If we explain women’s approach to politics mainly through their greater tendency toward conformity, how do we account for Milgram’s famous experiment and other psychological studies in which participants were told to administer electric shocks and researchers observed how far they were willing to go? In those experiments, women were far more reluctant—even when explicitly ordered to turn up the voltage or when financial incentives were involved.
What was happening was a clash between two kinds of conformity. On one hand, there was obedience to authority: “Crank it up!” On the other, there was social pressure to live up to the expectation that women should be kind and compassionate. But today’s white, urban liberal women no longer face any such pressure. No one is asking them to show empathy toward members of the political opposition or toward the citizens of countries that dare to resist the empire. On the contrary, what’s demanded of them is fervent hatred.
If Milgram’s experiment were run again today, and if participants were told that the person on the receiving end of the shocks was a “pro-Russian racist,” I suspect many of them would be turning the dial more eagerly than most men.