Definition:
The Left–Female Equivalence, or LFE, is a theory of leftism based on a structural equivalence:
Leftism is the political expression of natural female interests and behaviours.
Natural female interests and behaviours are the individual expression of leftism.
Informally: leftism = female preferences.
The LFE therefore establishes a correspondence between two levels of expression: femininity at the individual level and leftism at the societal level. Leftism thus expresses globally what femininity expresses locally, and vice versa.
This does not mean that all women are leftist, nor that no men are. Here, female refers to what women desire or tend to prefer on average. Meanwhile, the term natural refers to preferences that reveal themselves in relatively unconstrained environments, that is, in rich, free, and safe societies.
Starting from this equivalence, the LFE reinterprets the entire modern political landscape. It is therefore, above all, a classificatory theory of politics, not a general theory of femininity.
What does the term “leftism” mean here?
Leftism designates the abstract limit toward which social-liberal societies appear to converge. It is therefore a kind of limit-leftism that extends European social-liberalism or American progressivism. This process of convergence toward the limit-leftism is called leftization, or leftward drift.
Moreover, what matters for the LFE is not the grand principles social-liberal societies invoke, but the choices they actually make: which risks they tolerate, which forms of pollution they regulate, which preferences they subsidize or pathologize, and which exceptions they favor. Either directly or indirectly, through a convenient absence of regulation.
This limit-leftism is therefore neither marxism, nor radical feminism, nor radical environmentalism, nor some woke or queer ideal. It is instead bureaucratic, consumerist, selectively ecological, hostile to certain masculine preferences, and highly protective of female interests.
How does the LFE work?
The LFE makes it possible to assign political meaning to laws, markets, cultural norms, and even everyday objects.
For example, avocados, cats, and yoga are respectively preferred over red meat, dogs, and weight training by women. According to the LFE, each of the former is therefore more leftist than its respective counterpart among the latter. Yet none of these everyday objects or activities votes. What is leftist, then, is not the everyday objects or activities themselves, but the way socio-liberal societies treat them: their political expressions.
In a society that has reached the limit-leftism described above, the LFE therefore claims that the ordering of individual female preferences is perfectly transposed into cultural norms, markets, and laws. Then again, leftism expresses globally what femininity expresses locally, and vice versa.
Consider alcohol. On average, women prefer wine to beer, whereas men prefer beer to wine. As for spirits, with the exception of gin, they are primarily a male interest. On the female side, the order of preferences is therefore:
wine > beer > spirits
The LFE predicts that, in leftist societies, the very same ordering should be transposed identically at the societal level. In other words, leftism should treat wine more favorably than beer, and beer more favorably than spirits.
This is precisely the ordering reproduced by alcohol taxation in social-liberal societies: spirits are taxed more heavily than beer, and beer more heavily than wine. Yet beer contains approximately half as much alcohol per liter as wine. A public-health principle would therefore tax spirits more heavily than wine, and wine more heavily than beer. As a matter of fact, it is the female-preference ordering that socio-liberal societies have decided to institutionalize, not the one derived from the public-health principle.
The LFE claims that this type of correspondence is not accidental. On the contrary, it is a universal and defining property of leftism properly understood.
Why would societies converge toward female preferences?
A rich, free, and safe society allows both male and female preferences to express themselves more faithfully. Why, then, would such a society become progressively more feminine, rather than simultaneously more feminine and more masculine?
The LFE explains this convergence through three structural asymmetries:
the asymmetry of homogeneity: female preferences are more homogeneous than male preferences. This is the dual formulation of the greater male variability hypothesis. At the societal level, this asymmetry makes female preferences aggregate more easily than male preferences;
the asymmetry of solidarity: women display greater solidarity toward other women and their shared interests than men display toward other men and theirs. In psychology, this is known as the in-group bias. Additionally, men are more competitive than women and therefore more likely to prioritize their own preferences over those of other men. Transposed to the societal level, this asymmetry causes female preferences to be defended more strongly than male preferences;
the asymmetry of solicitude: men take better care of female preferences than women take care of male preferences. At the societal level, female preferences therefore receive more attention and are more easily institutionalized than male preferences.
The asymmetries of homogeneity and solidarity make leftism a unique and well defined ideology. The asymmetry of solicitude, for its part, explains why leftization is easier than rightization in free, rich and safe societies. More importantly, the first two asymmetries make the political expression of male preferences non-unique: one must therefore speak of rightisms in the plural if one truly wished to posit a Right-Male Equivalence.
Why does all of this matter?
If modern societies are indeed converging toward the limit-leftism, the LFE becomes capable of explaining the evolution of social-liberal societies. More importantly, it makes it possible to formulate testable predictions.
In particular, political expressions that the LFE classifies as non-leftist should be corrected over time, transforming into relatively more leftist versions of themselves. Again, the LFE is a classificatory theory of the modern political landscape, not just of leftism.
The LFE also explains why leftism so often appears incoherent. Female preferences are more contextual and less systematizing than male preferences. They are therefore more prone to contradiction. Equality, environmentalism, public health, safety, or bodily autonomy may consequently be invoked in one context and then discreetly suspended in another.
The consistent and uniform application of a leftist principle is therefore not necessarily leftist. This remains true even when the principle itself has been derived through the LFE, that is, from a female preference. Leftist choices are determined by female preferences, and by female preferences alone.
Finally, the LFE explains why the homogenization of values and the stagnation that some people deplore today are not two independent phenomena, but two natural consequences of leftization.
To understand the LFE better, start with the foundational essay: What Makes Something Leftist?
For empirical tests, feel free to read any shorts. Say, Energy Drinks Are Less Leftist Than Starbucks Lattes and Bubble Tea.
If you have any objections, feel free to comment, but read the FAQ first.
If the equivalence is correct, modern politics should become strangely predictable, including in cases the theory was not designed to explain.