Women Are More Likely Than Men to Endorse Political Violence

 City Journal  

"If we care about social stability and the well-being of the next generation, we need to change course. We must stop rewarding moral outrage—especially when it means support for violence."

   "When we talk about political violence, we almost always assume that its perpetrators are young men. That makes sense: men are statistically more likely to engage in physical aggression and get arrested for violent crimes at higher rates. At the same time, many are dealing with rising unemployment, declining educational achievement, and growing social disengagement. Given all that, researchers may reasonably assume that young men are driving greater tolerance for political violence.

   "New data complicate that assumption. A recent survey by the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers found that under certain conditions, women were more likely than men to express support for political violence. The findings were so counter to the prevailing narrative that they surprised even the researchers.

   "It makes sense, though, when you start to recognize where these women’s impulses come from. The rise of what I call “punitive femininity” is downstream of the toxic political culture online, a culture that is transforming the sex long viewed as more restrained and less prone to violence.

   "To investigate toleration of political violence, NCRI use data from a survey of 1,055 respondents, weighted to be representative across sex, age, race/ethnicity, and education. The survey asked participants whether they saw any justification for the targeted murder of President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. It recorded responses on a seven-point scale ranging from zero (“completely unjustified”) to six (“highly justified”).

   "Among left-of-center respondents, 67 percent expressed at least some justification for the murder of Trump, an 11-point increase over NCRI’s earlier 2025 study. Fifty-four percent of right-of-center respondents expressed some degree of justification for murdering Mamdani.

   "Strikingly, justification for killing Trump and justification for killing Mamdani were strongly correlated. This implies that support for political murder is not merely partisan but reflects a generalized tolerance for political violence." . . . More...