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The Most Active Threads Since Friday
The topics with the most engagement since my last blog post included understanding Republican women, parents expressing regret, election predictions, and anger over survey questions.
Quite a few of the most active threads over the weekend were ones that I have already discussed. This seems to be an emerging trend as the same thing happened last week. But, that was not the case for the most active thread. Titled, "Help me understand Republican women in their 30s and 40s" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum, not only had I not previously discussed the thread, I hadn't even read it. Now it is 40 pages long and there is no way that I will read the whole thing. The original poster states that she understood Bush-era Republicans, but "cannot wrap my mind around how any remotely educated woman today could consider herself a part of the Republican party." She asks others to explain the appeal of the Republican Party to women. Based on some of the responses I read in the thread, many posters — and perhaps the original poster as well — assume that the Republican Party's hostility toward reproductive rights and the former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump's history of brutish behavior toward women (which includes being found liable of sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll) would push women away from the party. Recent election results have demonstrated that there may be some truth in this theory, though the trend is clearly not universal. Based on the responses from Republican women in the thread, I don't think that Republican women are all that different than Republican men. The traditional view of Republicans is that they are motivated by interest in low taxes, business-friendly regulations, tough on crime measures, and a strong defense. That view is outdated, or if not outdated, those concerns taken a backseat to other priorities. Washington Post columnist Philip Bump recently wrote about Pew survey results regarding race, immigration, and gender. Bump's findings are consistent with the posts by Republican women in this thread. While crime remains a concern, they tend to be much more motivated by cultural issues. In each of the three topics, race, immigration, and gender, the Republican women feel that they are being disadvantaged by Democratic policies. Like White men, White women frequently believe that the interests of non-White people ar put above theirs. One of the first Republican women posters to respond in the thread cited the claim that White women have "privilege" as something she resents, implying that it hurts the employment opportunities for White women. Immigration in Republican thinking is often connected to crime, reminiscent of Trump's claim that Mexico was sending rapists and murderers to the US. But an equal concern seems to be the belief that Democrats are encouraging immigration in order to gain Democratic voters. Again, these women think that Democrats are putting the interests of others above theirs. The gender issue is more complicated. One would be inclined to think that the motivating issues around sex and gender would be reproductive rights, equality for women, and other women rights issues. But, again, Republican women see themselves as being disadvantaged in preference to others. In this case, transgender women who, these women believe, are men impinging on women's rights. In general, I think it is safe to say that Republican women, like Republican men, are primarily motivated by a series of issues which cause them to feel that their position in society is being eroded by trends towards diversity.