- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
Boys and men from generation Z are more likely than older baby boomers to believe that feminism has done more harm than good, according to research that shows a “real risk of fractious division among this coming generation”.
…
On feminism, 16% of gen Z males felt it had done more harm than good. Among over-60s the figure was 13%.
The figures emerged from Ipsos polling for King’s College London’s Policy Institute and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership. The research also found that 37% of men aged 16 to 29 consider “toxic masculinity” an unhelpful phrase, roughly double the number of young women who don’t like it.
“This is a new and unusual generational pattern,” said Prof Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute. “Normally, it tends to be the case that younger generations are consistently more comfortable with emerging social norms, as they grew up with these as a natural part of their lives.”
Link to study: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/masculinity-and-womens-equality-study-finds-emerging-gender-divide-in-young-peoples-attitudes
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Feminism is not needed in places or situations where rights and treatment are equal. I live in a country when genders have equal rights. The only thing that makes gender unequal are people treating woman better because they thing society threat them worse.
Ask a woman.
Based on his comment I don’t think he knows any
*woman
Corrected, good sir.
Young men/boys thinking we don’t need feminism reminds me of healthy people thinking we don’t need vaccines. Just because we’ve improved the world and made a problem less of a thing doesn’t mean we can now forget about it and move on.
There is a lot more to it than that, as evidenced by all the replies already.
It never ceases to amaze me that in almost every comment section there is a highly upvoted comment by someone who clearly didn’t read the article. Or maybe they read the article and are I explicably talking about something else completely.
Even reading just the headline, I don’t get how one would talk about not needing feminism anymore. It’s about them thinking it has done more harm than good and/or it’s now harder to be a man.
I am talking about the similarities in how these two good things became something bad to be rejected because they are actually harmful. Became that way to a certain wacky group, at least.
Should we start referring to them as Gen incel?
Gen zigma
To be fair—they’re asking people to judge the effect of a movement, but only one of the groups remembers what things were like before the movement. It could just be that more gen Zers honestly don’t know the answer.
I can’t say I’m surprised that people like Andrew Tate, Steven Crowder, Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro have gained quite the social media following. Society has failed a lot of young men, and the oligarchy that controls our world has a lot to answer for.
Men are disproportionately affected by a lot of the socioeconomic issues currently plaguing the Western world because despite decades of progress towards creating an egalitarian society, men are the ones who are negatively impacted if they cannot provide. Look at the US and how judicial decisions on child custody and alimony are heavily favoured towards women as a very good example of this.
And before you dispute me on this notion, can you offer any other explanation for why the biggest role model for a lot of teenage boys is some bloomy rind dick cheese who looks like a spitting image of the Stonks meme guy?
It’s easy to get a following by fostering fear and hate. Literally just blame and vilify a group and blame them for all the problems your target audience has.
I do agree males are disproportionately impacted by certain things… look at prison, suicide, etc. but I also think feminism would correct that. I’m a truly equal society, men wouldn’t bare the brute of the stress of financial support, for example. I also think in a truly equal society, the notion that men chase women goes away. People are just out there trying to find love and/or happiness.
If you have that, a lot of the symptoms you mentioned, where men are disproportionately affected go away.
but I also think feminism would correct that
Maybe if feminism paid more than lip service to men’s problems, I would believe that. Instead, whenever feminists are confronted with men’s problems, the response is usually along the lines of “men should sort that out themselves”.
Feminism is fundamentally not concerned with equity. It’s concerned with advancing the status of women. Historically, since women have been so discriminated against, that’s been functionally the same thing. But that’s less true now.
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Childless men don’t have a stake in child custody, visitation, child support or spousal support so that can’t be it.
I used to be sympathetic to these types of arguments until I actually gained relevant experience with the formula that gets used to calculate family support.
I have to assume you’re talking about Andrew Tate. Pretty much everyone who ever pushed cryptocurrency as part of their social media sponsorships I assume is or was on the Russian take. We experienced the same exact type of messaging in 2014-2015 about how unfair life is for men when women are by default responsible for raising and providing for kids if Dad skips town or otherwise leaves the picture.
Because their content is controversial, thus driving engagement, thus being favored by the algorithms of many social media platforms. I still get recommended some of their garbage on YouTube, despite never having watched anything remotely similar to it.
Younger people tend to be easier to influence, and they often lack the experience to smell bullshit. And the more people hear something, the more likely they are to believe it.
Men are disproportionately affected by a lot of the socioeconomic issues
Women are more poor than men. So, what do you mean by this?
men are the ones who are negatively impacted if they cannot provide.
What does that even mean?
judicial decisions on child custody and alimony are heavily favoured towards women
Men are more likely than women to get custody when they ask for it. Men pay more alimony on average because they are more likely to have and earn more money.
Single mothers (not single fathers) are one of the poorest groups worldwide. That goes for the USA as well.
It seems like you really bought into the angry YouTubers.
There are many things.
For instance, I am working legally in the US, this is my third year, I had to run away feom my home in Mexico because od the narco, I didn’t mess with anybody, I hardly got out just to get groceries and my job. Some narco srill burned my house.
I know 2 women with the same issue, but they came here illegally. One of them works and the other didn’t. But both, in a year, are already residents. I for instance pay my taxes do everything legal and i got denied of any form of aid to change my status.
And for instance, I helped at one place where they help single mothers… all have the kids and some.od yhem still do drugs. I doubt what you say about the custody.
Cherry picking, cherry picking and, finally, cherry picking.
Nice.
For the most part these are great points. No arguments, save for that you mentioned women earn less than men - not disagreeing with you, but my understanding is that where men and women are doing the same job the wage gap is almost nonexistent.
Factors like the glass ceiling and draconian laws about taking time off work to parent - and who can do this - contribute as well.
Also men tend to gravitate towards higher paying, and more dangerous, jobs. Women generally want jobs that will help others and give their life meaning, whereas many men will kill vows in a manure pit with their teeth for 8 hours a day if you pay them enough.
Of course things are changing - there Fd women working in the trades, for example.
So yes, the gap exists but the “why” of it and the solutions are complex and nuanced. I felt hat because of this it detracts from otherwie well made arguments.
Yeah that is there but the playing fiekd
The gender pay gap is very real. Women end up with holes in their CVs due to pregnancy, child birth and then child care. That holes means lower pay. Lower pay means more likely to do child care. Society pushed childcare more on to women. If child care costs more than they earn, of course they aren’t going to work. Making the CV hole worse. It’s a negative feedback loop kicked off by having kids.
Edit: down voting? It’s pretty normal reasoning given. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/07/uk-women-work-childcare-pwc-budget
Yep. Tovuhed on this. Many countries allow both parents equal time off to take care of kids. Which is the better solution here.
It helps, but we need society to support and celebrate when men do this. I know one dad who did this. One. I know a lot of other dads. We did the math with our first kid with nursery and my wife’s then pay. There was next to nothing in it. But we went for nursery anyway so my wife’s CV gap was short. Now it’s paid off and she is not part of the statistics. She also works somewhere very progressive, with lots of women in upper management. That helps a lot too.
Of course things are changing - there Fd women working in the trades, for example.
They’re still a statistical rounding error. Trades are almost 100% male (in the US anyway). And in my experience as a tradie, if there’s a woman technically on the crew, she’s probably the one walking around with a clipboard, not the one fixing or building or whatever. Safety officer, environmental engineer, etc. Supporting and supervisory roles.
Women are more poor than men.
Men are more homeless. The median wage difference between men and women 18-34 is not significant.
What does that even mean?
Going to the first point, societally, generally women have more to fall back on. Of course it would be great if everyone can choose to work or not, but generally in a straight relationship, the only one with a real choice is the woman. Also, obviously this is controversial to say, but semi-jokingly a lot of men see being able to sell sex/nudes as a privilege for relatively easy money.
Men are more likely than women to get custody when they ask for it.
Source?
Single mothers (not single fathers) are one of the poorest groups worldwide. That goes for the USA as well.
Does that include the single fathers in prison?
Men are more homeless.
Selection bias, as homeless women have twice the mortality of their male peers. There are more living homeless men entirely because there are more dead homeless women.
societally, generally women have more to fall back on
More of what?
Men are more likely than women to get custody when they ask for it.
What’s more damning is that In 91% of custody cases, the parents mutually decide to give custody to the mother. Fathers fight for custody in court in less than 4% of divorces. Twenty-seven percent of fathers completely abandon their children after divorce.
Does that include the single fathers in prison?
Bizarrely, yes. In the rare instances when fathers with convictions attempt to win custody, they have a better than average chance of obtaining it.
A great deal of this boils down to with the gender pay gap which favors men at virtually every income tier and along every sociological fault line. Since primary guardianship is officially a gender neutral dispute, the individual with the larger income enjoys disproportionate advantage in winning custody.
There are more living homeless men entirely because there are more dead homeless women.
You can’t honestly believe this. The mortality rate is awful but it does not sufficiently explain why there are more men than women unhoused.
Edit: Turns out their own source debunks their claim on the first page. You can’t make this stuff up.
You can’t honestly believe this.
I don’t have to believe it. I’ve got the data to prove it.
The mortality rate is awful but it does not sufficiently explain
When the mortality rate among women is twice that of men, the only way you get an equivalent number of homeless women is if the deficit is made up by women moving into the homeless population faster than men.
So which is it? Are men predominant because women die faster? Or are they not predominant because more women are becoming homeless?
I don’t have to believe it. I’ve got the data to prove it.
Ok, this is hilarious! I actually dug into your data, but I didn’t have to dig that deep to find you are COMPLETELY misreading it. Just read this from the FIRST PAGE:
Within the homeless population, people who are Black, FEMALE, and Hispanic have LOWER relative mortality risk than their white, male, and non-Hispanic counterparts.
So wait, your data which you used to dismiss the male homelessness issue by provocatively suggesting women were dying in the hundreds of thousands, actually shows the exact OPPOSITE?
I mean, I am not a statistician, I will be humble for a moment and accept the possibility that maybe I have misread something here, because this level of irony is hard for me to believe. I get things wrong sometimes! Where am I wrong? Point to me where in the data you can get away with saying that female homeless mortality is double. Make it make sense.This seems to happen every time an issue affecting boys and men is discussed. No matter what the data says, the welfare of men is dismissed hastily. It’s like people think this is a zero sum game or something.
Men are disproportionately affected by a lot of the socioeconomic issues currently plaguing the Western world
Absolute nonsense. But good job exemplifying the segment the article is talking about by regurgitating that imaginary talking point.
Found the boomer?
It’s crazy how hard it is for some people to simply recognize that men have their own unique issues not being addressed by feminism.
I can’t say I’m surprised that people like Andrew Tate, Steven Crowder, Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro have gained quite the social media following.
I can. Their content sucks. It’s whiny and boring and utterly tasteless. Tate’s an absolute skeez. Crowder has zero swag. Peterson is an incoherent puddle. And Ben Shapiro… well… just come on, wtf is this?
And before you dispute me on this notion, can you offer any other explanation for why the biggest role model for a lot of teenage boys is some bloomy rind dick cheese who looks like a spitting image of the Stonks meme guy?
Because that’s half of what YouTube / Twitch / Netflix / et al serves up anymore. These people are the dregs of modern media, but they and their promoters are everywhere. Its the same way that AM radio is the endless cesspool of senile racists whining about scary foreigners and Daytime TV is washed up fashion models pretending to have the secret to fame, fortune, and eternal youth. The lowest common denominator of mass media is overflowing with gross, juvenile bullshit.
And when you simply cannot escape the morass of filth, that’s going to affect you one way or another.
Feminism has 100% turned into a push for superiority, not equality.
Modern feminists believe it’s “their turn” to be the abusers.
Just listen to the disparaging jokes we’ve all heard them make towards men and imagine how they would react if the same things were said about women.
I think generalising across the whole group like that is what got us into this mess.
🤡
What makes you believe that women are now the abusers and superior to men?
100%. What’s your proof? Jokes. Ok buddy
Yeah I saw this over on Mastodon, and there were a lot of stats folks questioning the methodology. I’m not qualified to do that, but my sons are Zoomers as are all their male friends, and they are all good feminists. This is in NW Europe, so might be a bit biased.
I very specifically first thought that we should have a look at the methodology to see what is going on here.
To be honest I don’t think parents is a good source of their children’s beliefs usually.
Fair enough point in general, sure.
We’re talking 16% vs 13%. Still a small minority. Based on what groups of people these are concentrated in, and what group you run in, it’s completely plausible you don’t know any of them well enough to understand this is how they feel.
Worse, depending on sample size, this might not even be a meaningful difference.
Well, that’s a new one. Not that surprising, though.
Seriously doubt this (and most polling these days). Gen Z is particularly unlikely to respond to polls or answer unknown callers in general. Until those issues in polling are solved, I take them with a grain of salt.
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That’s an interesting thing to note. If the people more likely to approve of Tate and his message are the ones looking for easy money then that could indicate a degree of selection bias.
The existence and popularity of people like Tate and toxic dating strategy shit might be an indication of how Gen Z is handling misogyny. It’s possible Gen Z hasn’t been exposed to misogyny in such heavy doses as the rest of us. Seeing your peers undervalued and objectified could sort of be an inoculation. There also might be a perquisite strong belief in equality component.
For things like feminism, the battle is never over. Insidious ideals like misogyny needs to be constantly kept in check.
If you pay me to answer your poll, I’ll answer it however you want me to.
Truthfully?
Of course not. Why would I care about telling the truth as long as I was getting paid?
Of course not. Why would I care about telling the truth as long as I was getting paid?
So is it just the men who are lying ‘to get paid’, or are the women too?
I didn’t say they were lying to get paid, I said if someone paid me, I would answer however they wanted me to answer. I speak for no one but myself.
You just said you’d answer it however they want you to. The way they want you to is truthfully.
Got eem
LOL, this dude’s been lucky enough to never read a strategically worded political poll apparently.
All polls are inherently biased in their wording. Almost no poll-makers are non-partisan, and the people most likely to complete polls are often the most biased.
Statistics baybeee! They’ll tell you whatever you want if you structure your intake datum properly!
LOL, this dude’s been lucky enough to never read a strategically worded political poll apparently.
So why did women and men respond completely differently, if not because… they feel that way?
I think you know what I meant.
What you meant is being communicated clearly. Why you think it’s some sort of conspiracy against big feminism or some shit is the confusing part.
They just want you to answer the poll legitimately.
No, I don’t. You said you’d do whatever they want if they paid you, then immediately said you wouldn’t do it truthfully if they paid you to answer truthfully. It’s nonsensical.
I’ll select the first option for everything. Give me my AppleBee’s coupon!!
Then why are boomers immune to the pollster’s secret agenda?
I don’t remember saying they had a secret agenda.
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But they didn’t tell you how they wanted you to answer, I guess…
Your first link disagrees with the article you posted…
And while younger people overall have a more favourable view of this phrase, there is a big gender divide in views among them: 37% of men aged 16 to 29 say “toxic masculinity” is an unhelpful phrase, roughly double the 19% of young women who feel this way. Correspondingly, young women (47%) are considerably more likely than young men (29%) – or any other age category – to find it a helpful term.
By contrast, views among older age groups vary less by gender – although older men are more likely than younger men to say “toxic masculinity” is an unhelpful term.
It sounds like the only change is you get women are more supportive of feminism than older women…
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Looked at the pdf …
The public think the oldest group of men are most likely to believe equal opportunities for women have gone too far – but it is actually men aged 30 to 59 men who are more likely to feel this way47% of the public think older men aged 60+ are most likely to believe attempts to give women equal opportunities have gone too far – the top answer given. But in reality, 20% of men aged 30 to 59 hold this view, compared with 13% of men aged 60+.
For 16-29, it’s 5%
So yeah, still not sure why you’re using a string of different articles, but they don’t agree with you main post bud…
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Thank!
I saw the survey was just British respondents, but I didn’t know that question was specifically about British culture…
Sorry, it’s really hard to follow all the omissions and misrepresentations a survey went thru to get to the post you decided should be the main one.
But yeah, older people are going to remember what it was like 40 years ago and can see the good feminism has done.
A teenager would have know first hand knowledge how bad it was even a decade ago.
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and how many people will click on an ad or email saying you’ll get paid to take a poll?
is that a representative portion of the population or a very niche subgroup of desperate, gullible or extremely bored people?
how/where was it advertised?
…
polls don’t have to be bullshit, but they always are…It sounds like you are sent the poll by snailmail and/or you are “recruited” that way and are then sent multiple polls over sometime.
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/uk-knowledgepanel
It’s hard to get random people’s emails and still be sure that the samling is good. This way seems more reliable. The few serious polls I have ever been sent by the National Bureau of Statistics has always been sent by snailmail (or technically digital snailmail which is connected to my digital ID)
technically digital snailmail which is connected to my digital ID
do you mean e-mail? or is this some UK thing?
No, it’s a free service you sign up for which delivers all the snailmail you get from governments and others to a digital mailbox instead. It’s like instant snailmail.
It functions using an app or website instead of email, so you login by verifying your ID and not a password. I think the service is fairly common where I live.
You can also get some receipts via that service.
The service automatically organises all your mail into folders for each sender and separately for receipts and payments. Sender folders wouldn’t work well for email because you get email for a lot of people and companies but with this service I have only collected 16 different senders over 3 years.
You can also share your digital mailbox with other people.
It’s very convenient and saves time and paper. So I highly recommend checking if anything similar exists where you live.
I don’t live in the UK so I don’t know if they have anything like it.
so… they scan and digitize your mail for you?
No, they send it through the service. Nothing ever gets printed.
The different companies and government organisations do have to support it though.
There are a few different companies that deliver the same service, the biggest (and first?) one is apparently used by almost half of the country’s population. Pretty much every service supports all the governmental organisations. Company support varies more.
One of the smaller (not small) service provider is owned by the goverment. I am thinking of switching to that one but I haven’t bother yet.
Apparently at least one of the smaller providers supports scanning of all physical mail but I have never had that.
Do you have any reason to believe zoomers’ willingness to respond to polls (compared to other zoomers) is correlated with their views on feminism?
The result is not to my liking, it must be wrong.
That is NOT what they are saying. They are suggesting that the methodology may have been wrong, which is a perfectly reasonable question that EVERY person should ask themselves EVERY SINGLE TIME they hear about a study releasing results.
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Yeah, the privacy-minded socially-averse demographic is a well-documented stronghold of feminist support.
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There are multiple studies showing the same thing. Denying it isn’t going to change anything.
“1/5th of one quarter of the small group of men who participated in one survey that was only taken in a single country know who Andrew Tate is and approve of him, thus all GenZ men hate feminism”
This article is a fucking joke
The problem is the so called Third Wave Feminism, which is far too often just middle and high-middle class women trying to obtain special benefits for themselves by claimimg the whole group they were born into “is a victim” (even though they themselves were born into and are amongst the most priviledged 1% of people in the World) and hence “must be compensated” in some way which is discriminatory against all those not in the group and which is invariably in a form that is mainly usefull for middle class and high-middle class well educated women in well-of western nations. Hence things like Quotas or the practice of Benevolent Mascism in power situations such as in Court (for example the whole gender-discriminatory idea that the Mother should be prefered as the custodian of children when a couple separates).
This is generally neither fair, nor equal (you know, the whole judge and treat people based on what they do, not based on the genetics they were born with) and even has zero positive effects for the vast majority of women out there who aren’t the well-of scions of well-of families in well-of countries: you get loud noises about the “glass ceiling” that stops well-of women from maximizing their income from being in the upper classes, not about the 3000% difference in incomes between those above said glass chieling such as corporate CEOs and the average worker, which includes most women.
This shit isn’t Leftwing, it’s just a “make believe leftie” facet of “Greed is good” Neoliberal Capitalism: personal upside maximization hidden behind “the group” so that it doesn’t just look like naked greed, hence why you see this mostly supported by Liberals in Anglo-Saxon nations, not traditional Lefties.
Previous generations of Feminism (and those who still now fight for Equality and Fairness) are the ones who are deserving of tremendous respect and support, not these pampered, priviledged, greedy people who happen to have been born with 2 X cromossomes and who want to maintain the discriminatory and prejudiced treatment of people base on the genetics they were born with, as long as theirs is the group getting benefited by that discrimination.
It’s thus not surprising that amongst those who are not in the groups that benefits form the discrimination these people defend and are exposed to this highly moralistic variance of greed is good, grow negative about it. The thing is made even worse in the US because Politics ther is entirelly in the Moral space (people have no genuine choice on how the Economics is managed in that country since both sides of the Power Duopoly do the same in that field) so you end up with equally pro-descrimination groups on the other side, who just differ in who gets favoured by said discriminationand face off against these, muddling the whole “equality” domain.
It’s pretty hard to find a space if you’re genuinelly pro-Equality and pro-Fairness and not be confuse by either side of selfish fucker as being in the other side of selfish fuckers.
This became especially obvious in my country when we were passing the gender self-determination law. Really helped me differentiate between feminists who actually wanted equality, regardless of background or biology, and narcissists who saw a discriminated group trying to get acceptance as a threat to their own position in the hierarchy, who would later got angry and offended when we called them TERFs for repeating far right talking points. Thankfully the later are overrepresented online and aren’t so prevalent in society as a whole.
Replace “woman” with “Black” in this rant and it sounds just like someone trying to make reparations look bad by strawmanning its supporters.
I agree that neoliberal capitalism has (largely successfully) used feminism as a way to distract from society’s real problems. But this ain’t it.
You can just as easilly replace “women” there with “the arian race” and suddenly find out that my post is a critique of the social side of Nazism that would apply even before they started exterminating people when all their messaging was about “protecting the arian race”.
If you’re deeming people worthy/victims or unworthy/aggressors merelly on their genetics rather than on their actions and what they support, you’re part of the problem because you’re being prejudiced rather than fair - by judging people on externally visible genetic differences you end up de facto protecting bad people when they have the genetics of those you deem victims and treating badly good people when they have the genetics of those you deem agressors.
It doesn’t matter what “genetically defined group” you put in there because there will always be good people and bad people amongst them and if they can the bad people in that group will do exactly what the bad people amongst Feminists are doing: use the goodwill of others who see the world in an oversimplified prejudiced way, to maximize personal upsides, and along with them drag many from the neutral middle who see an opportunity for personal gain, so they gladly jump on the bandwagon.
(In simple terms, every group of people defined by things that have nothing to do with their actual actions, contains assholes and lots of people who will easilly turn into one if they come out better of by doing so).
That’s why one fights actual actions of unequal and/or unfair treatmente and do so no matter the “genetic makeup” of the victim and the aggressor - it’s the acts themselves that are wrong, not the chromossomes with externally visible expressions of the victims and aggressors.
Get off the internet bro, you’re suffering from acute brain rot
Opinion Gatekeeping.
Typical …
I am seriously disgusted that there are more upvotes than downvotes to your comment.
Why? I see comments claiming the commenter to be hateful but nothing addressing what he actually said.
Just remembered article about working in foreign company(I think it was on habr and I think it was in Intel, but it could be anything else) where they had something along the lines “diversity list” which is list of race of employee. So america’s answer to racism is more racism.
in Anglo-Saxon nations
I think brits support it the least. It is more North-American thing.
I’ve lived in Britain and I suspect it’s actually worse over there because the dominant culture of the middle and upper classes in that country is what in most other nations would be seen as fakeness and hypocrisy, the higher the class the worse it gets.
People from the outside aren’t really aware of what’s behind “posh” and “gentleman”: let’s just say that not only is it entirelly fake (it’s all about saying what others expect and doing so in a certain style), but the dominant interpersonal relationship style in the upper class can only be described as slimy two-faced adversarial, which isn’t at all healthy IMHO.
Certainly a lot of what I wrote is based on observations and discussions I had in Britain and British discussion forums, all informed by my experience before that living in The Netherlands, a far more equalitarian country with a culture which is significantly different (to illustrate it, let me just point out that 2 decades ago Pim Furtijn - the leader of the largest far right party in The Netherlands - was very openly gay. In which other country in the World would the far-right thinking not include aversion to homosexuality??!)
Wow, you are knee deep in the manosphere rhetoric. Hate speech online does work.
You’ve just proven the last paragraph of my post.
Thank you.
Who’s that “Poll”? I wanna kick her in the pussy…
I’d wager that people who think that couldn’t give you a coherent definition of what feminism actually is.
God fucking forbid women receive equal treatment or autonomy over their bodies!
Is there a coherent definition of feminism that feminists agree on?
(I think that people’s opinion about feminism is commonly their opinion about self-identified feminists. It’s fair to say “I believe feminism is harmful because the opinions I have heard self-identified feminists express have often seemed ridiculous, offensive, or counterproductive” without needing a definition of feminism that goes beyond self-identification.)
The definition I found that popped up on google pretty well sums up what I have always heard women say.
The advocacy of women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes
It’s really that simple. It’s not a women over men movement. It’s a movement to receive the same respect, rights, and inclusion that men have enjoyed basically forever. They want the right to make decisions about their body. They’d like to maybe not be victims of sexual assault and rape and staggering percentages (about 1 in 6 American women will be raped in their lifetime). They’d like to have a better chance at corporate leadership (10% of fortune 500 CEOs are women). They’d like to have more of a footprint in government (roughly 28% of the US congress is female and this is a record high).
They just want equity and respect and they deserve it.
There’s an essay that I agree with about that sort of definition.
Here’s a relevant excerpt:
I feel like every single term in social justice terminology has a totally unobjectionable and obviously important meaning – and then is actually used a completely different way.
The closest analogy I can think of is those religious people who say “God is just another word for the order and beauty in the Universe” – and then later pray to God to smite their enemies. And if you criticize them for doing the latter, they say “But God just means there is order and beauty in the universe, surely you’re not objecting to that?”
The result is that people can accuse people of “privilege” or “mansplaining” no matter what they do, and then when people criticize the concept of “privilege” they retreat back to “but ‘privilege’ just means you’re interrupting women in a women-only safe space. Surely no one can object to criticizing people who do that?”
Let’s say that, for example, I affirmed my belief that people should be hired based on their ability rather than on their sex, but then I said that there are more men than women in software development mainly due to biological differences. That doesn’t go against your definition, but do you think most feminists would react well to it? They didn’t when James Damore said it, or when the president of Harvard said something similar…
(This is despite the fact that it’s commonly accepted that biological differences between the sexes are the main reason why there are more men than women who are violent criminals.)
As a man myself I’m just having a hard time sympathizing with other men who grief at a term like “mansplaining” and in that find the justifications for disregarding the crux of what feminism seeks to make right. Is the term thrown around too much? Sure, I bet it is. So are a lot of absolutely vile quips about women. I can empathize with why some women are as verbally antagonistic towards men as they are.
To your other point. Are women underrepresented in STEM fields because they lack the ability to tackle those problems or because women have been historically directed away from those sorts of professions for as long as we have history to look back on?
You can play some of this off to less women wanting X or Y job, but if you cannot acknowledge men holding 9 out of 10 CEO positions in fortune 500 companies as maybe being a symptom of major structural imbalances in favor of men, I do not know what to tell you. I’ve watched women be professionally undermined throughout the entirety of my working life.
Also I missed your edit on your previous comment:
(I think that people’s opinion about feminism is commonly their opinion about self-identified feminists. It’s fair to say “I believe feminism is harmful because the opinions I have heard self-identified feminists express have often seemed ridiculous, offensive, or counterproductive” without needing a definition of feminism that goes beyond self-identification.)
Would it be then fair to say that, men broadly speaking are harmful because a not insignificant group of men rape about 16% of the female population? I think judging any group wholesale by the actions of it’s most extreme cohort is problematic. And in this case we’re talking about words women said that made some guys feel bad.
I just don’t buy into the counter argument to feminism and I think this quote sums up how a lot of men are feeling about the topic right now.
When you’re accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression.
To your other point. Are women underrepresented in STEM fields because they lack the ability to tackle those problems or because women have been historically directed away from those sorts of professions for as long as we have history to look back on?
To speak to that, back when software development was not a prestigious job, it was done mostly by women. The lead developer for the Apollo program’s guidance software is a woman, Margaret Hamilton.
I find the internet is super good at locking people into echo chambers. For some reason, I feel especially keen on this when I was super into reddit over the last decade. I could FEEL just how a community would shift into just saying the same 10 things on repeat and any deviation would result in downvotes and messages in my inbox.
But it’s not just reddit. Modern video feed algorithms and other social media just need to feed you the same stuff you’ve engaged with previously.
So what ends up happening is young boys only see the videos of angry purple haired stereotype liberal feminist first year college student get SLAMMED/DESTROYED by Ben Shapiro or Jordan Peterson or a woman who is clearly saying something sarcastic with sad sigma male music in the background and all the comments are calling for her to be put in prison or death.
And that’s not to say people don’t experience these types IRL and it morphs their opinions, my sister is this stereotype and is pretty fucking stupid and she will get into heated debates on Facebook about stuff she has no idea about. She’ll read a headline and form a whole mindset of bullshit around it and never verify if it was just a click bait article posted to Facebook to get ad revenue with no concept of journalist integrity. It’s really difficult talking to her about anything political because even though I’m pretty liberal/progressive myself, she’ll just say things that are factually wrong and when I try to talk to her about it she takes it as me disagreeing and won’t listen to reason or logic outside of her preconceived image of reality. Very difficult person
I often have to look at her and remind myself that people like her are a very small portion of the population and aren’t really indicative of the masses.
I find the internet is super good at locking people into echo chambers.
People do this to themselves because they find comfort in the familiar, like in real life. I am not sure echo chambers are a unique to the internet.
Yes, to an extent. But the algorithms of all the major social media sites kick this into overdrive. Seriously, how many times have you clicked on a random YouTube video about some obscure topic and then for the next week it seems like every other recommended video is about that same topic? Even if you just watched a little bit of the original video and then clicked away because it wasn’t interesting. I see the same thing with the Google Feed on my Android phone - I click on one random article and then it just assumes that one topic is my new primary interest.
Prior to the internet, it was people’s churches, workplaces, the local pub, etc. Now it’s randos with an agenda.
The internet can definitely get very echo chamber/brigade/gatekeepy when it feels like it. Sadly, lots of people have no identity of their own and attempt to latch on to one created for them. Once this happens, then they fiercely and angrily defend what the adopted, as if it were them being attacked personally.
I swear rage baiting in the social media era has to be the most lucrative grift of all time. Even being super aware of it I still fall for it from time to time.
Probably not the comment you were expecting, but, what’s “sad sigma male music”? And why is it called that?
There are a few sound clips that got used a lot when the whole dumbass sigma male thing was popular
I’m so out of touch. Need to google what 'sigma male things is.
First you should learn about ligma
Modern video feed algorithms and other social media just need to feed you the same stuff you’ve engaged with previously.
People should really stop saying this. Every YouTube ad I get and recommendation I get is crap now. It is like someone ordered the developers to break echo chambers by making sure people don’t get what they want. I am not a fucking kid, I know what I want to watch, and what I don’t want to watch. Tired of the anti trans bullshit I am constantly being suggested.
i think your experience is likely anecdotal and non-representative of general trends.
scholars still indicate that algorithms play a significant role in gathering echo chambers
That’s not anti-echohamber. That’s the algorithm reinforcing the anti-trans propaganda that drives clicks and views on most platforms. Controversy is sensational, and anger provokes responses.
I don’t know, wasn’t happening about a year ago right around the same time that everyone decided that watching the video you want to watch was a bad thing.
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Or, you know, women wanted to stop being told by men like you what they ought to do and how to arrange society. Smh
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You don’t think it’s possible that women might want equal rights? LMAO
I think equal rights it’s not the problem about it, the problem it’s the manly role feminism propose. Equal rights /not the same/ manly role. I believe the agenda it’s pushing a manly role instead of equal rights to prevent world over population what at the same time it’s not all bad tbh.
Manly role according to whom?
The nuclear family structure is the propaganda pushed as beneficial for social progress without evidence. Encapsulating women in a predominantly reproductive role is just good for reproduction and to think it’s beneficial for society is only true if you think that’s a good goal alignment.
Do you think overpopulation is a good idea?
