Our six sisters voted for Harris and, with varying degrees of intensity, are horrified that their three brothers voted for Trump. The much discussed "gender divide" is pronounced in our family.
We are serious about religion and politics. The two are distinct, but politics is an expression of deeper religious convictions. We were raised, in the 1950-60s, to be loyal to family, Church, the Democrats/Labor Movement, and the USA... in that order. Our "Leave it to Beaver" world collapsed in the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s as the DNC turned culturally progressive and hostile to core Catholic values around powerless human life, gender, sexuality and other. In reaction to the Sexual Revolution, the Catholic community entered an interminable civil war: one side accommodating of and the other resistant to progressivism. An overly simplistic explanation would be that the brothers leaned more deeply into their Catholicism and the sisters their liberalism. That binary fails because the sisters themselves are deeply Catholic and view their politics as expressive of their faith.
This essay will highlight specific ways in which masculinity/femininity contributed to this divide. To be sure, political (and all human) choice is overdetermined: the result of many factors including class, culture, place, time, personal idiosyncrasies of temperament, history, and choice. Fleckinstein will be accused of exaggeration of and obsession with gender. The plea, of course, is "guilty as charged."
The binary is clear but far from pure and absolute. A recent PEW poll shows Catholics favored Trump 55-43%. An earlier EWTN poll shows Catholic women favoring Harris 56-37% and men Trump 49-43%. Interestingly, our spouses all (with one exception) voted with us; as did, for the most part, our children. Our family suffers the polarization of our society and Church. We brothers disagree regularly, but are remarkably close in politics and religion. Our sisters, united in their vote for Harris, show more diversity as one is generally more conservative, two strongly progressive, and three maintain the dual allegiance (liberal and Catholic) received from our parents.
Here are gender differences that contribute to this troubling divide:
1. Mom and Dad: Boys Leaving and Girls Staying.
"What would Mom and Dad, Aunt Grace and Uncle Eddy think of the three of you!" Our youngest sister, my closest collaborator in Magnificat Home, shortly after the election, spoke with striking candor, directness, intensity. I was silent, speechless, awestruck. I was being reprimanded authoritatively like a misbehaving boy. It gave me pause! She expressed the painful sense of betrayal shared by our six sisters. We brothers had betrayed the precious heritage of our parents and family. How had it come to this?
(For context, consider: although it cannot be spoken, our family is a matriarchy, not because of the numbers (6-3), but due to the loyalty and cohesiveness of sister-power. This strong unit is pure democracy, without hierarchy. But probably the most influential is the youngest, by virtue of her loving, humble, wise, openminded gentleness. She is like the swing vote on the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, in the minority, male, marginalized, rightwing sector I am honored as The Patriarch, first among equals to be sure...but covertly, always! So this reprimand of the oldest son by the youngest daughter was significant.)
After high school, each brother left for college out of state and never came really came home. The sisters stayed local, living with the family. Today, half a century later, our sisters mostly live a few miles from each other and are extremely close-knit. We brothers also love each other, but in a more distant, detached (geographical as well as emotional) way.
Ideologically, our sisters remained faithful to our inherited ideology, we brothers broke away. The feminine psyche inherently retains an intimate connection, over a lifetime, especially with mother but also with father. ("Your son is a son until he finds himself a wife; your daughter is your daughter for the rest of your life.")The masculine life itinerary is defined by rupture and distancing from mother and later differentiation and sometimes conflict with father. Our family perfectly reflects this: we brothers (like the three little pigs) left mother to build our own homes, religiously and politically. Our sisters retain a connection with the Catholic-Democrat honeymoon of the 1945-65 era.
2. Immigrants.
Compassion for immigrants is a Catholic value, strongly expressed by Popes Francis and Leo both, and very, very deeply felt and lived by our sisters. Perhaps nothing grieves them, properly, than the reality of hard working, decent but undocumented families arrested, jailed and deported back to poverty and violence. It is heartening that large majorities of our electorate favor closed borders and toughness on criminals but renounce deporting the undocumented that are not criminals. I share this compassion. At the same time, we brothers entertain countervailing, more masculine values like boundaries.
3. Borders and Boundaries.
The masculine ego and psyche is less expansive, welcoming, fluid, pervious, generous, nurturing; it is more discrete, structured, legal, defensive, defined. Everything about the woman...hormones, morphology, neurology, psychology, spirituality, etc....is intended for the maternal embrace. Everything about a man is preparatory for the paternal mission. The man has a sharper sense of boundaries. And so, many of us blame Biden for the immigration mess we are now in. That open door policy was in part humanitarian to be sure. It also included appreciation that most would be voting Democrats, that our business/middle classes demand cheap labor for our financial privileges, and long term demographics (falling birth rate) require large numbers of immigrants. But it was also a deranged over-reaction against Trump. Biden failed to protect us: incentivized unaccompanied children, human trafficking, drugs, gangs, and terrorists. Needlessly, this aroused the anxiety, not of the affluent and professional classes, but of the underclass. This breath-takingly irresponsible, dysfunctional, destructive policy consolidated the Trump movement and led to his triumph. The 2024 election, for many of us, was about Biden, not Trump.
Of course, Trump defeated Harris, not Biden. She was an extension of his pronounced weakness. She had exactly two clear ideas: Trump is very, very bad; legal abortion is very, very good. She trusted "reproductive rights" to drive her to victory. Trump wisely, in political calculation and also for the wellbeing of our nation, downplayed the issue. She became a misogynist's stereotype of the female as incoherent, indecisive, shrill, giggly, void of character and political vision.
4. Abortion and Choice.
A male, paternal protectiveness of the powerless embryo/mother is widely construed in our society as "patriarchal" or oppressive. And so women who are "pro-life" nevertheless vote "pro-choice" in reaction to an image of the conservative, pro-life movement as male, wealthy, powerful, Republican, arrogant, ungenerous, judgmental, controlling. In fact, of course, the movement has been almost entirely driven by women and their powerful maternal energies. It is puzzling: our sisters (with one exception) may have never voted for a politician who was not pro-choice. But: no father in human history loved his daughters more than our father. Additionally, they themselves love their husbands reverently and tenderly. Nevertheless, the women in our family share a strong ideological disgust for the Republican male, especially as preacher (eg. Huckabee), soldier (eg. McCann), and businessman (eg. Romney.)
5. Global Warming and Environment
We speak of "Mother Nature" and of "God, our heavenly Father." The male role of imaging The Father entails an element if distance, transcendence, abstraction, separation. The female role of mother means greater connection, closeness, empathy, communion. So we might expect our women to be closer to nature, gardening, physicality as men are more abstract, distant, systemic, managerial. Women feel more the vulnerability of others and of our physical environment itself. In our family women favor the medical profession (20, mostly nurses) and psychology (7); men number (5) in these two fields. It is hard to imagine any male leading the global crusade as poignantly as the young Greta Thunberg. So a difference in the emphasis on this issue between brothers and sisters is hardly surprising.
6. Masculinity of Trump
He is not a good man. He (refreshingly) does not pretend to be a good man. But he is a strong man. When he won in 2016 I noted that he was a strong, but not a good, father figure. He defeated Hillary and Kamala, but lost to a competitive father figure, Joe Biden, who is charming and nice but weak. At the NATO conference last week the leader playfully referred to him as "Daddy." He loved it. NATO and much of the world is now looking to him as Dad. The unforgettable image of him when he was shot...blood flowing across his face, combatively pumping his fist ...may have propelled him to the White House as much as anything else. Any red-blooded male has to love it! The extraordinary B2 bombing of Iran last weekend is another gesture of vigorous virility. The electoral results, including among black and Hispanic men, show the appeal. Especially in contrast to his opponents, Biden/Harris.
7. Non-Virility of Biden
Joe Biden epitomizes the masculinity approved by progressive feminism: nice, charming, warm, conciliatory, pro-abortion, trusting in diplomacy, averse to combat, humorous, weak. What a man sees in Biden:
Refused to acknowledge or see his own little granddaughter, his own blood! Indulged and enabled his son Hunter, failing him as a father! Abandoned our allies catastrophically in Afghanistan! Betrayed his Catholic faith in cowardly surrender to abortion, LGBTQ, and the entire agenda of cultural liberalism! Failed to protect our national border! Expanded our deficit and debt, leaving a burden in the future for our young! (Yes I know Trump did the same.) Pampered those with college debt, burdening those who did not go to college or financed their education responsibly! Endorsed identity politics, BLM, "defund the police" approaches thus disparaging underclass whites as uneducated racists and homophobes.
Beyond himself, his entire cabinet emanated weakness, indecision, and a lack of virile energy, confidence, fortitude and purpose: Blinken, Garland, Buttigieg, Mayorkas, Harris. We still have no clear idea of who was ruling the nation and concealing his mental decline. Aside from Jill and Hunter, we were apparently governed by an group of anonymous bureaucrats.
(Thought experiment: imagine you get into a bar fight with Xi, Putin, Kim, Chavez, some Tren de Aguas, and Hamas thugs! Who would you want in your corner? The cabinet members listed under Biden? I would go with Vance, Hegseth, Duffy, even little Marco and super-smart, gay-identifying Bessent. To be more gender-inclusive, I would go with Kristi, Tulsi, Pam and Karoline over Kamala and Hillary. But to be fair, I suspect AOC, Warren and Karine can handle themselves. In the geriatric division, against the Ayatollahs would you prefer Joe and Bernie, or The Donald himself? The question answers itself. This crude metaphor will be immediately obvious and pleasing to most men; nonsensical and repugnant to many women. But it is not ridiculous: our world today (as during the Cold War and WWII) is less like a boutique, high-end restaurant and more like a tough biker bar!)
I am surely not the only voter who was compelled to vote reluctantly for Trump as the lessor evil, several levels less depraved than Biden.
8. Culture War and Trump the Combatant.
Men are warriors by nature: hormonally, neurologically, morally, culturally, historically, religiously, ontologically. Women are not warriors by nature. They are peace makers, unifiers, reconcilers, nurturers.
Sometime in the 1970s, we brothers realized that cultural progressivism, now hegemonic over elite culture, was at war with our Catholic faith. We became conservative, culture warriors, pro-life, Republican. Many Catholic women made peace with progressivism. They did not enter any war. They did not recognize such. "They had no dog in the fight." Some liked both sides; they reconciled them.
Paradoxically, given his personal decadence, Trump entered the Culture War on the side of tradition. And a powerful warrior he is! The Supreme Court! Just this week his DOJ filed suit against Washington State which is repressing the seal of confession in situations of abuse. Deplorable in many ways to the Catholic conscience, he is nevertheless our best friend in our battle to practice our faith against elite progressivism hostile to us.
9. Trump as Camp, Macho-Comedic, Performative.
Primarily a celebrity and entertainer, he is entirely performative and histrionic. A cartoon figure! He has always been for me the high school "wise guy:" pushing the boundaries, transgressive, indifferent to rules/courtesy/protocol, defiant of authority, prankish, hilarious, recklessly and vicariously expressive of the male id against the regressive, progressive, woke superego. At one level you hold him in contempt. but he is wildly entertaining.
Stephen Adubatto and others have highlighted his "camp" closeness to gay culture. His outrageous, flamboyant deportment expresses a burlesque, faux-machismo the way the drag queen mimics femininity. Every day is Halloween for him. There is a sense in which his politics is tongue-in-cheek. It is not just that he is good at what he does. But an extraordinary combination of his superhero energy/confidence with national/global developments have propelled him into a historical role that is unprecedented. Additionally, he surrounds himself with similarly freakish, circus, larger-than-life characters: Musk, Vance, Kennedy, Bannon, Miller, Homan, even Bessent.
The aggressive, ironic masculine mind appreciates this camp/comedic dimension. Our minds are more divided and split off. In one part of my mind, I am thoroughly enjoying his performance, especially his defiance of elite, liberal culture. With another part of my mind I deplore his moral decadence. With a third part I evaluate his policies: some very good and many very bad. For example, his disparaging of others with nicknames is morally vile, but it does trigger the 9-year old male sensibility in us. The feminine intellect...more compassionate, integral, unified...is disinclined to such aggressive, ironic humor. There is nothing funny about Trump. Most women do not get the joke. That is mostly to their credit.
10. Mother-State, Narratives of Victimhood, and Suspicion of Authority as "Patriarchal."
Women lean left partly because maternal instincts of nurture look to the "mother state" to care for the poor, suffering, marginalized. This is the core Catholic principle of solidarity, at the heart of the Church's social doctrine. Since Pope Leo XIII the Church has rejected both socialist collectivism and capitalist individualism in favor of a communalism directed to the common good, subsidiarity, a mix of public/private economies, private property, unions for workers, and prudence in tax and regulation.
The male intellect entertains Catholic values in tension with such care. To start, a suspicion of overreach, the regulatory deep state, the mega-bureaucracy, government as a smothering mother. This distrust is heightened when government accepts the agenda of sexual liberation: abortion on demand, tax funded contraception, gay marriage, transgender protections, and so forth. This masculine tendency can lean into privileges for big business such as low taxation and regulation. Alternatively, it can move in a more Catholic direction of subsidiarity, preference for the small, the local, the personal. Since World War II such subsidiarity has largely been forgotten, by Democrats who favor big government and by Republicans who privilege gigantic corporations. A more masculine Catholicism will prefer that works of mercy be performed in freedom, voluntarily in civil society and intermediate organizations, outside of the coercive arm of the state.
The compassion of the maternal heart also leads it toward sympathy with narratives of victimhood. For example, the viral video of George Floyd on the ground, struggling to breathe, foot on his throat evoked paroxysms of indignation across liberal America. We had riots/protests in the midst of the pandemic, BLM, CRT, and defund the police crusades. The perspective of one in authority, however, might pause the rush to judgment to consider the difficulty of restraining and overwhelming such a powerful man who is intoxicated. Most men in our world have struggled in physical combat with a strong man and we realize that real physical violence is life-threatening. We know that physical resistance of a legal authority creates just such a life-threatening situation. One accustomed to such authority has some sympathy for the police, called to the scene of a strong, intoxicated, lifelong criminal who is breaking the law.
And so we see that the feminine can be drawn to suspicion of the police as patriarchal, oppressive, and violent. Those who exercise paternal authority...as father, police, manager, mayor, etc....will have some sympathy for the policeman, soldier, prosecutor in the exercise of protective authority. It is notable that mirroring this feminine distrust of patriarchy is the masculine concern with a smothering, expanded, maternal government. Both seem to be defensive responses to government (like all of society) grown too big and powerful.
Conclusion.
The intention here has not been to advance the masculine viewpoint, but to consider how gender tendencies can lead us to different positions. Please pardon if the intensity and clarity with which these convictions are held has become aggressive in tone.
Again, we seen in our family a microcosm of the broader society and Church. We brothers, separated by geography and profession, came to shared conclusions in our positioning of our Catholic faith against hegemonic cultural liberalism. Our sisters, with varying emphases, continue to mimic our parents in a reconciliation of Catholicism with liberalism.
The good news! We just returned from a weeklong family vacation in Maine, a great blessing for our family; about 150 of us; something we have done for over 50 years. Great fun: eating, drinking, visiting, walks, runs, boating, frisbee, basketball, biking, book club, NBA finals, hockey championship, daily mass, shopping, reading, and more.
What didn't happen? No arguments about politics! Some things ... love of family and all the beauty we share ... really are more important than our differing political viewpoints! A magnificent blessing: that we can disagree quite passionately about things of great importance, and yet set them aside for a time to delight in each other. In that Mom, Dad, Aunt Grace and Uncle Eddy can be pleased!
