The Mythical Dangers of Feminism

Surprisingly, younger men seem to fear these the most

This guy was telling me the other day about how harmful feminism is. He’s all for equality, mind you, but these days feminism has gone too far. When I asked him for some specific examples, he disappeared into the fairy tale mists. This sentiment seems to be more of an ogre living under a bridge in some men’s minds than something they can actually quantify, but it is a growing sentiment nonetheless.

I don’t know this guy’s exact age, but I’m guessing young 20s since he did say he was Gen Z. So, being the intrepid researcher that I am, I went to dig further into what the issues with feminism might possibly be — for a guy like him, in particular. Aside from certain types of men not liking to be told that they are anything less than perfect and wonderful, particularly if that newsflash comes from a woman, the main problem for older guys seems to be about dismantling traditional gender roles.

You know, the ones where men are the head of the household, and what they say goes.

Where men control the money (even the money the woman earns), and

Where men do a fraction of the home and child care, even if their wife also works outside the home.

I mean, who wouldn’t be upset about that? Those effing feminists messing up a good thing…

It used to be that women knew their place, and then feminism went and cocked it all up by giving them ideas about partnership in the home and equality in the workplace. I mean really…

But for some guys in the younger generations, it really isn’t about wanting to harken back to the days when men had so much overt power over women and literally hundreds of more rights under the law. They’ve never known a world where that was the case or a common narrative amongst their peers in any more than a superficial Lad-culture kind of way. A couple of years ago, however, things started to really change and now more younger men are against feminism than guys from older generations.

What’s going on here? It seems to be a change in the zeitgeist spurred on by economic and cultural changes, as well as a void that was filled by anti-feminist social media.

Millennials were the last generation to genuinely care about men’s publications. For at least half a century, men’s media set the goalposts for behaviour. When it died in the 2010s, the vacuum was filled by brands and social media — where masculinity is only ever implicit or rarely addressed — and incel and alt-right adjacent culture.

For Kesvani, the issue of anti-feminist boys stems from the fact there’s no real blueprint from men’s media or society-at-large for how to be a young man now. “The lack of blueprint is to do with economic and material reasons, but also cultural reasons too, and cultural reasons can be so hard to define.” Vice

More and more boys, at younger and younger ages, are getting indoctrinated into an anti-feminist world online. It’s filled with false statistics and what amounts to essentially conspiracy theories, but a lot of young men are being taken in by it anyhow. Gaming communities are a key recruiting spot.

One popular method of teen recruitment is through gaming. Recruiters use sites and games as a “hunting ground”, Bates says, since this is where young men are gathering. “They can reach them without supervision, particularly boys who are playing multiplayer online games over headphones with people they’ve never met before.”

Bates describes the method as subtle: “They start by dropping sexist jokes into the conversation to see if they’re receptive and escalate it to private chats, which are obviously meant for people to share gaming tactics, but they’re using them to groom boys and eventually direct them to these more extreme communities.”

Lonely young men without girlfriends are prime targets. “They think ‘I’d like a girlfriend’ and the far right says ‘Well, you can’t get a girlfriend because all the girls have become feminists and left wing.’” Vice

For some younger men, it feels like they have to work twice as hard for what used to be a given. They see women succeeding in school, going into professional jobs in larger numbers, and uninterested in dating guys they perceive to be lacking in interpersonal skills — and it’s frustrating. The zero-sum dynamics which are inherent in a dominance hierarchy system (like patriarchy) are a part of the issue as well. If you believe someone has to lose in order for someone else to win, gains by women read as taking something away from men.

“New research examining 32,469 people across 27 countries shows younger men, as opposed to older generations, are more likely to believe in the “zero-sum game” notion — that feminism has hurt their livelihoods and chance at a stable life.”

The researchers claim young men are increasingly working against women’s rights and that a perceived sense of injustice and competition between men and women is directly affecting political attitudes. The study authors cite previous research claiming radical right-wing parties benefit from such anti-feminist beliefs.

“Some people believe that increased gender equality only benefits women and do not see the benefits for society as a whole. Some research suggests that this feeling of injustice can even motivate citizens to vote for right-wing radical parties who are against feminism and sexual freedom,” says Gefjon Off, a doctoral student in political science, in a university release. Study Finds

Masculinity as it is envisioned in a traditional, patriarchal context, is something that can never be claimed outright. A man has to constantly prove his status and his worth as a “real man.”

Because masculinity is a relative status, a man can only really know how masculine he is if he compares himself to all the people around him. That’s part of the reason feminine men are so reviled: if you mock a man for being feminine, it proves you don’t have any of those traits within yourself, and hence are even more masculine. And the form this competition takes — this masculine status game — is searching for power.

I think for younger men who do see women succeeding more fully and openly than they ever have before, this zero-sum outlook is indeed a driver of anti-feminist tendencies. It’s easy for them to gloss over all the still very prevalent instances of sexual assault and harassment that women face, all the places where women’s authority and competence are still undermined and thwarted, and to instead hone in on how they don’t feel like they are “winning.”

Men like Andrew Tate have figured out how to weaponize (and monetize) this sense that guys are being unfairly treated and targeted by women and by feminists, in particular. If you listen carefully to Tate’s rhetoric, underneath the bravado and the machismo is an undercurrent that men are not being understood and that they are alone. “Life as a man is far more difficult than life as a woman,” Tate says. His advice in the face of that is to take control, and recognize that masculine life is war — you have to fight for everything you want. You can never let your guard down and never be vulnerable, but this is the exact opposite of what young men actually need.

As a large and growing body of research demonstrates, boys from all ethnic/racial backgrounds face difficult developmental challenges as they attempt to reconcile the reality of their emotional and relational vulnerability with persistent demands on them to “man up” in order to make it in a cruel world.

Contrary to the claims of conservative anti-feminists that helping boys develop tools of emotional intelligence “wussifies” them and thus renders them soft and ineffectual, it is arguably necessary to acquire these tools in order to be strong and successful in both relationships and work — especially in leadership roles. Ms.

“Tate’s message harms young men because it deflects attention away from the conservative “free market” economic policies that have hurt their life chances, and misidentifies women — especially feminists — as one of the main sources of their troubles.”

Tate isn’t the only one engaged in this sort of scapegoating. The alt-right and neo-fascist groomers who troll online spaces where young men hang out are doing it too. In the University of Gothenburg study on gender equality and sexism in Europe, unemployment was the strongest indicator of feelings that women, and feminists in particular, were robbing men of opportunities.

Perhaps it’s because many of these young men are not yet thinking about marriage and families, but it doesn’t seem to occur to them that it’s nearly impossible for the average family to have a comfortable life on one income anymore. Not supporting women in having full opportunities for good careers, and earned advancement without having to navigate harassment and gender prejudice is pretty much shooting yourself (at least your future family) in the foot. Mostly only upper-middle-class and rich families can afford to have one person who stays home and takes care of everything related to the house and kids.

And although there are some women who aspire to that, overwhelmingly younger women do not.

Gerson found that when the demands of daily living and the organization of work make it hard to live out egalitarian ideals, men and women have different fallback positions. Of the young men who wanted egalitarian marriages, 60 percent said that if this was out of reach, they would choose some kind of modified male breadwinner marriage, in which they earned the bulk of family income and their partner took care of most family obligations. The reaction of young women, however, was strikingly different. Eighty percent of them told Gerson they would rather go it alone than be in a traditional or even a modified traditional marriage. (emphasis mine)

Coontz, Stephanie. Marriage, a History (p. 300). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen next when such a large percentage of younger men have such a warped impression of what equality looks like in practice and not just in theory. In the UK a recent survey indicated that 50% of young men thought that feminism was a barrier to their ability to succeed — although at the same time, the number of men who identify as feminists had also increased.

“Men’s rights and anti-feminism are increasingly becoming a slip road to the far right, appealing to young men feeling emasculated in an age of changing social norms,” the report said.

Although the survey represented a widespread belief that feminism is at the expense of men, gender equality actually improves men’s lives. The World Health Organization found that in 41 European countries, men’s health was weaker in more gender-unequal societies. Men also report they are more satisfied with life when women have more rights. Global Citizen

I don’t know how we get men and particularly younger men to realize that.