What 'Love is Blind' reveals about the growing political gender gap

The Democrats keep fumbling the ball.

So, about that moment in Love is Blind season 8...

That’s right, I watch the occasional trashy reality show. And Love is Blind is by far my favorite. Watching people fall in love without being able to see each other is catnip for a therapist. It means there’s a whole lot of projection going on.

Now, I didn’t catch the latest season. But there’s a scene ricocheting around the internet that has me thinking a lot about the growing political gender gap among young people.

Sara loves Ben. Ben loves Sara. They decide to get married after only days of knowing each other. But when Sara asks Ben about his political views, Ben more or less has nothing to say.

“What are your thoughts on Black Lives Matter?” she asks.

“I just kind of keep out of it,” he responds. “I’m like kind of ignorant toward that stuff. Like, I didn’t vote in the last election. As long as I don’t know, it’s not going to do much.”

“That is so annoying,” Sara says. “I think it’s very valuable and important to think about those things.”

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Spoiler alert...

Sara dumps been on the altar. “I’ve always wanted a partner to be on the same wavelength,” she says to the camera afterwards. “Equality, religion, the vaccine—I brought up all these things. Whatever you believe, at least have the conversation. There was no curiosity coming from his side.”

This tweet from Malcom Harris, a leftist writer I’ve followed online for years and author of the new book What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis, got me thinking:

The data is overwhelming, ya’ll. In the 2024 election, Trump won young men by 14 points, after losing them by 15 points in 2020—a nearly thirty-point swing. Meanwhile, Gen Z women have become the most progressive cohort in U.S. history. While Trump has supercharged this trend, the partisan gap between young men and women has almost doubled in the last 25 years.

We’re all trying to figure out what’s going on with young men. But I think what many are missing is the Democratic Party’s role in fumbling the ball. Not because they’ve embraced too much “wokeness” and care about trans people too much, as many powerful liberal voices have argued after Trump’s second win. I would argue they don’t care about trans people enough.

But because the Democrats have become the party of elites. The party of highly educated, technocratic, overly scripted, teleprompter-reading, “well, actually...” wonks and do-gooders. The party who says, “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia”—as Chuck Schumer said back in 2016. The kids who sit at the front of the classroom and roll their eyes at the chaos and noise behind them. The kids who teenage boys like to make fun of.

I’ve worked in DC alongside many of these folks. I’ve been good friends with some. I’ve wanted to be one of them at times. They care a lot about other people and the world. They have a strong sense of mission and purpose. They want to have an impact. But they’re also upwardly mobile and willing to twist and bend what they do and say to stay that way. They want to lead nonprofits, launch “social impact” investment funds, and/or run for office. They give off an air of deserving to be in charge because they have smarter plans and better ideas.

Again, I’ve got some of that in me. Part of me wants this newsletter to do what I set out for it to do: to help men develop a healthier sense of masculinity. But another part of me wants to be famous. I call this my inner “rock star,” and I don’t care much for him. He wants to be on stage with everyone ogling at him. He wants to be a public intellectual, like those still exist. He wants to write a bestselling book. He wants all the attention and tons of money.

But very few people get all the attention or have tons of money.

Most people, because of our increasingly unequal capitalist society, aren’t upwardly mobile. Most people live paycheck to paycheck. Most people don’t have much of a say at their job let alone the chance they’ll ever lead anything at all. Most people who are Gen X or younger are downwardly mobile compared to our parents. Most people are the kids in the back of the classroom feeling ignored, looked down on, and left out.

More and more young men, especially, feel like this. They’re more likely than young women to be financially dependent on their parents. They spend more time every day alone. A lower percentage of them are working jobs than were 20 years ago, while a higher percentage of young women are.

And those without college degrees are really feeling it. One in three working class men under the age of 40 isn’t married, and a higher percentage of them don’t have children than ever before. Young working class men are more likely to die than middle-aged non-working class men.

At the same time, while still facing plenty of obstacles, women are faring better than men in a number of ways. They’re more likely to graduate high school, enroll in college, and complete college. They’re going to law school and medical school at higher rates. They’re (slowly) closing the gender pay gap. In some U.S. cities, women are now even out-earning their male counterparts.

And so it makes sense that women are more politically engaged.

They must increasingly feel like they have more to lose. Throw in the #MeToo movement, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, an openly misogynist administration in the White House, and multiple strikes in recent years by nurses and teachers—two fields dominated by women—and of course more young women are paying close attention to politics.

Of course Sara, who grew up in a conservative family but was radicalized by Trump’s first win and the police murder of George Floyd in her hometown of Minneapolis, wants to know if her future husband is on her side.

But the loudest voices speaking directly to men right now are the Republicans, the billionaires, the manfluencers. The Donald Trumps, the Elon Musks, the Andrew Tates.

They’re selling snake oil, telling men—especially young men—that all we need to feel better about ourselves and the future is a bit of so-called “traditional” masculinity. That all we need to feel powerful is to restore our rightful place as the head of the household. That we have more in common with them than we do with the women and trans people in our communities and workplaces.

And those loud voices are winning. In New York Times interviews with Trump-supporting young men, their concerns were mostly economic, “like whether they could fulfill the traditionally masculine role of supporting a family.” In 2023, 60 percent of Gen Z men said that the U.S. had become “too soft and feminine.”

So, I get it, Ben. You don’t want to have to pick a side.

One side is led by racist, misogynistic, billionaire con artists who want you to blame women and trans people for your troubles. The other is led by folks who also take campaign money from billionaires, but who want you to blame yourself because you’re a man.

One talks to you like they’re with you at the back of the classroom (or on a podcast together), laughing at the nerds up front. The other talks down at you.

One acts like it’s with the regular, everyday folks, the working class—even though it cuts taxes for the rich and dismantles the parts of the government meant to help working class people. The other is increasingly trying to curry favor with “moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia” by appealing to “decorum,” “rules,” and “norms”—things kids at the front of the classroom care about.

I swear I didn’t make up this quote that perfectly illustrates my point: “Trump can run America like a business and Kamala would run it as a classroom,” an 18-year-old construction worker told NBC News last year about his intentions to vote Republican.

Hoping that the Democratic Party is going to change is a depressing place for me. So, I’ll end with this: You don’t have to pick a side between the two billionaire-funded political parties. But you do have to pick a side between the billionaires and the rest of us. Between the rich and powerful and those they want us to hate, the poor, the marginalized, the immigrants, the trans people. Between the bosses and the workers.

Maybe if Ben had stood up for someone other than just himself, Sara might’ve felt differently…

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below! Why do you think the political gender gap is growing?

— Jeremy

P.S. If you become a paid subscriber for $5/month, you could have your questions answered in my occasional Q&A posts—plus you’ll get the warm feeling of supporting this project!

I’m Jeremy, a licensed therapist on a mission to help men and couples have better relationships. Learn more about what makes great relationships, download resources, get help finding a therapist or men’s group, and more at jeremymohler.blog.

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