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Why are more young men than older seeing feminism as a bad thing?

Cloo

Cloo

Banana for scale
www.theguardian.com

Gen Z boys and men more likely than baby boomers to believe feminism harmful, says poll

Fifth of men aged 16-29 look favourably on social media influencer Andrew Tate
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

It is still a minority fortunately, but interesting that it's less favourable a view than older men. I saw someone commenting that it's probably more than just 'social media', and I think they have a good point. Yes, it spreads the ideas, but they're also coming from other factors.

I wonder if it's connected with the distance from a society of much more overt sexism, and also a late-stage capitalism thing where a) the role of man = dad = provider is being eroded and b) a modest job doesn't actually even pay you to live anymore. So they turn their anger at this at feminism because it seems obvious - everything's got worse since women got equality! [obvs not recognising we still don't have equality] -rather than against capitalism or the patriarchy, both of which are also happy to blame feminism.
 
There was a decent segment on Woman's Hour this morning - Yes, lots of stuff about the bile they get on SM, but also about the 'downside' or unintended consequence of the 'strong girls' thing that's (rightly) prevailant in fiction and education where girls/women are cast as leaders and more capable than ineffectual/shit boys/men, and boys are (broadly) not given good, solid role models who are also effective/intelligent/brave.

Unsurprisingly, it turns out that boys rebel against a diet of 'you're shit, and your place is where a woman tells you it is', and the toad Tate has found a willing audience.

Because I don't have boys, I don't know what boys fiction is like, so I can't confirm or otherwise the validity of what the commentators were saying, but I can say that (deliberately, but we don't have to do any searching) the fiction that my kids (20, 13, & 9) read is full of strong, capable, intelligent and brave girls and women, and the boys are crap.
 
Cloo said:
I wonder if it's connected with the distance from a society of much more overt sexism, and also a late-stage capitalism thing where a) the role of man = dad = provider is being eroded and b) a modest job doesn't actually even pay you to live anymore. So they turn their anger at this at feminism because it seems obvious - everything's got worse since women got equality!
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Yep, bang on - I think you’ve nailed the answer to your own question.
 
The Guardian's chosen some really weird ways to report/show that data, by the way:
1706816901952.png
Ah yes, the three sub-categories of people, men aged 16-29, women aged 16-29, and ethnic minority. :confused:
Similarly, "On feminism, 16% of gen Z males felt it had done more harm than good. Among over-60s the figure was 13%." If males between the ages of 30-60 have an opinion about feminism, that article doesn't seem to want to tell us about it.
And this point is is worth stressing as well: "Larger proportions of young men still think it’s harder to be a woman today than a man, that feminism has done more good than harm and have an unfavourable view of Tate."
Think there was a bit of discussion of this generation stuff on the general Tate/Rogan thread recently as well?
 
kebabking said:
There was a decent segment on Woman's Hour this morning - Yes, lots of stuff about the bile they get on SM, but also about the 'downside' or unintended consequence of the 'strong girls' thing that's (rightly) prevailant in fiction and education where girls/women are cast as leaders and more capable than ineffectual/shit boys/men, and boys are (broadly) not given good, solid role models who are also effective/intelligent/brave.

Unsurprisingly, it turns out that boys rebel against a diet of 'you're shit, and your place is where a woman tells you it is', and the toad Tate has found a willing audience.

Because I don't have boys, I don't know what boys fiction is like, so I can't confirm or otherwise the validity of what the commentators were saying, but I can say that (deliberately, but we don't have to do any searching) the fiction that my kids (20, 13, & 9) read is full of strong, capable, intelligent and brave girls and women, and the boys are crap.
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I work with kids books in my job and I'm seriously side eyeing this. There's a lot of research about how people think women and girls dominate conversations if they speak an equal amount to men and I would suspect this bias has crept into the theory being spouted there.

There is an issue with male role models my generation have been dealing with (same generation being spoken about in the original post), and there's a good essay on it somewhere but I can't remember where. But it's the asshole genius archetype that's been popularised by Marvel, Big Bang Theory, BBC Sherlock etc. Kids start watching theses shows aged what like 12 or 13? And they come away from multiple rounds of exposure thinking boys and men being assholes = them being intelligent, and the usual tricks of women being sidelined, "strong" women not really being strong, etc.
 
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why are older men taken out of it

loads of gobshite who love musk , tate and that cunt rogan hanging around with older fella
who like chappelle and other other comics with similar view points

jebus at 40 i'm the odd one for thinking they are all cunts in most situations :hmm:
 
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Definitely over the last couple years feel like manosphere stuff has gone mainstream. I don't know if misogyny is getting worse but it's changed form. It occurred to me recently that I feel really safe walking past a random roadworks crew or builders site but not hanging around with a mix gendered group of my old uni mates whose men have gone on to work in well paying professions. Times have changed.
 
andrew tate is latest arsehole from the pick up artist bullshite that start back in the 2000's its nothing new
and why it would of gone away in men as they age is not really ring thru

plus the bantz shite was another 2000's view point that just turned plenty of people in bitter resentful asshols as they've aged

more internet and media exposer is not helping the new generation but it the same stuff cycling again
 
kebabking said:
There was a decent segment on Woman's Hour this morning - Yes, lots of stuff about the bile they get on SM, but also about the 'downside' or unintended consequence of the 'strong girls' thing that's (rightly) prevailant in fiction and education where girls/women are cast as leaders and more capable than ineffectual/shit boys/men, and boys are (broadly) not given good, solid role models who are also effective/intelligent/brave.
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Is that really the case? Male protagonists in children’s books still outnumber female ones, even including the ones with animals. My youngest adores comic book style books and the vast majority of those characters are male; heroes and villains. I’d guess the same still applies to TV and film. There’s also still a huge cannon of older fiction which is all about the boys. No longer always being in the leading roles does not mean having no leading roles.

If the claim was more about there being very few male protagonists who are comfortable openly showing their feelings and are appreciated for this, yes you’d have a good point.
 
I may be biased or in a bubble, as I work in a public library, but there are loads of books out at the mo with sensitive male role model characters, and they’re very popular.
I suspect, though, that the boys that fall for Tate’s schtick aren’t reading many books in the first place, as they’re getting their indoctrination from social media.
Books might offset the misogynistic propaganda a little bit, but only if the boys who are consuming it are also reading keenly for pleasure.
 
Agent Sparrow said:
That’s good to know Orang Utan. :) About the sensitive boys in books. Tbh you’re probably a good person to comment on books as you see so many, and being read by loads of different kids!
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Aye, but there’s the bubble I mentioned of kids whose parents take them to libraries and encourage them to read (and who are also keen on reading). I don’t often encounter those who do not visit libraries.
I do encounter some boys at work (13-14 year olds hanging around after school behaving antisocially and doing anything but reading, and who are often abusive to staff and customers. I try and avoid them, so I haven’t asked them what they think about Andrew Tate and his views on women. I daren’t tbh, and it’s so tempting to make assumptions that I’m not sure how prepared I am to hear their presumed answers.
 
Cloo said:
But why are those so effective? I think it is not just that, there's a wider context as well.
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Quite simply I think life for young people is just more shit than it was ten or twenty years ago. Prospects of even a basic independent existence are slim for those who haven't got family money to give them a leg up. 'Financial independence' is a key trope for Tate and his ilk, a carrot that gets dangled to drag disenfranchised boys into his orbit and towards the more ideological, anti-woman stuff.

Tate is a piece of shit but he's filling a gap in the market. Nobody else is really talking to young boys about their self esteem or their futures. It's something I struggle with as a teacher with because in reality, their futures look pretty bleak. I try to focus on the value of being kind and decent for it's own sake, but that's not something you can actually teach. You have to find the kindness that's already there and show them how Tate's rubbish goes against that.
 
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www.persuasion.community

Why Men Are Drifting to the Far Right

Many men are falling behind. They need meaning and belonging.
www.persuasion.community www.persuasion.community

Interesting article there... ^^

I've recently fallen out with my oldest friend over this. He seems to have moved over to being a total dick and quoting Brand and Tate.

There's talk of setting up a ministry of men's affairs in the UK, the women's one has been in place for a long time. In the interests of equality think it might be useful.

Last week, a widely-circulated analysis in the Financial Times confirmed what many researchers had long suspected: The ideological gap between men and women is growing.

Over the past fifteen years, men across the globe have voted for radical right-wing parties at much higher rates. Spain’s far-right, populist, and conspiracy-minded Vox party polls roughly twice as well among men compared with women. While men and women voted for Poland’s anti-democratic Law and Justice Party at similar rates last year, men voted for the even more extreme Konfederacja nearly three times as much as women. Data from a 2009 study of European parties that leaned authoritarian or populist found that men were generally around twice as likely as women to vote for them—and up to five times more likely in the case of the nationalist-populist Swedish Democrats.

It’s not just Europe: Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro performed 10 points better among men than women in the 2018 election which brought him to power. Roughly the same gender difference pushed Argentina’s new populist libertarian leader, Javier Milei, over the top last November.

In some countries, gender aligns very closely with other social or demographic variables like class, education, and employment—but in a number of places, being male makes a big difference, independent of other factors.
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SpookyFrank said:
Quite simply I think life for young people is just more shit than it was ten or twenty years ago. Prospects of even a basic independent existence are slim for those who haven't got family money to give them a leg up. 'Financial independence' is a key trope for Tate and his ilk, a carrot that gets dangled to drag disenfranchised boys into his orbit and towards the more ideological, anti-woman stuff.

Tate is a piece of shit but he's filling a gap in the market. Nobody else is really talking to young boys about their self esteem or their futures. It's something I struggle as a teacher with because in reality, their futures look pretty bleak. I try to focus on the value of being kind and decent for it's own sake, but that's not something you can actually teach. You have to find the kindness that's already there and show them how Tate's rubbish goes against that.
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It's environmental. I wouldnt have been best mates with that friend I mentioned above for literally decades if he was a cunt. Unfortunately he's been living in some kind of Internet echo chamber while being a 'digital nomad' and seems to believe he's superior to everyone else, particularly women. He finds solace in sex workers between airports and genuinely believes that white men are getting a short shrift (although we have debated this and yes, there are some points to argue - all comes back to 'Wokeness'). We disagree on this though. He's moving back to London soon so I hope will come back to normality. But... hmm.. thinking about it now. I dunno.
 
I don't know you tell me. I (tried to) raised my son to treat women as equals, to see women as intellectual equals even down to him doing his fair share of the housework - I was working full time as was his step dad & father - so he was doing his washing, cleaning his room etc by the time he was 11-12. Then puberty hit, and even though he had TWO good roles models (step dad and father): both always there for him, both doing their bit and treating women as equals.

I still don't get what went wrong, but yes, YouTube + Andrew Tate etc have a lot to answer for. There's only so much parents can influence. Once they become teenagers it's all about peers and outside influences. It would seem the outside influences are extremely toxic and misogynistic- there's a real identity crisis for boys. For girls too, but they manifest differently. The world is really fucked up at the moment and well, teenagers and young people are a reflection of that mess. :(

And, yes, capitalism too!
 
girasol said:
I don't know you tell me. I (tried to) raised my son to treat women as equals, to see women as intellectual equals even down to him doing his fair share of the housework - I was working full time as was his step dad & father - so he was doing his washing, cleaning his room etc by the time he was 11-12. Then puberty hit, and even though he had TWO good roles models (step dad and father): both always there for him, both doing their bit and treating women as equals.

I still don't get what went wrong, but yes, YouTube + Andrew Tate etc have a lot to answer for. There's only so much parents can influence. Once they become teenagers it's all about peers and outside influences. It would seem the outside influences are extremely toxic and misogynistic- there's a real identity crisis for boys. For girls too, but they manifest differently. The world is really fucked up at the moment and well, teenagers and young people are a reflection of that mess. :(

And, yes, capitalism too!
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See it's just a small sample size but my eldest is massively pro trans rights, maybe some other than CIS but well they have not said one way or the other, has been out with a few trans people and again, their business. His best mate is gay, his sister and mum are both bi so that reveal for her was a bit of a low key thing since her mum just said me too and well who cares effectively, sod anyone that treats you differently because of it. They have friends of all kinds of states of being and discovery (for lack of a better phrase, please enlighten if there is one.) My (biological) SIL has been through CIS, lesbianism, bi, pan, NB where I think they settled with a new name I will obviously not mention, we just made sure we knew the right pronouns for the time and what the hell business is it of anyone else? "They" always works failing any idea. Some thing are unnecessarily gendered, makes some of the "romantic" languages look a bit daft with gendering everything.

We are also in an extremely white CIS area, no one that matters cares tho. Had a mate who on the first time meeting them told me they had schizo-affective disorder, including me. Eliminated the arseholes very quickly. Ended up occasional FWB when single but mainly mates. Absolutely not saying a identity/gender/sexuality thing is a mental health issue, just that telling people immediately can remove the twats hanging on for too long.

I have seen some of the results of people watching Tate etc, especially online gaming, kids who should not even be playing VR as under 13 shouting things about top G (bleh) and other such things. Not actually insulting other than the general idea of that horrific person existing and them being referenced but they got a lot of responses asking them if they would say these thing to their mum, tho they tried to correct me to mom since US predominantly (just the way the game was popular). Idk if it made any difference but they patrol language very closely and I got a few banned permanently for such behaviour. One was a top ranking guy, he was horrendous and multiple people reported stuff with video evidence (built in for reporting).

Generally the kids at least in the UK seem to not not care but be more indifferent to someone else's preferences. They are x, so what? This is over the last 11 years with 3 kids spread over a 11 year gap specifically since it became even known for them. We did have a cyber bully for the middle kid who was then expelled as a result. Thankfully she knew she could tell us immediately and did so, we collected evidence, school and police acted quickly. (I usually think they are absolutely useless as based on my history with them when I had things nicked).
 
newme said:
See it's just a small sample size but my eldest is massively pro trans rights, maybe some other than CIS but well they have not said one way or the other, has been out with a few trans people and again, their business. His best mate is gay, his sister and mum are both bi so that reveal for her was a bit of a low key thing since her mum just said me too and well who cares effectively, sod anyone that treats you differently because of it. They have friends of all kinds of states of being and discovery (for lack of a better phrase, please enlighten if there is one.) My (biological) SIL has been through CIS, lesbianism, bi, pan, NB where I think they settled with a new name I will obviously not mention, we just made sure we knew the right pronouns for the time and what the hell business is it of anyone else? "They" always works failing any idea. Some thing are unnecessarily gendered, makes some of the "romantic" languages look a bit daft with gendering everything.

We are also in an extremely white CIS area, no one that matters cares tho. Had a mate who on the first time meeting them told me they had schizo-affective disorder, including me. Eliminated the arseholes very quickly. Ended up occasional FWB when single but mainly mates. Absolutely not saying a identity/gender/sexuality thing is a mental health issue, just that telling people immediately can remove the twats hanging on for too long.

I have seen some of the results of people watching Tate etc, especially online gaming, kids who should not even be playing VR as under 13 shouting things about top G (bleh) and other such things. Not actually insulting other than the general idea of that horrific person existing and them being referenced but they got a lot of responses asking them if they would say these thing to their mum, tho they tried to correct me to mom since US predominantly (just the way the game was popular). Idk if it made any difference but they patrol language very closely and I got a few banned permanently for such behaviour. One was a top ranking guy, he was horrendous and multiple people reported stuff with video evidence (built in for reporting).

Generally the kids at least in the UK seem to not not care but be more indifferent to someone else's preferences. They are x, so what? This is over the last 11 years with 3 kids spread over a 11 year gap specifically since it became even known for them. We did have a cyber bully for the middle kid who was then expelled as a result. Thankfully she knew she could tell us immediately and did so, we collected evidence, school and police acted quickly. (I usually think they are absolutely useless as based on my history with them when I had things nicked).
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Can def agree that US kids playing VR are a world ahead of (or rather behind) the UK kids when it comes to bigotry of various kinds.

Am maybe just lucky in that every youngster I’ve spoken to on the matter thinks that Andrew Tate is a ridiculous tool, at best.
 
I’m thinking aloud now but I wonder if these sort of youth political ideas (e.g. the misogynistic Tate stuff or the gender identity progressive acceptance described by newme ) are at least partly fulfilling the role of teenage subculture based identity. I’m certainly not saying that these values are a phase, but when we were young there were loads of prescribed ways how kids could show themselves as different to other kids. That was a key part in forming our developing identities. That doesn’t seem to be so much the case now for things like fashion or music.

Of course when that goes the way of the Tate rabbit role, it’s much more insidious and dangerous :(
 
Have thought about this a lot so I will go into one. A great deal if not most of our lives are spent on social media now, which is a often a very profitable, engaging, addictive relationship with a machine - an algorithym. I think anyone who says young mens beliefs (or anyones) is prior to this or would exist without the algorithymic matrix that we are all in is niave in the extreme in my view. Surely we are beyond the point of caring to seem old fashioned or like Luddites - stop apologising for social media companies whose primary mode of existance is to try and addict us as much as possible. We live huge proportions of our life, for better or worse (likely both), within digital realms - of course these are going to affect our beliefs. Take also the fact that most of that content is monitised - then factor in that profit motif in how content is tailored, presented, and chosen. Boring doctoral analysis that requires deep thought and time to process is not likely to go viral on tic tok, etc. We can barely walk in a straight line or think in a straight line without being interupted somehow - this is not good for any sort of deep contemplation that, say, your average misogonist might need to actually start to change. Imagine your average 22 year old not being interupted by the online world for say 5 days - impossible. "BEing interupted" - keyword "being". This is our being now. and it's interupted, a lot, lol. because the machines wants our attention. No going back, genies out of the bottle. We speculate and hope for better online worlds, perhaps.

Do I feel chastised, belittled, "under attack" as man - often the "first cause" to these online communities are arguments. No, not in the slightest. Infact I feel, if I temporarily inhabit or "embody" whatever the concept of a man is, probably that I have more freedom to be expressive than say my dads generation. Maybe its the buddhist in me, but I think if you think "I am a man" or "I am a woman" you've kidn of lost anyway. These young men think there is some esssentialist core to their being, which is "a man". that is a hugely reductive starting point right at the beginning. "So you're a man", okay what do men do. They are STRONG, so spends ages in the gym, or acts aggressive in bars etc. If you are going from an essentialist core and building out from it, good luck fellas.

The primary cause though I think of this is the relentless age of insecurity we live in: jog insecurity, housing insecurity, what if the car breaks down insecurity, what if no one loves me insecutiy, what if i haven't done enough steps today insecurity, what if I am not social/confident/calm enough insecurity, what if I can't ever retire insecurity, what if my personality is not right insecurity, what if my rent goes up insecurity, what if I don't eat right insecurity, what if I don't read the right books insecurity. The nag and nag and nag of the neoliberal "Improvement Society", where we have internalised hte master slave dialectic. We have become burntout "entropeneurs of the self" as Byung Chul Han puts it. Harrased subjects, and its our own selves doign the harrasing, disciplining our ourselves by not doing enough of X or not achieving X. We remain disciplined. Capitalism now strives hard to put on a friendly face but has to keep us disciplined somehow. It comes as a no surprise perhaps that some men will deal with this by latching on to essentialist toxic figures and ideologies, something that gives them a sense of a grand narrative and guidance. I know it's hella more complex than that but the above is true in my view.

Not sure the answer, tbh. I speak to the young lads and argue with them at work. They are all tate fans. IT depresses the fuck out of me. The way the treat women is terrible too and they don't even realise it. Blocking them after fucking them, that sort of thing. Calling them bitches in private etc. Absoloutly horrible. I avoid them at work. I look to concern for both my son and daughter's future and will try my best to help them navigate it. My parents views had a massive baring on my life, I hope mine will on theirs to in regards the toxicity of this stuff.
 
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One area of work that I think men could do with more of a focus on is in the realm of sexual shame. Slut shaming etc is a thing for women for centuries and still goes on today here and even worse around the world. Sexual shame is in no way restricted to men, just to say.

The way I see male sexual shame is that it is a bit more subtle than that. Men might feel shame after jerking off. Or lusting hard over someone at work. Or not wanting to hit on anyone ever because it's creepy etc. They too have had messages of "sexual energy": dangerous, should be kept hidden, should not be explored, keep it in its box. We call each otehrs "wankers" in the derogitory sense. Looking at porn or excessive masturbation is seen as something a little sad. Whoa betide getting caught doing it! We laugh and shame men caught in "embarrasing" sexual acts - popping on a pair nickers, or something. Or stumbling out of a bush at a cottaging site. Why is that, truly? It's a message of this is somehow wrong.

We do need sexual mores and graces of course. Shame and guilt probably plays a useful social role. We really probably don't want to lvie in a world where people are absoloutly open all the time about sex.

...but a lot of men and young men I think live in a kind of internalised sexual shame. Think Jung's Shadow. A cut off, ignored, carefully watched over part of ones being. I mean we live in a self help world now, it would be nice if there was more guidance about how men can explore their sexual side, to really get to know it deeply, and to embrace that part and love it. See it as somethign powerful and beautiful that should be understood intimately and closely. This i think would be create more integrated men actually less obsessed with the object of their desire because they are not in conflict. If you're in conflict with something, it's in conciousness. If you've made peace with it it sinks away. David Ley the psychologist when working with "porn addicts" always goes for attachign the shame all of his clients feel when they are watching porn (hence why they have self-reported as sexually addicted - many men watch tons more than them but dont see themselves as addicts - they just enjoy it), and after a few sessions, once they have really integrated their desire, their porn use paradoxically declines.

The Jungians are great with this and David Ley too (The Myth of Sex Addiction), and I guess there's a male centric ness to this particular subject.
 
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