Phoebe Maltz Bovy is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail.
The time-honoured tradition – or hardwired near-universal reality – of men and women pairing off is on the cusp of vanishing. Or so it may seem.
The Financial Times gathered recent survey data indicating that, in countries ranging from the United States to South Korea, Tunisia to Poland, young men veer right, while their female counterparts practically projectile vomit at the sight of a MAGA hat. Accompanying graphs demonstrated the starkness and novelty of the split. How did it happen? Per author John Burn-Murdoch, “The #MeToo movement was the key trigger, giving rise to fiercely feminist values among young women who felt empowered to speak out against long-running injustices.” Moreover, “the proliferation of smartphones and social media mean that young men and women now increasingly inhabit separate spaces and experience separate cultures.”
Mr. Burn-Murdoch posted that the trend “provides the answer to several puzzles.” It certainly taps into two popular, intertwined, narratives: that marriageable men, who have always been hard to find, are borderline extinct, and that heterosexuality itself is kaput. Opinions differ: Is this a tragedy, or should we rejoice that the future is queer?
In November, The Washington Post ran an editorial about the U.S. findings, breathlessly warning: “If attitudes don’t shift, a political dating mismatch will threaten marriage.” In her own analysis, Christine Emba argued that this is no mere neutral split: “Men (in aggregate) are less appealing to women generally in this moment, due to well-documented social and economic factors. And women, newly empowered and able to manage financially on their own, simply don’t want to be with many of them. Men are becoming more conservative … as a response.”
I am familiar with the argument that women have had it with men, and wouldn’t contest that some women have had it with some men. But is it true that men’s appeal to women fluctuates according to their population-wide eligibility? Some conditions favour marriage more than others, but sexual orientation is real. Even if there’s no man around you’d want to marry – even if marriage itself isn’t for you – if you’re wired for man-liking, men you shall like.
It can be tempting to say that it doesn’t matter if men and women find each other undatable. One viral response to the Financial Times graphs was from writer Sophia Benoit: “Not to be too trite (or heteronormative) but I really really think this is the HUGE reason dating is so rough right now. The pool of available men whose politics don’t suck is actually a shallow puddle.” Is it “heteronormative” to say that most of the dating pool is straight, when it just … is?
Some of the more amusing polarization-graph commentary has come from commentators for whom an end of heterosexuality would pose no personal impediments. On a recent Savage Lovecast, Dan Savage highlighted the sexism on the American right (”Women shouldn’t vote” is having a moment, lovely), and went on to suggest that groups of liberal straight women will “decide that they would rather share one good man with their best girlfriends than marry one shitty man.” That, or they could lean into the bisexual potential straight women are purported to have, and date other women.
I realize hetero-polyamory is all the rage, but there is a reason that one-man-several-women versions of it are not historically associated with feminist outcomes. The idea that things would play out differently if you were looking at ethical non-monogamy rather than polygamy runs contrary to common sense. (Consider how it goes at colleges where women outnumber men.) And did we not learn all the needed lessons about “male feminists” during #MeToo, when, one by one, they turned out to be not so very feminist after all in their personal lives?
As for women living among ourselves, this not only idealizes all-female environments, but also ignores that for all the talk of women’s sexual fluidity, most women are straight, and rather a lot of the queer-identified ones prefer male partners.
And what would come of the remaining men? It would be business as usual for gay men, but what of the rest? Would they not cluster in a toxic incel cave? Or is the idea that they’d transcend heterosexuality as well?
Maybe! Nellie Bowles, of the Free Press newsletter, quipped: “This very smart Financial Times analysis shows that you will all have to be homosexuals within five years. It’s fine over here, guys!”
As tongue-in-cheek commentary about these findings goes, “game over for heterosexuality” has a certain ring to it. But in all seriousness, we must live with the reality that most women want men and vice versa, and address this political split head-on. Not to save marriage, but to defend love.