There was an upside to this sexism, of course, not drowning being one.

From The Sexual Revolution's Titanic winners and losers by Ed West.  The Subtitle is Class and sex do not intersect: quite the opposite.

There was an upside to this sexism, of course, not drowning being one. You might not guess it from the film, but proportionally far more third-class women passengers survived the sinking Titanic than did first class men, so if you were one of the Irish colleens doing a jig downstairs you’d have a better chance than Billy Zane. Although newspapers at the time condemned the indecent number of first-class male passengers who survived, this reflected the exacting moral standards of the age. In fact, many masters of the universe died on the Titanic, and did so with great dignity and courage.

Among the dead were John Jacob Astor IV, Macy’s owner Isidor Straus, and Benjamin Guggenheim, who is said to have changed into his formal evening wear alongside his valet when he realised rescue wasn’t coming. Guggenheim had helped get women and children onto lifeboats before facing death beside the man who had faithfully served him. It’s hard to imagine a more noble ending, and a better testimony to the values of the era.

Sex was the main determinant of whether you survived, but class was a factor; 16% of third-class men made it, compared to 32% of first-class men (although second-class men did worst of all). In contrast 97% of first-class women lived.

This was a society that to some extent infantilised women, but the upside was protection from danger. If you were a young British male and you survived the sinking ship, there was anyway a one in eight chance you’d be killed in the war that began two years later if you volunteered, and the upper class had an even higher death rate. (At least one man survived the sinking only to die in the conflict, while a handful of others fought and lived to tell the tale, including the extraordinary Charles Lightoller, who not only features in Cameron’s epic but is also the inspiration for Mark Rylance’s character in Dunkirk.)

In old Europe, class did not ‘intersect’ with sex; being a woman was a disadvantage, as was being working class, but these did not work together: being a working-class woman was not necessarily worse than being a working-class man.

That was then.  And this is now:

Today if you talk to any young white male who feels in some way he’s losing — that he can’t get a well-paid job or girlfriend — he will probably in some way identify as Right-wing, if he is at all political. If he’s American, white and not college-educated, he will most likely vote Republican. This is historically very unusual, but it exists because the realignment in American politics is partly about who has won from the last 50 years, and the biggest losers are working-class men. They have lost in terms of economics, both absolute and relative, and they have lost social status. As their respect and prestige has fallen, so they have moved to the Right, which at first glance doesn’t make sense, until you appreciate that what’s called the Left is really just the post-revolutionary moral establishment.

In contrast, upper-class women have been the big winners of the past 50 years, freed from constraints to enjoy careers and occupying positions of power from which they were once excluded. During that period college-educated women have become by far the most progressive and liberal demographic in America, and women generally are more Left-wing than men. This is a reversal of historic norms — but, again, not that paradoxical if you accept the Left-as-moral-establishment argument.

Upper middle-class college educated women have been enormous winners post-World War II.  15% of the population.  I draw attention to this piece because I am seeing more and more discussion about both the gender and class divisions arising from this dynamic.  In particular, I am seeing more articles about the influence of women in politics and business in terms of social dynamics, especially the cult of victimhood.

Why there is this discussion, I don't know.  Well, more specifically, why it is happening now, I don't know.  It has been clear for a very long time that white college educated women have been the single demographic with the greatest relative and absolute improvements.  Not because they were far behind but because they have more range of choices than they did and than do most everyone else.  Obliquely, some of this is covered in Charles Murray's Coming Apart.

My sense is that we may slowly start focusing on the class implications rather than the race and gender ideological narratives.  And about time.