Sex, Gender, and the Election – Part 3 of 3
A Sex and Gender Specialist Explains the Primal Reasons Behind the 2024 Election
This is the third and last part of Michael Gurian’s recent Substack post on how he interprets the recent presidential results. I first encountered Gurian’s work in 2003. I started to buy copies of his book, What Could He Be Thinking? How a Man’s Mind Really Works so that I could both recommend it to my clients, the parents of gifted children, and sell it to them on the spot. I hope you have enjoyed this series of guest posts.
Nov 22, 2024
The Revelation of Protection
Strong translates to protective in the human brain because evolutionary biology is set up that way. We vote for the leader whom we believe will protect us and our family — even when that person is as flawed as Trump is. While “it’s about the economy, stupid,” pundits always say, and of course they are right (the economy is almost always the biggest issue on people’s minds and Harris lost on the economy), a huge mistake will be made by Democrats and by women candidates in the future if they stick with just labeling Americans as sexists and racists and miss the link between “strength” and the biology of protection.
We exist as human beings in a hierarchy of four pro-social intentions (needs):
protecting
providing
nurturing
destroying.
(It is primal to want to destroy things and systems we don’t like, so I include it here). Protection is often our highest priority in adulthood — especially if we have sired children — because we are constantly focused on family safety. The word and idea of “protection” got away from Harris in part because the media only applied it to Trump via “protectionism.” When that word was used in media, it was mainly used as a word that denoted the negative side of the Right/Trump. This was a mistake.
The Left and moderates, including women candidates, will need to gather the word “protection” back into themselves. They will need to stop letting the other side possess it. When a candidate is seen as “protectionist” to most voters, he or she is seen as empathizing with and, thus, protecting women, children, families, and men. Empathy is assumed in protection so that whoever is attached to the word protection will more likely prevail for the majority of voters because the word and its meaning are primal — a nexus of empathy and strength.
The only large-voter area I listed above where Harris tapped best into protectiveness was abortion politics. She showed intense protectiveness for women on abortion rights and used the words “I will protect a woman’s right to decide what happens with her body” constantly and well. (In my mind she was also more protective of the environment than Trump, but her vacillations over the years hurt her there). But protecting abortion rights, and even adding protection of the environment, were not enough. In the majority public’s eye she did not show enough empathy/strength/protection for families on economy, illegal immigration, and sexgender. This meant Donald Trump could use “protection” as he saw fit and prevail.
A Sexgender Mistake on “Protection”
All candidates who win elections, whether male or female, must convince voters that they are strong, resilient, and will protect families economically, communally, at the border, in war, and in peace. Another example of how Trump understood this at a micro-level (and Harris did not) shows up in sexgender issues regarding gender nonbinary and trans.
Trump was adamant about protecting girls/women from being hurt in competition with biological males in sports. The vast majority of Americans are with him on this — even a huge swath of gay and trans voters agree on this point. Similarly, eight years ago, Trump pushed hard on protecting girls/women’s bathrooms from having biological males in them. Trump’s sense of protectiveness spoke well to the majority of Americans as Trump emphasized empathy, strength, and protection of vulnerable girls and women.
Harris said that she would protect LGBTQ rights specifically, which was a good use of the protection strategy, but she went too far in saying that she would follow the law to use taxpayer money for transition surgery in prisons (even though, as she said in her CNN interview, it is the law of the land). To the majority of Americans, this seemed to be a lack of protection of American assets, i.e. spending taxpayer hard earned money on something that is not be appropriately decided in a prison system. To the public it appeared that Harris was protective of some people around this gender fluidity issue, but she left other things — people’s money and other human lives — too unprotected for the majority electorate.
Changing Messaging Toward the Primal
If the next female presidential candidate and her campaign staff will look at all of this and go forward with a strong campaign that appeals to people’s primal drives, this candidate and staff will coach each day’s messaging with “remember, today, when you go out and speak, it’s about strength, resilience, and protection” just as much as the candidate and staff will say, “remember, it’s about the economy,” and more than, “the other guy is bad” or “men are bad” or “America is bad because it did not elect a woman.”
As a moderate and a gender expert, I hope all of us, candidates and citizens, will look at these things as we look into our crystal ball about the future. I hope we will support a qualified female president whether Democrat, Republican, or Independent because we need women at the top. But to get that goal reached, I believe we need to ask this female candidate to take human biology to heart and master our biological — natural — reality. We as citizens can ask her to focus on our human need for strength and protection.
Even though there are sexists and racists in the voting public, I believe she will win the majority of Americans in large part because she will win the moderates — that vast number of voters who vote for certain policies on Left or Right, but even more so, vote from within our primal needs and intentions. I am one of those voters ready to vote for her, glad to help her explore these things. I hope everyone around her will see beyond the bad in the other person to the good in the woman herself — the strength, empathy, resilience, and protectiveness that she no doubt feels already but, if she is to win, must make central to her leadership.
To connect to Gurian’s Substack for the entire article
I recommend you subscribe free, paid, or Founding Member status. His is an excellent podcast.
Michael Gurian
Executive Director, the Gurian Institute
www.gurianinstitute.com
www.michaelgurian.com.
ph: 509 624 0623
My current published books about the gifted:
The Five Levels of Gifted Children Grown Up: What They Tell Us (2023). https://www.amazon.com/Levels-Gifted-Children-Grown-Up/dp/B0C9SHFRLH or https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-5-levels-of-gifted-children-grown-up-phd-deborah-l-ruf/1143719859?ean=9798988323709. This is an 18-year longitudinal study follow-up about the original gifted child subjects in 5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options (2005, 2009).
Keys to Successfully Parenting the Gifted Child (2023). On Amazon, Keys to Successfully Parenting Gifted Children (2022, 2023) Print and ebook. The Nook version is also now on B&N. This is a short book 80 pages including pictures — that is a great starter for parents just wanting some answers … fast! The content was originally from a PowerPoint I created for the parents of gifted children presentations around the country. The contents zero in on some of the most important things about raising gifted children want to know.
Losing Our Minds: Too Many Gifted Children Left Behind (Oct. 2024). Available now on both Amazon and B&N. It is not the old purple book from 2005. Also, the Kindle and Nook versions are formatted so readers can click back and forth easily and find their place again. Follow this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DL3BSC9X or this link: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/losing-our-minds-deborah-ruf/1146410968?ean=2940185888872
5 Levels of Gifted: School Issues and Educational Options in 2009. Here are links to the 5 Levels of Gifted book on Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/5-levels-of-gifted-deborah-ruf/1126358834 and Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Levels-Gifted-School-Educational-Options/dp/0910707987 or directly from the publisher: https://www.giftedunlimitedllc.com/store/p12/5_Levels_of_Gifted.html
Environmental, Familial, and Personal Factors That Affect the Self-Actualization of Highly Gifted Adults: Case Studies (D. Ruf, 1998) doctoral dissertation. Free PDF https://dabrowskicenter.org/ruf
Dr. Ruf is available for the following services.
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