Young women are more liberal than they have been in decades, according to a Gallup analysis of more than 20 years of polling data.
Over the past few years, about 4 in 10 young women between the ages of 18 and 29 have described their political views as liberal, compared with two decades ago when about 3 in 10 identified that way.
For many young women, their liberal identity is not just a new label. The share of young women who hold liberal views on the environment, abortion, race relations and gun laws has also jumped by double digits, Gallup found.
I understand how abortion and guns can/do have a womens exclusive perspective, but how is the environment a womens issue? By environment you mean things like climate change and pollution, right?
I can understand how liberals vs progressives would have different views…but I’m not grasping how men vs women would.
There’s a sense of “Caring about nature is effeminate and for wusses” in toxic masculinity.
Which I find extremely odd, since some traditionally masculine activities are nature oriented. Hunting, fishing, outdoorsy stuff in general. It wasn’t that long ago that (environmental) conservation was a huge component of those activities to ensure continued access for people to those activities. Maybe it still is but I certainly don’t get that impression as strongly anymore.
In my area the types of guys into outdoorsy stuff also tend to trash their campsites.
I can’t count the number of times I go hiking and find beer/monster/soda cans, empty beefjerky bags, lead fishing weights that were cut off and left next to the rest of the garbage, piles of empty shotgun shells(not just one or two that were missed or fell out of a pocket), cigarette butt’s and boxes, ect.
It’s always really shitty to find a part of the forest like that. Especially if I can see where there was tree stand above the pile of garbage. I get that deer are basically overpopulated due to milder winters, but take care of the forest my dudes.
Teddy Roosevelt was a big conservationist. He would’ve happily knocked some heads over the idea he was effeminate for it.
I take part in a lot of outdoorsy activities, there’s kind of a split. Lots of conservation-minded folks like myself, and lots of assholes who don’t seem to realize or care that they won’t be able to go hunting, fishing, etc. if they develop over all the woodlands, poison the waterways, etc. and just want an excuse to shoot something or justify their much-larger-than-needed, lifted, coal-rolling truck.
Also a fair amount of people who don’t feel particularly strongly either way.
Sales of hunting/fishing licenses and such do end up funding a lot of conservation efforts, though arguably in a lot of cases the money doesn’t necessarily go where it’s most needed.
The more conservation-minded folks tend to be quieter about their interests and don’t make it their whole personality, they’re usually not the ones posing with a deer or fish in their profile pic.
Weird conservatives have never been know to understand things like “longterm effects” or “treating what they have with any respect”.
They like buying trucks, guns, and knives. They like showing those things off. Like the “rustic charm” in the memes that are really just about how anti-social they are. They like wearing red and black flannel, camo hats, and acting like they could totally live off the land just because their entire idea of nature is about who’s more violent.
The people who can name the birds and trees, who gather responsibly, and just like to go for a nice canoe aren’t usually too conservative. Obviously it happens but that requires a level effort and stewardship for the land that’s often incompatible with the personality required to grasp onto conservatism.
I remember when Steven Seg*all was a strong supporter of the EPA.
I think he still is!
Oh wait, I just realized that you probably mean the “Environmental Protection Agency.”
Here I was thinking you meant the “Eager for Punani Association.”
Oh…hadn’t heard that. Guess I’m a big ol’ sissy for loving trees. Oh well.
A lot of people also conflate dominion with domination, in certain faiths.
Burning fossil fuels and polluting is viewed as masculine, whereas caring about the environment is feminine, in a phenomenon sociologists have coined as Petro-masculinity. Think of those men who roll coal in their lifted trucks towards cyclists in lycra, who they view as “gay”.
Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire - Cara Daggett, 2018 - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0305829818775817
People are weird. I see nothing masculine or anti-masculine about recycling, or driving an electric car.
Like…it doesn’t even seem related to how tough you are. If anything the really masculine guy would be the one who rides his bicycle everywhere.
Really built calves. Leg muscles. Able to go 40mph from your legs alone. Isn’t that the real tough guy? Not the guy who gets into a large truck, and slightly presses a pedal downward.
Like I said. People are weird.
I don’t know why either, but in I heard the same thing: more women tend to care not about the environment than men. Anecdotally, a lot of environmental related stores > and groups I go to are a majority women attended or assumed at women.
Caring about pollution is associated with wimpy electric cars instead of manly trucks, and the not manly activity of taking transit or cycling, and soyboy diets instead of steaks, and omg electric stoves, etc.
And I don’t understand that, because my wimpy electric vehicle will leave your archaic, noisy, pollution belching vehicle in the dust, and will do so in effortless silence
But does it make vroom vroom noises?