LOVE IN THE TIME OF SUFFRAGE

SGT. PEPE’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BUND

—Romance and Relationship Advice Column

Dear Sergeant Pepe,

My girlfriend treats voting like combat training—every headline a drill, every disagreement a moral emergency. Is that normal civic engagement, or am I dating a volunteer militia?

Signed,

Doug Trenchard

Sgt. Pepé replies:

Son, stop digging. What you’re reacting to isn’t politics—it’s pressure. Don’t listen to Doyle Lawson:

Yes, I hear what you’re hearing, and I smell what you’re smelling, and it ain’t roses. It’s cordite mixed with Wi-Fi. Suffrage was never meant to feel like comfort; it was meant to feel like weight. And lately, that weight’s been misrouted straight into the living room.

Let’s start with language, because language never lies—it just waits longer than we do.

Suffer and suffrage do not share a direct Latin root, but they arise from the same moral vocabulary. Suffer comes from sufferre—to carry from underneath. To bear weight. To endure pressure without dropping what you’re holding. Suffrage emerged from the same Roman idea of bearing responsibility in public judgment. Voting was never meant to feel like self-expression therapy. It was meant to feel like responsibility. Heavy. Serious. Occasionally inconvenient.

Now here’s where I’m gonna phrase this carefully, like a man who’s testified before committees and slept on couches.

What we’re seeing lately—especially online—is not enthusiasm. It’s over-identification. Civic duty has been run through the social-media centrifuge and spun into permanent mobilization. Some recent studies suggest women, after prolonged exposure to outrage-heavy political feeds, express higher tolerance for political violence. That doesn’t mean only women can be violent. It means the environment is, too.

Before anyone reaches for a whistle, let me say this slow:

This is not only biology. This is bandwidth.

Your girlfriend isn’t a militia. (Though “Militia” would be a lovely feminine name for a little girl—strong consonants, good posture.) Look, your girlfriend is over-loaded. Suffrage was supposed to be weight-bearing, not weight-multiplying. When every scroll turns moral judgment into a live-fire exercise, the nervous system thinks it’s under siege—and guess who gets drafted? She does.

Now here’s the relationship rule they don’t teach in civics class:

A household cannot survive permanent emergency footing.

You can debate politics in a relationship. You can even disagree sharply. What you can’t do is live with someone who treats the ballot like a bayonet and bedtime like a briefing.

So what’s your move?

You don’t argue the issues. You don’t mock the passion. You change the terrain. Get out of the feed. Walk. Cook. Touch something real. Get her pregnant. Romance predates democracy. The algorithm came late and loud.

Suffrage means carrying weight together.

Suffering starts when someone insists on carrying all of it, all the time, at full volume.

You’re not dating a militia.

You’re dating someone who’s forgotten that even soldiers rotate off the line.

What you’re seeing isn’t hatred—it’s a motherly, protective instinct with no clear perimeter. A maternal drive built for guarding a crib has been reassigned to guarding abstractions, case files, and strangers— often with criminal backgrounds —who have illegally crossed borders. When instinct loses its proper object, it doesn’t disappear. It recruits substitutes. Give her a baby to protect.

Dismissed! Now get to work.

— Sgt. Pepe

P.S. (Assignment)

Sgt. Pepé:

Before you write back, argue, or escalate this into a theory of everything, read the following. It’s not politics. It’s instinct, written down before it learned how to post. Consider it required field reading. We’ll talk after you recognize what it’s describing.

— Sgt. Pepe

From The Female of the Species (Condensed)

Rudyard Kipling, 1911

When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,

He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.

But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.

For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.

Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact

To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame

Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same,

And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,

The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast

May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.

And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unchained to claim

Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

Her contentions are her children—Heaven help him who denies!

He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,

Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Doug Trenchard:

Sergeant Pepe—if I redirect the instinct, won’t it just get stronger? Isn’t pregnancy just adding fuel to the fire?

SGT. PEPE:

You’re confusing fuel with aim.

Instinct doesn’t calm down when it weakens—it calms down when it has a target.

Power without an object roams.

Power with an object builds a perimeter.

Dismissed.

— Sgt. Pepe