Women Are Dominating Men In College
The Republican war on higher education and reproductive rights intersects for a reason and this is it.
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Over the last several years, the right has really ramped up its war on both reproductive rights and higher education. There are multiple reasons for this. Part of it is the right’s spiral into extremism. Part of it is the fact they stole the power to enact that extremism.
But not a small part of it is simple panic.
It’s always important to remember that one of the core motivations of the right is terror. Terror that men (specifically white men) will be displaced as the predominant power in the United States. The Tiki Torch Nazis in Charlottesville were literally chanting “Jews will not replace us.” The most popular conspiracy in Republican white nationalist circles1 is “The Great Replacement Theory.”
So, yeah, men, mostly white men, live in a constant state of terror of losing the top spot in America.
This terror has led to, if you’ll forgive the expression, an explosion of white nationalist violence as white men wage war against their coming mediocrity. Or rather, the codifying of their mediocrity as they lose all of the unearned privilege that has allowed them to maintain the fiction that they are “special” and better than everyone else. It is, after all, easy to claim you’re superior when you start with all of the advantages while putting enormous roadblocks in the way of the people you blithely dismiss as inferior.
But this terror is not just limited to racism. It’s very much directed at women, as well. Ever since feminism took hold, conservative men have been rending their garments. The more success women found, the angrier men got.
The right to vote. The right to own property. The right to not be beaten like an animal. Reproductive rights. All of this sent men scurrying in fear of the “weaker sex.”
But in the last couple of decades, a much more troubling trend has arisen that threatens to topple man’s place at the apex of America’s social hierarchy for good.
Women are utterly dominating college campuses:
This has been getting increasingly worse (or better depending on your point of view) for decades. Despite this, men still dominate the workplace:
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8b76daf0-6b0d-448e-b79c-3b64c57924e1_870x618.png)
It hasn’t gotten much better since 2018. In fact, Covid made it worse as more women were forced out of work.
Still, even with that setback, women are still steadily overwhelming men in college and there is no sign that trend will reverse any time soon.
Here’s the thing: We are going to reach a tipping point. Maybe in 10 years. Maybe in 20. I’m sure someone much smarter than me has already crunched the numbers and figured this out. But at some point in the not-too-distant future, women with degrees are going to so vastly outnumber men that it will be impossible to maintain the Boy’s Club in Corporate America. It simply will not be feasible.
There will be too many women with Master’s and Doctorates to keep passing them over for men who…don’t.
“Bob’s been with the company for 20 years and knows how things are done!”
“Bob has a high school diploma and really only knows how to get coffee for the boss. Maria graduated from Harvard with honors.”
“But does she have a penis and can she grow and manly beard?”
This is not how a corporation stays competitive in the 21st Century.
Eventually, women will move into leadership positions en masse and they will hold the door open for more women to come through because they won’t be looking for a penis as a prerequisite for promotion, just who is best suited for the job. And that will be the people with the best education. Which will be mostly women.
With the promotions come money and power and the end of the myth that men are “superior.” Hence, the terror of the right.
So, what to do?
One way to hamstring women is to remove their ability to control when and how often they get pregnant. Some women can juggle work, motherhood, and education at the same time. Most cannot. Unplanned motherhood, especially at a young age, has a way of keeping women in poverty and out of college. Sometimes out of high school.
If you don’t think that’s part of the Republican plan, you are out of your mind. It’s an explicit part of their plan. Why do you think the same people who “revere” the life of the unborn also wage war against all forms of public assistance for pregnant women and newborn babies? Republicans would end Medicaid in a heartbeat and allow women without health insurance to give birth in the back of a car and laugh while they scream in pain and fear.
Feeding hungry children? Republicans have never met a hungry kid they didn’t want to make hungrier. Clothes? Housing? Medical care? For children? Are you serious?! That’s the mother’s problem! The GOP’s “pro-life” responsibility stops the second the baby is born.
At the same time, Republicans want to destroy higher education. They’ve been waging a war on college since the 60s. First by making it outrageously expensive, then by making loans predatory, and now by seizing control of college curriculums.
If colleges churn out trash degrees, then what’s the point in going? And those who do push through will have faced years of right-wing indoctrination. Republicans won’t mind if some of those women take leadership positions.
No single thing Republicans do will be enough on its own to reverse the gains of women. But they never do just one thing. They always have multiple avenues of attack on the things that hate and fear the most.
Restricting reproductive rights. Dimishining higher education. Lowering the age of consent/normalizing child marriage. Ending no-fault divorce. Glorifying Tradwife nonsense. These are all just different puzzle pieces that form a whole and that whole is women disempowered.
Harrison Butker did not stand up in front of a crowd of college graduates and share his misogyny on a whim. It was not out of the blue. This is a core belief of the right. Women should not hold power in the workplace and the fact that they are reaching a tipping point where they will start taking over is sending a certain type of man into an existential crisis.
The only way they can think to solve this crisis is not by doing better or “pulling themselves up by the bootstraps” like they’ve been telling everyone else to do for generations. Oh helllll no! The only solution to the problem of women catching up is to shatter their kneecaps and throw them to the wolves (or a bear, perhaps?). Because why earn your place at the top when you can just use your power to smash the competition down?
Want to keep that from happening? Then Republicans have got to go. Take away their power and the war on women ends. It really is that simple.
There are 164 days until the 2024 election. Vote blue like your life depends on it.
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Yeah, I know, “Republican white nationalist” is super redundant. It’s like saying “Greedy fat lazy racist pervert Donald Trump.” It’s not really necessary since we all know it’s true but, man, it feels good!
As an "older" woman with advanced degrees in history and law (and a couple of other things), the blatant fear of white men is reaching a serious tipping point. I've watched this for decades as I moved through the educational system and it's terrifying. I stand on the shoulders of the women who fought in the 19th century and beyond to achieve some security in life.
I fear for all the young women of today whose struggles will only be amplified by the increased misogyny and fear that permeates our lives. I'm sick and tired of old and young white men deciding how we should live.
White guys can fuck off...🤬
As someone that’s bipoc and lgbtqia along with being young and a man, I’m glad to know that this is happening. My mom’s gotten an MBA and she STILL has to tip toe around what she can apply for or even get because of these arbitrary laws and rules put in place by the colonizers of the current century and centuries prior. I’ve come too far to have everything I’ve worked for and continued to work for come crashing down because a bunch of whiny little boys not being able to continue to control absolutely everything and anything because of their “heritage and culture”. I’ve also gotten certificates and a high school diploma as I’ve literarily gotten the opportunity to learn more about the world around me thanks to years of educational experiences and being told I’ll never amount to anything because of who I am and how I look. I’m not letting ANYONE stop me from voting 💙 and vanquishing the magamanical mutants that’d rather die knowing they’ve destroyed the world while I die or become entrenched in indentured servitude under their perceived authority and superiority. I’m not letting THEM or any other parasite like them define my future and my legacy. I’m done runnin’. I’m tired of living in fear of men. And I’m glad that 20 years from now things’ll be better and brighter for all of us with the abilities to use our brains and empathetic reasoning.