The widely accepted rule is that you should never talk about politics or religion in polite company, but we may need to extend that to within marriages as well.
Some UK relationships never recovered from different Brexit stances, and now in America there’s a huge divide between how people are voting, separated by gender.
While men are rooting for Trump, their wives have decided to opt for Harris – often secretly. The meme currently going around sums it up perfectly: “Women married to MAGA men, it’s OK to vote for Harris and later tell your husband you voted for Trump. Chances are good it’s not the first thing you’ve had to fake.”
Further confirmation came in the form of a Harris-Walz advert voiced by Julia Roberts, which also went viral. “In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose,” Julia says pointedly, referring to the Republicans appalling anti-abortion stance, “You can vote any way you want. And no one will ever know.”
Obviously this ‘betrayal’ has been likened to having an affair, by men who bear an uncanny resemblance to the clueless MAGA Bro husbands in the ad.
The many reasons women might decide not to vote for misogynistic, racist, convicted sex offender Donald Trump are fairly obvious, what’s more puzzling is why they are doing so covertly.
“It’s not that my husband would ever stop me or anything, it’s just I just can’t deal with that animosity,” a 60-year-old Wisconsin wife told America’s National Public Radio.
She’d voted Republican her entire adult life, until Trump became the nominee in 2016, and explains that her husband of 40 years is, “Frustrated with me that I won’t listen to him plead his case. I can’t and I won’t.”
Another woman, who also wished to remain anonymous and lives in a red state in the Midwest feels similarly.
“My husband assumes I’m voting Republican. I just listen to him talk about his views, and I just nod my head and go, ‘Uh huh’,” she said. “And I’m thinking, ‘Yeah and my nieces have less bodily autonomy and rights at their ages than I had’.”
Toxic masculinity is clearly a massive factor in all this, encouraged by the likes of Andrew Tate, and with more US women than ever going to university, the men who risk being left behind – figuratively and literally – appear to be seeking another way to hold them back. Donald Trump identifies as the guy who can help them achieve this patriarchal dream.
“Gender equality is on the forefront of the issues,” Harris supporter Lola Nordlinger, a student at University of Michigan, told BBC News. “A woman’s choice is something that’s so personal to her, and it really should be no one else’s decision.”
Adrianna Pete, 24, identified the mood by saying, “I feel like a lot of women are rising up.”
Katherine Tate, a political science professor at Brown University, goes even further, saying, “If Harris wins, it will be because women elected her.”
The Harris lead among women age 18-29 is by a massive 30 points, according to a recent poll by the Harvard Institute of Politics, and not just because of abortion rights.
“I just like the way she talks about people in general,” says student Hannah Brocks, age 20, “It’s just so much love and empathy.”
Love and empathy becoming the driving force in a country as powerful as America would unarguably be very positive for the whole world. And yes it’s unlikely, but who knows, maybe it could eventually lead to a few US husbands admitting that universal truth. Wives are never wrong.