Young Women and the Election Issue that Wasn't

Trump, Vance, abortion, and liberals without a clue.

I knew on the day Biden won in 2020, that Trump was going to win in 2024. I saw desperate, frenzied liberal commentators trying their utmost, with gritted teeth and white knuckles, to explain what a ‘certification of an election’ and a ‘slate of electors’ was to deeply unmoved 20-something-year-old men. I saw Pundits outlining the absolute necessity of winning the Donbas, with the sort of moral superiority that can only come from a stint in the not-for-profit sector, and knew, absolutely and totally it was over. To say I cringed while watching people with expensive haircuts, trying to explain the great glory of the City on the Hill, to people whose only shred of relief was escaping the latest debt collector notice, is an understatement. The obvious Parkinson’s dementia of Dear Leader was only the seal on the eviction notice. And Kamala, dear Kamala, with her senior management polish, and boomer feel-good sensibility would only be the latest causality in the march towards the America made great once again.

But something weird started to happen to me, a crack appeared in my resolve. One issue stood out, a great inevitable sticking point. Abortion. I thought Trump had suitably disappointed the conservative Christians in his first term on the issue. Sure there were those supreme court justices, but the guy is a New York liberal. I follow the pro-life movement closely enough to know that to them, his abortion politics were lukewarm, a sell out, a compromise that revealed moral weakness. The “abortion is murder and we are going to act like it” Catholic sexual ethicists were pissed. Melania broke her stoney Eastern European facade, revealed herself to be a yummy mummy, took a break from reading Brené Brown, and dropped a pro-choice book. Attacking Trump on abortion felt like a footnote, the criticism wouldn’t stick. January 6th, the Ukraine, Russia collusion, and finally and lastly abortion.

This was probably because the democrats, despite their superior posturing, don’t care about protecting reproductive rights at all. If they did they would have codified Roe V Wade. It was a bargaining chip, and they care more about being in power than making sure women don’t die from sepsis. Besides which, all that boring 1970s feminist politics has been replaced by something altogether more sexy, and more interesting. Womanhood of course is not a sex category, it’s a feeling, a style, an essence, an identity. Invite Dylan Mulvaney to the White House to meet with Biden. Let the other one flash his silicon tits on the White House lawn. Destroy title IX. All of this is a settled question, we will hoard our bargaining chip forever. Women, whether we call them degrading names like ‘birthing people’ or not, will come out to vote for us forever.

The addition of JD Vance to the ticket, a staunch pro-lifer who campaigned for strict abortion law’s in his state felt like omen. His anti-globalisation rhetoric was appealing to young men, sure, but maybe he was actually weird (at least to young women.) American women, who were used to the most permissive abortion laws in the western world, would surely rise up and vote against Trump / Vance 2024. The gender identity complication wouldn’t be relevant to them, and Kamala started treating the trans question like a bad smell. So two weeks before the election I became convinced, American women would vote to secure abortion rights. MAGA would be a bizarre blip in history.

But that didn’t happen, Trump and Vance won, and women overwhelmingly voted for them. They also voted for abortion rights, with seven states passing amendments that enshrined abortion protections in their constitutions. More people voted for reproductive rights than voted for Kamala. Clearly, the pro-life movement is losing and abortion bans are unpopular. But surely, the spectre of a Vice President who is against abortion even in cases of rape and incest would motivate women to vote democrat? Maybe out of hope, I was silly, and forgot the cold hard reality of sexual politics in 2024.

The generation of women who grew up in a hard and fast continuum of Brittney Spears, to Kim Kardashian’s sex tape, to Pornhub, to dating apps are opting out. In a world were high school girls are asked for anal before their first kiss, women have to seek out EDMR therapy after one summer on dating apps, and there is little if any material necessity to attach oneself to a man, sex with men was starting to feel like self-harm. These young women grew up being told that male and female sexuality are exactly the same, the more sex with men you had the more liberated, fun, and interesting you would be. They ran the experiment and it failed. The crisis of masculinity in young men has been much written about, but the corresponding crisis in young women has been ignored. Girls raised on Disney movies and boy bands were met with Andrew Tate obsessed gamers instead of their prince charming. 2010s era sex-positivity has died a death, celibacy is rising to rates not seen since the medieval period, and much to the shock of the medical establishment young women are stopping hormonal birth-control in droves. We are in an era of hetero-pessimism, and while young men are pissed, young women are quietly resigned.

Abortion is a necessity, a right, and should be safe and legal, but with most women in America now over 39, and many young women developing quiet contempt for sex and relationships with men, is it a surprise they didn’t come out to the polls? The democrats cashed their chips and left the casino empty handed. The liberal-left, after spending years promoting casual sex, prostitution, pornography, gender identity, and a kind of faux sexual egalitarianism that seems to say if we insist the sexes are the same sexually, they become the same sexually, lost women’s trust. I hope to God democrats see sense, before Vance 2028 becomes the reality that democrats what to insist that Trump is now. But we can say many things about democrats, their good suits, their ability to start a profitable war, but no one can say they are good at learning lessons.