I really fail to understand the alarm here. The first thing is the idea that men are more conservative and women more liberal is a "water is wet" type thing to me. While certainly there are conservative minded women, and liberal minded men, they have always been the exceptions. Speaking only for myself, and in context to my age (47) and upbringing (midwestern, low income), it was a safe assumption that if you are a guy talking to a woman, her view point will be more politically or socially "liberal" than yours regardless of your position on the spectrum (key to note here is the "talking to" part).

Again, your results may vary, and I welcome evidence to the contrary, but I just thought this was fact. Then again this could just be yet another assumption I make without evidence, like I always assume a cat is female for some reason and all dogs are "good boys".

The second bit here, and perhaps more important is that part of the reason I lack the data to support my claim above is that up until the last 5 years or so I can not recall a time when someone's politics were relevant to me, and I could safely say most people I met felt the same. The only reason it is now relevant is because the media has basically started mixing this shit into the water supply at this point. Sure we all have our suspicions, stereotypes are a thing after all, but it wouldn't be weird for a couple who has been together for years or close friends to be fairly clueless about the politics between them. Most the ladies I know assume men are all about team red "guys like guns and stuff", and most the guys I know think ladies are team blue (how brave / stupid must you be as a guy to ask any random women about the abortion issue). Hell it is half the fun imo, like finding out the person you are with comes from an super liberal / conservative family when that does not match to what they are like, and the bonding that can happen when you both make fun of how superior you are to them :D. But it is most certainly not in the top ten things one considers when evaluating a friend or significant other. The truth is most people are indifferent to this stuff. Sure sometimes something comes up that is just too big to ignore without comment, but if your relationship falls apart due to a discussion about policy... idk what to tell you. But also if your relationship (if that is what we are talking about here) is in a place where you are so bored that comparing politics seems like a good idea, I am thinking maybe you got other things going on.

So I would say that instead of trying to right the ship for x gender to better match y political leaning, maybe the right tact is to put this whole knotted ball of string back into the box. While there are crazy fringe beliefs out there that are like oil and water to one another, the vast bulk of what people believe is more or less benign. Let's pretend that we are all moderates, and wait until at least third base before we start talking about our uninformed, highly polarized, political hot takes with someone we might like to get to know. I mean this all assumes that is the point.

I feel like every time I come across a piece about the divisions between groups whatever they might be, they always kind of fail to get their arms around what it is they actually want. Not an idealized state of things, but just a general direction seems hard for folks to make apparent. If you want connection, it is as available to you as it has been to humans for as long as we have walked upright. If it is an academic pursuit, or some kind of human LARPing exercise their are plenty of eyeballs for that, maybe just make it clear upfront that this is a conceptual framework for discussion and not an obituary for a life once thought possible.

Interesting read all the same. For the commentary bit I would say that if both men and women are going further to the edges in this one dimension of difference, maybe that says something about the blurring of traditional distinctions to be had. So much of modern life is homogenous, culture, music, food, etc. People have a need to differentiate themselves. If society is increasingly embracing the idea of "everyone is equal" or more accurately perhaps "everyone is the same" then it shouldn't be odd that a black market in distinction opens up. To answer the prompt of the essay, nothing. Do nothing. That much I have picked up over past decade. Almost everything people have tried to fix would have been better solved by time and not intervention. All these movements and wrist band activism, protests, boycotts etc often harm the thing they are looking to help, and when they do appear to make a change in outcomes its really just that time has passed and people have either moved on, or society has quietly corrected itself to match the new ideas.

I keep making the effort to find people with concerns like this to talk to in the flesh, but I am either going about it wrong (totally plausible), or people who have this perspective just don't go out anymore / don't offer up themselves for discussion. Anywho, my contribution to the void of replies no one asked for. :)