There are a lot of young people out there who are grew up with diversity, are racially inclusive, strongly support LGBTQ rights, and support many aspects of feminism, yet lean so stubbornly R.
I say this as someone who is young, and currently goes to a generally liberal high school in NYC that has significant pockets of conservative Asians and Jewishs. Everyone basically supports stuff like same sex relationships to the point where people don't really care whether someone is gay or trans, it's just the social norms we grew up with. To many, this sort of makes these social issues seem like non-issues compared to our adult friends who actually lived in times when there were literal sodomy laws in many states. This may be optimistic on my part, but I genuinely feel that by 2030, gay marriage, and transgenderism will largely be a non-issue in our politics. I do suspect the sports debate will actually stick around though because you can def argue it's unfair without directly attacking trans folks, but it will never be a driving factor in our politics.
I think it's similar to the reason that younger black voters support Ds less overwhelmingly than their older counterparts - they never grew up in a society where they faced the same degree of discrimination as their parents and grandparents did. Sure, there is still plenty of racism out there, but it's generally nowhere near the barrier it used to be.
I've said this before, but I think the main driving social factor for political sorting for young people is gender, and specifically feminism, or at least the more extreme end of it. Teenage years is when people develop a sense of gender, and I think a lot of the males I know feel like they're being attacked for presenting any sort of masculinity. You def do have a portion of girls who over-accuse men of sexism such as mansplaining. I think many of my male peers are also frustrated because it makes dating a lot more frustrating; things previously seen as polite like holding a door open may be a turn off. It's also silly things like girls getting upset about guys being too muscular, too talkative, or too anything associated with masculinity/dominance. On the flip side, I do think you have a significant faction of boys trying to "out-man" each other, and I think it's partially in a response to this culture. This sort of creates a really toxic loop between both genders, and to be clear, I don't think either side is in a "right" or "wrong", but we just have a general cultural issue.
I hope a lot of this is just due to immaturity and hormones, but it's really not great.
Correct. This is the future divide and it is a funny thing to watch.
Even on Tiktok (Skip to TLDR if you don’t want to hear about what’s going on with Stupid Dance App)
there is a clear difference. I have mainly a very young Gen Z (13-18 theoretically but most kids lie about their age to be older) base and when I look at the differences between my male followers and female followers it’s just astounding.
Politically sure, you have the boys toting American flags and the girls with pronouns/a fist in their bio, but even beyond the political surface it’s two different worlds.
I have been exposed to both and even down to basic mannerisms it’s different. The divide has always been there sure, but nowadays I can tell both the gender and politics of a commenter without even looking. The language is different for goodness sakes. This isn’t just political, it’s a full blown cultural divide perpetuated by algorithms and it seems to be stronger as you get younger.
Sure some of it is hormones and my year did have Shapiro/Milo (and Hunter but he is now left lmfao)
but it feels even bigger and deeper than just a few years ago.
I wouldn’t say the driver is feminism so much as it is just basic culture at this point. It’s not even some political issue wedge, most of the self identifying homophobic and racist boys support gay marriage and have diverse friend groups. It’s a matter of identity and culture at this point.
TLDR: ProgMod is correct and in online spaces it’s even more pronounced. There really does seem to be two different stories of the younger cohort of Gen Z. It’s a cool trend to talk about…but the consequences are dire long term.
