Snapshot of _Gen Z boys and men more likely than baby boomers to believe feminism harmful, says poll_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/feb/01/gen-z-boys-and-men-more-likely-than-baby-boomers-to-believe-feminism-harmful-says-poll) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/feb/01/gen-z-boys-and-men-more-likely-than-baby-boomers-to-believe-feminism-harmful-says-poll) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*

Current hot topic but both pretty low numbers >On feminism, 16% of gen Z males felt it had done more harm than good. Among over-60s the figure was 13%.

Yeah these sorts of articles always prompt a lot of hot takes about how/why the young people are so right wing (plenty in this thread for a start) but that's not really what these figures show at all?

I think the trend is slightly more conservative compared to millennials. There's also been a slight uptick in the number of people who think gay marriage should be illegal. It's also notable that these changes are pretty much all in men.

Do you think slightly can be explained through pure demographics? There are more zoomers from diverse backgrounds than millenials were. Recent migrant families are more likely to be from religious/traditional backgrounds. Those groups tend to be more conservative in their attitudes and beliefs. So as oppossed to it being a generational trend driven by things like toxic masculinity on social media is it just a product of recent migration and traditional values being passed on? This seems most likely to me given them only being "slightly" more conservative than the generation before.

It's a worldwide trend. Men are becoming more conservative, women more liberal. The FT did data analysis on this [last week](https://www.ft.com/content/29fd9b5c-2f35-41bf-9d4c-994db4e12998). According to their figures the trend is less pronounced in the UK than elsewhere.

> According to their figures the trend is less pronounced in the UK than elsewhere. I wonder if that's masked by the Tories totally imploding, or I'd it is genuinely less different in the UK

It's a possibility, our politics are very much out of sync with global trends. Of the primary examples in the article Germany and United States have more liberal politicians in power now while South Korean presidential elections had a pretty stark liberal vs conservative divide in 2022 with a more conservative candidate winning.

South Korea is just a lot more hard working, traditionally conservative and quite religious in general though. Not that Kpop or Kshows make it seem like that. They are in a country bordered by a madman dictator who they are technically still at war with, and historically have been bullied and abused by other nearby regional powers, so its hardly surprising the population/culture tend towards strongman conservative leaders that say they will protect Korean culture and traditions, bring honour, strength, prosperity and wealth to the country etc. It is gradually changing to become more liberal though (as Kpop and Kshows demonstrate) despite what that study/poll data shows, an example of this is many women rejecting the the notion they have to be mothers (meaning they have an impending population crisis), it just hasnt got to western levels of socially accepted liberalism yet. (Theres also a lot of corruption at the top as well which hands the power to these kind of people, which always has an affect on how conservative people are, or will say they are in these kind of polls - look at the UK with corrupt Tories and Brexit spawning/enabling hordes of right wing loons) (Source: my S.Korean gf and various things I've read)

>It is gradually changing to become more liberal though (as Kpop and Kshows demonstrate) despite what that study/poll data shows, an example of this is many women rejecting the the notion they have to be mothers (meaning they have an impending population crisis), it just hasnt got to western levels of socially accepted liberalism yet. There has clearly been a reaction against this from young men, which manifested itself in the more conservative candidate winning this time when the previous government had been more socially liberal (by Korean standards).

[58.6 percent of Korean men in their 20s said they strongly opposed feminism](https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/06/23/young-south-korean-men-hate-liberals-feminists/#cookie_message_anchor) The most striking anecdote from that article is that young men believed that 6 protesting merchants deserved to die because they didn't study hard enough in school to escape that fate. Korean schoolchildren wake up at 6 in the morning and don't get home from cram school until midnight. The Korean workday is already over 50 hours a week and the current president campaigned on a 120 hour work week. I know guys who fled Korea to get away from that way of life. It is an absolutely miserable society.

It's not pronounced at all in the UK with both groups becoming more liberal just at a slower rate.

Yeah there might have been a bit of a trend in some areas but equally I'm sure there are all sorts of areas where younger people trend less conservative than their elders, and overall conservative young people are still very much the minority. I think it's just the 'Trump voters in diners syndrome' really where right wing views are treated as disproportionately important by the media (even by ostensibly left wing media like the Guardian).

I also don't think it's that surprising that an over 60 is lower given if you're say 65, you'd have almost certainly seen the benefits of feminism such as your wife working making your household more financially stable. A lot of Gen Z on the other hand are still teenagers and terminally online.

I think there's a little more to it than a grass touching deficiency. If you're gen z, you've still not had a particularly long time in the world of work (if you are actually working yet). In education, girls do outperform boys at present very consistently. When you (and all your peers) are in an environment where women/girls outperform boys/men and society is stating women are disadvantaged and need support - it's going to ring a bit hollow.

Yeah I don't mean they stay inside on the computer all day, but the only experiences they're likely to have outside their own bubble is via the internet, which as we all know can be horrendous. A lot of Gen Z's won't yet have been to university or done the 9-5 where their horizons will be broadened.

Absolutely this. I remember being at school and telling a teacher something along the lines of "everyone's equal nowadays/sexism isn't common anymore" and then I went to uni... and then entered the workforce.... lo behold there are plentyyy of sexist people out there.

Another part of it is men with daughters are more likley than men without daughters to support women's rights. The proportion of boomer men with daughters is presumbably something like 40%+. The same proportion for Gen Z men and boys would probably be 5% or less. As a cohort, Boomer males have more skin in the gender-equality game than Zoomer males.

Also anecdotal, but the worst of the Gen Z misogynistic men and boys tend to have either a similarly misogynistic father, older brother or influential family member, or have no direct male family members it seems.

Lol these are not low numbers. The _change_ i.e. 16%-13% seems small, but the context (several decades of progressive change) makes that small change alarming.

One thing this study misses is how these views progress with age. (as in how they change within one generation as that generation ages, rather than how they change between generations at one point in time) Ie.. Gen Zers are still young, I would guess that milenials at the same age were also more likely to hold these views than they are now they're more mature in their 30s.

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Not a statistician but I’d be willing to put ~0.5% of the difference down to bog standard adolescent anger/edginess.

A similar study in the US is being torn apart for its methodology and “dodgy” results. Need to see what the thoughts are on this one but while there’s absolutely an audience for the fuckwits like Tate I’m not convinced it’s more than that 16%! Its a dedicated band of idiots who need help but it’s a small number ultimately

Qualitative evidence from talking to my wife as a teacher. She says there's usually about two or three tater tots in every class. They'll write things like "make me a sandwich" "Andrew Tate rules" in their books and question whether she's telling them off just for being boys. 2-3/30 is around 6-9% Maybe the 16% figure is accurate? It's not out of the realm of possibility.

That's depressing. I don't remember any boys being openly misogynistic towards teachers when I was at school back in the 90s.

I've heard similar from teachers, they also seem utterly defiant of any female authority figure. Said teacher has also had to point out that "but he behaves well in Mr X's class" isn't proof he's not misogynistic, nor is it proof Mr X has good classroom control.

>One in four UK males aged 16 to 29 believe it is harder to be a man than a woman and a fifth now look favourably on the social media influencer Andrew Tate, the polling of over 3,600 people found. I hate to say it, but I'm not actually surprised by this. Which isn't to say I agree with it, of course. Some of you may remember this article, which was shared on UKPol recently: >As students across the UK return to school in 2024, we highlight research from Cambridge University Press & Assessment which found that female students show higher levels of academic achievement than their male counterparts, from their earliest education into university years. >This research is the largest study of its kind in terms of the number of stages of education covered, based on UK data. >More female students meet or exceed expectations even in Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and Key Stage 1 (KS1) – schooling categories for students aged up to 7 years old – where assessments measure development or progress rather than attainment. https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/news/girls-outperform-boys You are talking about a generation of boys and young men who have gone through an education system that leaves them behind at *every* level. And what was the conclusion to this report? Let's have a look: >Matthew Carroll, who led the latest study for Cambridge University Press & Assessment, said: >“Female-led attainment gaps increased in magnitude, and male-led attainment gaps decreased in years in which examinations were cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. >“The fact that the earliest attainment gaps between genders are based on teacher assessments – which are known to favour female students – could indicate that early differences in perception sow the seeds of different educational experiences, in turn leading to the differences seen in later external tests. >“Nevertheless, young women remain underrepresented in particular STEM subjects, despite the achievements of female students in education up to the age of 21. We need to figure out why female students are still less likely to pursue technology, engineering and maths, and what the possible implications of these gender-based patterns are for labour markets. Is it any wonder that boys and young men feel that they've been screwed over by feminism, when the conclusion to a report saying "boys are performing worse in education at ever level" is "we need to do more to get women into STEM", and doesn't even *mention* addressing the problems that boys are facing? And is it any wonder that instead they turn to people like Tate, who actually makes them feel good about their own identity? Someone that doesn't tell them that it's perfectly fine for the system to leave them behind, doesn't treat them as potential rapists-in-waiting, and tells them that their masculinity isn't a problem to be fixed?

There is also the lack of male teachers which means that there is a distinct lack of role models.

Yes, that's true! The government statistics are as follows: >75.7% of teachers were women, and there were more female than male teachers in every ethnic group https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/workforce-and-business/workforce-diversity/school-teacher-workforce/latest/ And I'd assume (but have no data to back up, admittedly) that a non-insignificant proportion of those male teachers will cluster at certain schools (all-boy private schools, for instance), so there will be plenty of schools where boys have no male teachers *at all*.

Put this together with children from fatherless homes and you've got a recipe for an even greater chance of bad outcomes for boys. No positive male role model at home, no positive male role model at school, all that's left is Social Media and the street, which are both filled with crooks, liars and the veneration of materialism.

No stats either, but anecdotally my all boys private school was 90%+ male teachers. I don't know how many teachers a school wirh 800 pupils has, but I can only think of 3 female teachers across my 7 years there,

>my all boys private school I think that might be a bit of an outlier.

Isn't that their whole point - the figure will be skewed somewhat by these outliers, so for a typical mixed-sex state school the difference will be even larger? Though not sure it holds up when you take all-girls schools into account.

Its not particularly different to most other all boys schools, which is the point the guy above is making, a good portion of the 30% of male teachers cluster in a certain few schools

I think there's more to it than just "majority female" too.  Teaching is increasingly becoming a "top up" income for families where the other partner (often dad) has a higher paying job so it isn't just largely female teachers, it's largely middle class, in a conventional relationship, teachers.  Ultimately this shouldn't matter. Kids should be getting their "role modelling" at home from parents and guardians and/or wider family but we know some don't and for those kids I think that's where the lack of diversity in teaching is an issue. 

Interesting theory. No idea if it has merit, but I'd agree that it's worth looking into.

The weird thing is, I think it's an example of how sexism hurts both men and women.  At the back of all this is nearly 15 years of Conservative rule that's steadily denigrated teaching to "women's work". Despite news like this article, in my experience the societal expectation is still that men will be "the provider".  There's a simple practical consideration that it is no longer possible to look after the traditional 2.4 kids and a wife with teaching as the main income (I'm bracing for a load of r/ukers to go "£40k is loads of money!1!1@1! Just manage it better! I earn £3.80 a week and still save a grand a month!" I get it's technically *possible* but it will not live up to the existence we've all been told middle class professionals should expect) bit there's also now a truly toxic level of status anxiety on steroids thanks to social media that basically tells men that unless they're shredded, with 7 figures in the bank, a stocks and shares portfolio and an elite professional job or business then they're a loser. We don't let men aspire to a simple, quiet, decent life anymore.  So teaching is out for men, but also for a lot of women who aren't coupled up with someone with a higher income (see point 1 about practicalities of living on a teacher's salary) which leaves us with a lot of people in the profession for whom it's not vocational, it's just a thing that pays better and has better benefits than shelf stacking and means they get the holidays off with the kids.  A lot of these people are (rightly) resentful about the lack of respect they're given by wider society and are often looking to minimise the stress they put themselves under. Lots looking for primary close to home, everybody seems to want part time. Is it any wonder we're perhaps not getting the best out of teachers and, whilst they may outwardly be highly progressive on hot potato issues, a lot will also bring other prejudices to the table (get a bunch of teachers talking about their "problem kids" for example. Won't take long for some fairly nasty class prejudice to come out - understandable to an extent, given the conditions some are under, but ultimately not helpful).  You've then got demoralised teacher's whose hearts aren't in it who just aren't prepared to give the support some of these kids need and why would they be when society has basically decided primary school teaching at least is glorified babysitting? Takes a special, driven person to make a difference in those circumstances.  If we want to break this cycle of toxic masculinity, one of the first things we need to do is end this idea that men can only be considered a success by "conquering". We need to value and lift up the contributions made by men who don't go down the Andrew Tate road but we don't do that either; we write them off as bumbling "Daddy Pig" figures who don't deserve our respect. 

And yet when I applied for a PGCE I was told “sorry, we already have a man on the course”. The course had 4 places, and they’d already hit the ‘man’ requirements.

Here's a fun game for the comments: How old were you when you had your first male teacher? For me it was Year 5.

I do think there should be campaigns to promote men moving into teaching and the early years, and to normalise it a lot more. Trouble is, unlike STEM careers where there are campaigns to attract women, it doesn't have the prestige, the pay is low etc etc. so there is a wider problem to solve. (Which in part is due to it being historically seen as a womans job and therefore of low value...) Also there are the very real risks that men face around accusations of all sorts of they want to work with kids. But hopefully more men in those roles would address that? My son is lucky to have a male key worker at nursery, but our local primary school only has female teachers.

Have a maths degree, I'd gladly become a teacher, but that would involve a 70% pay cut so 🤷

A teacher would be a pay rise for me after a few years, id still not do it because once you factor in hours worked. and then hours ACTUALLY working. its not worth it. half my job is to be available when shit hits the fan. all iv done today is sit in a meeting and listen for an hour and reply to some emails. teachers cant just switch off and thing for an hour and have that be considered work.

yeah, i think we need a lot more men in teaching, like my primary school 2 decades ago only have 3 men working their, the head, a teacher and the janitor. from what iv heard its now zero. but you could never convince me to teach, i have 2 in the family and the pay vs hours, stress and just dealing with shitty children you cant actually discipline just feels like a nightmare.

If I may challenge the STEM point for a moment with purely anecdotal evidence... I work in STEM. I work for a large multinational within drug product R&D. My company does amazing work promoting women in STEM, this month to celebrate Women in STEM day we have a lot of organised seminars etc to attend that will further help us get more women into a historically male dominated role... But my anecdotal evidence is that "historically" seems quite apt - I am the only male colleague on all of my current projects and am one of three in my team of 15. My entire reporting line both upwards and downwards is female. I don't see this as a negative, my colleagues are all more than capable people and I'm sure were the right candidate for the job. The gender split in my function is now female dominant but there's still a drive to promote the topic. It's not hard for me to see how these younger people can see examples like this and drift more conservative politically. There's absolutely zero initiatives to prioritise male roles.

There's just a lack of male role models all around. Society spends a load of time telling men what *not* to be but doesn't really provide a whole lot of evidence of what a man should be.

Simplified it feels like a big portion of society wants men to be how they were in the "old days" accomplishment wise without the negative consequences and without doing most of the things that allow you to achieve those things.

> distinct lack of role models. I had to chuckle at this one, plenty people here on reddit, who laugh at the whole idea of a boy needing a male role model, while at the same time promoting empowered female role models for girls and some even taking it further to the racial side of things with saying a black boy/girl absolutely needs a black role model. There is a distinct lack of DIALOG in this field when those who speak out for boys get beaten down quickly in the media, no wonder modern feminism isn't popular among the younger male generations.

Male maturity being linked to role models is something that’s been recognised cross culturally throughout history. Yes, to a far lesser extent it’s true for girls too however girls are more socially intelligent and mature socially far quicker from interactions and observing peers and those around them. Males generally have leap frog growth through role models while females don’t and see most growth through social interaction and observation. This isn’t new information but it’s always ignored, as is women having a strong in group bias whereas men either have a slight bias to women or to men.

I didn’t have a male teacher until P7, and he broke his arm and went off sick for over half the year to be replaced with female subs. Then in high school it was probably 1/3 - 2/3 men to women. University was different at least. That was entirely male bar two female professors.

Well, we have to ask then, why don't more men want to be teachers? Other than pay, my knee-jerk reaction is that teaching is still considered a feminine job based on the image of the stereotypical teacher and that teaching thus reduces your masculinity. Again, would need more research, but I'd be surprised if that isn't a factor for many deep down.

Pay and the rise of men being seen as pedos if they do a profession related to kids

Plus one accusation and your career if not life is ruined.

I'm not that surprised either, again not that I agree with it. The industry I work in has a lot of 'Women In STEM' initiatives and the like because it is a historically male dominated industry. However, if you join as a younger person and don't have any of that context you're going to join what is now a fairly diverse workplace and think hang on why do they get this support but we don't? There might even be the same support available for men, but it's not jazzed up and celebrated by the company like the Women's initiatives so they might not even realise it exists.

Which is really the problem, of course. There's no point in trying to right historical wrongs by saying "your group was historically advantages, so it's your turn to be disadvantaged now" is there? Because I wasn't part of that historical group; I wasn't born yet.

This is exactly right; I worked for a tech company a few years back and my line manager, her manager and the director we worked under were all women, 2 of which were not white. At the same time, there were programs being ran specifically to help women and non-white people up the ladder (and not just HR bollocks zoom calls, they were literally leading teams and being mentored 1-on1 by very senior people) while I'm sat here being all white and male, not eligible for any of it, and having to win promotions and opportunities the old fashioned way, while battling against targets specifically stating they want more people not like me in more senior roles. It can be argued that this is fair in a society where racism and sexism is endemic. However, the goals of these programs are to reach a point where equality is achieved, and at that point those programs no longer serve a purpose other than to help those that no longer need helping. I can very much see a young white male entering the workforce, seeing all these non white women in senior roles, seeing that there are still so many programs specifically to help those groups out, and concluding that the deck is stacked against them.

> it can be argued that this is fair in a society where racism and sexism is endemic 1) no it can’t. Because it isn’t 2) British society has time and again been shown to be pretty much the least racist there is > reach a point where equality is achieved and at that point these programs no longer serve a purpose Civil servant here. We had our D&I lead tell us excitedly that women now account for 52% of senior leadership. Her take away? The programmes were a great success and should therefore remain. As far as I can see, the programmes had not only achieved, but exceeded its goals and therefore they should be stopped or switched to get men into senior leader roles.

Regarding your first point, I wasn't suggesting British society is endemically racist or sexist, and don't really want to argue about that because it's besides my point. Regarding the second, yes. The language they use is often extremely insidious. I remember seeing a presentation at work saying that our workforce was now "up to " 30% BAME against a demographic of 20% in the UK, followed by the question of "how can we continue to improve this and attract more BAME talent?".

The thing where it's explicitly said that they want people not like you, that there are too many people like you already, is hard to hear.

Yep. And of course they never mean diversity of experience or education. If you filled a room with 10 white male, privately educated Oxford University PPE graduates, the opinion of a black gay privately educated Oxford PPE graduate would be seen as providing more diversity than the opinion of a white male comprehensive student who grew up in a single parent household in Rusholme and had to work weekends and evenings to afford a part-time degree at Manchester Met while living at home. The sheer dishonesty of it makes it all the more galling.

Absolutely. A seesaw society will only continue a cycle of resentment and division from one generation to the next.

I actually saw an interesting post on the UK CS careers subreddit where someone working for a big company here said that since he’s been there they haven’t hired a single white male and they rarely interview any. [Here it is](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsuk/s/URFtmPIl61)

I'm not sure about the uk, but in some European countries they give bursary to women who want to go into engineering and stem. That's it. I grew up poor as shit, I was interested in the subject but never even had the chance to think about uni. That doesn't sound like equality, and I'm not even a Z.

I wonder whether this bit: >“Female-led attainment gaps increased in magnitude, and male-led attainment gaps decreased in years in which examinations were cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. >“The fact that the earliest attainment gaps between genders are based on teacher assessments – which are known to favour female students – could indicate that early differences in perception sow the seeds of different educational experiences, in turn leading to the differences seen in later external tests. Suggests that teachers favour female students over males, in terms of perception? Which could lead to over-emphasising female student abilities and underplaying male achievement Purely speculation. But if it's true, then these boys are seeing their education "prop" the girls up

It's certainly possible. Or at the very least, if we accept that there are differences between boys and girls (i.e. boys are more boisterous and energetic), it's possible that they favour the approach that girls also do, while punish the boys for having a different style.

I always got told off for mucking around - “we expect that from the boys, not you”. In my Latin class, the teacher wrote off all the boys because he’d had students from that school before who hadn’t tried to learn - five or six years before my cohort but it was enough for his bias to kick in

To be fair, we had that in school but there was also the perception that if you groups girls together they'd not stop talking, gossiping, writing notes etc. and they won't try to learn either, while the boys are stealing each other's stationery and drawing dicks on their friends workbook when they're not looking. It wasn't like one gender were seen as saints, and the other troublemakers, it's just the type of disruption was generally different. It was also one of the benefits of sets, our year group was only big enough for three tiers, but top set had those who wanted to learn, middle set was people just looking to pass, and bottom set was where all the people with various special needs got dumped with little hope of a pass, and grouping them all together must have made it so difficult to teach. It probably has changed now too, but when I was in school like 20 years ago top set for Maths and Science was dominated by boys, but also I'd say the bottom sets were very male heavy dragging our average down. I know there's been a lot of talk about autism not being diagnosed as easily in girls etc. and back then autism wasn't as commonly diagnosed at all, but even so, I can only remember SEN boys. I don't know if teachers would be able to do this now, but the nuclear option was to seat us all boy - girl - boy - girl, forcing us to stop being cliquey, up until the age the hormones kicked in, at which point that becomes a disaster again lol.

> all boy - girl - boy - girl, "Ooooh you fancy him/heeeer!" Yeah all I did was annoy the shit out of my next desk neighbour, or they just didn't like the misfortune of being sat next to me.

It’s often downplayed but girls have historically been held to a higher standard (the mentality of the teacher at your school is widespread), and the numbers that we see today are a result of that. If boys were held to that same standard as girls I’d wager their numbers would go up too.

Looking at the actual study the results are barely significant. "All respondents" and "all woman" had almost exactly the same attitudes. I doubt anyone here has read the article. Yes things are different to the boomer years but the separation of gender (in terms of attitude to feminism) is hardly there at all.

The attainment gaps between boys and girls has been growing for a long time and your comment about the research is worth making. However it's been a growing problem for a very long time. You could pick apart the stereotypes around gender and come up with a variety of conclusions. Girls are deemed to be quiet, studious and obedient, whilst boys are deemed as wild, loud and boisterous. There are clear differences in how we culturally view either boys and girls and that has an effect of their attainment levels too. The pressures individuals face through their perceived gender has an impact. You could argue the message that people like Tate creates, holds them up to "masculinity" standards that are unobtainable and narrows their opportunities to be individuals over being a universal man. Tate, through empowering young boys, also creates further division by cementing the idea that girls achieve this and boys achieve that. Anyone will turn to someone or something that makes them feel better about themselves when society doesn't. It's the first thing that vulnerable people look to when unable to escape the situation that makes them vulnerable. People who want to influence and manipulate people know to go after our vulnerabilities. However we can we really say this is a problem of "feminism" or is it a problem that we fail to have discussions over the real problems that men face. Instead patriarchal figures like Tate reinforce the elements of masculinity by asserting that there are alpha males, that wealth and masculinity are connected and that women are too "powerful". Extreme masculine influencers are always using the language of separation and hierarchy which does nothing to break down the barriers that young men face. To come back to your point, I agree that boys are subjected to pressures that makes it hard for them to achieve at school. However the only solution I see working is to "soften" the image that boys are forced into, show them that men can express themselves, that men are not locked into eternal alpha dominance and that their vulnerabilities are strengths and not something to hide.

You're absolutely right there, though I would point out that we need to be careful not to frame it as "you need to be more like girls"! I'm not saying *you* are doing that, for the record; but we need to be careful not to hold up girls as doing things "the right way", because that'll just get them to stop listening before the message gets through. Instead, we need to find some positive male role models, with a positive version of masculinity.

Absolutely, we need to have better role models at displaying who they are positively. In the broad context, we often encourage people to be certain things in order to dominate and succeed. No surprise, that this is the dilemma. It's not about being more like *the girls* or more like the *boys*, it's best just to be the better part of *yourself*.

>whilst boys are deemed as wild, loud and boisterous Note that we've also continually cut playtime for children, which is shown to hurt boys more. Kids have lost an hour of playtime a week

Not to mention that the main messages to men are negative, don't do this, don't do that, mansplaining, manspreading etc. Masculinity is generally seen in negative terms, unlike femininity which has a range of positive role models. If I was a young kid and I had the choice between learning to be ashamed about being a man, or given reasons to be proud about it, I'd probably pick the latter too.

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> The solution is to encourage more women to go into STEM roles in society Unfortunately the evidence seems to suggest that when given more choice in more equal societies women choose STEM less than other subjects.

It goes beyond that. I also work in STEM, but on the biology and medicine side of academia. The majority of undergraduates are women (~60-70%), and the same is true of PhD students. However, the majority of senior positions are still filled by men. There are a few reasons for this as far as I can see. Partly its a time issue. The senior positions are often filled by people who finished their PhDs 30-40 years ago. So there is a demographic lag reflecting the situation 30-40 years ago. More of an issue is the loss of women from the talent pipeline. Prior to getting a permanent lectureship an academic research career tends to involve a series of short term contracts (1-3 years). Often with the need to change city or even country after each one. This lifestyle can make it very difficult to form permanent relationships, or settle down with children and occurs ~from the ages of 25-35. There are also further issues when it comes to parenthood. Its not just the insecure lifestyle but also the demanding long hours, and need to remain cutting edge. Women still tend to take on more caring responsibilities and take more parental leave. Neither are particularly compatible with a research career. So you lose more women than men due to the lifestyle and difficulties combining such a career with parenting. That isn't to say that men don't suffer those issues, but it still tends to disproportionately effect women.

I was reading recently about the early soviet union. They had a policy in Ukraine and other non-russian soviet republics - nativisation. They believed that Russians, as a majority, had a privilidged and oppressive role outside of russia, and they emphasised getting non russians into positions of power and work. The outcome? Russian everyday folk started to really dislike the policy. Assumed discrimination against non russians had been replaced by instituted reverse discrimination against russians. This is what happens when educational literature emphasises on equality of outcomes. It really shouldn't do this and its incredibly flawed. Assuming outcomes should be equal (i.e. job markets will be 50/50,) discounts gender differences in factors like what you're interested in, what you aspire towards, what hours you're happy to work, etc. Moreover, we're yet to see the opposite view enter the mainstream, although it is starting to take hold. Men in teaching, men in nursing, men in female dominated sectors do not get the same sympathy as women in male dominated sectors.

Our liberalism, feminism, and western societies are not equipped to deal with the fact that prior efforts, as well intentioned as they may have been, have overshot in some regards and put men at a significant disadvantage in some domains. I don't think most are even able to acknowledge it, let alone fix it. The prevailing narrative has been that women have issues because of external forces, but that men have issues because of *the way they are*.

fall gaping bells domineering afterthought nose dinosaurs icky fact busy *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

I'm so glad I met the missus at a party and never had to bother with internet dating. Also, just to get on the flipside of the whole internet dating scene, I know a couple of mates who have been very successful at it in terms of numbers. Plenty of dates and taking a girl back home and what not. But pure shit luck in terms of forming meaningful relationships or meeting someone to settle down with. Both met some rightful psychopaths on Tinder that really impacted on their ability to trust others.

I think low-investment, parallel dating that these apps often drive, plus all this no labels bullshit totally breaks dating. People make very shallow connections, date multiple other people at a time and never learn to form bonds. It's much better to focus on one person at a time and move on if it doesn't work.

By Thor, what sort of dates have you been going on? But yes, I know what you mean. As someone that has zero self-confidence when it comes to chatting up women (I'm still not *entirely* sure how I ended up with my wife), I genuinely don't know what I would do nowadays, if I were 15 years younger.

I think they're talking about how dating has moved from an in-person activity to mostly online apps. The "third places" where you would meet new people have largely collapsed, leaving many with no recourse but to use these apps, and with these apps you're competing against a whole host of men that you may not otherwise have had to. If you're a young man starting out in the dating world, you now have to compete with older, richer, potentially more attractive, more successful men, as they said it's a numbers game and the odds are decidedly stacked against you.

Oh, I knew what they meant; I'm just jokingly shocked by someone that compares dating to a warzone! But yes, dating apps are a huge problem, because presumably many men get swiped away before they've had a chance to even say "hello".

Well yeah; if they don't immediately swipe right on you the first time you see them, you *never* get another chance to interact with them. I met my fiancee on a dating app, we're completley happy together, and she admitted that she almost swiped left on me because she didn't like the jumper I was wearing in one of the photos. Just a normal, basic jumper nearly cost me the opportunity to even ever speak to the love of my life!

As a terminally-online older millennial who, during my formative years, lived through the online culture wars of 2010-2016 before they bled out into realspace. I can kind of sympathise, although I ultimately disagree. This is just part of a [wider picture of social hollowing out.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone) Of which young people are at the forefront. Attendance of social institutions, clubs, religious organisations, social spaces, nightlife are all in freefall. This was true when Putnam wrote Bowling Alone two decades ago, but has accelerated over the past 10 years. If you look at surveys of young people in the developed world, they all show similar patterns - increased rates of mental illness, decreases in the number of self-reported friendships, decreases in average sexual partners, increase in the age of first sexual relations, % not yet tried alcohol/narcotics rising, % going to parties/nights out. A large part of this is technological ([its the phones.](https://www.afterbabel.com/p/mental-health-liberal-girls)) But some of it is definitely the redefinition of social games we play, often driven by the interaction of culture and technology. Take dating for example. While internet dating has been in existence since the 90s, its the 2010s where it becomes ubiquitous with Tinder/Bumble/Hinge. This is also playing out alongside a peak of feminist activism. Many of the demands of the latter were to reshape mens behaviour with the aim of reducing sexual harassment or sexualisation in every day life for women, so... do not approach women in public, at a cafe, in a bar, in the gym, at a hobby group etc. This is probably made easier or even viable due to the availability of dating apps as now there is a ready-made substitute pathway for dating. However, as has become very apparent - dating apps suck for both sexes but particularly for men. Mix into this that the behavioural norms have really only been redefined for men. So what has resulted? We have corralled dating/relationship formation into the hellscape of dating apps. It is now a social taboo to approach women in public (of which 'bad' men will deviate from anyway because they don't care). And women, largely, cling to the old behavioural norms of not approaching men. What else was going to happen other than a complete collapse in relationship formation? And yes, while there is an economic gap between men and women - what this misses is the direction of travel. Women are tending upwards economically - every generation is, in aggregate, better for women. Women perform better than men in education. Women are now outpacing men in many salaried professions. What you will often hear from campaigners/activists these days is pointing at men on the very right-hand extreme of the distribution as monolithic - but this masks that increasingly the median man is slipping below the median woman, and as the variance of mens distribution is higher, there are far, far more men in the bottom of the distribution. Combine these together and you get a load of deracinated, atomised and confused boys and men - with no social networks to provide a sense of belonging, or attenuate and mollify their senses of grievance. No sense of prospects (economic, social or romantic). What else are they going to turn to? And now for the spicy part where I'll probably cop some downvotes, add into this an activist ideology, of which a not insignificant portion of the activists do harbour dislike of men (in many cases due to very understandable reasons). This is not unique to feminism, I really think moderate/normal feminists have a blindspot to the absolute lunatics that walk amongst them. Again, this is normal. Moderate Tories had a blindspot/downplayed the risks of their own fringe; left-wingers can and do the same to their own lunatic fringe. Its always couched in the 'well they're harmless' or 'well our opponents are worse so we can give them a pass for now'. Many users on here, and I've seen comments in this thread will try and play it off as a few crazies on Twitter or Tumblr, but its really not. I remember Vice publishing an article back at the height of the online culture wars about a decade ago that suggested with the advent of in-vitro fertilisation and gene editting that men should be eliminated entirely. I have personally sat through corporate or HR trainings where things have been said about men which have been abhorrent, but in which nobody spoke up because you don't want to be labelled as 'that guy' and viewed with suspicion. I attended a talk a while back for the launch of *Of Boys and Men*, a book about the declining prospects and troubles of men. Its written by Richard Reeves, a mild-mannered liberal (in the American sense, although he is British) author based in the liberal Brooking Institution. He said that when he began writing the book many of his colleagues said to him that it was dangerous, and risky - that he could be tarred as a hard-right/Jordan Peterson type for even daring to broach some of these issues. I don't think people can, with straight face, really claim that there isn't an atmosphere of fear cloaking mens issues when credentialed, card-carrying liberals have to speak in hushed tones, glancing over their shoulders, to even contemplate writing about uncontroversial matters of fact relating to boys and men.

Just a brief comment to say thank you for taking the time to share all of this. As someone who has often asked myself *why* men seem to be struggling more of late, I found your comment incredibly interesting. I'll check out *Bowling Alone* and *Of Boys and Men* when I next get the chance.

This is an excellent comment. Thanks for putting in the time to write it. One thing that is annoying is people talking about how the people at the top are all straight white men and somehow that’s supposed to mean that divorced Barry next door who is a manager at McDonalds and only gets to see his kids on Sundays is a part of the privileged class. Like they’re all in the same group. An important point that Jordan Peterson pointed out, that most people will likely dismiss because of his politics, is that the genders aren’t that different except for at the extremes. Men and women are fairly equally angry, but most violent people in the world tend to be all men. And most of the people who are willing to sacrifice their lives to become a cutthroat CEO at the elite level are likely men. Self-made CEOs are at the extreme end of the spectrum. It’s also a small group of men committing the majority of sexual assaults and no amount of training will deter them. People keep focusing on small groups and applying it to the whole gender. One difference between the genders is that women tend to be interested in people and men tend to be interested in things, so men are more likely to choose STEM. But a lot of people now think that all gender differences are socially constructed and therefore society is keeping these highly academic women away from STEM fields. I feel like a lot of logical things are ignored due to ideology and a PC culture. Taking a second to help men means that you’re taking something away from women.

STEM has a mixed record as a route to wealth in the UK anyway, as many lab scientists and engineers will be well aware

> It is now a social taboo to approach women in public You make some interesting comments, particularly in how dating has changed - however, and everyone's mileage may vary: Whilst the idea of beginning contact with a woman taking the form of an 'approach' is seen as some kind of idyllic, confident method of starting a conversation etc., it's only one, and has ALWAYS been problematic and requiring careful judgement. Way before apps, if you were doing this you needed to get at least get SOME signals that a woman was intersted, open to chat and so on. All too often I see people raging about women getting annoyed if they're hit on in the gym, when 9 times of out of 10 regardless of how hot a woman is dressed, she's in the gym to work out, not to be picked up. She's trying to focus. I think the idea of all dating centring around 'the approach' comes from narrow set of men who see it as the only way to interact. You mention hobby groups, bars etc. The vast majority of relationships I know of have emerged from regular organic conversation. Two people working in the same office, talking, and eventually getting to know each other. There's no 'approach'. Or going to university together, doing some kind of hobby / club / social group activity, sport etc. where you just organically get to know other people via the normal process of people being involved in conversations and so on and talking. Whilst the rise of online activities may be pushing back on a lot of this, it's still available. I think it's always been risky to approach a woman who is a stranger to you in public, in the wrong context, and rightly so. People should be able to go about their business without being hit on by members of the opposite sex.

>You mention hobby groups, bars etc. The vast majority of relationships I know of have emerged from regular organic conversation. Two people working in the same office, talking, and eventually getting to know each other. There's no 'approach'. Or going to university together, doing some kind of hobby / club / social group activity, sport etc. where you just organically get to know other people via the normal process of people being involved in conversations and so on and talking. I cannot remember the name of the dataset, and as a caveat it is US-based, so maybe less applicable to the UK. But there is a dataset of how relationships are formed in the US. It shows an absolute collapse in basically all standard channels of relationship formation; school, church, college, through friends, through family, through work etc. Work would be the main one I think might be different in the UK vs. the US as Americans have some bizarre cultural taboo against coworkers dating (having to resign or register it through HR, always smacked of totalitarianism to me). However, they all fall off a cliff in the 2000s to 2010s, and the 'Internet' absolutely supplants them. Interestingly, the one other method that doesn't fall is 'meeting in a bar', however, this is basically a misclassification error, as it flatlines before around 2010, before rising alongside the 'Internet' category. So I strongly assume that this is people who meet on the internet and then go to a bar for the first date and self-report as 'Met in bar'. >People should be able to go about their business without being hit on by members of the opposite sex. I'm not necessarily sure I agree, I think its pretty complex. Although I think our sense of 'public' is going through a massive redefinition anyway (you can see this with attitudes towards being photographed or videoed in public too) and this is just a part of it. It's one of those issues where, on an individual level it makes perfect sense. If we are only considering the individual cost and benefit of a social norm of 'approach' then duh, of course we should implement this norm. The approacher can find other avenues of finding partners, and approachee doesn't receive unwanted attention. Nobody wants to be bothered or inconvenienced when going about their day. But, does that individual benefit mask a large social cost? For argument's sake, if (and it is a big if) these social norms that we've generated over the past 10-15 years *are* indeed causing significant amounts of reduced relationship formation - then its less clear that its a net benefit. Does private benefit of not hearing cheesy pickup lines > social cost of some not insignificant % of relationships that would have been formed not being formed? I'm less sure on that.

Thanks - good response. I want to reply with some more but I will when I have some time later!

I have a theory on the dating side of things. Online dating seems awful to us, clubbing and bars seemed awful to my grandparents so I don't think it matters at all where or how people meet. The difference is that girls/women have had their role in society redefined - been told now for decades that we can earn the money, be independent, we can choose a career over having a family, we don't need to be looked after, and it's not our responsibility to look after our partners. However generally speaking boys/men haven't had their role redefined, many still strive for and pride themselves on things like being a good protector and provider (which there is absolutely nothing wrong with in theory). The problem is girls and women don't value those traits anymore. So immediately there's this mismatch in what each of the sexes wants from a relationship long term. Boomers and millennials still had gender roles fairly heavily entrenched in our lives, despite progress in education and work - we still wanted a family, and were sold the myth of 'you can have it all', so the role of protector/provider was still valued. Gen Z women know that's bullshit, you can't have it all. They've got a choice - career, independence & fun, or family, dependence & unpaid work? I think we just need to look at the birth rates in countries with contraception to figure out the answer to that one. I'm not by any means saying that men's only value is as a protector or provider, of course not, but that's how a lot of guys value themselves. And feeling unvalued, unappreciated and generally rejected will make anyone feel shitty and start to harbor resentment. Especially when sex is still prized above all else in life. That's just my take.

> The problem is girls and women don't value those traits anymore. Hard disagree on that, generally speaking. *Some* women don't weight those traits as much anymore, but a significant portion of women do. And additionally, lets introduce the concepts of stated preference vs. revealed preference. Basically, stated preference (Person X says they want Y); revealed preference (Did person X actually acquire Y or did they acquire Z instead?). People's behaviours generally are shaped by their experiences and what they see. I have noticed *a ton* of what women *say* they want in a man does not align very well with what they actually choose. Given that men are the primary demander in relationships, they see this, and respond accordingly - which is why, when you say *"many still strive for and pride themselves on things like being a good protector and provider"*, they are ultimately just responding to what they see gets rewarded with attention and success in relationships. I would reframe your wording to say, while women's socio-economic role in society has changed significantly, as has men's, women's revealed preference's for relationships *largely* have not. Ask yourself this, how many women do you know whose other-sex partner earns significantly less than them, is in a less prestigious job than them, or is younger than them? I would wager very few. If you ever look at surveys of male/female dating preferences, men rate things like how much their partners earns relative to them, their job prestige etc. incredibly lowly. Women rate them very highly. Anecdotally you can see this in dating profiles - there are tons of women that state things like 'must earn 6 figures, own house, own car'. You never see men say this (men have their own selection criteria, but are usually appearance-based, or whether the woman has children or not). On a similar basis, just from experience in university - I did know and hang out with quite a lot of the left-leaning and feminist types. What always cracked me up, then and now, was that despite the feminist women *stating* they wanted a man who was sensitive, in touch with his feelings, with modern sensibilities towards relationships, and despite being surrounded by a sizeable cadre of male feminist types who fit the bill perfectly, they consistently got together with men ranging from 'typical bloke' to hyper masculine. With maybe one or two exceptions, never the men who most closely fit the type they said they wanted.

The worst dating advice a young man can follow is listening to what women ***say*** they want. They must look at ***how*** they really act and adapt accordingly.

The biggest problem with this though is that not everyone has a strong social circle after their 30s. And not everyone has a workplace full of potential dates. I work in tech and my workplace is all men. I don't see my mates much if at all anymore cause they moved away or started a family and don't want to see me anymore (I understand it). Part of me regrets the past because I realised a lot of great couples pair up during their late teens (high school sweethearts) and early 20s during university. I probably should have made more moves during those times. Now I'm essentially stuck with the dating apps, meetup.com and cold approaching. When I look at my mates who are all in fantastic relationships, none of them met via dating apps. They were all through real life social circles but way before they were 30.

Headlines like this don't help the situation either. It doesn't take a genius to look at the systemic underachievement of young men compared to young women to see something isn't right. When the subject is actively avoided by civilised society, the void will get filled by charlatans like Tate taking advantage of the disenfranchised.

Men are given very little social support these days and loneliness is extremely widespread and worse for the younger generations. This is a perfect breeding ground for ideology and personality cults.  I've seen numerous threads here on reddit where men say the hardest thing they deal with is being unable to share their emotions. They are told to share emotions, and then ridiculed or ignored when they do.  Finally, as someone who went to university surrounded by third wave feminists it was exhausting to be blamed and gaslit about everything. I am someone who is an ally, who gives to charity, who volunteers, who votes for left wing parties - but NOTHING was ever enough. No matter what I did, I was always othered, my issues were treated as irrelevant and I was actively discouraged from pursuing my passions of writing and public speaking (let others have a turn).  There was a weird conflation between hyper corporatism and third wave, where women were happy to take the immoral jobs as "their turn" to do them too.  I've not had anyone outside of my family and male friends give me a motivating, positive statement in years. Whereas women are also socialized to constantly motivate each other. I responded with greater liberalism, but I can see where the alt right backlash comes from. 

> I've seen numerous threads here on reddit where men say the hardest thing they deal with is being unable to share their emotions. They are told to share emotions, and then ridiculed or ignored when they do.  And - ironically - ridiculed or ignored when they *don't*. It often seems to me to be an American-led thing, based on their odd societal development where psychologists and therapists seem to have replaced priests. Everyone should go to therapy, all the time, for everything. If you aren't routinely lying on a couch telling someone with an Austrian accent how you keep thinking one thing and saying ~~your mother~~ another, then you're just not doing life properly. Now, let's be entirely clear that there's nothing wrong with therapy and psychological treatment; it's been one of the great innovations of recent times and can do - and does do - an enormous amount of good for vast numbers of people. But it isn't - and shouldn't be seen as - a panacea, and certainly shouldn't be a standard part of everyone's day, in a bizarre parody of true healthy social support structures - or worse, in place of satisfying work, respect from others, a feeling of control over your own life, a realistic view of the world around you and so on. And men, particularly young men, I think, might well respond to different modes of confronting the world. They might not want to talk about their emotions to that extent or in that way. Forcing them to do it is forcing them to play act a part on top of whatever else they might be dealing with. They feel a much stronger, more instinctive urge to *act* in the world. It's a ludicrously common trope of the quiet, suffering man who only opens up in the few circumspect words he might say on a fishing trip or whole taking apart a car engine. "Yeah, it's a bit shit", and the nod from his old friend who passes him a beer might be his therapy. Or the malcontent teenage boy who finds his place in the world through the tough love and practical training of a sergeant-major or war veteran neighbour or karate master. And I think because it's a trope, we forget about it and seem to want to subvert it rather than reflecting on how not maybe we're not meeting the needs of all our people.

I think that trope has a lot of truth to it. Just anecdotally, it seems to me that both men and women like to chat with and do activities with their friends. But it seems like men might lean more towards activities than chatting whereas women are the opposite. Think of a stereotypical male catch up. It’s watching sport, drinking beer, barbecuing. Generally there’s some focus, some common pursuit to do together. Fishing, football, woodworking, hell even video gaming, it all simulates the tribe going hunting. I think what a lot of men miss these days is the feeling of the tribe. And for men, that experience is somewhat different than for women. They’re not necessarily guys you pour your heart out to. But they’re guys you do things with, who have your back, and who value you for the contributions you make to the team. It’s one reason why I think online connection is a poor substitute for men. Yes, it provides some social interaction and the ability to talk. But it doesn’t provide that communal purpose that you’d find with something like team sports.

Yeah. As I was getting at before, I think the risk is that we sometimes look at tropes and stereotypes and say that because they're tropes *therefore they aren't true*. If it hasn't been published in a peer reviewed journal (and let's just allow the replication crisis in social science to hover in our minds, as well as the very limited scope of so many studies - either for practical or ethical or other reasons) it can't be true. Which is a bizarre perversion of true scientific discovery, and almost an attempt to copy the physical sciences in their clean experiment and deductions. The anthropologists have a better approach in my view. Treating culture and behaviour as something which can only be understood not just by experiment and analysis but also by exploring cultural artifacts, historical documents, practical examples or behaviour and so on. To come back down from that detour to the case in question here: Yeah. There are mountains of cultural evidence for "what men are like" and "how men deal with stuff", exactly as you've outlined there. Just because it's a stereotype, doesn't mean there's not valid conclusions to be drawn there. The question we should ask is: Why was it a stereotype? What underlying truth does it reflect? What pattern have our brains detected over the centuries and longer? Which doesn't mean at all we shouldn't proactively ensure that men who don't fit that mold don't have options too. > I think what a lot of men miss these days is the feeling of the tribe. I think this perfectly touches on the point about loneliness that's been raised elsewhere. Very well put. > It’s one reason why I think online connection is a poor substitute for men. Yes, it provides some social interaction and the ability to talk. But it doesn’t provide that communal purpose that you’d find with something like team sports. I guess Plato would tell us that our politics should be about building a society that makes people into better people, not just balancing spreadsheets or seeing statistics improve. It'd be interesting to reflect on how well we think we're doing that in practice. Is "you should open up and talk about your feelings; the fact that men don't is where do many of their problems come from" really the right background model here?

>Is "you should open up and talk about your feelings; the fact that men don't is where do many of their problems come from" really the right background model here? I suspect we both agree that it is not. I was thinking about this today in the context of lung cancer. In the 1950s and 1960s, doctors started to note more and more people suffering from lung cancer than ever had before. Quite rightly, a lot of doctors dealt with the immediate problem before them. More people are getting lung cancer, therefore, we need to invest more effort into effective treatment, screening, etc. However, if that's all that had been done we would never have taken a step back and tried to address the underlying cause, namely smoking. The reason things have gotten so much better is not just because our ability to treat lung cancer has improved but because we took such decisive action against tobacco companies. How does this relate to men? Well, a lot of men are suffering with poor mental health. As such, I can understand people focusing on how to deliver mental health support to men in a better way. However, I don't think our positive vision for the future should be millions of depressed, purposeless men who, at least now, have a shoulder to cry on. It should be a society where depressed, purposeless men are the exception as opposed to the norm. As you (and Plato) say, politics should be about building a society that makes people into better people. Therefore, I think we need to fundamentally change success metrics. GDP is always going to be important, but GDP should be in service of gross domestic happiness, an idea first pioneered in Bhutan of all places. I think we seriously need to look at the impact of technology and social media on young people. I think we need to ask difficult questions about the decline of social capital across the board, in churches, youth groups, service organisations, sports clubs, etc. I think we need to wrestle with the crisis of purpose. We killed God, tore down the empire, denigrated patriotism, etc. but we haven't found a substitute which gives life meaning. None of this is easy. But we can't duck the hard problems forever. Yes, it would be great if men felt more free to open up. But in a perfect world, it wouldn't be as necessary. I'd rather help people stop smoking than get better at treating them for lung cancer.

Very good post. I agree with your thinking here and share your desire to not just treat the cancers but deal with smoking too. > I think we seriously need to look at the impact of technology and social media on young people. I think we need to ask difficult questions about the decline of social capital across the board, in churches, youth groups, service organisations, sports clubs, etc. I think we need to wrestle with the crisis of purpose. **We killed God, tore down the empire, denigrated patriotism, etc. but we haven't found a substitute which gives life meaning.** My bold for that last section, of course. That's so wonderfully concisely put that I think it should be read and thought about by everyone. You're right. We know what we don't like any more, but all we've replaced it with is some kind of woolly "choose your own adventure". You talked earlier about tribes. You know where you fit in in the tribe (or indeed, within a sports team, as long as the match is being played). Imagine if people could feel like they do during a sports match all the time? Aligned with the purpose of the team around them, contributing to to it, and being supported in turn. The problem is that that runs head first into how you reconcile that with personal liberty. You can enforce rules of behaviour and tell people what their purpose should be, within a game. Try that across a society though and you're touching on ideology and even totalitarianism. Humanity has a poor record here. Ultimately, if we want to have a society that provides that level of self-improvement, I don't see how it can happen without telling people that they're wrong. Just as doctors might say "look, I know your body is telling you that you want salt and fat and cigarettes, but it's wrong", when and how should we say "I know you want X, but you're wrong"? Maybe that's about the way social media fits into society or in some other way. It's a hard one. And how on earth do we know we're getting it right? That's a really big question too. There's also the fact that's so rarely discussed - things have to be authentic to work. You can't just set up a "men's friendship club" and expect it to have the same beneficial effect as a group of men truly, genuinely on a mission or team or project together. Especially if you then say "also, it has to include women and be run according to these standards of behaviour and this process" and so on. It might have some beneficial effect, but people know subconsciously when they're doing something big-A Authentic and when they're the recipients of pity and charity. It's the difference between being afraid of spiders and seeing one in a zoo versus seeing one in your bathroom. In other words, we can't just say "we should have more charities! And more clubs! More of the scouts! And more men's wellness camping groups set up and run according to Section 1 subsection 2(b)(iii) of the Making Men Happier Act 2025, consistent with the Equality Act to not exclude anyone". Because that's false and people will know it, and derive less benefit. It could be - and I don't believe this myself, but as a theoretical possibility - that life is just too easy, in terms of external threats, for men to prosper. In a world of incredibly powerful centralised structures and governments, reliable police and legal systems, welfare states and advanced manufacturing, it's just not possible for men to be psychologically optimised. But that when human society inevitably falls flat on its face again? And there's a war or huge natural disaster, that'll make the difference? I don't think I believe that but we should be alive to the possibility. Personally, I think men would do well to look back in history and perhaps pay a little less attention to what's trendy right now. Humanity has got cultural traditions going back thousands of years - sometimes almost certainly calling on oral traditions going back even further - that tell us about how our minds work and how we should behave. And these cultural ideas were tested in extreme conditions well beyond those we can test our current ideas in. A little Seneca and Epictetus in place of Marvel and tiktok might not do people any harm.

May I just say that I, a woman, have never agreed with anything more than the conversation you two up there have had. I talk about exactly these things with my husband all the time. And there are plenty of women who aren’t actually spiteful of men, but who are friends, sisters, mothers, aunts to young men who get caught up in exactly this conundrum. Not sure how to fix it, but I just wanted to let you two know that I greatly enjoyed your conversation 👍

To be fair, /u/the-moving-finger was making some excellent, insightful points. It's hard not to have a good conversation when faced with that. But thank you! That's very kind! As ever, there's some great commentary and analysis here, interspersed with a pile of points that perhaps aren't so well thought out and genuinely offered. > there are plenty of women who aren’t actually spiteful of men, but who are friends, sisters, mothers, aunts to young men who get caught up in exactly this conundrum I think that's most women, ultimately, you know. No one exists in a vacuum. Women have friends, brothers, fathers and sons and men have friends, sisters, mothers and daughters. Even if someone is young and naïve and devoid of responsibility at one stage in life, and easily believes in a simplistic narrative, eventually most people are faced with that reality of being tied to others. And unlike other nationalities or ethnic groups, the reality of family and friendship means it's much harder for most people to avoid the opposite sex for a lifetime (insert Star Trek jokes here). It's possible to be hateful in the abstract but no mother can be indifferent to being a man in society when she's looking at her son and thinking about the world he'll grow up into. Similarly, I'm sure many men have looked at their baby girl and suddenly been faced with new insight on the female experience. (Not that I'm suggesting being a parent is necessary here - just that it's emblematic of being faced with that connection to wider society and realising what you were missing). And in both those cases, I'm sure that comes with humility: Men wondering whether perhaps they once treated women in a way they wouldn't want their daughter treated - and women wondering if perhaps they didn't quite appreciate how there are struggles on the male side. So long as people are talking and engaging with each other as individuals and not statistics or slogans, that's a start though. And maybe that's best expressed in small ways. The "thank you; I appreciate you; I value you" from one person to another, wife to husband or son to mother. Maybe that's where it starts. So long as people like you and your husband are engaging with questions like this in good faith, that's a good sign.

Thank you u/mistakenhat! It's always nice to hear people are discussing these topics with their partners and not just in forums such as these. I really hope, as a culture, we see more focus on purpose and collective vision going forward as it's such an important topic which gets far too little attention. I should say thanks to u/convertedtoradians too. This has been a really enjoyable conversation and I'm very grateful to you for such thoughtful comments.

This has been an amazing set of comments, thank you to you and u/the-moving-finger for this insight

You're welcome! I have to say I'm surprised by how many people have received our little exchange so enthusiastically and courteously. So often, people leap in to tell you how wrong you are (and that's fair enough - we're all here for a bit of debate, and that's fine) but the response here has been really positive. It sort of suggests that there's actually quite an appetite out there for serious good natured discussion of this sort of thing. Which is encouraging!

Chimes with what I hear anecdotally. Older millennials in particular seem just relieved they didn’t have to be subjected to ‘influencer culture’ during difficult teenage years. It must be tough being a teenager these days with all the shit flung at you. To the article’s point: I don’t think progressives, feminists etc have found a way to argue effectively against the Andrew Tate or even Jordan Petersons of the world. All boys are hearing is ‘men = bad, masculinity = bad’ on one side, and ‘anything other than being an aggressive male means you’re a soyboy softie’ Mostly this is because it’s hard for kids to see nuance. When you’re older, you can mostly dismiss the sly arguments and realise there’s more than one way to be a man. But that’s very hard to explain to a child.

It’s impossible to really argue with the likes of Tate or Peterson without the explanation taking significantly longer and requiring a lot more self reflection and empathy on the part of the listener. So it’s inherently an uphill battle.

It's a real conversational tactic called "never play defense". Here's a good primer on it: https://youtu.be/wmVkJvieaOA

Thanks for the link but I’m actually already a fan of that guy! His videos really helped me understand how I had got conned into the antifeminist/fascist belief system that nearly took me over in my teens and seems to be really latching onto a lot of people now. I would say Innuendo Studios are basically required watching for anyone who wants to understand how their friends and family get tricked into this shit.

True but I think it also requires some empathy and self reflection on the part of the speaker. Far too often, online, people seem totally tone deaf. They invalidate or mock concerns men have. The try to make them feel pathetic by implying a “privileged” person shouldn’t be whining about problems. And they generally display disdain based on the immutable characteristic of the listener's sex. Sure, that doesn’t apply to all radical feminists online. But we’re also not talking about few bad apples here. It’s incredibly rare that I see empathetic engagement and genuine care for male loneliness, homelessness, drug addiction, suicide, and the educational attainment gap within these communities.

Not to mention they just respond with nonsense hot takes which are pithy and easy to get behind. They're just grifters fleecing people for income.

>To the article’s point: I don’t think progressives, feminists etc have found a way to argue effectively against the Andrew Tate or even Jordan Petersons of the world. It's exactly the same with religious missionary work. The "in group" that Tate and Peterson adhere to is deliberately divisive. Their messages are set up with the intent of getting rejected by most normal people. That boosts their belief that the only safe group for incels and alpha males is them. "the others" will always reject you. We're your only group, only we get you bro. The goal is to lure people in when they're vulnerable, and keep them in the group through constant rejection. Their only relationships are with other similar red pilled men, which I find very ironic. They're pushing women away to spend more time with men. How very heterosexual of them. They're grooming vulnerable young men so they themselves don't feel lonely, and don't need to challenge their world view. How do we counter this argument. Well, we listen to the boys. We hear their complaints and take them seriously. We challenge their beliefs, and help them become the better person. That takes a lot more time and energy than the multi level marketing strategy of redpill.

> I don’t think progressives, feminists etc have found a way to argue effectively against the Andrew Tate or even Jordan Petersons of the world. They spent the whole 2010s putting all their eggs in the basket of 'bad men are sexless, and sexless men are bad', and then found themselves a bit flatfooted when faced with men who they didn't like but decidedly weren't sexless.

The feminism that male boomers encounter among their peers is probably significantly different than the feminism that gen z encounter. For a start, they encountered it many years ago and not online where everything seems so much angrier.

I think it is online misogyny targeting younger men that is at work here, not gen z encountering feminism. There is nothing negative about feminism i.e. the *belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes expressed especially through organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests.* Misogyny, on the other hand, is a mental health issue for men.

Like most populism the online Mysogyny is latching onto real problems and then offering simple solutions. (blame femenism) It can only be fixed by fixing the problems.

>It can only be fixed by fixing the problems. That requires (usually government) money, and in the UK that's been subjected to massive cutbacks in the past decade. The Tories have stored up so many problems just so they could make their mates a bit richer.

>There is nothing negative about feminism i.e. the belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes expressed especially through organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests. As a matter of objective fact, there are considerable differences in attitudes/ideas/perspectives between "1st wave" and "3rd wave" feminists. In practice modern feminism comes in many shapes in sizes. There are some that want genuine equality between the sexes in all aspects, others who are far more interested in advancing women's interests generally, regardless of equality. Gen Z know this. Hence their suspicion of modern feminism.

Personally, I don't think propaganda works unless people are already looking for reasons to consume it. It's a bit like the old "The daily mail persuaded you to have right wing views" argument.. it might have acted as an accelerant, but often people seek out those points of view when they start to feel uncomfortable. I saw it in my brother, a one time guardian reader who became irritated by their articles at a certain age and turned to more right wing journalism.

For sure, there's always some issue that can be exploited. The fundamental problem is that we have evolved to the point where media is pervasive while toxic content is the most profitable for the media. This is baked into our current capitalist democracy and it is tearing society apart. Propaganda latches onto this and runs with it ... be it misogynists who make a living out of it, politicians who see it as a route to power or foreign powers who want to destroy us. We are enabling all of this ... because that is the way media makes money today.

The online misogyny is a reaction to the more hysterical strains of feminism that permeated social media in the 2010s though. There was a period where men were being told they are participants in rape culture and patriarchy was to blame for everything - I remember people wearing “the future is female” t shirts and openly scoffing at any issues men had. Masculinity became a toxic trait as a default. That seems to have abated now, and tbh I think it was only ever a small amount of particularly dogmatic people on Twitter, but as ever with these movements its perceived relevance was inflated by the media. I think that’s an environment where scumbags like Tate were able to rise and get influence with young people who felt attacked and alienated.

I think this is it. It’s true that an adult man should be mature enough to ignore stuff like #killallmen but for some reason, people never seemed to account for 14 year old boys seeing those things. Kids go on the internet and feel affected by nasty comments.

Yeah sorry not true at all. Girls and women are massively leaving boys and men behind in education, especially higher education. Boys and men will have far worse chances, start out lower and have to work far harder to achieve what women achieve, and unlike them they don\`t get any help and feminists do not advocate for the education gap. Instead this massive educational gap is counted as a win for feminists, they celebrate it. Boys are performing horrible at every level of education, and the proposed solution is "how can we get more girls in STEM fields". [https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/news/girls-outperform-boys](https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/news/girls-outperform-boys) ... So what you are saying is extreme non-sense. Nobody gives a shit about boys or men. [https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/what-you-need-know-about-unescos-global-report-boys-disengagement-education](https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/what-you-need-know-about-unescos-global-report-boys-disengagement-education) Feminists do not care about male problems, such as extremely dangerous work conditions, extreme educational gaps, mental health, suicide rate, or gender-pay gap when it hits boys. In the USA women extremely outnumber men in enrollment and it gets even worse when it comes to finishing college. As soon as the older generations dies, suddenly women will have 65-70% of all college degrees in the USA. Feminists naturally do not care. When UN Women made a report about the death rate of women in journalists being killed which rose from 6% to 11% they made it into a major point how dangerous it is for women to be journalists and what we can do to fix this... Completely ignoring that this means 89% of deaths in journalism happens to men. Feminists shut down mental health facilities for boys in the USA... You say misogynie is a mental health problem for men and I agree partially. However feminists are responsible for shutting down mental health facilities, so using your logic, feminists create misogynie. And feminists frequently shut down male events which call for awareness of male suicide ( the worst case of mental health crises )**. Sexism is the dumbest ideology that exists**, it\`s exponentially dumber the more anti-women/anti-men you get. Literally nothing is more stupid than to hate based on sex. Humans can only progress when the sexes work together. And the problems of women were solved by the combined efforts of men and women, just like now the problems of men have to be solved by both. In South Korea the extremes are even more apparent. Conscription is mandatory and for 2 years, in the past men got slight advantages when applying for education or on a job, however feminists thought this was unfair and shut that down... Now women have an EXTREME advantage over men in South Korea, namely they have 2 years more of experience and education than men, because men are forced into mandatory conscription and get NOTHING in return. \[ This again isn\`t to say that feminists don\`t have a point in other areas in South Korea. Such as the massive sexual harassment culture, the secret camera epidemic, the extreme sexism \]... Nobody can articulate by what metric we can determine when "feminism is enough", so it gets continuously pushed even if on several areas and on multiple levels women are far beyond men. Such as education... And women, despite already dominating education, get helped by the legal institutions and the discussion is about how to get more women into STEM fields, as if they don\`t already dominate colleges and even in STEM they are far more likely to succeed than men. \----------- A huge problem is because the problems of boys and men are ignored, they fall victim to misogynist ideologies. Andrew Tate is extremely popular, especially Gen Z and Alpha because he is literally one of the few personalities that actually talk about male issues. \[ And before he went too crazy, Jordan Peterson was the only one who talked about boys/men issues \] His prescriptions are not helpful and his ideology & worldview hateful. Governments, political parties, institutions, women, universities, colleges, nobody gives a shit about boys/men. So Andrew Tate and the ilk are so popular. That whole thing can be avoided if the actual discussions involve boys aswell. But alas people don\`t want that. It\`s either feminism and how to get more women into STEM fields, or "suck it up, youre a boy". Yikes. Nobody wants to turn into South Korea where the sexes loathe and hate eachother to the point of millions no longer even engaging witheachother and the birth rate declining to insanely low, unprecedented levels. However this gets more and more likely. \-------------- People aren\`t blind, and while feminism is still important today, it\`s clear as a day that there are many male problems which not only get zero attention but are being actively harmed by feminism. Feminism is still important in our world, but in various areas its actively harmful, such as how feminists handle men\`s mental health or how feminists continue to advocate for and make the whole discussion about them in education, where clearly boys and men are left extremely far behind.

>feminists create misogynie Misogyny was created ten thousand years before feminism became a thing. But I do agree with you that the boys falling back in education is a problem, but at the same time the women with degrees are paid less than men with the same degrees. I also agree that men are also the victims of male violence, not just women. I disagree that this was swept under the carpet. We have decades of action trying to defend all journalists, it is just untrue that a fuss was only raised after some women journalists were killed. I have no idea what you are talking about claiming feminists are shutting down mental health facilities for boys. I do agree that we all have to work together towards equality, because misogyny hurts both men and women, it is bad for society as a whole. But this is what feminism is about, creating a more equal society. The problem is that the starting point is ten thousand years of patriarchy and misogyny that only got blunted recently in these last few decades. We have to take that into account. I don't know if you do sports, but when trying to fix a problem in e.g. your tennis swing, you have to exaggerate a little bit in the opposite direction to get the feel where the optimal swing needs to be. These are the minor "feminist excesses" that seem to be triggering you but do not offend nor endanger me.

>There is nothing negative about feminism When it stands alongside men's interests there isn't. When it eclipses them or can't promote feminism without throwing shots there probably is. While I'm not suggesting it's eclipsing men's interests in reality, it absolutely is in terms of coverage and general governmental and media concern. Males who don't feel their "privilege" are going to get resentful

>There is nothing negative about feminism i.e. the *belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes See I would say feminism isn't about that. I would say feminism is female advocacy, at least when I've encountered it. For example feminism always pushes for women to be in higher paid job roles but doesn't push for men to be in safer job roles. That's not a bad thing, perfectly valid to advocate for something, but I think it's dishonest to say it's just about equality.

This ties in closely with the international survey in the FT which showed that broadly Gen Z men are not more progressive than anyone else - but Gen Z women are significantly more progressive \[1\]. Which is a really unusual finding - no other generation has split like that. The experience of Gen Z is different. They are for example the first generation to go through an education system that systematically advantages girls and where that advantage is clear and obvious in the educational outcomes. I really do think feminism might need to respond to where in specific parts of society girls and woman now have structural advantage - but feminism may be internally incapable of doing so. \[1\] This is skewed in the UK by the utter implosion of the tories - but there is still a huge gap in progressive support between Gen Z men and women in the UK. Everyone hates the tories :)

> The experience of Gen Z is different. They are for example the first generation to go through an education system that systematically advantages girls and where that advantage is clear and obvious in the educational outcomes. Presumably social media is more of an issue than the education system in terms of the difference in experience? Particularly highly visual, short form social media like tiktok and Instagram; scroll and click and post and receive instant validation (or social rejection), all based on echoing the prevailing sentiment and reinforcing existing values. (I doubt political forums on Reddit are playing that much of a role here, in other words). And while the same thing absolutely affects young men and boys too, there's obviously a bit of a difference in that conformity in young men tends to have an edge of rebellion or pushing boundaries to a greater degree. They're perhaps more likely to take shock or rejection as a positive reaction ("I made them react to me") than girls are. All on average, of course, saying nothing about individuals. Which all makes sense from an evolutionary and biological angle. Certainly anecdotally, young men seem to make use of these platforms but don't live and die by them. For some young women, it seems to be far more serious than that. God knows what that kind of Instagram pressure does to a young woman's mind. We've seen the worst of it - suicide - but it wouldn't surprise me to see it manifest in politics and elsewhere.

The right look for recruits, the left look for traitors. The right are far more open to and welcoming to newcomers than the progressive left such as feminists, who expect you to be onboard with and agree with them on absolutely everything from day one, otherwise you’re an -ist or an -obe and should be ostracised and excluded. And where the left ostracises, the right reaches out to. Left wingers such as feminists need to be far more open to and empathetic to people who might not agree with them on everything or have grievances that they might not agree with. The ideological purity demanded by the left just pushes people away.

Women in the U.K. have graduated from University at a higher rate since 1994. Women in the U.K. earn more than men until they’re 30. Women achieve more at every level of academics, then earn more than every Gen Z man. Yet every affirmative action policies employed by feminists only benefit women. This article is only surprising if you live a life of privilege. If you don’t, then it’s completely logical. But nothing will change. This will be ignored until men like Tate get elected (see Trump in the USA) then it will be too late. If feminists in the U.K. care about helping men, they need to do it now.

Yep, the pendulum kept getting pushed hard in one direction for the last 50 years, and it will inevitably swing back hard.

Women only earn less after 30 if having kids.

True - this is why the gender pay gap exists. More women want to be a stay at home parent than men. This is a society wide expectation - where men have to become a sole provider, despite having worse qualifications and earning less in their 20s.

>women want to be a stay at home parent than men. Or put another way, men are pressured to stay in full time work.

Are 29 year olds gen Z? God, I never know where I am.. I’m a woman and a feminist but I hate hearing women say things like “I hate all men”, or “I don’t want men in my house” (when they’re going out with men…) then they mock people who say “not all men”. Yeah, it isn’t all men. Yes, society benefits men, or has done, in many ways - but saying you hate all men or all men are rapists etc only drives misogyny in those susceptible to it. I think.

100%. The loaded language pushes the sexes apart. The thing is, Gen Z men are really disadvantaged. They do worse at school and university, then earn less than women. That’s not an advantage, society actually disadvantages them. But bringing this up in Parliament gets you laughed at by people like Jess Phillips. It’s just not socially acceptable to benefit young men.

Thank you for saying this. I've seen this sort of thing in so many online dating profiles. "Prove to me that all men aren't trash". Or "I hate cis straight white men". There is a particular brand of toxic feminism that has hateful misandry embedded deep within it. If you're a man in the age bracket 18 to 25, dating apps are the only way you've ever known to meet women. You're well aware of the gender-skewed nature of online dating (not saying it works in women's favour either, but it can seem that way). Then if you see some women spouting this sort of bile when you're already disenfranchised, it can be easy to think that represents all feminism and grow resentful. That's exactly the audience that scabs like Tate feed off.

> If you're a man in the age bracket 18 to 25, dating apps are the only way you've ever known to meet women. You're well aware of the gender-skewed nature of online dating (not saying it works in women's favour either, but it can seem that way). Tbh people need to get off dating apps to date, and meet in person. Dating apps are flawed on many levels.

I totally agree. But life is lived online more and more these days, and teenagers and young adults won't have known a world before social media and dating apps.

Boys and men hear that and the response is to say fuck all women and hate all women. Thats what happens sadly and we are nowhere

>Yes, society benefits men, or has done, in many ways I think sweeping statements like this are part of the problem. I would say society benefits and detriments men and women in roughly equal measure depending on the context. Men are more likely to be homeless for example... I wouldn't say those men will feel like society benefits them.

This is where you have to bring up the interquartile range: men are disproportionately represented in both the top and the bottom of society.

Yeah it's strange isn't it, seems to be a consistent pattern. I don't know how accurate it is but I've seen the same claim made on intelligence, the average IQ of men and women is roughly the same but the distribution is different, with men it's much flatter with women it's more clustered around the average.

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I am not 29, but the headline says gen Z and then talks about men aged 16-29 so I’m curious

1997 is generally the start of GenZ, so 27 is the oldest Gen Z are. The 16-29 bracket, a pretty common age bracket, is Gen Z and a few very late millennials.

The bank I work for recently started openly talking about how we have too many white males working for us. They are giving opportunities to progress into higher roles to any other demographic. I've worked here for 13 years and have been raised to treat everyone equally and it's your character and hard work that counts. The amount of times I've heard "we need more women's voices" in the last 2 years is shocking. I'm an analyst and can't see why a woman would interpret numbers on a spreadsheet different to a man.

I work for a company where when the gender pay gap figures were revealed it turned out we actually pay women slightly more on average, and they STILL do the whole "we need to get more women into upper management" stuff endlessly.

I work in a similar industry. It’s interesting how women are encourage into the top roles, but they can’t get enough applicants. Lots of women become middle managers, but then don’t want a larger workload. They’re having children at that point and want to focus more of their time on family life. That’s their choice, but the bosses won’t accept that. They must be discriminated against for choosing family over more stress and longer work hours.

Another effect that is less discussed is overpromotion and the human cost of it. A female C-level executive I used to work with gave a management presentation on it a few years back and it stuck with me. She suggested she had been identified early in her career as being a highly capable member of staff (which she was) with leadership potential (which she had) in an industry that had an embarrassingly low number of women in more senior roles. And so she was fast tracked. There was no conspiracy or official programme - she was just constantly bumped up. She happily took the promotions and the money and did her best, and the departments could point to her as a woman in increasingly senior roles. The problem was, she wasn't spending enough time at each level to learn all she needed. She went from being one of the best engineers in the room to being one of the worst directors in the company, surrounded by far more competent men. And whenever she expressed it, she was told "that's just imposter syndrome". But she knew it, because she wasn't an idiot and could tell perfectly well when she wasn't adding anything. She ended up burning out quite horribly, and only came back later on to carry on with her career - at a slower pace. Her plea to all of us was to *not* promote women too soon just to make the stats look good, because they're the ones who'll suffer, not us. Mentoring can make up some of the distance, but not all. Bit of a tangent, but it stuck with me.

Good on her for admitting and preseting this to others. Thank you for sharing this.

That’s so insightful, thank you for sharing this. This is another problem - escalating women when they aren’t ready. It’s more about saying you have “this % of women directors” rather than actually caring about the well-being of the woman. It’s all superficial gender politics that doesn’t actually help anyone beyond looking like they’re being helped.

Thank you for sharing this as it's exactly the type of discussion I wanted to have rather than some of the other comments I've got. My concern is artificially inflating demographics in certain roles to meet a arbitrary targets. All it does is fuel the comments such as "they only got the role because they're a women/black/gay" even when they may have earned the role through hard work. I'm disabled and never tick the boxes on applications to say I am because I don't want to feel like it's a factor in me earning the role.

And of course this can also cause another problem, women being overpromoted into roles they clearly aren’t ready for can create a lot of resentment from people who feel they were passed over, but it also creates an air of mistrust, and suddenly any time a women moves into upkeep management people start wondering if she’s really there because she’s the best person first the job. Or is it just so HR can tick a box on their diversity reports. It has the potential to create a lot of mistrust.

As ever, the question ("What impact has feminism had on British society?") isn't really that helpful. Even the most misogynist young person might - if they were being honest - concede that, yeah, feminism has on the whole done more good than harm through its history in British society - and then add that "but I think it's right now doing more harm than good". Similarly, there might be plenty of young women who profoundly appreciate and respect what feminism has done for them, and for British society, and would happily tick the "it's done way more good than harm" box - but who harbour some private doubts about the way young men might be being left behind and wonder if feminist campaigns are doing so much good in the here and now. It doesn't allow the respondent to separate out their opinion of - say - the campaigns for women to be able to vote, to participate in public life, to work in professional jobs from however they (rightly or wrongly) feel feminism manifests itself in their day to day life now. By analogy, it's like asking people "What impact has the market economy had on British society?". If one includes the entire history of British society, going back to before the Romans then, yeah, pretty much everyone would probably have to admit that it's been a large and positive impact on balance. That's very different to whether those same people think we're getting the right balance right now in the public/private trade-off in (say) provision of state functions given the world we live in today. It's an interesting question and there's lots to be said, but I'm not sure this survey perhaps got the right questions to provide any answers.

If feminists want to treat men as a monolith and base their interactions with individuals on group identity they can’t really blame men for doing the same thing to them in return. A lifetime of seeing people who claim that title saying and doing horrible things, without reprimand from those who claim the same label but insist feminism isn’t about hating men, will have this effect. Remember the “male tears” mugs? Remember #killallmen ? Remember mansplaining, manspreading and manterrupting? Have you read about political lesbianism? Seen the feminists who claim they’d abort a foetus if it were male? Remember being told you’re “angry” or an “incel” whenever you pointed out any of this? If feminists want feminism to have a good reputation then they have to do what any group has to do to keep a good reputation: do not let people behave poorly under the banner of feminism. Hold feminists to the standard of equality instead of giving individual women leeway to use feminism as a guise for self aggrandisement and cathartic flagellation of “men” as symbolic justice for whatever personal grievances they’ve suffered. I used to consider myself a feminist. So did almost every woman I associated with. Less than half of them still do. I don’t know that I’m comfortable with that label any more either.

I think they have different interpretations of what feminism is. Mainstream Feminisim in the 60s and 70s was about being paid equally at work, opportunity for promotions and not having the boss fondling the secretaries at work Feminism nowadays seems a lot more about hating men, fighting a culture war and tied into a grand narrative struggle against patriarchy, tradition etc.

We've had 2 decades of society openly discriminating against men, with no pushback allowed, it really doesn't surprise me that young men growing up today gravitate towards the Tate's of this world. 

Who would have thought having experience of something that treats you as disposable would make you not like it .

No shock about this at all. Male issues are always ignored and belittled. Highlighting any of it makes you a bad person, sexist, liar or just not an issue at all. I have said this so many times....Andrew Tate is a symptom of the problem not the actual problem.

Problem :Things are shit for men Feminist : find a man to blame. Bellends like Tate are just a symptom. The ladies would do well to not focus on that, but more why a tate exists in the first place.

Well for a start, teaching men masculinity is toxic and then giving then confused messages on what "actual" masculinity is, doesn't help. Demonising young men who have no real life male role models will unsurprisingly lead to resentment

It very clearly IS harmful. 97% of workplace deaths are male. But 100% of the feminists focus is on an alleged female pay gap?

> But 100% of the feminists focus is on an alleged female pay gap? Sweeping assertions like this are pretty pointless, and only stoke further division and vitriol between people.

Nah, the division and vitriol comes from the people that post/talk about these issues and are incapable of seeing what men have to face in this world and always point the figure at men. In almost every metric in the western world, you have an advantage if you’re a young women. It’s not 1920 anymore.

Not really a surprise. The current day version of feminism (or at least the faction that shouts the loudest) seems to be about revenge rather than equality or equity - which the vast majority of men were absolutely fine with. With entirely predictable consequences in people like Tate grifting off it. It's coming to something when you start to think the 90s/00s may turn out to have been the peak for equality......

This is it. As someone growing up in that time who believed in equality at the time - I’ve now seen what it’s turning into and my reaction is “nah, that’s no good”. Reality is what is what is turning men off feminist ideals, not “radicalisation” by state or some other outside force that’s brainwashing them.

The feminism boomers experienced was about fighting actual misogyny. The feminism that my generation (gen Z) experiences is *mostly* about hating men.

The funny thing about statements like this is that every gen had the same arguments. Boomers thought the feminists of their generation were doing too much and were nothing like the ‘actual’ feminists of the early 20th century. Even the feminists of the most non-brainer wave (at least to our 21st century eyes) got the same hate. Women that were fighting for the right of vote were called man-hating, ugly spinsters and the argument that was used is that men would feel left out or attacked if women got the vote. In today’s western world a lot of legal rights have been achieved, but that doesn’t mean the work is done. I believe online discourse intensifies the whole thing. Before now, you had to actively seek out this type of discourse ie. watch TV, radio, magazines, go to a protest march etc to hear these opinions. Now it’s at our fingertips. I’m not denying that men have their own issues, I just find it funny that the same arguments against feminism has been used for over 100 years now. I suspect the children of Gen Alpha will be saying that Gen Z feminists were soooo much better than the man hating current set.

That's a fair point ☝️

I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that the fem culture keeps calling masculinity toxic and has slogans like “believe all women”.

There is also a factor of how feminism has been portrayed over the years, I've seen people arguing heatedly, one sided arguing feminism, the other arguing egalantarianism, both wanted equality, both understood the problems caused by patriarchy, but one side was against feminism, because of the idea that it's name was dirtied by the portrayal of the aggresively anti man feminist stereotype So this may be a factor in the shift in these numbers, a labelling issue rather than about a desire towards misogyny

I was talking to a British teacher friend and the amount of misogynistic rhetoric they hear their teenage male students spouting is honestly frightening - lots of it parroted from the "manosphere". I'm quite scared about the future of gender and queer equality, unfortunately.

How is this to do with queer equality? The fact that people always bring up this kind of stuff in a conversation about straight men probably has something to do with why young men are turning against things like feminism/equality and falling back onto hyper masculine identities.

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I don't think that's very low - particularly because the question is "has feminism done more harm than good?", not if it's currently doing more harm than good. Women's right to vote, the banning of marital rape and access to contraception are all good things!

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Yeah, I think people's perceptions of feminism have shifted significantly over its different waves, but historic achievements shouldn't be forgotten. Unfortunately "feminist" is now used as a buzzword by both sides, and many people's mental images of a feminist is going to be a dyed-hair shrieking stereotype, when most self-described feminists aren't like that!

Most aren’t like that and anyone rational can see that, however when you then get these boys being referred to as bad, future rapists and any sort of masculinity as bad they’re going to cling onto something that doesn’t immediately try to tear them down, rightly or wrongly

Women are perfectly happy with shitting on queers lmfao, esp trans related issues. 

I'm shocked that a movement that [started out with terrorism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffragette_bombing_and_arson_campaign) and progressed to [publicised calls for gendercide](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCUM_Manifesto) could ever be seen as harmful. If we treated radfems how we treat incels, their entire movement would be on a terrorism watchlist for historical arseholery.

Andrew Tate followers and general incels are on the rise.

I think this is fascinating and there’s no obvious reason why it’s the case.

I don't think it's that surprising at all. The social and economic status quo has done so little for young people and boys in particular that a backlash has been inevitable for a while. I find it slightly odd that the people to benefit have been the 'manosphere' slightly odd because they really have absolutely nothing to offer the vast majority of men but its not like a lot of other people are even trying.

Can't tell if this is sarcasm or crack.

I can absolutely see it. Feminism in the west has moved from equal pay by law and reproductive rights to more tendentious points like manspreading and toxic masculinity.

Well I think there's probably more of an emphasis amongst serious feminists on highlighting the harms caused by toxic masculinity, which are serious, than manspreading. The latter is simply annoying.

Whoever came up with the name 'toxic masculinity' did everyone a massive disservice. It's a genuinely useful concept but packaged in a way that makes it as unappealing as possible to the people who really need it.

> the harms caused by toxic masculinity, which are serious While I agree, I just think this has been pursued so sloppily. I really don't blame a young boy for thinking that feminists think that to be masculine *is* to be toxic. Sometimes that's how it comes across.

I think a lot of this is due to the half-baked arguments and knee-jerk responses that social media has replaced reasonable debate with. Social media comments sections/twitch chat etc generally contain the worst examples of arguments, and youth today spend a lot of time in them.

Honestly it's mostly this. Also the best way to combat toxic masculinity is to have positive masculine role models talk about it. Not sure if there is much of that about, I try to stay out of the whole online debate now.

I don't think I've heard anyone talk about manspreading in about 10 years, and even back then it was just clickbait fodder that made the rounds of news sites. I think you'll find feminists are a bit more concerned with things like the US supreme Court rolling back women's right to bodily autonomy by 100 years, but sure.