What’s Dividing Young Men and Women? With Rob Henderson

_THE INTERVIEW_

Ari: When I was getting ready to do this interview, I started looking at your X account and the recent stuff you've been reading, and you are way more prolific than I thought.

I'll start by asking you this: What is something happening right now that you're really focused on or fascinated by?

Rob: You're right that my interests tend to be more varied. If you know me for a particular idea, luxury beliefs, for example, that's probably the idea that most people come across associated with my name.

I developed that idea, and it got some popularity, but then, there's my book. People read the book, and they're unaware that I have all of these other interests.

I'm working on this piece about sex differences. You and probably many of your listeners are aware of this growing political divide between young men and young women.

I studied psychology formally in undergrad and for my PhD. I have quite a bit of knowledge on the psychological reasons for these sex differences, where they come from, why they develop the way that they do, and how that might help us to explain this political divide.

I'm perennially interested in the broader dating discourse. What's going on with online dating, with apps, this sex recession. I generally have just a broad interest in human nature.

Ari: I’ve got a question for you about the gender differences, because I've been following this too, and I've been fascinated. I know one of the theories about the last election is that there was this “podcast election,” right? Podcasters like Joe Rogan activated young voters, specifically young males. They got them to go out and vote.

I also looked at what was happening across the globe. These national populist movements, specifically among young people, were happening everywhere.

So my question for you is, do you think that podcast election was a real thing, and do you think it took the Joe Rogans and the Theo Vaughns to activate these young male voters, or is there something else at play here?

Rob: I would be surprised if it played zero role. Did it do enough to sway the election? Maybe. There is a story you could tell here because, generally, young people don't turn out to vote much compared to older age groups.

Boomers and Gen X are the ones who actually show up to the polls and fill out the ballot. But young people are often more lazy, more relaxed about it, or they just don't feel as invested in the political system.

So when you have these popular podcasts that appeal to large numbers of young men, I could imagine that getting them motivated to go out. I don't have any data on this specifically, but I would guess that in most elections among young age groups, say under 30, women are probably more likely to vote than men.

Men are generally lazier, less orderly, and less social. It's much easier to imagine a group of 25-year-old women saying, “Okay, let's all get together and go vote together” as a social thing. Whereas with guys, it's just harder for me to imagine them organizing something like that.

The podcasts created this kind of Schelling point, this unifying point for young guys. “Hey, did you listen to the Theo Vaughn podcast?” “I did too.” “What did you think about it?” “Are you gonna vote?” “Yeah, I'm gonna vote.” It created this moment for everyone to talk simultaneously, go out with their friends, and actually show up to vote for Trump in this case.

I think that “podcast election” is probably overstating it. Like every social phenomenon, we overstate its importance. But it probably played some non-trivial role. People talked about how Kamala Harris made this blunder by not going on Rogan's podcast when she got the invitation, and initially, I agreed that was a mistake.

But on the other hand, you could also imagine her blundering her way through that interview and actually hurting her chances even more than she otherwise would have. She might have created some memeable moments in that interview that may not have gone well for her. So maybe that was the right call.

Podcast election? Yeah, maybe.

Ari: What are you seeing regarding the gender differences in women and girls who are now starting to vote, who are more liberal? That's the general understanding: guys going out to vote are more right-wing, and they're creating a big gap between the sexes.

Rob: That's the consistent finding. A variety of independent surveyors have found that same basic point across the developed world. Whether it's in the US, the UK, France, Germany, or South Korea, you're seeing this divergence. In some of these countries, men are tilting slightly to the right. But you're seeing women dramatically go to the political left.

Men are a bit more stable in their political orientation. There are some studies and surveys showing a slight drift right. Whereas for women, the shift to the left is much more pronounced.

Different reasons have been suggested for this. Some people blame the algorithms. This difference, in mainstream media in particular, gets framed as the radicalization of young men to the right. They’ll think, “Oh, young men are watching Andrew Tate videos or Joe Rogan,” and this is radicalizing men to the right.

Most of the action is taking place on the female side. The male side hasn't changed all that much. One hypothesis: Women are listening to their podcasts, they're being siloed by the algorithms, and this is radicalizing women. And then men are being radicalized on the right.

My suggestion for this is drawn from an idea in psychology called the gender equality paradox. It essentially states that as societies become more prosperous and prioritize sociopolitical equality, differences between men and women tend to increase rather than shrink. This has been found for a variety of different attributes, even physical traits.

Height differences between men and women, regardless of society, whether in pre-industrialized small-scale societies or developed first-world countries, men are taller than women. That gap actually grows in those developed first-world countries.

In societies that are more oppressive, have less equality, and are less economically developed, the height differences between men and women are smaller than in places like the United States, Germany, or the Scandinavian countries.

That's been found for physical traits, but it's also been found for psychological traits, in terms of personality and preferences. Among older age groups in the US, men and women don't differ all that much. Baby boomer men and women — there's still this gender difference in voting patterns, but it's much smaller than it is for younger people in the US and in other countries.

As our society has come to prioritize equality more and more, and as our society is growing richer, you're seeing this gender divide grow in terms of our political preferences as well. In this case, it's unsurprising.

One possible reason why men and women grow different the more equal and prosperous a society is: When people have material abundance and freedom of choice, and when they don't have many obstacles preventing them from doing what they want, they tend to express their preferences more deeply.

In a rich society where people are free to do what they want, people are free to express their underlying preferences. And because men and women are biologically different, you will see them behave in ways that express those differences. One way is through these psychological personality differences, but also in terms of their political preferences.

Many studies have shown that women generally have traits associated with the political left — belief in egalitarianism, redistribution, compassion, and similar things. Men tend to be more comfortable with inequality and unfairness, and more likely to endorse things like competition, whether in the personal realm or the economic realm.

Those differences might be more slight in less developed societies. But as our society has grown more equal, more wealthy, and we have removed barriers that prevent us from expressing our preferences, politics shift as well.

Ari: This sounds like a big concern. If people who are supposed to marry each other have radically different ideas about how America should function, that's probably going to cause a problem down the road.

Rob: Another possibility for why this is happening more and more with younger generations relative to older generations — this gender divide in particular — is because we're pairing up less.

Among the older generations, they got married at a young age; they became more familiar with one another. When you spend time with people, you tend to become more similar. Your preferences tend to align a bit more.

Perhaps in decades past, when men and women were marrying one another — men, to put this very bluntly — became a little bit more feminine in their preferences. Women became a little bit more masculine in their preferences because they're with their partner, because they get married, and they spend more time with the opposite sex.

Whereas now, because fewer and fewer people are getting married and people are spending more and more time with the same sex — not necessarily in person, but online — consuming content that's targeted toward their specific gender, this may also feed into and magnify these differences.

You've probably seen some of these surveys where fewer and fewer young people are going on dates, fewer people are dating. Jean Twenge — she's a social psychologist — Jonathan Haidt's written about this too. All of these surveys that have tracked 17- and 18-year-olds across time — it used to be something like 80-plus percent of 17- and 18-year-olds had gone on a date by their senior year of high school, at least one date.

And that was the norm up until 2009, 2010. And now it's plummeted to something like half that. I think it's 40, maybe 50 percent of 12th graders have gone on at least one date. So this is a dramatic decline.

Ari: On the flip side, you have the counterculture. People are writing about young people converting to Catholicism from other forms of Christianity. They're trying to be pro-natalist and have as many kids as possible as early as possible, and get married right away.

Rob: You're seeing that with politics, too. That's fascinating. I was just listening to this discussion with Brad Wilcox, who's a sociologist at the University of Virginia, and he had some survey data indicating that among women at the age of 40, liberal women on average have one child, and conservative women by age 40 tend to have two children.

If you extrapolate that out across time, you may actually see a more conservative population over time, simply because liberals have fewer and fewer children. Even natalism, fertility rates — those are diverging along political lines.

Ari: An extreme example, in Israel, the religious demographic there has been exploding over the past few decades, just because they have way more kids than the secular Israelis do. I think that probably would happen here in America, too.

There are these two extremes. On one side, people are dating less and getting married less. And on the other side, they're trying to do those things — the counterculture. Do you see any push towards something — an equilibrium in the near future? A balance between the two?

Rob: Yeah, probably. We're in this strange interim period, dealing with the fallout of this massive technology. People still underrate the importance of smartphones, social media, and dating apps.

There's this online meme about how nothing's changed in the last 20 years. If you compare 1985 to 2005 — the styles are different, the clothes, the music — everything's so dramatically different between 1985 and 2005.

But if you compare 2005 to 2025 in terms of style and those kinds of things, it doesn't look that different. Society has changed, but it's largely taken the form of digital media and devices — and we're fumbling our way through.

We will probably find a way to pair up, find a romantic partner, and settle into some semblance of normalcy. But it'll take some time. Regardless of the society or time you're in, there are always things to complain about. Many people think of the late '90s as this zenith of American power, peace, and stability.

If you read about what was happening in the '90s, people were struggling, suffering, and complaining. Even if our relationships were to become more predictable and stable, we would find other things to focus our complaints on.

I'm short-term pessimistic and long-term optimistic. I think it's gonna look pretty ugly for the next five or ten years, and then we'll come out the other side of this.

Ari: Have you been following the intra-right discourse? Specifically, how regular commentators on the right who have not changed for the past five, six years, are calling each other "Woke Right.” Are you following that?

Rob: A little. I've read a couple of interesting pieces on that. A friend of mine, Richard Hanania — he's in a skirmish within the right about battles within the conservative movement. I still actually don't exactly know what "Woke Right" means.

I've not done a deep dive into it, but my understanding is something like a conservative version of grievance politics. The left’s woke is "I'm oppressed because of my ethnicity or historical reasons,” and then the right’s is the same, but it's more geared at white people or men.

Ari: It's very confusing. We've written about it extensively, and I still don't know where that term ends and begins. It ties into what we discussed earlier with young people, specifically young men who are starting to get more politically active. It seems like a lot of the young Gen Z guys who are now in politics got into it through these podcasts.

People like Joe Rogan — they're not traditional conservatives or Republicans. They're actually platforming many people accused of being on the Woke Right. Same with Theo Von — I mean, he had Candace Owens on recently — someone who has probably been accused of being Woke Right more than anyone.

Will this new coalition of young men who are voting be more radical than someone like Ben Shapiro or a “normie” type of conservative?

Rob: I don't know — maybe. I think most young men — probably not. Extremism in general, by definition, will only be attractive to a small percentage of the population. I don't really have a strong worry that large numbers of young men are going to become radicalized.

It also depends on what you consider extreme. There are people who consider Trump extreme, or JD Vance extreme, or even Ben Shapiro extreme. I see these concerns.

I listened to that Douglas Murray discussion with Joe Rogan about platforming Israel skeptics or people who are pro-Hamas. I understand those concerns, but I don’t think it will move the needle in terms of broader politics.

Ari: What do you think about Democrats? Do you think they'll be able to get rid of the woke element of the party?

I interviewed Ruy Teixeira recently, and he was saying that the Democrats need to totally get rid of wokeism. He thought it was possible. Do you think it's possible for them to shed this more radical, ideological element?

Rob: I don't know. The Democrats are stuck in this difficult position because on the one hand, especially the highly educated — the people that Ruy Teixeira writes about and discusses — they want to impress other people like themselves.

They’re highly educated, went to good schools, very politically active. They have newfangled, unconventional ideas about politics. And they want to impress one another by reaffirming those beliefs.

Ari: This is the “luxury beliefs” you write about.

Rob: These boutique political concerns that the vast majority of the country doesn't care about or are not even aware of.

You want to impress your peers, but you also want to win elections. And you can't say the same things to both of those groups. It's a difficult thing to pull off.

Political operatives, candidates themselves — they're much more online. They're much more ideologically niche, whereas regular Americans are not. There's a reason why Joe Biden won the 2020 primary.

He was probably the least online candidate. I don't think he was running his own social media accounts. He just seemed like a normal guy.

There was this interesting, telling moment. You might’ve seen this, Ari — there was this clip going around of Tim Walz at the Harvard Kennedy School talking about politics. And one of the things Tim Walz said was, the reason why he was picked as Harris’ running mate is because he could code-talk to white guys — the kind of guys who change the oil on their car and like to watch football and drink beer. He could code-talk to them and give them the permission structure to say it’s okay to vote for him.

Joe Biden was picked as Obama’s running mate for the same reason — to reassure Middle America, here’s an old white guy. But Biden would never say, “Oh, I’m code-talking to white guys.” Biden would never have used the word “permission structure.” Biden was an actual normal guy.

Walz has this sort of double consciousness. On the one hand, he has to play act in front of America on camera as a soccer dad, suburban guy. When he’s at the Harvard Kennedy School, he has to wink and nod at the audience and say, “You and I know what we’re talking about here. I have to pretend to be that guy to get elected, but that’s not who I really am. I share the same values as all of you here at Harvard.”

That’s a very difficult and duplicitous spot to be in. And voters can sense that inauthenticity.

Ari: That’s crazy that he used the word “permission structure.” I thought you were paraphrasing what he was talking about.

Rob: No, no, no. I almost said that verbatim because I watched that clip three or four times. I was in awe of it.

Ari: That’s pretty shocking. I would not expect him to use that phrase, but that makes sense. Someone like Gavin Newsom probably thinks in that way, too. Have you been watching his podcast where he’s fixing his brand and pushing away from the progressive stuff he’s done over the past few years?

It’s crazy how charismatic and persuasive he is, because I leave those podcasts like, “Wow, maybe he should be president.” And then I’m like, “Wait a second. Wait, wait, wait … what just happened over the past four years?”

Do you think the next leaders of the Democratic Party will look more like Biden and less like Tim Walz or Kamala Harris?

Rob: I think that will probably be the synthesis — someone who looks the part but still has the same values as the highly educated, progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Maybe it’s someone like Gavin Newsom.

Gavin Newsom doesn’t strike me as someone with strong political convictions anyway. I think he’s willing to fold with the political wind. He senses we’re in this vibe-shift moment — he launches this podcast, has people like Charlie Kirk on, attempts to reach across the aisle.

He has that kind of glib charisma that’s superficially appealing. It wouldn’t surprise me if he is the guy. But it’s so early — it’s too early to tell who’s gonna emerge as the front-runner in the next election.

Ari: One of the words you used earlier in the interview was “optimistic.” What else are you optimistic about? Right now, people are concerned about so many different things. Do you think we’re heading in the right direction? What fields or what things in general are you optimistic about?

Rob: Technology in general. In the end, either through traditional means or through some technological breakthroughs, I think we’ll figure out this fertility crisis.

Generally, we are becoming richer. Fewer and fewer countries are living in poverty, and fewer people are living in poverty. More people get sick because of obesity than due to starvation. It’s hard to walk this tightrope of, you don’t want people to starve, but you don’t want people to be overweight. In reality, things are messy, and an obesity problem is preferable to a starvation problem.

Extrapolate across the centuries, across the decades — in many ways, life is getting better, such as medical breakthroughs. Ozempic is a good thing because we’re gonna have more hot people and fewer overweight people. So aesthetically, things will improve.

Ari: Do we know if Ozempic is safe?

Rob: It’s funny because in this case, the guinea pigs for Ozempic are rich people. The rest of us get to look at the rich, monitor what happens with their bodies, and the physical changes over time.

I know people on it. It seems to be working for them. Obviously, there are side effects, but I know people who have lost a lot of weight using these drugs. And I know there are concerns about whether we are removing people’s ability to impose discipline on themselves, to learn to go through that struggle on their own.

I just read this interesting piece in The Free Press. Advances in technology have made us overweight. It’s a symptom of modernity that so many Americans are overweight or obese. We have food companies and scientists optimizing to make everything we eat taste as palatable, delicious, and addictive as possible. It’s human biology — we’re frail before this industry.

Technology caused the problem. Maybe technology can be the solution, too.