Not trying to be sexist here, but all of these socialist ideas and nostrums have been getting traction since women have achieved equality, or near-equality, in public life -- and most of them seem to have women as their chief adherents and spokespeople. I'm genuinely curious: what is it about socialism that seems to appeal to this vast swath of women (our hyper-intelligent, stunning and witty FReeper women excluded, of course)? 'Tis a puzzlement to me (channeling Yul Brynner). Does freedom of the individual in American society mean nothing to them? Is it a matter of, "Now that I've got mine, I'm going to get rid of some of yours"?
Thank you in advance for enlightening me.
They just like the idea of government as Big Daddy, always taking care of them.
I don't even blame those women for it, really - it's rooted in biology. She is going to do whatever is necessary to make sure her children survive to adulthood, and if that means adoping government as a surrogate husband/father, then so be it.
Generally, once a woman is married and realizes just how big a bite the government is taking out of her family's income to fund all those socialist programs (thereby hurting her children's chances of surviving to adulthood) her whole attitude changes, and she starts buying Anne Coulter books. ;)
Speaking from the viewpoint of a man. I am pleading the fifth.
If I were to write what I really think the reasons socialism appeal to a vast number of women, I would be excoriated as a sexist pig all the while being totally misunderstood.
I will say the biggest reason is most men care way too much what women think, not their wives, but women in general.
I already said too much.
Here's my take:
Feminists: because men 'dominate' and women 'relate' or 'link', they decided that hierarchy is a bad thing, so they scraped hierarchy in favor of equality- in other words, everything is equal, there is no such thing as better or worse, good or bad, right or wrong, because they're all equal.
So what does this give us? A hierarchy that says equality is better than hierarchy- basically a hierarchy that denies the existence of hierarchies. This is an operational fallacy. To deny the existence of hierarchies is also to deny the existence of values, since a thing has value in relation to another thing- more valuable or less valuable, which is why self-destructive behaviors such as homo-sexuality, and a lack of education, etc. are seen as equal to hetro-sexuality, a quality education and so on- there's no value distinction.
Hierarchies exist, no amount of denial will change that, but in order to balance the scales, feminists and liberals emphasize the traditionally negative and minimize the traditionally positive.
That, in my opinion, is what it is about socialism that seems to appeal to that vast swath of women. Now, I believe there is such a thing as 'equal but different', but have you noticed how many publicly prominent women have hair styles that make them appear disturbingly like men? The more we minimize the differences between men and women, the less attractive the one will be to the other.
"I'm genuinely curious: what is it about socialism that seems to appeal to this vast swath of women...."
Just proof that biologically, women need a provider/protecter. When the feminazis rejected men as the provider/protector they turned to the government to fill that role.
Of course, this excludes the FReeperette community....