How Conservative Men Can Help Solve The GOP’s Single Women Problem

Last week’s election revealed an ever-deepening divide between the voting preferences of single women and everyone else. Single women broke +37 for Democrats, whereas single men, married men, and married women all favored Republicans. Perhaps “toxic feminism” or “AWFL discourse” is the problem. But whatever the explanation, given the slim margins of the recent election, this is a real issue for Republicans.

Such voting trends are problematic yet understandable. Single women who lack the protection and security that a husband or father provides are likely to look elsewhere, such as to government, for the securing of their interests. Increasingly atomized and isolated from family and community, it is understandable that many single women vote for politicians who will help shape society to be more amenable to their natural instincts. Women naturally pursue harmony and avoid conflict. A public square defined primarily by such qualities will be very different than one characterized by rational argument and directness.

Moreover, when women observe male behavior that is genuinely degrading to women, as can be sometimes seen in circles in the online right, it is understandable that they flee politically to groups they perceive as more welcoming.

Yet the political right ought to be the landing place for women. Those on the right tend to value tradition, order, and the family. Such qualities are good and right in themselves, but also good for women. A single mother without family or community is in a precarious spot, but a wife with children might look to her husband, her parents, or her church community for security.

So how ought men of the right to respond, recognizing that the flight of single women into the party of Drag Queen Story Hour and abortion is a massive problem? Before answering that question, let me make one caveat and then consider a few wrong responses.

First, the caveat. It must be acknowledged that not everyone is persuadable. Those who have swallowed the lies of postmodernism and feminism will not move voluntarily to the political right until they abandon such worldviews. Tradition, order, and gender complementarity are built into the fabric of the political right and are incompatible with postmodernism and feminism. Thus, single women who cling to those twin pillars of the political left will not change their voting preferences.

Those who are persuadable fall into two categories: first, those who are making rational political calculations based on self-interest and are open to being persuaded that their interests are better secured by the political right than the political left. This group must be convinced that the political right is the better defender of the good of women than the left.

The second category of persuadable single women is those who make political decisions less based upon argument and more upon their pre-rational instincts that in an ideal society direct them to their own good. As a man, what I want to convey here are exhortations to men that will help move this second category of persuadable women to the