The New Girl Disorder - Why are young women so prominent in anti-Israel protests?

In late May, a strange post appeared on the X account of Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Dear University Students in the United States of America,” it read, “you are standing on the right side of history. You have now formed a branch of the Resistance Front.” As it happens, the Supreme Leader’s government has struggled with its own resistance, ignited by the regime’s murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, accused of violating Iranian laws requiring head coverings—the most visible, but far from only, limitation on women’s basic freedoms in the Islamic country.

It’s hard to imagine that the cleric looked closely at images of the campus protesters denouncing Israel for its military response to Hamas’s monstrous terror attack last October. If he did, he would have noticed that they were predominantly female. It was women holding the microphones, addressing the press and crowds; women leading the chants of “From the river to the sea”; women giving interviews about the encampments; and women issuing demands to university administrators. In some images, so many women were involved that it seemed as if men had inexplicably vanished, like the missing in the sci-fi series The Leftovers.

The demographic makeup of the university demonstrations was something new for the United States. American women have led political protests before, but those generally concerned “women’s issues,” such as Prohibition, abortion, #MeToo, and the like. Granted, women marched with men in the 1960s civil rights and anti–Vietnam War protests, but they usually played secondary roles, such as cooking food, typing speeches, and sometimes serving as playmates; “The only position of women in SNCC is prone,” in the memorable words of Stokely Carmichael. (Recognizing their second-class status among otherwise progressive male comrades motivated activist women of the era to start building the second-wave feminist movement.) Decades later, at Occupy Wall Street, a male protester produced a Tumblr video featuring photos of some of the comelier females sitting in at Zuccotti Park. He called it “Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street.” Those days are over. Imagine publicizing a “Hot Chicks of the Campus Encampments” video in 2024; the writer would have to go into a witness-protection program.

The vibe has shifted—and not for a reason that the Ayatollah would celebrate: women are all but conquering the twenty-first-century academy. They not only make up well over half of undergrads and graduate students on university campuses; they also hold half of all professor positions, as well as six out of eight Ivy League presidencies and more than a third of college presidencies overall. Younger women who came of age in the new millennium have been thoroughly prepped for leadership as valedictorians, debate-club and student-council presidents, and Rhodes, Marshall, and Truman Scholars. If the protests offer further evidence for the dimming of patriarchy, they also show how women’s growing dominance in social institutions introduces new and ambiguous power dynamics.

Women’s prominence at the protests helps explain why, despite menacing sloganeering and electric tensions, little serious violence occurred. Men’s higher propensity for physical conflict is a human universal; when they find themselves in tense interactions, the likelihood of mayhem rises. With women running the show, you might stumble across an interpretive dance performance, as at Columbia’s encampment, but probably not much physical violence. True, when the cops arrived to break up encampments, things got rougher. But this was inevitable, with some protesters resisting police commands; there’s no gentle way to transport defiant dissidents to a police station. (Also worth mentioning: the police were mostly men, and, on some campuses, they seem to have lacked training in crowd control and de-escalation tactics.) The most disturbing exception to the relative nonviolence was a brawl at UCLA on April 30, where counterprotesters, including Jewish students and outsiders, tried to rip down barricades erected by a campus pro-Palestinian group. Videos of the fight showed only male participants.

Don’t take this to mean that women are not aggressive; they are. Their strategies, however, are frequently more cunning than men’s, and invisible not just to their more guileless victims but even to themselves. They’re masters of the covert psyop. Social exclusion—keeping out people whom the in-group deems deplorable—is a preferred tactic, as described by popular “mean girl” ethnographers like Tina Fey and Rosalind Wiseman, the latter the author of Queen Bees and Wannabes.

These pop observations have found scholarly support in the work of academics like Cory Clark, director of the Adversarial Collaboration Project at the University of Pennsylvania, and Joyce Benenson, a researcher in evolutionary biology at Harvard and author of Warriors and Worriers: The Survival of the Sexes. Both writers find that women have different psychological tendencies and moral priorities than men do and that, because of women’s rising status, those “priorities have more power than they used to.” Over the past several decades, safety (both physical and emotional) has taken on a talismanic power in the feminized academy. Equity and inclusion have become major moral concerns. Trigger warnings, cancel culture, and deplatforming are imposed to protect the marginalized and oppressed from ideas deemed harmful by the in-group—and serve as ways to ostracize those who don’t share those convictions.

This kind of social exclusion was exactly what we saw on campuses. Then Harvard provost Alan Garber noted that the issue was not open anti-Semitism but the social “shunning” and “pervasive” attempts to “vote [Israeli and pro-Israel Jewish students] off the island.” It began well before students pitched tents on quads. Reporting by Joseph Bernstein in the New York Times revealed that shortly after October 7, a Columbia lesbian group, LionLez, sent an e-mail letting Zionists know they were unwelcome at an upcoming event. Similarly, a Barnard hip-hop dance team removed a four-year veteran, an Israeli American, from its WhatsApp channel, where practices and events were announced.

Once protesters established the encampments, they could pursue segregation policies more systematically. The Los Angeles Times described the UCLA scene in the days preceding the April 20 melee. Pro-Palestinian students used wooden pallets, trash cans, and metal barricades to block the path from a central plaza on campus to the encampment. If a suspected pro-Israel student came near, the demonstrators alerted allies by yelling, “Zionist! Zionist!” and refused him entry. Eventually, wristbands were provided for the in-group to show to appointed guards so that they could be distinguished from the undesirables—that is, the Zionists, who had to find an alternate route. Columbia protesters used a similar approach. In a well-publicized instance, one announced, “We have Zionists who have entered the camp!” The intruders were then told, “We are going to create a human chain where I am standing so that they do not pass this point and infringe upon our privacy and try to destruct [sic] our community.”

The large presence of women made the absurd demand for privacy in an outdoor public space in the middle of one of the busiest cities on the planet only somewhat more comprehensible; people tend to expect more protection for women, for reasons that will become clear. Still, the tactic proved effective for three reasons. The protesters could, first, directly assert their ownership of university space; second, humiliate pro-Israel Jews; and third, keep the support of faculty and the broader public, who might turn against them if any blood were shed. That the protesters accomplished all this without physical violence is testimony to women’s ability to wield soft power. A short time later, a splinter group of mostly male demonstrators reverted to the 1960s (male) approach, breaking windows, pushing through doors, and scuffling with maintenance workers to occupy the university’s Hamilton Hall. The hard-power tactics were counterproductive, giving the administration the excuse it believed it needed to call in the cops.

Unlike males who might cross their arms across their chests, jut out their chins, or flare their nostrils when fixing for a fight, women sometimes hide their aggression behind a mask of civility—maybe a tight smile or a stiffly polite comment. A video of an incident during the protests at the University of Washington provides an example. A few students holding an Israeli flag argue with a larger group of anti-Israel protesters blocking their way. A small, soft-spoken woman enters and, with the cool authority of a veteran teacher warning her naughty fourth-graders to behave, says to the Jewish students, “I’m going to ask you not to yell.” She suggests that the Jews take a different route to avoid confrontation. She continues, “I think you want to walk that way [meaning down the path her allies are blocking] because it’s antagonistic.” The men feel checkmated. Do they point out her hypocrisy: She thinks they’re the antagonistic ones? Should they push her aside? Walk off with heads down? Just in case they didn’t do the right thing—retreat—a group of large men, faces partially obscured by keffiyehs and chests puffed out, appear and encircle the Jews, who, by contrast, don’t look like candidates for the football team. The encounter was “peaceful,” perhaps, but the gender dynamics bristled with psyop belligerence. A woman making a show of being a caring, civil person masks her own hostility by projecting it onto others. And just in case her targets figure out her passive-aggressive game and try something, she calls in male protection.

The soft power of social exclusion wasn’t the only familiar female tactic common at the campus protests. Women also relied on “safetyism” and often exaggerated harms. Columbia School of Social Work’s Layla Saliba, quoted repeatedly in the press, claimed to have suffered a “chemical weapon” attack after counterprotesters pranked her by spraying make-believe “skunk spray” in her vicinity. (The School of Social Work, whose students were well represented at the protests, is 88 percent female.)

Several viral moments from the demonstrations also capture this dynamic. Asked why student activists wanted to keep Zionists out of their encampments, a UCLA art history major responded, “Our top priority isn’t people’s freedom of movement. It is keeping people in our encampments physically and emotionally safe.” A Columbia grad-student spokesperson, Johannah King-Slutzky, notoriously demanded food and water for the Hamilton Hall occupiers. Responding to a reporter who asked why the university should support trespassers, she retorted, “Do [administrators] want their students to die of dehydration and starvation or get severely ill?” It was a matter of “basic humanitarian aid,” she complained, ludicrously. One leader of the University of Pennsylvania encampments, Eliana Atienza—daughter of a Philippine television celebrity father and a Wharton-educated mother who founded the most expensive private school in the island nation—tweeted that Penn had left her “houseless.” She went on: “This is their weapon. So disappointed to be attending an institution that resorts to administrative violence.”

Yet it’s worth remembering that women have reason to exaggerate dangers and embrace safetyism. Societies have always needed to adapt to the biological reality that women are the smaller and weaker sex and bear the children necessary for group survival. Protections for the weaker sex have taken various forms, from the hunting and gathering division of labor to medieval chivalric rules to the “women and children first” moral code that left otherwise cold-blooded captains of industry standing on the Titanic’s deck, watching stoically as their wives and children rowed to safety as they went down with the ship. Even today, when women can serve in the military, they rarely get assigned to combat roles. Nor will you find many women toiling in the most dangerous civilian jobs, such as oil drilling or logging. Whenever Gazan casualty figures are cited, the numbers of women and children get singled out. This emphasis has propagandistic advantages, offering seeming evidence of Israeli brutality and Gazan innocence, but it also reflects enduring and socially valuable instincts of protectiveness toward the vulnerable.

Modern economies complicate those instincts. To get ahead, women must compete aggressively in the classroom and workplace. Toughness is an advantageous trait in this context—hence the popularity of female boxing classes and sweat-drenched gym workouts. Contemporary social-justice thinking, however, gives women a new route to protections similar to those they could count on in the past. Instead of deserving special respect because of their relative physical frailty, on this view, women should be safeguarded because they’re historically victims of male violence, coercion, and sexism. In an insightful essay on this topic, Richard Hanania writes, “For all our talk of equality, our culture treats violence, incivility, and aggression towards women much more seriously than the same towards men.” That’s one reason why the University of Washington men marching with an Israeli flag found themselves paralyzed by a female peer.

Male restraint of this sort may be necessary in a civilized society, but it can also enable a bullying strain of female hyper-emotionalism. At a June protest, a young keffiyeh-clad woman gave a remarkable display caught on video, a screaming tirade that lasted several minutes. Eyes popping, she screeched repeatedly about the “lies” Israelis had told about rapes on October 7. When a counterprotester asked if she supported Hamas, she shouted louder yet, “Yes, I support Hamas! I am Hamas!” Of course, most women don’t let themselves get so wild, and cooler heads escorted the frenzied protester away. In general, college students have been well trained in the art of bourgeois self-control; how else could they have passed muster with admissions officers? But some young women like this one have come to view anger as a way to show their toughness and to unnerve men, who can’t respond in kind. Because men are stronger, their anger could register as a genuine threat.....

From Orwell's 1984

"...Winston had disliked her from the very first moment of seeing her. He knew the reason. It was because of the atmosphere of hockey−fields and cold baths and community hikes and general clean−mindedness which she managed to carry about with her. He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones. It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers−out of unorthodoxy..."

IOW, Karens.

“Toughness is an advantageous trait in this context—hence the popularity of female boxing classes and sweat-drenched gym workouts.”

Female boxing isn’t all that popular, and most young women are at the gym to improve their appearance for attracting men.

People learn three two ways:

Education
Experience

By definition, the education of young people is INCOMPLETE
By definition, the experience of young people is LIMITED

These people know absolutely nothing and are guided soley by their emotion. Like drunks, mentally challenged or children, they only know ...

* What I WANT
* What I FEEL

You cannot make decisions worth a da*n on that basis

Exactly. They are completely lacking in self-worth or esteem and struggle with mental illness. I think a lot of it is caused from growing up in the age of social media.

I have seen it first hand with my daughter and most of her peer group. It’s been a long battle, but we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

With all due respect to the conservative women here on FreeRepublic, young women tend to “feel” about an issue, rather than “think” about an issue.

Add to that the fact that the women in colleges and universities around the country have spent years and years being brainwashed by their evil teachers.

Because they are young and dumb and full of _ _ _ _. They in turn attract the goof balls who can’t attract women in any normal way. When I see pictures of the protesters I see a bunch of people with no life. They latch onto the protest to escape the boredom of their lives. It doesn’t matter if they support terrorists who would kill them. I remember an old song about all the lonesome losers.

I see women boxing, and if they are doing it for simple physical conditioning, I suppose that is as good as anything, and probably fun too, since it looks like an avenue for working out tensions.

But when I see a woman boxing, trying to look tough, and people building it up, I regard it as stupidity. If she tries that on a guy, she might get lucky, but more likely, she is going to be in trouble when she finds out it isn’t how they show it in the movies.

Boxing skills learned in a gym for the purposes of conditioning are one thing. Boxing skills learned in a gym for “toughness” or self-defense is stupidity.

If a female wants self defense, she should have instruction on defensive tactics that work, like specific defensive techniques or even possibly grappling, not boxing. I see the things where they show a woman gritting her teeth working on a heavy bag, looking like Rocky Balboa, and I can’t think of a stupider thing.

Because it is an easy way to feel powerful and they crave attention. The cause doesn’t matter; what attracts them is the chance to act out and impress themselves with their “strength and daring”. The feeling is like a drug and they are not easily weaned off it.

The number of women boxing is dwarfed by those simply going to the gym. And those at the gym are their for health and to improve their appearance. The writer is in her latter 70s and apparently not that in touch with the demographic.

There are two kinds of leftists: the ignorant, and the ideologues.

Ignorance is easily corrected.

Ideologues need an epiphany.

The ignorant would benefit from patience.

If these young women are merely ignorant, then I’d counsel patience.

And I say that as someone who used to be a five alarm flaming leftist, one of the ignorant variety.

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