I was reading this rather lengthy piece in the Washington Post about how young women are afraid to fall in love and realizing that I don’t really understand this emerging generation. But then it occurred to me: there is already a major gender gap with women favoring the Democratic Party. Is this new generation going to have any time for Dan Qualyle’s paroxysms about family values? I mean, let’s look at what these women are saying.
To tell a man “I need you” is like saying “I’m incomplete without you.” A young man might say that and sound affectionate. But to an ambitious young woman, who has been taught to define power on her terms and defend it against all comers, need signals weakness…
…A college senior from Dallas with deep brown eyes and thick hair to match was describing a man she had hooked up with a couple of times. Despite her best efforts, she said, she was falling for him and that worried her.
“It will suck if it’s bad,” she said, “but it will suck even more if it’s good.”
She explained: Her number-one goal, for as long as she could remember, was to excel in school so that she might someday land a great job that would make her financially independent. In high school, she maintained an A average, played volleyball and rowed crew, edited the digital yearbook and played on a church basketball team that won the state championship. Her pace in college was similarly brisk, and she didn’t see how, even in her senior year, she could afford to invest time, energy and emotion in a loving relationship.
At her 21st birthday party she talked about this with a girlfriend who understood. As the friend said, over the recorded sounds of rapper Jay-Z, “I don’t have time or energy to worry about a ‘we.'”
Or take a look at this exchange:
Student 1: and we layed [sic] in bed and talked for like four hours and like had sex during the whole thing; it was really like a moment; like he held me sooo tight for the rest of the night; i woke up like really close to him; and i felt something . . . .
Student 2: that’s incredible intimacy . . . do you love him?
Student 1: i am scared of loving him.
Student 2 because of what being in love will do to you
Student 1: because of what does that say about me . . . i’m just a weepy girl who relies on someone . . . i want to be independent and i think that it is important for women of our generation but by saying i love someone and need him it’s like contradictory . . . hypocritical . . . but i also don’t want to give into love because i am scared he won’t call me . . . and i will be heartbroken and then feel like a stupid girl that should have known better.”
This opens up a whole lot of avenues for discussion. But one thing I think is safe to say is that these women aren’t going to be very sympathetic to the Republican Party message on abstinence and the centrality of marriage, and the importance of a mother in the kitchen…basically the whole package.
Am I wrong?
