A new global gender divide is emerging
A new global gender divide is emerging
Young men and young women’s world views are pulling apart. The consequences could be far-reaching
women aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male contemporaries. That gap took just six years to open up.
That is quite remarkable.
"When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."
As a white cis hetero American male, trying to have a little empathy is literally the least I can do.
Yeah that was part of my attitude back when I thought I was one of y’all. The other was that it sure seemed like one side wanted a world that sounded nice to live in and it wasn’t the one selling power over others.
Like yeah change is scary, and I’m sure that cishet white guys who are struggling already hate being told they have privilege especially as it’s often portrayed as some get out of everything free card instead of just that the dice are weighted and that certain problems aren’t going to be a concern to you. I know because I definitely had those knee jerk reactions.
But both sides have their buzzkill side and their party side. It’s just that one presents a future that kinda feels worth living in ya know. Like even when I thought I was a cishet guy instead of none of those things I still didn’t want my future wife to have to deal with misogyny or to have to give up on any of her hopes or dreams or anything. It’s difficult and sad to live a life in which you don’t love anyone who is marginalized in some way.
Equality != Equity
So why do young men feel more represented by right-wing idiots than the "left"? I see comments going "yass slay queens" but isn't the fact half our young people are being radicalized by grifters like that sex trafficker Tate ring at least some alarm bells?
Why are we celebrating that an increasing number of young people are voting for right-wing radicals because our politics just forgot about them as if it was some kind of vindication for women?
There is a big difference in the messaging to young men by both the parties.
Republican - "You're going to have a job, a house, a wife and kids, and all you have to do is work hard and you can live the American Dream"
Democrat - "You are the oppressor and need education on why men and white people are bad"
You can see how one is more appealing than the other, especially to those who don't pay much attention to politics and maybe only hear a 30s political clip on social media once a week.
Disclaimer: not saying these are actually the alignments/messaging, just major annecdotal perceptions I have heard from people who describe themselves as "not a Democrat" and asked them "why not?"
True equity isn't sexy and doesn't motivate voters or sell ad space. It's much easier to try and shine a light on the plights (real or otherwise) of as large a group as possible and pretend to be behind them. Politics and News are sales, not education.
Paywall
No paywall: https://archive.ph/MrnR1
The hard kind too, it even persists at https://web.archive.org/web/20240126130159/https://www.ft.com/content/29fd9b5c-2f35-41bf-9d4c-994db4e12998.
I'm guessing it's also clickbait once someone did end up getting past it anyway.
Works fine for me with the Bypass Paywalls Clean Firefox extension.
What's the new gender
What colour is the smoke going to be
The real questions
Unfortunately, a lot of people who claim to want 'equality' really want superiority.
They just hide behind the guise of equality until it's too late.
It's sad seeing women who think they're "owed" something because of how their sex has been historically treated. They legitimately believe that because women have suffered in the past, that men should suffer in the future. I know it's not all of them, but coming across any of them was a real wake-up call for me.
It's fucked.
At first, it may be hard to recognise the privileges patriarchy gives men. Totally worth taking them into consideration, especially if we want equality in society.
Good list but 7 seems wrong.
Studies I've read for work suggest that around 1 in 10 men have experienced unreported sexual abuse. Same studies suggest the statistic is 1 in 5 women, which is much worse, but it does a disservice to male victims to suggest ten percent is 'negligible.'
(as someone whose crotch was aggressively groped by a female in college and never reported I'm admittedly a bit sensitive)
7 is about rape. You talk about sexual abuse. They are not synonyms.
Also, in the link above the following passage might interest you:
As McIntosh points out, men also tend to be unaware of their own privileges as men. In the spirit of McIntosh’s
essay, I thought I’d compile a list similar to McIntosh’s, focusing on the invisible privileges benefitting men.
Due to my own limitations, this list is unavoidably U.S.-centric. I hope that writers from other cultures will create
new lists, or modify this one, to reflect their own experiences.
I’m wondering how old this is because it has some fantastic points but is missing some big ones that are a part of modern feminist discourse and some of its points are lacking some nuance that’s become more common in the current discourse.
That said for the most part it’s very good and is likely to hit on several things that in my experience many men don’t really think about. The bits about having to ask yourself if something was misogyny really hits hard. And I think a reasonable summary of several of these points is that men are treated as the default kind of person
ETA: the nuance here that I think was really missing is that as time has gone on we’ve gotten more acknowledgement of male victims of sexual and domestic violence and the ways in which toxic masculinity uses threats of emasculation to push men into a specific role. This is all bad and the ways in which toxic masculinity hurts men are real things. But it too privileges a theoretical maleness and the punishment it presents to failure is accusations of womanhood or femininity (alongside genuine physical or economic violence). The degendering that women are threatened with is rarely accusations of manhood, but more often accusations of not even being a woman.
And to clarify toxic masculinity is not the claim that masculinity is toxic but that there is a set of expectations placed on men by each other and by women that pushes them into a rigid role devoid of gentleness and emotional honesty. In that role they are granted agency and power as the trade off. It is a role that often would rather they hurt others for their own pleasure than to display vulnerability. And that role comes with varying degrees of manifestation. It can be calls for young boys to not cry but it can also be things like frat bro rape culture. In the end it hurts everyone.
Fantastic list! Thanks for sharing that.
Seems like more younger women are finding battery-operated devices offer less drama than real "men" do.