It’s 2020 and we’re in the Trump administration. I’m in Year 10 at my all-girls Catholic school. I’m 15 and I think I have a crush. I’m on the phone with this boy who I haven’t known for more than a few months, when his answer to a hypothetical question unsettles me. “If we were in America, I would have voted for Trump”, he snickers.
“It doesn’t matter, we’re Australian anyway.” I couldn’t seem to wrap my mind around this rhetoric. Talking to a boy my age, realising he had a MAGA mindset and entering this vicious cycle of arguing, I fell into a bit of a saviour complex. I tried to fix the opinions of every mediocre white boy who came into my path, as if somehow my hatred of Trump would be enough for them to respect me as a person. I wondered why I couldn’t change them. Everyone surrounding me in all aspects of my life had seemed to be reminding me that difference is good. Vis-a-vis: “You don’t have to agree with everyone on everything, but you do have to respect each other.”
During my early teen years, this was the norm. Especially within relationships, there was often an unspoken pressure to conform to predefined roles and expectations of complacency from women. The idea that expressing opposing beliefs or questioning expectations may cause disruption in a relationship is used as a tool in encouraging people, especially women, to stay complacent in order to maintain the peace. Commonly, left-leaning young white girls date right wing Trump-supporting boys, in a misguided and futile effort to try and change or fix them.
As a 15-year-old trying to understand my place in the world, I spent the rest of my high school life trying to internalise this and “embrace the differences”. For those few years between, I decided to spend some time working on myself and learning how to calm myself down, falling victim to the argument that there is more to life than politics.
When I started university, I realised that there was something worse than being perceived as loud and political: being complacent. In 2023, Trump was found liable for sexual abuse. Whether you argue you are not politically up to date, or you like him for his economic policies, there is nothing that is more of a slap in the face to assault victims and women worldwide than backing a candidate who is a convicted sexual abuser. Finding out men in my life simply did not care was a wake-up call. Politics is always personal.
NYU recently released data that discussed how American beliefs have become more liberal in the last 50 years. With that in mind, we’re in an intensely polarised political moment and it’s important more than ever to fight against complacency. Even in our relationships. Tinder did a study on how much politics impacts relationships, finding out that 1 in 5 people believe political apathy is a relationship dealbreaker.
The Financial Times reported that globally there’s a growing ideological gap. Women are becoming more liberal and men are becoming more conservative, and this is reflecting in their relationships. The rise of the far-right is increasingly common in our world, with Trump re-entering office, and the far-right party in Germany capturing double their 2021 percentage of votes this year during the election. Far-right beliefs are not only rising in our governmental sphere but also on social media. Conservative internet voices, like Andrew Tate and Charlie Kirk, are emboldening young men to implement conservative and misogynistic values in their relationships. The widening division of gendered labour and expectations surrounding how to dress means it’s impossible to ignore politics within a relationship, in a society where women are beginning to truly fight for empowerment and autonomy, rather than complacency within their relationship.
Politics is becoming more central to our identities as issues of race, sexuality, and gender are at the forefront of most parties’ agendas and political discourse. Our political views are formed by our identity and our experiences, and when someone we date has a different view, it’s almost impossible to ignore the fact it feels like an attack — because it often is.
A young man who spends his time listening to alpha podcasts that prioritise toxic masculinity will not respect a young woman fighting for abortion rights. The differences in beliefs are no longer distant enough to ignore. More than this, it’s imperative that we do not ignore them.
When we teach young women to neglect their own morals, values, and political identities in order to appease society and placate young men, we risk protecting the status quo and worse — we risk undoing all the work feminists have done so far. With so much more work to do, we have to encourage teenage girls to be critical of their relationships and continue to question the growing political gender gap that neoliberalism encourages us to ignore.
