Young women are more liberal than they have been in decades, according to a Gallup analysis of more than 20 years of polling data.
Over the past few years, about 4 in 10 young women between the ages of 18 and 29 have described their political views as liberal, compared with two decades ago when about 3 in 10 identified that way.
For many young women, their liberal identity is not just a new label. The share of young women who hold liberal views on the environment, abortion, race relations and gun laws has also jumped by double digits, Gallup found.
Ignoring the annoying way in which liberal has been re-christened into anything vaguely left-wing in U.S. parlance, this seems hardly surprising since the conservative side seems both anti-young, and anti-woman.
I don’t want to ignore it. Calling yourself liberal on the environment and gun laws just makes me think you want more polluting industry and more guns.
Liberal, as in liberty, as in freedom from restriction. Being liberal on abortion means you’re against more abortion laws. Being liberal on guns and the environment similarly means deregulation to me.
Here on Lemmy leftist means communist to some people, but liberal means corporatist Democrat to me.
Progressive or leftist is what I call myself depending on context. If I’m among a group that will immediately think I mean communist, then I stick with progressive.
The thing is, liberal means something rather specific to me - open, against regulations. If you’re socially liberal, I’m probably on board. If your liberal regarding the financial market, we’ll probably disagree.
I suppose someone who is extremely liberal in all regards following this definition would be what most people in the U.S. would call a libertarian.
In the end, shouting at clouds about me thinking that people are using words wrong won’t do much, and generally I’m very open to language evolving, but this one always gets me because it’s one region specifically using it differently than what I learned.
