How single men and women are making politics more extreme

The campus identity politics movement and the alt-right have one thing in common: They're quite gendered

Trump supporters.
(Image credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Gender segregation has become seen as rather outdated. In Britain, where the old Victorian school buildings still carry the words "boys" and "girls" once indicating separate entrances lest the children be tempted to indulge in beastliness, the Conservative government has just announced that any citizen may identify as whatever gender they choose. This mirrors the War of the Bathroom in the U.S., which has of late spread to the military and where increasingly any all male-gathering in politics — especially of the pinkish variety — is liable to be dismissed as illegitimate by definition. And yet politics has become sex-segregated as never before, which partly explains its growing extremism.

It's not widely known, but there once was a time in Europe when clothes weren't gendered. There were no "men's clothes" and no "women's clothes" and most people below the aristocracy wore pretty much the same thing, or at least the differences were small.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Ed West

Ed West is a journalist and author in London who writes regularly for the Spectator. He would like to plug two history books he has out this summer aimed at young adults.