The Left Lost the ‘Sex Wars’ Among Young Male Democrats
The Left Lost the ‘Sex Wars’ Among Young Male Democrats
Male Democrats under 50 are now more anti-feminist than older Republican men.
By Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
“Drag queens make everything better. Drag queens are fun,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel gushed. “A drag queen for every school! That is what would be fine for a kid.”
“Drag storytellers, and the libraries and schools that support them, are advancing a love of diversity, personal expression, and literacy that is core to what our city embraces,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams tweeted after a newspaper report that the city had spent over $200,000 on transgender strip shows and other drag acts in public venues, including schools and libraries.
At 53 and 61, Dana Nessel and Eric Adams have been touted as the future of the Democrats, but they’re already deeply out of step with Democrats under 50.
Especially young male Democrats.
A new Southern Poverty Law Center survey reveals massive age and gender gaps that show that gender identity politics is alienating younger generations of Democrat men and women.
The survey found that 47% of Democrat men under 50 believe that “gender ideology has corrupted American culture” and only 41% disagree. That a majority of Democrat male Gen Xrs, millennials, and zoomers are out of step with the radical gender ideology that their party has embraced as its standard ought to be a warning for a party dominated by an aging leadership.
However only 20% of Democrat men over the age of 50 see gender ideology as a threat.
Kamala Harris, 57, recently announced that the White House would be launching a task force to stop “gendered disinformation” while falsely claiming that disagreeing with leftist radical gender ideology is a threat to “democracy”. This latest effort to criminalize political dissent is dangerous and risks driving an even deeper wedge between Democrats and the future of their party.
While dissent on gender ideology is sharpest among young men, 37% of younger Democrat women also believe that “gender ideology has corrupted American culture” while 44% disagree. This is a surprisingly narrow gap especially when contrasted with the 26/60 and 20/69 agree/disagree splits among Democrat baby boomer women and men.
42% of Democrat younger men say that the transgender movement is a threat to children and 40% believe that it is actively “trying to indoctrinate children.”
Even 34% of younger Democrat women agree that the indoctrination of children is happening.
Hidden within the larger Democrat poll numbers is a massive generational and gender split in the ‘Sex Wars’.
The gap between boomer liberal men and younger generations is starkest when it comes to feminism and gender roles.
While only 2% of boomer liberal men agreed that “feminism has done more harm than good”, 46% of young male Democrats, a majority, believe that is the case. The change from a 4/94 to a 46/41 split is a massive generational shift on feminism by young Democrat men.
The split is much less pronounced among liberal women, but the number who believe that feminism has done more harm than good has still more than doubled from 10% to 23% or nearly a quarter of what is supposed to be the most liberal demographic of the Democrat party.
While the narrative has been that culturally each generation is becoming more liberal, and that is true on some issues, such as drugs and gay marriage, but the SPLC survey would indicate that younger people are actually becoming more conservative on gender politics.
The number of Democrat men who believe that males are undervalued in today’s society has exploded from 28% among boomers to 60% among younger generations.
Strikingly, this is now an area where younger Democrat men are almost perfectly aligned 60/29 with both older Republican men 63/29 and younger Republican men 65/29. While the media often claims that Republicans are losing young people, the SPLC survey offers an example of where even young Democrat men now reflect the worldview of older Republican men.
Meanwhile at a 46/41 view of feminism as destructive, male Democrats under 50 are now more anti-feminist than Republican men over 50.
While an aging Democrat establishment has embraced radical gender ideology, drag shows for kids, transgender indoctrination in schools, and the #MeToo movement, their own younger male base is turning on it and even opposition among younger women is making massive inroads.
That’s why the Biden administration was flirting with using the National Guard to stop parents from protesting the sexualization of children at school board meetings, and is now rolling out yet another disinformation task force to criminalize and suppress opposition to its gender ideology.
The Left isn’t just losing the country, it’s starting to lose its own party.
Even as the Democrat establishment doubles down on gender identity culture wars, there are major gaps emerging between members of their own party who have skin in the game and those who don’t. The generational gap is between an older generation of Democrats who dominate the political establishment, but whose cohort is no longer grappling with the problems of parenthood, and the challenges of employment and education in the #MeToo era.
Polls that group together older and younger Democrats have covered up a generational fracture that is significant because of what it reveals about the party. Younger male and even female Democrats haven’t moved to the right on gender identity politics because of FOX News, Facebook, or the other “disinformation” threats that the Biden administration wants to fight.
If that were the case, it would affect older Democrats more than younger Democrats.
This is a life experience cultural shift. Parents are seeing gender identity politics in their children’s classrooms. Men are being sidelined educationally and professionally.
And it’s happening on a seismic enough scale that it’s showing up in national surveys.
Democrats made a hard bet on leftism because of generational and racial demographics, but the Latino swing rightward has interrupted that narrative, as have conservative trends among millennials. These latest numbers reveal mixed feelings among many younger Democrats about their party’s gender identity politics and show why parental rights politics aren’t going away.
The Democrats are losing generations of their own young men. And they don’t even know it.