaginations of many conservatives who probably picture them all bragging about their children being trans. I think that this stuff is a way to create a little room for gender expression in an environment in which feminist norms and HR culture push towards androgyny.

That is all from Richard Hanania.  I too have noticed the hugging point.