I’ve never before written a multi-part column for the Daily Post. I understand that our editor, Bill Hudson, does it all the time. (All the time.) And a few other Daily Post contributors have tried it, more or less successfully.
For me, writing a column longer than about 600 words has always seemed like too much work.
But uncovering the answer to this question — “What Happened to Women?” — will probably take at least a couple of installments, considering that we’re talking about slightly more than half the entire population of the world.
Actually, we’re talking about the entire population of the world, Men included. And non-binary people. Because, as we all know, if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.
This question, “What Happened to Women?” is at the top of many people’s minds right now, as we enter the 2024 election season, because there seems to be a growing gap — politically — between female voters and male voters.
And a growing gap between female and male non-voters, too, I suppose… but no one gets too excited about non-voters. (Unless they’re single and looking for a date; I might get excited in that situation.)
An op-ed by D. Stephen Voss that ran earlier this month in the Kentucky Lantern, was titled “The political battle of the sexes.” I already knew about the battle of the sexes, in a general sense, but I hadn’t really thought of it being a political battle. In my mind, it was more a battle over who was going to take out the trash, or who had control of the remote.
But Mr. Voss has made a good case for the whole thing being political.
He led into the topic by referring to the headline-generating romance between Kansas City Chiefs record-setting receiver Travis Kelce — a handsome, well-built man, if there ever was one — and America’s top-earning singer-songwriter Taylor Swift… and Mr. Voss mentioned the accusations coming from the GOP right-wing, that the whole romance is a political ploy to get Joe Biden re-elected. I wrote about that situation a few days ago… because so many people seem to be talking about it. I like to be part of conversations, when they don’t involve me, personally.
Naturally, I assumed my column about Travis and Taylor would help clarify the picture. But I wasn’t considering, then, the political battle of the sexes. I thought it was just some old white men getting unnecessarily excited about a silly romance.
Mr. Voss makes the case that this is not just an ‘American’ political gender gap. But I’m most concerned about my own homeland, because I live here.
I will be quoting some of Mr. Voss’ numbers, without even the slightest attempt to fact-check. It’s what journalists do. We trust each other, while knowing full well that we’re all spinning the story to suit our personal perspectives.
Mr. Voss writes that the GOP is struggling to get women to vote for their candidates.
Few will be surprised to hear that women lean toward Democrats, while men lean toward the GOP.
That Gender Gap has been around for generations, documented by extensive research… Just it’s getting bigger. More surprising is who’s causing the gap to widen. The usual complaint is that many Republicans have become extremists, which might suggest boys drifted ideologically.
Not so. American girls have been swinging leftward fast.
To prove his point about ‘girls swinging leftward fast’, he included a link to a Financial Times article… which is, unfortunately, behind a paywall. I assume Daily Post readers don’t have a paid subscription to the Financial Times. (Why would we?) But in the extremely unlikely situation where you do have a paid subscription, here’s the link.
I can make the argument, meanwhile, that the leftward swing of girls has not necessarily been ‘fast’. It’s been a long time coming, here in the U.S. It began in 1869, when cowboys in the state of Wyoming granted their mothers and wives and girlfriends the right to vote. The rest of the U.S. finally caught up in 1920, when the 19th Amendment was approved.
If there’s anything that smacks of ‘leftward swinging’… it’s giving someone the right to vote. Next thing you know, they want the right to own property, and have their own bank account. Which, of course, is exactly what happened.
But the ‘leftward swinging’ got a bit more serious in 1972, when I was about eight years old. A group of female intellectuals in New York began publishing a magazine called Ms.
The inaugural edition sold out — 300,000 copies — in a mere eight days.
No one knew what the title, “Ms.” meant. Before 1972, a woman was either a “Mrs.” or a “Miss” depending on whether some man had agreed to marry her. But the editors of the new magazine thought a woman had some kind of value, regardless of whether she was, or wasn’t, married.
Because they knew they were going to be required to explain this new ‘Ms.’ concept to their readers — which might be something of a pain? — they had also considered other names for the magazine, including the name, Bimbo. (True story.)
This was actually a pretty daring enterprise, because the publishers needed to find display advertising to support the magazine, and most national advertisers were corporations owned by old white men who tended to be “rightward swinging.”
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.