Performing Gender, Left and Right

Reflections on cultural differences between conservatives and liberals

Last month, I went to Abundance DC, which was the first time I had been to an actual left-wing political conference, although I did attend conferences as an academic where of course most people were liberal. At the same time, I still maintain old friendships, and the night before Abundance started I got an invitation to attend the launch of the DC Bureau of GB News, after which I was amused to find my presence noted in a gossip column. And yes, because I know you’re wondering, Steve Cheung is even hotter in person.

I also had other opportunities to meet with conservatives in DC. With a foot in both worlds, I noticed certain social differences that stood out to me. They center mainly around the ways in which individuals perform gender and are worth reflecting on.

When I talk about differences between conservatives and liberals here, I’m talking about people in politics who hang out in Washington. They may work as campaign managers or speech writers, or have jobs in think tanks, journalism, government, or sometimes academia. The following analysis doesn’t apply to San Francisco rationalists, or Brooklyn Hipsters, or rural church folk in Kentucky. And this doesn’t even apply to all conservatives and liberals in politics, but the ones I happened to spend some time with. So the scope of this analysis is limited, but readers will recognize some of what I’m talking about in other contexts.

The women at Abundance dress business casual. I don’t have the eye for these things to be Vanessa Friedman, so I can’t give a sophisticated analysis of what people wear, but the main difference is the degree to which dress accentuates secondary sexual characteristics. Among the MAGA crowd, cleavage lines are lower and skirts higher, with pants all but unthinkable. There is more makeup and the hair is longer. None of the women wear glasses; among liberals they all have very fancy frames. You don’t have to meet many conservatives or liberals to know this. Roger Ailes famously banned female talent on Fox from wearing pants until 2017. He also of course ended up being brought down for using the workplace as a harem, which he probably would not have been able to do running MSNBC.

In terms of behavior, left-wing women discuss their personal lives or ideas. If they flirt, it’s very subtle. Eye contact that lasts too long, a conversation that continues past the point at least one participant would have ended it under normal conditions, standing unusually close to the other party or looking for an innocent seeming pretext to see one another again. Conservative women, in contrast, flirt as their default style in loud, high-pitched voices. “Oh, you didn’t TEXT ME BACK, I’m so sad!!!” “Would you say I’m Low Human Capital? he he he he.” Of course, any particular signal shouldn’t be taken too seriously as an indicator of interest since they are like this with a lot of men.

You shake hands as a default when meeting liberal women, while with conservatives it would be strange to shake their hand instead of giving them a hug, which they will usually initiate. Liberals bring the norms of HR into social life. Anything too forward or that can be interpreted as showing sexual interest is potentially perilous. Meanwhile, with conservative women, men have the option of coming on to them, and then brushing off the rejection if they are shut down.

While not engaging in ostentatious displays of femininity, liberal women will sometimes drop these hints that subtly remind you they are still women. She might have a pixie haircut and thick glasses on, but will find a way to mention that she likes baking or the color pink. I’ve noticed that liberal women like to discuss how their sons are more aggressive than their daughters, which is the opposite of what must go on in the imaginations of many conservatives who probably picture them all bragging about their children being trans. I think that this stuff is a way to create a little room for gender expression in an environment in which feminist norms and HR culture push towards androgyny.

I met a few women at Abundance DC who voted for Trump. They were somewhere in between the two cultures, more towards the liberal side, maybe just because they were assimilating to their environment. But I think that the kinds of women who would be comfortable at a MAGA-majority conference would probably find liberal norms stifling.

If you’re right-wing, you might consider conservative women more outgoing and fun. One could alternatively say that they are using sex as a way to get ahead, to either gain approval from or manipulate men. Since among conservatives more value is placed on female beauty, and it is used for personal and professional advancement, liberal women who make it in politics tend to be smarter and more competent.

Conservative men also do more to perform gender than their counterparts on the other side. A guy will shout from across the room and come give you an embrace. “They let you into this place? har har har.” They will bring you close to them or slap your back, instead of giving a simple handshake and a pat on the shoulder. MAGA men brag about their exploits with women and expect an attaboy. They’ll do the Based Ritual thing when talking about public affairs, but also in discussing personal behavior they’ve engaged in, some of it sleazy. There are I’m sure other differences between men, but they’re not nearly as noticeable as with the women so I can’t remember them right now.

Conservative humor is based on joking about the absurdity of the situation, enemies on the other side of the political divide, or gossiping about friends and acquaintances, which extends across the spectrum from good-natured ribbing to the mean-spirited destruction of rivals. Liberal humor is more self-deprecating, or likely to reference the overwhelming emotional burden of the times we are living in, again focused on making one seem relatively harmless. With conservatives you can start a conversation by poking fun at someone, while with liberals you need to build a rapport first and ease into the humor, since they emphasize safety and jokes are potential minefields. You might want to pay attention to podcasts to see what makes people laugh in spontaneous conversations. In humor, you find something similar to what Derek Thompson recently described in how liberals internalize psychological issues while conservatives lash out at the world.

Conservatives are more likely to find subtle ways to brag about who they know, liberals about what they have accomplished.

Culturally, I can code switch between these worlds. Liberal culture is more nerdy, idea focused, and autistic, which is my natural home. But I do get the idea that there is something soulless about it, and the way conservatives interact with one another is closer to how our species evolved to live – that is, either hiding women from public view, or allowing their sexuality to be central to their public identity, without much room in between.

How each side behaves is a metaphor for its strengths and weaknesses as a movement. Conservatives fundamentally get human nature and are more in tune with it, but tend to indulge in their instincts and act like idiots. Liberals are thoughtful and polite but place a high priority on emotional safety and avoiding dangerous or uncomfortable situations, which explains why the Carter administration made it so much more difficult to build nuclear power plants.

These personality and aesthetic differences are central to political divides. So much of politics is who you know, and it’s difficult to go somewhere in a movement if you don’t get along with the people in it. Elites therefore sort according to personality in addition to ideology. If you’re a nerdy intellectual woman who is uncomfortable flirting with men, it’s going to be very difficult to socially find a place on the right. Being a religious Christian provides a way to check out of raunch culture, or at least mitigate its effects. And it’s not an accident that a figure like Trump who embodies performative masculinity emerged to lead the conservative movement, which he has made even more like himself. During the Bush era, there were probably smaller gaps in behavior between conservative and liberal circles in DC. The shift means that conservatives are now closer to middle and lower class norms.

When I say conservative circles are less autistic and nerdy, I mean relative to liberals. If you compared them to a frat house at a state school, rightists would seem reserved and intellectual. Conservatism is a kind of hybrid culture with aspects of both elite and non-elite norms. Populism is less plausible when people like this are already in positions of power and influence, as is the case in many developing countries. Elite Human Capital has invented a new way of being human, and is always alienated from the masses, creating constant tension and difficulties when it composes the ruling class.