Mean Girls: The Feminization of Political Brawling – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

In a political arena where verbal daggers fly faster than fists ever did, recent behavior from both the left and the right lays bare a new political reality. Toxic femininity, as Jordan Peterson has called it, has hijacked D.C., turning debates into reputational bloodbaths, leaving no one unscathed.

I can’t help but wonder if allowing women onto the battlefield of politics bears some of the responsibility.

I’ve been wrestling with this question ever since the video of the cat fight between Marjorie Taylor Greene, AOC, and Jasmine Crockett was unleashed on the public last year. The only thing more hilarious than MTG calling out Crockett’s “fake eyelashes” and Crockett’s rebuttal describing MTG’s physique as “bleach blonde butch body” was the men’s expressions of utter confusion. They were clueless. They could not comprehend the hostile attacks, nor did they know how to deescalate the situation. Indeed, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and men would do well to just sit these types of battles out.

However, this kind of feminized battle is not isolated to a few outbreaks on House committee floors. These kinds of verbal take downs — ones that can destroy reputations and lives — are the new rules of political engagement for both women and an unfortunate number of men.

In an era when men dominated both chambers, senators and representatives would have their brawls, even turning physically aggressive from time to time. However, they also used to shake hands and have a beer after. It wasn’t unusual to see politicians from different sides of the aisle sharing a drink and participating in a game of softball against each other just minutes after a duel on the Hill.

No longer. Democrats and Republicans are now mortal enemies. Fights break out daily on social media, calling for one another’s absolute destruction. After all, it’s easy to spew hateful words through a computer screen when there are no consequences for poor behavior. In a fist fight, physical damage is the outcome. Pain teaches hard lessons, but wounds heal. It can be harder to recover from losing a job or family devastation. A reputational stain may follow someone around for the rest of their lives. The internet rarely forgives, and it never forgets. Just like some women. It’s debatable if fighting like a girl is more humane.

I have a friend who has a 10n-year-old daughter and a seven-year-old son. He witnesses this dichotomy weekly. His son plays recklessly with other boys. But every day the same crew comes back for more, undeterred by previous battles, bonded sometimes by black eyes and bruises.

Not so with his daughter. Those girls change friends like underwear. He’s astonished at how cruel they can be, slandering each other on sidewalk with bold chalk. This kind of behavior leaves scars which may never heal without serious therapy. It shapes women’s psyches and how they interact with the world.

Contrary to the dominant gender narrative, men and women are different, both biologically and psychologically. While both sexes are equally subject to anger, men are more likely to express that anger directly, while women resort to more passive aggressive, but no less vicious, techniques.

Researchers attribute this to human evolutionary biology and the role of sexual selection. Men competed against other men for access to women, developing along the way a tendency toward duking it out and higher tolerance for physical pain. Women competed against other women for male partners, but due to the physical limitations of pregnancy, developed verbal strategies such as storytelling and gossip, designed to damage the status and desirability of their foes.

These inherent differences have increasingly manifested themselves on the political stage.  Juvenile teenage girl antics are on display daily. A recent Wall Street Journal article quotes a conservative activist describing recent MAGA infighting with the phrase, “whoever smelt it dealt it.”

Gone are the lifetime bonds of fraternal order and brotherly love. Former allies become foes at the drop of a hat and alliances change daily. Jealousies abound, the battle for increasing public attention and social dominance laid out for all to see. The habit of political surrogates doxing and showing up at politicians and judges private homes shouting and even threatening families’ lives, seems to go above and beyond politics as usual.

I originally thought the X dispute between President Trump and his former bestie Elon Musk offered proof you don’t need to be a woman to act like one. While the original online spat seemed to be quite the hissy fit, the speed with which it was over demonstrated Trump’s tendency toward positive masculinity. It’s clear from his past scuffles and subsequent make ups, Trump doesn’t hold grudges and tends to forgive easily. Remember, J.D. Vance once wondered if his boss was “America’s Hitler.”

But the example of Trump aside, misguided feminists everywhere are wrong to say we are living in a patriarchal society. On the contrary, we are in an era where the worst tendencies of a matriarch reign — bitterness, envy, grudges, hostility — no matter the sex of the people in power.

While many attribute the sea change to a rise in social media use, allowing women to lead the polis has also altered the dynamic. Men, particularly virtuous ones, will behave differently in the presence of women. They are hard wired to. Any man with a smidge of decency would never hit a woman. They will adapt, if not completely suppress, their instinctual techniques of aggression to accommodate female combat, as baffling as it may be for them.

This is the same argument against having women serve on the ground combat roles in the military. Having a woman, even the strongest of them, in the trenches (and the barracks), with a bunch of men charged with lethality will alter strategy and tactics. Like hand-to-hand combat, politics used to be a blood sport. Now it’s more like a high school lunchroom, and I am not sure if anyone gets out alive.

READ MORE from Jennifer Galardi:

A Warning to Conservatives on Roles for Women

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Takes on Unhinged Dems