Voting is tied to more tolerance in men — but less in women
Data shows how being registered to vote correlates with political tolerance
This post builds on a previous one about gender and tolerance, so I recommend starting there if you haven’t already read it. And if you’re interested, there’s also a more in-depth version of this post available.
We’ve already seen that when we ask students whether they’d allow controversial speakers on campus, men are far more tolerant. In fact, men are often more tolerant of speakers from the opposite side of the political spectrum than women are of their own side. That’s pretty wild. So the natural question is, what else drives tolerance? Even better, is any of it something we could actually influence?
One candidate is political engagement. FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings ask students whether they’re registered to vote — so we can check whether that lines up with tolerance. And the answer is…strangely, yes. But not how anyone might think. For men, being registered to vote is associated with higher tolerance. For women, it’s associated with lower tolerance.
That brings us back to the map from the earlier post. This is that same map — just rotated and reversed so the pattern is easier to see. As before, there’s a large tolerance gap between men and women:
To show what changes when men and women are registered to vote, we’ll use something called a vector difference plot. Think of it as drawing arrows that represent how people move on the free-speech map when they go from not being registered to vote to being registered. The arrows all start from the center so you can compare their directions and lengths directly. In short, these arrows capture the impact of being registered on men’s and women’s positions in the free-speech landscape. They aren’t showing how tolerant men and women are, just how being registered to vote changes each’s tolerance:
Wow. Men, on average, are more tolerant of both sides when they’re registered to vote than when they aren’t. Women, on average, are slightly less tolerant when they’re registered to vote — namely against the right.
For men, the boost in tolerance mostly comes from one place: Registered men are a lot more likely to be “perfectly tolerant” — the folks who say they’d allow every speaker, full stop. Political participation seems to make men more likely to believe in the principle of free speech for all. That effect doesn’t exist for women, at all. Instead, being registered to vote makes women more likely to be totally intolerant of the right specifically. In other words, registering to vote increases the odds of landing women in the stereotype of being woke. Men see a bump in that zone too, but it’s much smaller — and still overshadowed by the much larger increase in men becoming fully tolerant across the board.
Put together, this means that being registered to vote pulls men towards the free speech ideal and pulls women towards the woke stereotype. This means at least one of two things:
Voting, and presumably political participation in general, brings out the best in men and the worst in women.
More tolerant men and less tolerant women are drawn to voting, and presumably political participation in general.
So what do we do about this? The most immediate thing is to confront the deeply important and uncomfortable result: Most people are more censorial than we’d like, but women engaging in politics are disproportionately driving this problem.
We need to understand why this is happening and how to stop it. What are men doing better? Could that be replicated in women? If not, what then? And what about the few women, both registered to vote and not, who defy the trend? Could other women emulate them? Would stuff like or training in free speech, philosophy, or rational debate be of any help? What about stigmatizing being unwilling to engage in rational debate (and change your mind if the evidence demands)?
The problem may look intimidating, but there’s nothing here that says it can’t be fixed. If we want to correct our failures through open debate, we’ve got to understand what’s driving this — and then get to work on fixing it.
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Huh. As a "radical moderate" lesbian, this explains why it's hard to find other politically active, moderate lesbians who are willing to disagree politically sometimes to date... They just don't exist! Ha! At least that means it's not my quirky sense of humor or love of Star Trek... Thank God! 😂
I' m a long-time (if minor league) financial supporter of FIRE. And Wendy Kaminer (who may well be an outlier in this context) is the reason I started supporting FIRE. (I'd love to hear from Ms. Kaminer on this issue - she has a deeper-than-average knowledge of the history of feminism (and anti-feminism) in this country)
That said, I think that FIRE's tag line ("Free speech makes people free") is nonsense. Free speech is a necessary but far from sufficient condition. As Simone Weil noted, rights listed on paper are nothing without the social context to support them (I'm not sure I'd go with her solution for creating the social context, but she makes a good point nonetheless).
Why are men more tolerant? My guess is that, despite significant advances for women, that men still hold more social capital and therefore feel less constrained and less frustrated then women. The theory mentioned in the previous piece ("women prefer social harmony") seems like a reasonable guess at a contributing factor - but probably not the whole picture. And no, I'm not one of those people who see power relationships in every interaction - although I might be, if I held less power.
Also (pet peeve), I hate this use of the word woke, although, as an advocate of the descriptive approach to lexicography, I'm somewhat resigned to it (see The Dispatch's piece on the origins https://thedispatch.com/article/the-origins-of-the-term-woke-had/ and my rant on this and related topics https://substack.com/@robertpraetorius282272/note/c-169242311 (I'll be very surprised if anyone follows that 2nd link but. . .if somebody does, I'd love to discuss it))