Glossary
The LFE is easy to misunderstand because it uses familiar words in a technical and sometimes unfamiliar sense. The purpose of this glossary is to clarify those usages.
Anti-leftism — Opposition to leftism; not identical to rightism.
Asymmetry of homogeneity — The fact that female preferences are, on average, less dispersed and more unified than masculine preferences. Female analog of the greater male variability hypothesis.
Asymmetry of solicitude — The fact that men take greater care of female preferences than women take of masculine preferences.
Asymmetry of solidarity — The fact that women display stronger in-group solidarity than men, especially around shared female interests.
Female preference — An individual preference, interest, behaviour, or sensitivity more naturally associated with women than with men.
Feminine masculinity — Masculinity shaped by female preferences; that is, masculinity as women tend to prefer it: mature, protective, emotionally intelligent, stable, and non-threatening. The female gaze belongs to it.
Global anti-leftism — Systematic opposition to leftism, understood as a whole rather than as a collection of isolated/local political expressions.
Global political expression — A political expression associated with a global preference.
Global preference — A broad and dominant individual trait. Protecting nature, sacralizing life, and valorizing suffering are three examples of global preferences.
Individual preference — A preference, interest, behaviour, or sensitivity expressed at the individual level.
Left-Female Equivalence, or LFE — The claim that leftism is the political expression of natural female interests and behaviours, and that natural female interests and behaviours are the individual expression of leftism.
Leftism — The abstract limit toward which rich, free, and safe socio-liberal societies converge. It corresponds more to the extension of social liberalism, or to what Americans often call progressivism, than to Marxism or other “far left” movements.
Leftization / Leftward Drift — The process by which societies become more leftist over time. At the political level, it is a consequence of the asymmetry of solicitude.
Local anti-leftism — The mechanical inversion of a local leftist political expression.
Local political expression — A political expression associated with a local preference. Taxing wine less heavily than beer is a local political expression.
Local preference — A concrete preference attached to a very specific object, practice, or domain. Liking sushi, Spritz, or pastel colors is a local preference. So is preferring wine to beer.
Male preference — An individual preference, interest, behaviour, or sensitivity more naturally associated with men than with women.
Masculine femininity — Femininity shaped by male preferences; that is, femininity as men tend to prefer it. The male gaze is a form of masculine femininity.
Natural preference — A preference revealed more clearly in rich, free, and safe societies.
Political expression — A law, regulation, tax, subsidy, market norm, cultural norm, taboo, or convenient absence of regulation associated with an individual preference.
Right-Male Equivalence — The hypothetical masculine counterpart of the LFE; weaker because rightisms are plural.
Rightisms — Plural political expressions of masculine preferences. Rightisms and leftism are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Strongly leftist trait — A female trait adopted more often by leftist men than by non-leftist women.
Synthetic leftism — A female preference pushed beyond its natural form by being turned into an abstract principle and applied too uniformly, hence too indifferently to context.