Looking for Love in an Election Year

Our society is in love with love. If you’ve recently tuned in to Netflix, surely you’ve seen the latest variation of a reality dating show whose mass appeal hinges on the compelling experience of watching real-life people as they attempt to find love in unique circumstances.

But dating shows deftly dodge a fundamental aspect of dating today. An increasingly polarized political landscape and the divergent viewpoints that accompany it are exposing cracks in how we connect with each other, and particularly how we attempt to find a partner.

Recently, I went out for a drink with my friend Amelia, who experienced a breakup not long ago (I’m anonymizing her here for privacy reasons). She told me how politics, namely the lack of a shared political identity with her now ex, played a role in their downfall.

Amelia found herself often having to explain to her partner that she doesn’t have a choice to be apolitical, especially during election years like this one. To her, they couldn’t simply “agree to disagree,” especially on issues like gender-affirming care, the right to choose and public safety for women.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve had a conversation like this, especially with women and gender-diverse friends. For them, dating comes with risks, and data from the Pew Research Center suggests women have found dating more difficult over the last decade leading up to the pandemic.

The emotional and physical safety concerns associated with dating are often talked about in whisper networks. Now, thanks to social media, they are becoming more public.

Lately I’ve seen more frequent instances of women posting about how their experiences with dating men are hindered by mismatches of political ideology. Those can take the form of stated desires on the part of their prospective partners to remain “apolitical,” or heightened concerns about what right-wing political representatives are saying, in both the current U.S. and B.C. election runs.

Inside the right-left gender divide

A gender gap is emerging in regards to the political views of young people. A recent article from Brookings, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., has shown that there is a gender gap between voters aged 18 to 29. The data shows women in this age group lean more liberal and tend to embrace views that challenge the patriarchy. The data also points to young men in the same age group feeling as though they have been “left behind” and are single as a result.

We see this reflected in the U.S. presidential race. Kamala Harris has maintained and strengthened her lead against Donald Trump in recent weeks post-debate, and she leads across the board with women, compared with Trump leading with men in the United States.

In B.C., new data from the BC Chamber of Commerce shows that David Eby and the BC NDP enjoy popularity with female voters, while John Rustad and the BC Conservatives enjoy strong support with men under the age of 55.

Both the U.S. Democrats and the BC NDP have sought to make the right to choose a platform plank, with the BC NDP promising and delivering on free contraceptives for women and gender-diverse people, and the Democrats pointing out the audacity of Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance’s comments on women who don’t have children.

In B.C., the use of optional education modules in schools on sexual orientation and gender identity, or SOGI, has become a fixture of right-wing attacks against the BC NDP.

Following the August dissolution of BC United, the provincial election next month presents the first taste of far-right politics entering the mainstream for many young people. The stage is set for more clashes politically.

This will undoubtedly move into the dating landscape, with more conversations about politics creating pockets of conflict for progressive women and gender-diverse folks.

My partner and I regularly engage in what we call “Saturday morning discourse” as we clean the kitchen after breakfast, talking about anything from the upcoming U.S. election to the Middle East to the removal of the Stanley Park bike lane.

While I don’t expect conflict to arise between us, I do know that we’re bound to talk more about the B.C. election and the impacts of party platforms on our daily lives.

‘The personal is political.’ Is that true for men?

The idea that “the personal is political” has been checkered throughout social movements in history. It provides people with the ability to organize in a way that is tied to their livelihoods.

The phrase jumped to the forefront in the 1960s with the Southern Student Organizing Committee, a student activist group in the southern United States. Women in the committee used the “personal is political” framework to become more aware of how their daily lives were influenced by patriarchal forces.

This work was expanded upon by the Combahee River Collective, a group of Black feminists who first started meeting in 1974. The collective wrote that consciousness-raising with Black women was critical to understanding the cleavages between race and class, or race and gender, especially regarding second-wave feminism. The collective’s work ushered in a mainstream intersectional understanding of politics.

The phrase “the personal is political” launched into our collective consciousness during a time of racial and gendered upheaval. Now this term takes on new meaning. The current election cycles are demonstrating how our personal interests and fortunes are innately tied to the political circumstances of the day.

In a recent study, Brookings found that young women in the United States are concerned about issues such as sexual harassment, domestic violence and child abuse or neglect. Those are intensely personal issues that women are often faced with in workplaces and relationships.

The same study also reported that women are more likely to vote for the Democratic party and turn out to the polls, showcasing a motivation for progressive political engagement that young men may not express.

These findings show that women will often place their well-being at the forefront of an election and vote for parties that expand protections for them. This is an interesting contrast to men, who, according to the Brookings study, often cite that they are apolitical.

Love across party lines

Exercising one’s political agency for personal reasons is not just something that happens during elections. Dating has become another space for people to exercise their political agency. In the United States, most Democrats date Democrats, with the same trend found on the other side of the political spectrum. It’s a frequent discussion on social media platforms like X and TikTok, with posts regularly going viral about the need to properly discuss politics with one’s partner.

Hearkening back to the conversation I had in the bar, my friend Amelia was keen to discuss politics with prospective partners, and it was one of her first “filters” to determine if someone was a potential match.

She would scroll through dating apps like Hinge or Bumble, keenly aware of “red flags” that might pop up. She detailed men who would refer to women as “females,” or call themselves “free thinkers,” which reminded her of language from the Freedom Convoy protests.

Dating apps allowed people to mention if they were vaccinated against COVID-19, and she also was aware of dating profiles in which men would say they “do their own research,” making her wonder about anti-science beliefs.

This language also reminded her of right-wing politicians who use phrases like this, especially in regards to extremist falsehoods about people of colour, queer and trans people or reproductive health.

All of it can act as a signal to progressive women and gender-diverse people that those espousing these views are not safe people with whom to share a life, have kids or introduce to family members who may be people of colour, queer or trans.

But we’re living in an era in which these views are both mainstream and normalized. British American far-right influencer Andrew Tate and his acolytes have used their reach to normalize harmful beliefs that have led to outright violence and radicalization.

Tate had a hand in making misogyny mainstream. And political polarization has contributed to social polarization, with a stark divide across the gender spectrum.

Dating is now more dangerous for women and gender-diverse people

Elements of far-right ideology are now capitalizing on social polarization both to harm and to further spread their ideology into everyday politics. This has the egregious effect of normalizing harm against women and gender-diverse people.

Researchers in the United Kingdom have found a rise in language promoting sexual violence online in far-right circles, along with increasing anti-feminist viewpoints. This is often mixed with antisemitic, anti-Muslim, and anti-government sentiment, which they say acts as a hotbed for femicide and the epidemic of violence against women.

Dating is now more dangerous for women and gender-diverse people because these far-right sentiments are becoming normalized. If more right-wing politicians vying for political office use misogynistic language, attack the right to choose or call Pride political, we’re going to see more of that language in our society.

Additionally, if party leaders choose not to discipline their candidates, it is an implicit endorsement of their behaviour in the public realm. We’ve seen in the past the power that words have, especially by our elected officials. It’s vital that we recognize that if we normalize language like this, we will see more outright harm against women and gender-diverse folks.

The gender divides in political settings like B.C.’s are unlikely to abate soon. But the onus should not be on women or gender-diverse people to make space for these conversations or justify their stories.

It’s up to everyone, especially progressive men and those in power like our political leaders, to fight against the normalization of far-right beliefs in our political ecosystem, both globally and in B.C.

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