Seemingly every month, with striking regularity, a TikTok video from a young female makes its way into the conservative Twitter circles (still not saying X) where millions of engagements are farmed by everyone from Ian Miles Cheong to Libs of TikTok. Sometimes the video is about how unhappy they are with modern dating or how unsafe they feel surrounded by homeless and criminals in ever-increasing numbers. One up-and-coming topic of such videos is young women’s unhappiness with the corporate grind – aka the 40-hour work week.
Given that the conservative movement has opposed the attempts of radical feminism to obfuscate the line between men and women, force women into fields traditionally dominated by men, and denigrate the role of motherhood one would assume that such viral moments would provide opportunities to reach these disillusioned women. You would be right, but unfortunately, influencers on the right seem to lack such observational skills. In case you haven’t seen the video check you can watch it here.
To address this video, the responses from online grifters, what the message from the right should be to women having such moments of crisis, and why it is important Conservatives realize the error of their ways requires nuance. Something that most have lost in the era of social media so bear with me as we peel this onion back.
It is my thesis that making fun of women for being unhappy in the modern consumerist culture both undermines the conservative opposition to radical feminism and alienates an important voter group.
Most major accounts on the right take such opportunities to make fun of these girls for crying about their problems rather than see this for what it is – proof of the conservative hypothesis on modern feminism. The best comment that Ian Miles Cheong – who has almost 900,000 followers on the platform – could muster was “[t]his generation is completely doomed.”
A message that has been viewed 6.8 million times in the first few hours since being posted.
To begin, let me establish the stakes of this discussion. If you look at party affiliation based on marital status and gender you notice a couple of things that may shock you. First, married women are more Republican than single men, second of all the only group voting majority for Democrats is single women.
From this information we can reasonably draw two conclusions, if the Republicans could find a way to win over this group they would be unstoppable in elections, and clearly, something about the strategy Republicans have employed has failed to reach this audience so a change is required.
Going back to the position of Conservatives, they supposedly are against this idea that men and women are the same, yet use this brash vernacular you hear amongst football teammates when discussing the women in question.
For the sake of clarity, I am in no way trying to feminize men or how they speak, for those who know me personally, may even be surprised I am advocating such a tempered approach given my propensity to have a sharp tongue among friends. This is purely about the messaging used by ambassadors of conservatism when they are addressing women, particularly online where the tone is projected by the reader, who probably does not hold conservative values.
As a guy your reaction when you see a video like this may be to crack a joke, as offensive as that may seem to women, it is the instinctual reaction that many men will have which is fine. However, do not act on that and respond to a woman, whether it’s a friend in your life or a stranger online, in such a tone.
If you can govern your instincts – not trying to turn this into a lecture on stoicism despite my pen name – you will realize that this woman’s experience is proof of the conservative argument that feminism forces women into roles that often make them unhappy. This means they are in the optimal position to be shown the perspective that conservatism offers, perhaps for the first time in her life.
Given that in a state of emotional vulnerability, this young woman was attacked for not embracing the corporate grind by high-profile right-wingers, it is no wonder that single women keep voting Democrat. To make this decision even more inane is the fact that if she did embrace the 9-5 grind these same ‘influencers’ would attack her for buying into the feminist lie of fulfillment through corporate advancement.
Women like her are doomed if they do and doomed if they don’t.
This is not to say that all the “takes” on this viral video have attacked her – too many were though – so I want to highlight some of the accounts that took the proper approach and realized the opportunity moments of personal crisis like this present to conservatives.