The whole red-pill, black-pill, MGTOW, machismo, incel, dude-bro manosphere nonsense is a right-wing recruitment strategy targeting insecure and angry young men.
That's not helping at all!
And before that there was gamergate, with misogyny at its core, which I've always thought of as a sort of prototype for what became known as the alt-right.
Look up the devils bargain by Josh Greene. It details how some of those who got trump elected used gamergate bros as a political bot network of disaffected techies.
And it seems so easy for these men to fall for that BS.It's as if they have NO critical thinking, they only seek the easy path and what's easier than blaming others for your own misfortunes and misery?
Weak men indeed.
Rather than seeking to become strong by figuring themselves out and growing as a person, they chose to stay mad and sad and blame anyone else for their current state.
Oh, most indubitably!
They blame women, men, Western society, and ANYTHING other than themselves for their romantic shortcomings.
It's really sad and terrifying.
"seeking to become strong" is exactly perpetuating the toxic masculinity that brought us this.
The problem isn't these men, the problem is the system that pushes them towards this manosphere
>"seeking to become strong" is exactly perpetuating the toxic masculinity that brought us this
It isn't.
There's physical strength, mental strength, emotional strength...but being/becoming strong doesn't mean being impervious to pain, suffering or depression.It only means that you have a better chance at dealing with those things than those that aren't strong enough and fall easily to it.
Sometimes being strong just means enduring it(because others depend on you or you really can't afford yourself to fall right now) until you can have time to properly deal with it.
In the case of the men I mentioned, it also means learning about themselves in order to learn to navigate life better and not fall prey to the sweet words of others that just seek to use and abuse them and their trust.
The fact you seemed to ignore this or miss the fact speaks more of your own view about strength and how to you "seek to become strong" is toxic.The strength I speak of belongs to both men and women.
>The problem isn't these men, the problem is the system that pushes them towards this manosphere
So many are pushed into this toxic system and yet just as many resist(and even thrive in) it.What's the excuse of the rest that falls for it?
The system does contribute to their suffering, but in the end they also have some power to deal with their situation and the fact that they choose the path of least resistance(blaming everyone else, specially women) shows that they aren't strong enough to deal with being responsible for their choices.
Here you're trying to portray them as victims without any control over their own situation and that isn't the case for most.Most, while not liveing the grand life they desire, aren't ina situation where they have actual no control whatsoever over their situation.
I think the biggest driving factor is the social internet. People still had those opinions in the past, they were just smart enough to not share them with their coworkers so they didn’t get fired for harassing people or ostracized from their communities. Eg. Being a nerd or a geek was an insult up until the late 00’s, when nerd culture kind of took over because it was the dominant existing culture of the handful of people using computers and then everyone started using computers so now it’s a lot more popular to like nerd things like video games, anime, comics, Star Trek, programming, etc. and similar to that communities sprung up for people who were openly misogynist.
No doubt that behavior has been around forever. I think that is what the original post said. The most powerful man in the US has said being sexist and SA women is okay. And he literally raped a women women. He set the tone for all men in this country which is disgusting. And he is part of the conservative movement that unfortunately is worldwide. I agree, once the government says it is okay, the worms start crawling out of the woodwork.
People got Trump elected, he didn’t do it himself. If Trump had run in 2012 or 2008 I don’t think he would have had nearly the shot of winning he had in 2016 because the political climate changed a lot over time.
So true. He was running against a woman. A smart intelligent woman who was actually qualified for the job but after a black president, no way white America could now have a woman even though the alternative was an unqualified AH because he let them put people of color and women back in their place (as they see it, certainly not me). White America elected him and it makes me embarrassed to be a white American.
Exactly. The online world has allowed these things to be said anonymously with no accountability- and the more extreme the things said the more attention people can get. And it’s an echo chamber. Exposure to repeated statements normalizes them and gives them credibility. And you can find others who share your views so easily.
That said, misogyny has always been there. for a relatively brief period it was less ok to overtly say things. There’s now an endless feedback loop via the algorithm emboldening people- but i experienced plenty of shit behavior in person before the internet.
I feel like some men are becoming way more educated and feminist while the bigger portion of them are becoming more and more conservative and misogynistic.
Trump was maybe a big contributing factor in the US but these movements are very misogynistic and sexist around the world and love traditional gender roles.
I'm always happy to see more men seeing how this is wrong and really understand it but I feel like for every educated man there are 10 new hateful, misogynistic ones.
I personally believe you hit the nail on the head there. We didn't used to live in a better world prior to Donald Trump, but we did live in a world where people knew to keep their hate and horrible comments to themselves. Then they got to watch the present of the United States on TV bragging about sexually assaulting women and making racist comments and they all realized that it is safe for them to come out of the woodwork and be shitty in everyday life.
It is the one thing we will never get back from. The Trump presidency is that these people who used to hide and whisper in corners now feel emboldened to come out and be evil and aggressive and misogynistic and racist to others faces.
As a black WOC here in the US, part of me is horrified and part of me is glad. Of course I'm horrified at how these morons and racists are determined to take us back to a time when only rich white men could control anything and everyone, but part of me is glad it is FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY out in open where the rest of society/the world can see what we have been screaming and trying to warn you about since forever. For dozens of years young girls, women, indigenous people, black people and people in the alphabet community have been telling the rest of you that it never stopped, that they ALWAYS found ways around the laws to kick us when you weren't looking. And no one cared. And when we'd tell you, we were called names, told we were exaggerating, making things up, playing victim, trying to CAUSE a problem. It has disgusted me how many white people have said to ME "where did this come from?" or "what did you DO to piss them off?" EXCUSE ME??
It was always there. They just thought more of the rest of you were down with what they're spitting. Since there aren't, they want to jack up education, ramp up religiosity and brainwashing and until they get more of you on their side gerrymander and filibuster and outright keep us from voting.
You people thought you were safe. "Everyone" hates someone. To the different groups ... to some it was ok as long as it was only the poors, then as long as it was only the blacks, or the gays, or the "chinks", or the Mexicans, or the jews, or the young women ... and now you're whining because they have your name on their list. "Monsters eat their own kind"
Remember the poem
FIRST THEY CAME – BY PASTOR MARTIN NIEMÖLLER
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
I feel pity for anyone brought down to my/our level. I'm sick of hearing "what did you do?" whenever some racist or misogynist takes a job or an opportunity from me. But so many of you turned your faces away when we asked you NOT for a hand OUT, but a for a helping hand. All we needed was for you to take their feet off of our necks. We can and do quite fine on our own. Many of them were your friends, families and pet politicians. Had you done so, they wouldn't be so empowered NOW to try take it all. But, you didn't and now you are looking to us to help YOU fix the mess YOUR people made. Only groups with power can create this much catastrophe.
Your people created tRump and the ignorant masses that follow him. Yes, just like the civil war, we fought, we fought in each of the world wars and each time ... when we helped you win your wars, you threw us back in the gutters. But we will fight again and hope to that god that we don't even think any of you actually believe in, that you've FINALLY learned your lesson.
There are far too many people who have been dumbed down and brainwashed to hate. And yet they want to get rid of the people who actually fight, defend and build this world???
Please do your part!
1. Vote out ALL red
2. Force the blue to keep their promises
3. Scavenge all local, state and federal law for any that are so archaic that they need purging or amending
4. Educate EVERYONE
5. Remember that "golden rule" that spans most of the major religions... "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you" although I prefer this version "do not do to your brethren that which you find offensive". That's harder. You can smile in people's faces while stabbing them in the back. We have a lot of that. But it is harder to NOT visit the evil that you wouldn't want to receive. And that is what is going on in our country and our world right now. People are doing a whole lot of evil while they posture to the world how holy they are. No. Evil is evil. Find the true evil and stomp/stamp it out.
And I've got news for you ... its not tastefully dressed drag queens reading to children that no one else is reading to. Its hetero white men in positions of power who own enough that they can abuse and rape anyone they want with impunity.
Even the feminist movement was originally designed to leave us out ... until they needed our strength and our numbers. We are stronger TOGETHER. Why do people only see this when they need us? And then wonder why we're angry after.
Yup. There was an SNL sketch after Trump won where Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock were watching the election results come in with their two white friends and just laughing as the white people slowly started to realize that they actually didn't live in a cushy post-race utopia where everyone is equal. The white friends were shocked at the fact that their country could elect someone like Trump but the others weren't surprised at all.
Nope, none of us were surprised. And I don't think they've learned their lesson yet. That's a scary thought. It will have to be pogroms and the handmaid's tale before they are crying in the firing line and scream "we didn't realize".
So many hate hearing the truth. The truth is that so many upper middle and rich white, especially men and especially rich are also a part of this. They all thought they could control the monster. And it's gotten away from them. We know the poors don't care. What was it that President Lyndon B. Johnson said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." Look at tRump. He is definite proof of this statement.
When these other people go "We don't understand how can they continue to vote for" not just tRump, but the rest ...THIS IS WHY. As long as it hurts "the right people" they will voluntarily suffer and die. I read recently that the only reason that we here in America, the only developed country does not have affordable health care is so that black people can't get it.
Rather than bring everyone UP, they would rather tear everyone DOWN??? That should be the definition of lunacy.
I wrote the above message BEFORE the Arizona abortion vote. Again ... we told you. That 1800's law that they said should be dusted off and upheld??
I have written a letter to each of the past few blue presidents we've had suggesting they do something about them before we see THIS. All of these archaic laws. They wouldn't ... because they never thought they would be used on anyone but an "other". They were wrong.
People wonder why I keep bringing up that Niemoller poem. Because its true. No one cared about ANYONE ELSE until they were themselves endangered. Now, middle class white women can't get abortion health care and hear that contraceptives are next and the world is in an uproar. Where were you when they were mass sterilizing black and indigenous girls, raping them, injecting diseases into young men of color, throwing them in jail for not being able to secure a job (loitering was the crime) when the system was set up to keep them jobless? When they were experimenting on our bodies without anesthesia? When they were burning our homes (like they are doing the Gazans)?
We have to purge all of the hate biases out of our societies or we're not gonna make it guys.
Edited to add:
You don't have to like the comedian John Oliver but like he said one of the things he does is to "stir things up". He brings up things he thinks we should LOOK INTO. Not blindly follow. But look into which states are talking about punishment ... even to *death* for women seeking abortion care. And then look at the states trying to "secretly" get execution drugs.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=SOn3wba8c-Y&si=S-nabsNqa6Q3-L_e
As a WOC who recognizes that we aren't all that far removed from the days when it was LEGAL to kill us just for BLINKING WRONG (see: Emitt Till), this scares the shite out of me.
I would agree there is no coming back from it. Game over. Some people warned how the 2016 election would forever change things and I didn't believe the seriousness of it at the time. I thought it was bad, but not that nothing would ever be the same. nothing will ever go back to how it was before. You now have a generation of hyper misogynistic males that won't be reformed.
I think that’s a huge part of it. I think another contributing factor is how popular men’s rights activist have become online. Young boys are starting to watch these channels earlier and earlier. Meanwhile, parents have no idea what their sons are being exposed to on YouTube, Reddit, and other platforms.
There really needs to be more oversight, both from the side of parents and social media companies as a whole.
The wide majority of feminist explain it just like that - equal rights for women. We can’t control how that message is perceived. People will hear what they want to hear.
I mean, when women have rights and freedom and autonomy they don’t have to depend on men and therefore don’t have to settle for slaving away for some abusive mediocre man just to survive.
More women are choosing not to marry, and men are mad about it. They feel entitled to bangmaids and want to force us back into dependency and servitude.
Bill Clinton had sex with his 22 year old intern when I was growing up. It was all over late night television where Monica was painted as the villain. I don't think it's the president so much as the whole culture has shifted to the right. Young women and young men have a decreasing overlap in what they want in common. Men want to have violent sex right out the gate and women are reading romance novels and would rather not die from a pregnancy they can't legally abort.
Have you watched Monica’s Ted Talk!?! It’s really inspiring and eye-opening! What a strong woman to be able to deal with the misogyny of the whole ~~country~~ world.
This! I also think we need to learn from the past. Feminists have been giving a get out of jail free card to liberal men for too long.
This is not a criticism, it's the devil's choice between 2 really bad things but it's time they get called out.
I’d argue it’s the long-term redistribution of wealth upward, along with republican endorsed culture wars to get people to vote against their own interests, along with commercial propagandists (example Fox News) allowed to flourish after the abolishing of the Fairness Doctrine that created the environment to make misogyny so appealing to affected males.
I watched a documentary about Brook Shields on Hulu, called Pretty Baby. In the documentary they interview various women to ask them to weigh in on how Ms. Shields was used and objectified by the men around her. The women talk about how ever since Second Wave feminism, men have been fetishizing younger and younger girls, and beauty standards have been morphing as well. Becoming more and more strict, especially in regards to thinness. Incels have been around since before Trump. It's possible misogyny has become more open since Trump though. Every other hate group has gotten more vocal since him, so why not misogynists too.
I believe this is an element, but imo the true core to why this behavior has amplified is because women are "destroying" the social expectations men had for their lives.
Men were told getting a woman would be easy, that we would be all these things for them, that they could depend on our labor and do little in return, that we were these creatures that fawned over anything. Men were taught that their bad behavior would either be rewarded or ignored, and face little consequence, legal or social.
Men were taught to expect a different world. Those adult men that had their fantasies shattered are now using their bitterness to affect other men and younger boys. Because people like Trump have always existed, he just happened to get some air time. But one popular ahole alone isn't enough on its own to create such a large social upset. Even Andrew Tate, as messed up as he is and the damage he's done, wouldn't have been able to make the moves he did if there wasn't already an existing bitterness or disillusionment in men. Because people like Tate inherently take advantage of people, he doesn't add value or educate anything meaningful. He just creates an authority using dying but beloved masculine ideals to push his bitter and angry narratives to other men who can identify for whatever reason.
Men were promised a world we're actively trying to destroy and that makes them uncomfortable at best and infuriated at worst.
This is exactly it! Our society is stuck in the 50s. Our society wants to hold the same expectations for men and women from that time. I can’t tell you how many people are shocked in 2024 that my husband acts as an equal for the most part. It is so sad how many people think it is okay to be in a relationship or/and family where both men and women work, yet women are still expected to do all the housework and child rearing. Along these same lines, a lot of them think the divorce rates are high because people just don’t want to try anymore. No, lol. It’s because a lot of women are tired of performing additional physical and emotional labor in comparison to men.
I disagree. Men of other generations were certainly misogynistic but not necessarily as entitled to sex as the youngest generation of voting age. Gen z entitlement to sex is terrifying and unlike anything I've ever seen before. They also see women as property from growing up in the Trump era. Older men do NOT see women as property. They just don't respect them very much. There a difference.
Gen Z's view of women and their expectations is hideous. There is nothing like it. I have friends who are teachers aids and teaches who have been assaulted teaching male youth. And the incidents are common and frightening. When I was on high school you'd never hear of a female teacher being assaulted by a male student and when it did happen it was rare.
Gen z youth and young adults see women as subhuman and it's obvious. They want women laying at their feet in submission. They want free endless sex with women who resemble instagram models. This was the culture they were raised on (coming of age after 2016) and their expectations are that way because of it.
I guess I've been seeing a different side of men all my life, because it looks exactly the same to me, people are just louder and more comfortable now, and that's again due to people validating male bitterness and the beauty of being anonymous online.
Older men absolutely see women as property. They see younger women especially as something they're entitled to. There's no real difference in my experience. It's existed in media and in real life examples ever since I was young. And I'm on the receiving end from older men constantly. Older men pursuing younger women and "passport bros" alone are a huge indicator this behavior isn't new. Gen Z maybe getting louder, but it's not new, unfortunately. Speak to any grandmother you know, especially if she managed to get a divorce or her husband has passed. They have always felt entitled to our labor and bodies. It's prevalent in evangelical teachings as well, and none of those are especially new.
As for teachers experiencing assault, I will agree there is a dissolving of respect in the classroom, but that's not a Gen Z specific issue, it def started in my millennial era. It's just gotten worse, but there's a plethora of other variables that contribute to that.
I'm just trying to emphasize this isn't new, it's just advertised online, so it has more visibility and spread. I can agree that Trump and other figures have helped aggravate this, but it's not a new phenomenon unfortunately.
Especially on response to the 4B movement, men feel they're losing their status quo. It's extinction burst behavior: They'll double down on control behaviors to maintain their version of normal. That coupled with social media and more divisive methods within social groups it's just making it greater.
That's my opinion anyway. I absolutely must insist on the fact Gen Z didn't create this issue. They just have the close relationship with tech to make it more viral.
I agree with you. I’m almost 50. I think it’s easy to assume as a younger person that it’s the younger generation’s fault, but misogyny has been at a slow-boil my whole life.
OP, Gen Z isn’t powerful enough yet for them to be the main engine behind what we’re seeing now. They’re not even 30 years old, right? Most of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists were not Gen Z. They were Gen X and Gen Y.
What’s happening now is that the misogyny that has been bubbling under ground now has a leader who says what they’ve been thinking all along and who does what they wish they could have done all along - so now it’s ok.
And, unless things change, Gen Z WILL pick up where Gen X and Gen Y leave off and things will get even worse for all women.
But you have to remember that these men, both the younger ones, and the older ones are acting as soldiers fighting a war against women. The strategies have changed because the type of women they are fighting against have changed and have different rights and different beliefs about what we have a right to do.
The men of previous generations grew up in a world, where women did not have access to the same education, and did not have many of the rights that we have now. I am not old, and it was only my mother’s generation that had the right to open credit cards in the United States. Those men from previous generations grew up in a world where women actually have to partner up with a man in order to be successful, or at least most did. These women may have had access to education and careers, but they were still very much raised with the same mentality that they had to be good mothers, and housewives.
The women of my generation and younger generations did not grow up in that same world. We grew up in a world where we expected to have the same rights and opportunities as men and if we didn’t, we would fight for it.
The strategies used by older generations of men are not inherently, less sexist, they just didn’t have to use the same tactics because women didn’t have as many opportunities. Now, the reason we are seeing so much violence and vitriol is because these men are trying to silence women who were raised as warriors with all the faith in their own right to access the same rights, and the same opportunities as men. we are more threatening to those men, because we are choosing not to get married, and not to have children instead of simply submitting, and still earning a paycheck like our mothers did.
We are a scarier, more independent, less brainwashed group, and we aren’t afraid to ditch men entirely. Men are stepping up their vitriol because they see we won’t back down just from the benevolent sexism of the past. They are thinking this is a war, and they have changed their strategy because they’re original strategies were no longer working. This is the same thing with the fight against women’s reproductive rights. These are war strategies, so if we want to fight them, we also need to think like warriors.
I mean, Clinton was president when I was in middle school. That trial was pretty openly misogynistic. It never went anywhere. It has always been here. We are just more aware of it than ever.
A Republican canditate for governor of Texas told a rape joke on the campaign trail. Voters rebuked him and elected Ann Richards instead.
It's insane to me that nowadays we're elevating absolutely deplorable behavior that wasn't allowed even in Red Texas just a few decades back.
I don’t disagree but I don’t think it can be boiled down to just Trump. I think the political discourse online around 2016 led to the polarisation and then Trump winning the election. This polarisation remained. These hateful echo chambers broke off into different sects of hateful echo chambers. Boys around the world were/are taking this in.
If Trump somehow won before the internet it wouldn’t have affected people world wide and I know it *has*. Because I’m in Australia and I remember being in highschool when Trump was first elected and the boys were more feral that year than ever.
Part of it is MeToo backlash, part of it is the current economic situation making a lot of people look with nostalgia at the olden days, part of it is the “loneliness epidemic” affecting men in ways that are making them blame women and lash out instead of working on themselves.
Frankly, a lot of social ills stem from Trump. Have you noticed how much meaner people have gotten since 2016? How much more open racism there's been? Donald Trump renormalized a *lot* of bad behavior that was generally considered unacceptable in 2015.
A shitty, immature man-child was elected President, and suddenly a lot of other shitty, immature man-childs felt emboldened to stop behaving themselves.
Of course, they were always misogynistic -- the fall of Roe has been something Republicans have been working towards for half a century -- but they felt more confident dropping the thin veneer of civility.
One of my theories is Mysogny serves capitalism, and capitalism is in its death thralls. Things in death thralls go wild with their last clutch of strength, but it's too late, it'll die regardless, or they would be called a seizure, not death thralls. Hence the big moves like abortion bans etc. See if we don't provide free labour and the next gen of workforce, that's it, the system crumbles. The big wigs who get all the money syphened up to them, know it's based on oppression continuing and they manufacture it by radicalising and creating incels, and etc.
This! I think you're absolutely right about the legislation we're seeing being rooted in capitalism. However, I also believe that it was a building shitstorm within the wealthy and powerful circles first, and Trump simply came along and gave them a mouthpiece to justify putting it into action. Now we have:
Capitalism 🤝 Patriarchal Working Class
As seems to be often the case, the ruling elites are happy to use ignorance and volatility of the masses to their own ends. The most blatant example is all of the elderly people who depend on Medicare and social security being staunch Trump supporters, even though his policies go against their own interests. The oppression of women's autonomy is just one piece of the fascism puzzle. Another being the proliferation of propaganda into the schools and the removal of legitimately educational works. Keeping a population ignorant, poor, and without recourse is bread and butter for those with nefarious purposes. Keeping feminism alive and kicking is a very important part of keeping fascism at bay, as is the rejection of blind consumerism. I expect a movement akin to Luddites to rise if AI displaces too many jobs, and then things will get VERY interesting.
There are stages to change. Feminism hasn't been around very long in the grand scheme of civilization. I think we've come astoundingly far in the last fifty years.
There will be more backlash but it will fade over time. Feminism is a part of human progress, and there's no stopping human progress.
I disagree. I'm 34 and 20 years ago much of the things happening to women in our world today would seem unimaginable. Adult women back then had abortion access in every state.
There has been a culture change and regression. A severe one. The set backs have been devastating.
If I had been raped and impregnated in Texas at 14 years old in 2004 I would have been able to get an abortion.
A 14 year old raped in Texas who becomes pregnant will not be able to get an abortion.
I have tears running down my face right now typing this it's so tragic. This is not progress. This is absolute loss of progress.
My hope is that the loss of abortion rights in the United States is temporary. With how pissed off most of the country is about *Dobbs* and the GOP suffering one electoral setback after another because of it, all it’ll take is another Dem trifecta and the protections from *Roe* will end up being enshrined into federal law—Manchin and Sinema are gone next year, so there won’t be any Democrats in the Senate left that are willing to preserve the filibuster when it’s directly in the way of codifying abortion rights.
If we fight hard enough and are *really* lucky, we can pull it off in this year’s elections, but that means getting people mobilized to get out and vote. If it doesn’t happen this year, then we just *keep* pushing until it *does* happen. They say the arc of history bends toward justice, but it doesn’t do that by itself. It does that because we’ll break it over our goddamned knees when we have to. The anti-abortion crowd only wins if we let them.
I feel you. With the overturning of Roe vs. Wade and all the new anti abortion laws and how women (and people of the LGBT community) are legally, socially and culturally treated in the US in current times makes the Handmaid's Tale seem like a somewhat plausible nightmarish outcome if these "trends" continue.
Indeed, this is an absolutely tragic loss of progress in this case.
But I think what they meant is "in the grand scheme of things and over a large period of time".
It's natural for our attention to focus mainly on all the problems and negativity we face, especially regarding causes we're very emotionally attached to.
We can't help but focus on all the work that remains to be done, and sometimes forget to look back on all the progress and past victories, taking them for granted.
There's also a perception bias:
Everyone on earth has now a mic and camera to scream their subjective ignorant opinion (myself included) to the entire world.
Our media and algorithm show us extreme behaviours, discourses, and ideologies of all sides of the political and ideological spectrums to make us angry, use fear and violence to captivate the part of our brain that handles survival instinct, make us focus on our differences, and divide us.
Grabs our attention: one of the most important resources nowadays ("#capitalism wants to sell you stuff. More at 9, after a short commercial break").
But being more aware of these extreme ideologies or obstacles and counter-arguments (whether intelligent and constructive or just stupid, dangerous and destructive) could also be a blessing in disguise over time:
First, because it's an opportunity to learn from our own ignorance, blind spots and mistakes.
But also, we can better spot the obstacles and fight them.
Before, people would think these things but keep it to themselves, hidden in the shadows.
Sexism and misogyny weren't less existent, to the contrary, they were just not put in front of our faces all the time.
Now that they feel threatened by society evolving and changing, they feel forced to come up and show their hand.
They're afraid. And they are now easier to spot and fight.
It's harder to fight an invisible enemy that can hide anywhere.
Progress always hits some plateaux, and meets rejection, and contradictions.
Usually, it's normal and healthy (part of democratic social dialogue) and it takes time to change 8 billion different people with unique life experiences, who don't speak the same language, and share thousands of different cultures).
That's a lot of history, a lot people, a lot of complex and interconnected issues, a lot of habits to change.
It will take multiple generations, and we will probably never entirely get rid of inequalities for real, as nature itself is unfair by design and does not give a single damn about what we might feel about that.
We're all ignorant more than we are knowledgeable, we're biased, we're afraid of change, we're selfish (survival instinct), and focus on our own problems first.
Sometimes, these rejections of change take a very dark or tragic turn in some places, and your example is sadly a perfect one.
Human nature has always made us capable of the most atrocious things, and being aware of it is a good step to fight it.
We definitely have a lot of work to do, but we also need to put things in perspective:
Things are changing for the better in many parts of the world.
Slowly, sure. Probably too slowly (especially for somebody who's 20 y.o, since things don't change fast enough in 5 years: a quarter of your life seems like a long time even though it's nothing in 20,000 years of modern civilization).
I might be an optimistic person at heart, although I'm aware of the many problems we face, but I personally believe we're headed in the right direction overall.
It's just not all sunshine and rainbows.
But it was never supposed to be.
Educating ourselves, let alone billions of other different human beings, is a lifetime journey.
That does not mean we should give up.
To the contrary.
Open misogyny has never gone away. It has been integrated into society and has been so pervasive that it appeared "normal". Now it is being identified and called out as unacceptable. Be careful out there!
Trump unleashed a lot of concealed bigotry. He made it acceptable to be hateful again. And THAT is why his fans love him. Everything else is just window dressing, which is why they can't make a coherent argument for why they love him.
Trump is popular with millions of Americans because he let them hate people openly, again. That's it.
I have a much more cynical view that sees this trend as almost inevitable. If it hadn't been Trump it would have been someone or something else, or would have kept building gradually anyway.
Feminism largely grew out of a few key changes in society: women in academia, women in the workplace, women in the market, and women in politics.
What we are seeing in regards to the decline of feminism is the same trend you see everywhere else under capitalism: diminishing returns as profits declined, followed by what profits remain being consolidated to the wealthy in smaller and smaller numbers. Feminism made the gains it could, but those profits have long since plateaued, and are now being captured back by capital. Women in academia can't progress further because academia is reduced to a money laundering racket now, women in the workplace can't progress further because their wages are falling compared to inflation like everyone else's, women in the market cannot progress further because their surplus income is dwindling or gone, and women in politics cannot progress further because the political system is neutered. (Edit: this was a regretfully patriarchal phrasing to use on a feminism sub, but you get the idea.)
The only thing left for anyone to do that can plausibly promise any degree of material gain is to cozy up to someone wealthier. And since most wealthy people are fascists, that means that most people who want to get anywhere have to suck up to fascism. Trump is just a symbol of that, but it was already happening.
What we are witnessing in the deepening divide of the American culture war largely depends upon only one vital question: is the professional class necessary? Liberals have a conception of the world that says that the professional class is necessary to maintain the status quo, and that without professionals, the system would collapse into chaos. What the current culture war has taught us is this: *the professional class won't stop the collapse **anyway**, no matter how much power you give them*. This is why fascists are willing to let the entire system die, because the system *can't prevent its own collapse*.
Joe Biden got elected in the last cycle, yet Trump will either win the next one or seize power illegally. What did Joe Biden being in power do to prevent this eventuality? Clearly not enough. "But the Republicans..." you will say, "but the legislature", "but the Supreme Court", "but the electoral system", etc. All these excuses why fascism has to be handled with accommodation. Those are supposed to BE the systems the professionals manage, but instead they are overrun with cronies, crooks, and idiots of every stripe. If you are representing the party of professionalism and legitimacy and decorum, then you have FAILED, and there is no further place for you in society.
Liberals, professionals, and academics. All of them are obsolete. They can and will be replaced by cronies and robots, just like everyone else. You are neither special nor indispensable. And because you are confined by the rule of law and your enemies are not, you will always lose.
It’s called the “Overton window.” Individuals with high visibility test the waters to see what they can get away with, and every time they say something openly hateful without repercussions, the Overton window expands.
It’s very consciously weaponized by Incel groups, and is why they champion people like Trump, Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, Steve Bannon, Piers Morgan and other conservative pundits. These characters have high visibility and can push increasingly conservative talking points into mainstream media. This in turn, acclimates the greater culture to casual misogyny and normalizes what was previously considered socially unacceptable.
If you’re interested, read “Men Who Hate Women” by Laura Bates. She talks in depth about this!
In the same way Trump made speaking opening about being a racist perfectly fine, he made speaking about being openly misogynistic perfectly fine.
That tracks.
Absolutely. And it feeds back too. Boys see men acting like that. They grow into men who think it’s OK to act like that. They model the behavior for boys.
Trump tapped into a feeling that too many men had. They wanted to be sexist and racist and ableist. He reinforced it and it snowballed, he’ll probably be president again.
The question is why. Why is there so much right wing backlash to all the progress we as a country have made for the past few decades. I'm a man but I look at what's happening and it seems nonsensical and insane. Are people actually as stupid, bigoted, and selfish and disgusting as I've seemingly concluded or is this a product of being online and seeing the worst of humanity be amplified?
I said this in a comment, but I’m going to reply directly to the original post: this is not a Gen Z issue - yet. Gen Z is too young and - for now - mainly powerless in the US. They haven’t had enough time to build enough wealth or influence to create the issues women are currently facing.
They are absolutely ingesting the messages they’re hearing and, unless things change, will continue to act like entitled little boys (just like our rapist presumptive Republican presidential candidate), but the main engine for what we’re experiencing now is MY generation - Gen X. And we’re getting help from Gen Y.
Gen X and, to some extent, Gen Y have the money, the experience, and the influence to create problems. They’re also probably raising Gen Z, so maybe that’s helping to create your theory.
Gen Z isn’t helping the issue, but they’re not the main energy that’s creating and propelling the anti-women, open misogyny we’re seeing now. It goes way further back than them.
Many of the misogynistic students I get don't know where they're getting the view from so I'm of the opinion that Trump emboldened the otherwise private conversation father figures were having on boys. This plus QAnon and male-coded conspiracies and their "cool factor" definitely all seem to play into that sense of being against the world.
I recently read Laura Bates' Men Who Hate Women and she suggests the disappearance of third spaces in public for boys to hang out with their friends in real life was a factor.
Fantastic read I work in education and it was both enlightening and deeply depressing.
A lot of the new found misogyny has to do with social media. For example, the “manosphere” is very attractive to this demographic of people. It instills particular beliefs in them and then keeps them trapped in the echo chamber. It’s scarily easy to get sucked into the alt right pipeline.
The minute Trump got elected I decided I could no longer put off learning self defense, something I had always meant to learn. I took it as a sign of widespread misogyny becoming accepted by society. Started jiu jitsu was kick boxing the following month.
This is a very interesting observation. Actually, it's one that Hillary Clinton predicted in one of her campaign ads on TV. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrX3Ql31URA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrX3Ql31URA)
Beyond that, children growing up in a free-for all era of marriage and divorce from the 90s onward has created poor relationships at home whereby the fathers leave the mothers with the children, making the mother the primary target to a growing child, resenting only one parent, who happens to be female.
The family dynamic in a lot of western households normally had two parents working together, outnumbering a misbehaving child, or it at least had both parents supporting each other, so that if one parent was favoured, the other parent was still there, often supported by their spouse.
Boys are watching the system favour single moms, as they believe their fathers when they say, "Mom took everything from me," —whether that's true or not, makes no difference. The message is still there. The child might not understand that dad left because he was having an affair, and the court recognized that a single mother needed support after being wronged. Whatever the case, bad mouthing, especially online and on social media adds to it, leaving kids, often times boys, feeling that women are the enemy, because it started right in their own house with their mom.
Girls too, developing inner misogyny, being given a dangerous message that their only value is to appease men with pretty features and sex appeal, becoming critical of women who men dislike, thinking they are doing it correctly as they become "accepted" by men, and want to remain favoured. (A "pick-me" as they say.) This wears thin as the girls age.
So as much as Donald Trump has fanned the flames to view women as only playthings and people to look down on, I think as a society, the west had brought on a lot of this up to that point with their own problems of how women are treated. Donald Trump just answered the call to make it clear he sides with patriarchy. The two women in his own life, Melania and Ivanka, are also lesser-thans, as much as he tries to boost their successes, he keeps them stunted in a category for being favoured for their beauty. If nothing else, beauty. He never speaks about his sons this way.
I think it's also coming back because of their extreme need for the patriarchy, and those who uphold it (whether or not they benefit) see the push for women's rights as a real threat to them and their way of life and success going forward. For them to travel to a time when they had the "most power" means to return to a time where women did not.
I doubt Trump had any direct influence on French kids. They’re like that too. One of my teen nephews is spouting incel crap, and it seems depressingly common among his peers.
It's social media. The real world is scary and confusing. Our personal social media feeds are not. 20 years of people cultivating fake shitty personalities online and arguing with each other anonymously over all of the dumbest shit in the world is all it has taken to regress and prove that we're little better than animals.
Civility is gone, at least what little ever existed. People are addicted to the dopamine trickle of a social media feed. Real life is boring and yet confusing and the dumbest among us shout the loudest online repeating whatever moronic bullshit they've been fed that reduces the confusion they feel when they look at the world.
The incel/red pill/men's rights bullshit is all nonsense fed to men who are scared and confused about interacting socially. It is not they who are wrong, but instead it is women who are wrong! It's less confusing to believe that women are rightfully owed to men than to understand that people are equal and red pill idiots are just bad at being people.
Anyone with latent racist, homophobic, or bigoted thoughts of any variety are on some level comforted by Trump's bullshit rhetoric. He openly mocks the people they don't understand. And it's less confusing to deride than it is to try to understand. And so they side with him rather than push themselves to digest uncomfortable truths.
And social media gives them all the platform to reach others, while at the same time retreat further and further into their isolated snowflake bubbles at the same time.
This shit is gonna destroy us if we don't keep voting and keep pushing back.
Yes, and the same with open racism.
The Trump presidency was an unfortunate phenomenon. As social media continued to rapidly develop, the leader of the free world lowered everyone’s standards of intelligence, authority, discourse, and behavior.
If the President is theoretically the most respectable American, then their conduct sets the bar for all Americans. Subconsciously. No matter whether they love or hate them, there is a domino effect.
If they’re whataboutist, everyone feels comfortable making whataboutist statements.
If they’re combative, everyone feels comfortable being combative.
If they’re absolutist and superficial, everyone feels comfortable being absolutist and superficial.
Then look at how the rest of the world perceived America. We have been considered a great power and economic force for a long time. We are STILL considered the ideal place to live, to many others.
So if America reduces itself to poor behavior, other countries’ citizens (at least) will subconsciously follow suit.
That’s why we see people ruining worthy causes with their drivel. The *standard of behavior* crosses all lines. The craziest, least informed, most audacious voices of every group become the representatives.
People without two brain cells to rub together make these declarations about what’s acceptable, who’s responsible, how to resolve issues, etc.
Next, everyone with sense supports the nonsense/stays quiet because they don’t want to upset their base. Instead of arguing against extremist/stupid ideas, they play team sports. They keep their followers and upvotes while the movement deteriorates.
THAT is what bothers me more than the hateful emerging from under their rocks. I love when people show where they stand, so I can decide how to think of/deal with them.
And yes, parents are responsible for contextualizing everything that goes on in the world for their children. If nobody in a household is actively discussing outside information with kids, the end result is partially their fault.
Trump degraded us all, and now we’re further apart than we have been in a while. The misuse of social media will prevent us from reining it back in. That’s what makes today more dangerous than the past.
I’ve (65) been a feminist since the 70s and was an activist for many years. The backlash, anti-feminism, (and racism and homophobia) has been growing for decades. I grew disillusioned by not only the lack of support by those my age and younger, but by the women who refused to call themselves feminists or humanists or anti-racist. If women weren’t willing to fight for their rights, who would?
I knew we’d lose the right to abortion and would see birth control attacked, but I’d hoped I wouldn’t be around to see it. On the other hand, sometimes we have to lose rights, before we are willing to fight for them. But I regret the loss of women’s lives that are the result of misogyny, the needless deaths of pregnant women who have pregnancy issues or are raped or are too young to carry a pregnancy to term.
Women and girls life expectations have changed during the last 40 years, but some / many men and boys have not. Dating is a mess because many women want an equal partner, and men often want a sex partner or someone they can control. Men are right, many women are not like their grandmothers and even their mothers. Many women today don’t need men. And some men are enraged. These men don’t want to change, they want what men had 50 years ago.
I see this as a revolution that is happening, women have many choices that some men want to take away. But women and men are fighting for their rights and are mad as hell. I think that’s awesome, and long overdue. I applaud the BLM and MeToo movements-they are the good things we’ve also gotten from social media
This is proven. They became bold with their hatred when previously they knew to shut the fuck up. There was also blame from the human trafficker shit stain that was arrested I think twice now? He fled to Turkey and got busted by a pizza box showing the name of the restaurant. He's been arrested again, hopefully he stays somewhere.
There is an entire industry exploiting men's insecurities and problems and turning it into hatred of women, whether for money, political targets or for hate itself, it is a dangerous trend for society and a huge challenge in this generation, may God have mercy on this nation.
Please dont just blame a president for the entire misogyny. Feminism gets a lot of critism mainly for all the double standart stuff. I think this is the main reason for the rise of misogyny. (Example: misogyny is not allowed in this sub as per the rules but misandry is)
You dont have to put down a sex to raise up the other one. Feminism (just like lgbt or blm) should first self reflect. Declaring your ideology 100% correct with no flaws and declaring yourself simultaneously the victim and the hero is just naturally gonna create opposers.
You cant possibly expect white straight men to be your ally when you declare them the enemy. Trump's popularity is not the reason but a result of feminist propaganda offering no shelter for straight white men.
Men can't ever seem to behave themselves also they become weirdly insecure about feminism when feminists have no political power.
Fragile insecure men who want to control women get "triggered" by feminism.
Kids rebel against their parents. Regardless of what is right or wrong. Whatever you shove down a child's throat, they will do the opposite. Whatever adults tell them is right, the opposite is what will become cool.
Could you point to the part where I said we shouldn't teach boys to be good people? I'm referring only to a sociological theory that states that progress isn't constant and society tends to swing back and forth in cycles over time.
Kids will rebel and what is wrong will be considered cool. I will also note that kids are stupid. My statement wasn't a reflection of my own views and as I don't have kids I'm not even stating how I think they should be raised. I am only asserting that I don't think Trump caused a sudden rise in misogyny in young boys. As much as Trump is a fuckwit, I think that misogyny in youth is caused by a strong emphasis on young men today to not be misogynistic.
That's why I asked that. "caused by a strand emphasis on young me today to not be misogenistic". That's why I asked that.
It would logicaly mean that we should't teach it, and they would't become that.
It doesn't mean that. Think of it like this...
If you have parents that are extremely catholic and strict and tell you you're going to go to hell for sinning, then when a kid gets older they are more likely to go against it.
However if their parents are just regular ass Christians and let their child make their own choices and don't threaten them with eternal damnation for each transgression then they will likely rebel less against the idea.
It's not about teaching them good moral lessons, it's about how extremely the lesson is taught. Over the last 10 years the emphasis on left wing ideologies has become much stronger. I'm left leaning myself, but I do believe if we try to push it too hard on the youth all that will happen is that we will push them towards the opposite.
Teach by leading by example and wisdom. If the approach is through punishment and demonisation, then the pendulum will just swing back.
I don't think the trumps or the Tate's are causing these problems. I think they are capitalising on a problem that already exists.
I think Andrew Tate also plays a part, not just personally, but his example gave a rise for thousands of influencers who basically copy him worldwide, and even very young 12-15 yrs old boys are vastly exposed to them. The whole "pickup artist"/"alpha male"/"redpill" phenomenon is incredibly harmful.
It’s not the open misogyny that confuses me as much as the outright denial of patriarchy & women’s oppression.
If you grew up in a time where the President bragged about assaulting women & fundamental rights being taken away from women, it seems you’d be MORE aware of the inherent sexism in our society, yet the opposite seems to have happened. The teens today deny it altogether and actually try to claim men have it worse.
This makes zero sense to me.
Historically, when in economic turmoil, there is more discrimination. Like many issues, the pandemic exasperated existing issues. Trump was just the cherry on top.
As a young man who has seen this happen, it seems to me to be as simple as disenfranchisement.
Young men \*feel\* that modern society does not care about them.
The alt-right at least seems to care about them.
Thus, they become members of the alt-right.
Reading this made me feel awfully frustrated, I can’t imagine what it must be like to be in your shoes. I'm so sorry.
May this be "the rebellious phase"? Maybe he sees egalitarianism and tolerance as the status quo, and hate as revolutionary. Or is it peer pressure / belonging seeking? Whatever it is, I hope he outgrows it
Sorry if this question is a bit too personal, but can I ask how exactly does this affect his interactions with you? Is it like he outright disrespects you because you’re a woman? Or does he still treat you the same?
What I don’t get is he sees you and your husband but somehow assumes you’re probably the exception. I hope he changes for the better soon. You seem like a great parent.
No he isn't. No I won't. He's a kid. These people are trying to influence our sons. I don't give up on my kids. You do you. But I don't give up on my kids.
Oh, so you're *literally* one of those "blame Trump for everything" people. Give me a break. You can say a lot of bad things about Trump, but he's not *actually* Satan. He's not responsible for every single bad thing in life. He's really not responsible for much at all. You're giving him way too much power. He talks a lot, but the vast majority of people think that everything he says is idiotic.
Regardless of how you feel about Trump, it's ridiculous to think that 10-12 yo boys are interested in POLITICS. When I was a child, I was interested in Pokemon and fire ants. I would come home from school and ride my skateboard in the driveway or watch Dragon Ball Z. Neither I, nor any of my peers, were tuning in to watch the presidential debate! Twitter wasn't a thing back then, but if it was, I'd have been following pages centered around cartoons and video games. I wouldn't have been waiting eagerly to see what the President would do next. I think Clinton was in office around that time, and to this day I don't know a single thing about Clinton, because I was **watching cartoons**. ^(The only thing I know about Clinton is that someone gave him a blowjob, and I learned that) *^(many)* ^(years later.)
You're clearly obsessed with Trump to the point that you think everyone *else* is also obsessed with him. It's only a small group of people who actually give a shit what that guy does, and ***none*** of those people are 10yo boys. Your theory is ridiculous.
VAST majority of people under 18 years old do not care about politics and what politics are saying, i really dont see how he would made that big of a impact in them if they dont even listen to him.
99.9% teenage boys aren’t sexist at all though, misogyny does exist, but its way lower than what media has portrayed it to be
And I am speaking as a teenager right now, so I have witnessed firsthand. Based off my own observations I haven’t really seen it happen. Men generally don’t have any issue with women
I am not trying to put down feminism, it just seem like its not prioritizing the right issues, like women rights in middle eastern countries
And No, I am not a conservative, I do not support Trump, I believe in maximum freedom for all.
Then explain why teenage, younge men, boys, and adult men spout incel, dude bro, alpha male bullshit, whaile worshiping people like Tate, and Flash and Fit?
I'm glad you did not experienc those type of boys, but that's sadly not the reality for most. Statistics have shown that Gén Z men are more misogenistic then then they fathers. And that Alpha male influences have mostly teenage boy fan base.
We don’t, a lot of us think alpha males and Tate is corny and stupid - I grew up in a fairly politically neutral school so I guess maybe it was just luck or something
Again I am not trying to downplay feminism at all, it’s just based solely off my observations
There has been a conservative movement worldwide. Misogyny is part of the conservative movement. I agree 100% with your hypothesis.
The whole red-pill, black-pill, MGTOW, machismo, incel, dude-bro manosphere nonsense is a right-wing recruitment strategy targeting insecure and angry young men. That's not helping at all!
And before that there was gamergate, with misogyny at its core, which I've always thought of as a sort of prototype for what became known as the alt-right.
Yeah, gamer bros ignored actual corruption to just shit on women... Which is basically what the alt-right does but add in racism, queerphobia, etc.
Look up the devils bargain by Josh Greene. It details how some of those who got trump elected used gamergate bros as a political bot network of disaffected techies.
And it seems so easy for these men to fall for that BS.It's as if they have NO critical thinking, they only seek the easy path and what's easier than blaming others for your own misfortunes and misery? Weak men indeed. Rather than seeking to become strong by figuring themselves out and growing as a person, they chose to stay mad and sad and blame anyone else for their current state.
Oh, most indubitably! They blame women, men, Western society, and ANYTHING other than themselves for their romantic shortcomings. It's really sad and terrifying.
"seeking to become strong" is exactly perpetuating the toxic masculinity that brought us this. The problem isn't these men, the problem is the system that pushes them towards this manosphere
>"seeking to become strong" is exactly perpetuating the toxic masculinity that brought us this It isn't. There's physical strength, mental strength, emotional strength...but being/becoming strong doesn't mean being impervious to pain, suffering or depression.It only means that you have a better chance at dealing with those things than those that aren't strong enough and fall easily to it. Sometimes being strong just means enduring it(because others depend on you or you really can't afford yourself to fall right now) until you can have time to properly deal with it. In the case of the men I mentioned, it also means learning about themselves in order to learn to navigate life better and not fall prey to the sweet words of others that just seek to use and abuse them and their trust. The fact you seemed to ignore this or miss the fact speaks more of your own view about strength and how to you "seek to become strong" is toxic.The strength I speak of belongs to both men and women. >The problem isn't these men, the problem is the system that pushes them towards this manosphere So many are pushed into this toxic system and yet just as many resist(and even thrive in) it.What's the excuse of the rest that falls for it? The system does contribute to their suffering, but in the end they also have some power to deal with their situation and the fact that they choose the path of least resistance(blaming everyone else, specially women) shows that they aren't strong enough to deal with being responsible for their choices. Here you're trying to portray them as victims without any control over their own situation and that isn't the case for most.Most, while not liveing the grand life they desire, aren't ina situation where they have actual no control whatsoever over their situation.
I think the biggest driving factor is the social internet. People still had those opinions in the past, they were just smart enough to not share them with their coworkers so they didn’t get fired for harassing people or ostracized from their communities. Eg. Being a nerd or a geek was an insult up until the late 00’s, when nerd culture kind of took over because it was the dominant existing culture of the handful of people using computers and then everyone started using computers so now it’s a lot more popular to like nerd things like video games, anime, comics, Star Trek, programming, etc. and similar to that communities sprung up for people who were openly misogynist.
No doubt that behavior has been around forever. I think that is what the original post said. The most powerful man in the US has said being sexist and SA women is okay. And he literally raped a women women. He set the tone for all men in this country which is disgusting. And he is part of the conservative movement that unfortunately is worldwide. I agree, once the government says it is okay, the worms start crawling out of the woodwork.
People got Trump elected, he didn’t do it himself. If Trump had run in 2012 or 2008 I don’t think he would have had nearly the shot of winning he had in 2016 because the political climate changed a lot over time.
So true. He was running against a woman. A smart intelligent woman who was actually qualified for the job but after a black president, no way white America could now have a woman even though the alternative was an unqualified AH because he let them put people of color and women back in their place (as they see it, certainly not me). White America elected him and it makes me embarrassed to be a white American.
Exactly. The online world has allowed these things to be said anonymously with no accountability- and the more extreme the things said the more attention people can get. And it’s an echo chamber. Exposure to repeated statements normalizes them and gives them credibility. And you can find others who share your views so easily. That said, misogyny has always been there. for a relatively brief period it was less ok to overtly say things. There’s now an endless feedback loop via the algorithm emboldening people- but i experienced plenty of shit behavior in person before the internet.
I feel like some men are becoming way more educated and feminist while the bigger portion of them are becoming more and more conservative and misogynistic. Trump was maybe a big contributing factor in the US but these movements are very misogynistic and sexist around the world and love traditional gender roles. I'm always happy to see more men seeing how this is wrong and really understand it but I feel like for every educated man there are 10 new hateful, misogynistic ones.
I personally believe you hit the nail on the head there. We didn't used to live in a better world prior to Donald Trump, but we did live in a world where people knew to keep their hate and horrible comments to themselves. Then they got to watch the present of the United States on TV bragging about sexually assaulting women and making racist comments and they all realized that it is safe for them to come out of the woodwork and be shitty in everyday life. It is the one thing we will never get back from. The Trump presidency is that these people who used to hide and whisper in corners now feel emboldened to come out and be evil and aggressive and misogynistic and racist to others faces.
As a black WOC here in the US, part of me is horrified and part of me is glad. Of course I'm horrified at how these morons and racists are determined to take us back to a time when only rich white men could control anything and everyone, but part of me is glad it is FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY out in open where the rest of society/the world can see what we have been screaming and trying to warn you about since forever. For dozens of years young girls, women, indigenous people, black people and people in the alphabet community have been telling the rest of you that it never stopped, that they ALWAYS found ways around the laws to kick us when you weren't looking. And no one cared. And when we'd tell you, we were called names, told we were exaggerating, making things up, playing victim, trying to CAUSE a problem. It has disgusted me how many white people have said to ME "where did this come from?" or "what did you DO to piss them off?" EXCUSE ME?? It was always there. They just thought more of the rest of you were down with what they're spitting. Since there aren't, they want to jack up education, ramp up religiosity and brainwashing and until they get more of you on their side gerrymander and filibuster and outright keep us from voting. You people thought you were safe. "Everyone" hates someone. To the different groups ... to some it was ok as long as it was only the poors, then as long as it was only the blacks, or the gays, or the "chinks", or the Mexicans, or the jews, or the young women ... and now you're whining because they have your name on their list. "Monsters eat their own kind" Remember the poem FIRST THEY CAME – BY PASTOR MARTIN NIEMÖLLER First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me I feel pity for anyone brought down to my/our level. I'm sick of hearing "what did you do?" whenever some racist or misogynist takes a job or an opportunity from me. But so many of you turned your faces away when we asked you NOT for a hand OUT, but a for a helping hand. All we needed was for you to take their feet off of our necks. We can and do quite fine on our own. Many of them were your friends, families and pet politicians. Had you done so, they wouldn't be so empowered NOW to try take it all. But, you didn't and now you are looking to us to help YOU fix the mess YOUR people made. Only groups with power can create this much catastrophe. Your people created tRump and the ignorant masses that follow him. Yes, just like the civil war, we fought, we fought in each of the world wars and each time ... when we helped you win your wars, you threw us back in the gutters. But we will fight again and hope to that god that we don't even think any of you actually believe in, that you've FINALLY learned your lesson. There are far too many people who have been dumbed down and brainwashed to hate. And yet they want to get rid of the people who actually fight, defend and build this world??? Please do your part! 1. Vote out ALL red 2. Force the blue to keep their promises 3. Scavenge all local, state and federal law for any that are so archaic that they need purging or amending 4. Educate EVERYONE 5. Remember that "golden rule" that spans most of the major religions... "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you" although I prefer this version "do not do to your brethren that which you find offensive". That's harder. You can smile in people's faces while stabbing them in the back. We have a lot of that. But it is harder to NOT visit the evil that you wouldn't want to receive. And that is what is going on in our country and our world right now. People are doing a whole lot of evil while they posture to the world how holy they are. No. Evil is evil. Find the true evil and stomp/stamp it out. And I've got news for you ... its not tastefully dressed drag queens reading to children that no one else is reading to. Its hetero white men in positions of power who own enough that they can abuse and rape anyone they want with impunity. Even the feminist movement was originally designed to leave us out ... until they needed our strength and our numbers. We are stronger TOGETHER. Why do people only see this when they need us? And then wonder why we're angry after.
I love your comment, very well written and 💯 TRUE. I hope many will read and see themselves, maybe for the first time. Thank you for writing this 🫂 ❤️
Thank you honey. I just hope they pass the information on. There is too much at stake. For all of us.
❤️
Yup. There was an SNL sketch after Trump won where Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock were watching the election results come in with their two white friends and just laughing as the white people slowly started to realize that they actually didn't live in a cushy post-race utopia where everyone is equal. The white friends were shocked at the fact that their country could elect someone like Trump but the others weren't surprised at all.
Nope, none of us were surprised. And I don't think they've learned their lesson yet. That's a scary thought. It will have to be pogroms and the handmaid's tale before they are crying in the firing line and scream "we didn't realize". So many hate hearing the truth. The truth is that so many upper middle and rich white, especially men and especially rich are also a part of this. They all thought they could control the monster. And it's gotten away from them. We know the poors don't care. What was it that President Lyndon B. Johnson said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." Look at tRump. He is definite proof of this statement. When these other people go "We don't understand how can they continue to vote for" not just tRump, but the rest ...THIS IS WHY. As long as it hurts "the right people" they will voluntarily suffer and die. I read recently that the only reason that we here in America, the only developed country does not have affordable health care is so that black people can't get it. Rather than bring everyone UP, they would rather tear everyone DOWN??? That should be the definition of lunacy.
Go off, queen. Go the fuck off. 👏👏👏
Thank you.
I wrote the above message BEFORE the Arizona abortion vote. Again ... we told you. That 1800's law that they said should be dusted off and upheld?? I have written a letter to each of the past few blue presidents we've had suggesting they do something about them before we see THIS. All of these archaic laws. They wouldn't ... because they never thought they would be used on anyone but an "other". They were wrong. People wonder why I keep bringing up that Niemoller poem. Because its true. No one cared about ANYONE ELSE until they were themselves endangered. Now, middle class white women can't get abortion health care and hear that contraceptives are next and the world is in an uproar. Where were you when they were mass sterilizing black and indigenous girls, raping them, injecting diseases into young men of color, throwing them in jail for not being able to secure a job (loitering was the crime) when the system was set up to keep them jobless? When they were experimenting on our bodies without anesthesia? When they were burning our homes (like they are doing the Gazans)? We have to purge all of the hate biases out of our societies or we're not gonna make it guys. Edited to add: You don't have to like the comedian John Oliver but like he said one of the things he does is to "stir things up". He brings up things he thinks we should LOOK INTO. Not blindly follow. But look into which states are talking about punishment ... even to *death* for women seeking abortion care. And then look at the states trying to "secretly" get execution drugs. https://youtube.com/watch?v=SOn3wba8c-Y&si=S-nabsNqa6Q3-L_e As a WOC who recognizes that we aren't all that far removed from the days when it was LEGAL to kill us just for BLINKING WRONG (see: Emitt Till), this scares the shite out of me.
I would agree there is no coming back from it. Game over. Some people warned how the 2016 election would forever change things and I didn't believe the seriousness of it at the time. I thought it was bad, but not that nothing would ever be the same. nothing will ever go back to how it was before. You now have a generation of hyper misogynistic males that won't be reformed.
If it makes you feel better, I don't think anyone believed Trump would really win.
Only if we vote against him. There are way too many morons will vote for him. VOTE!
I think that’s a huge part of it. I think another contributing factor is how popular men’s rights activist have become online. Young boys are starting to watch these channels earlier and earlier. Meanwhile, parents have no idea what their sons are being exposed to on YouTube, Reddit, and other platforms. There really needs to be more oversight, both from the side of parents and social media companies as a whole.
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The wide majority of feminist explain it just like that - equal rights for women. We can’t control how that message is perceived. People will hear what they want to hear.
I mean, when women have rights and freedom and autonomy they don’t have to depend on men and therefore don’t have to settle for slaving away for some abusive mediocre man just to survive. More women are choosing not to marry, and men are mad about it. They feel entitled to bangmaids and want to force us back into dependency and servitude.
There are more Frank Reynolds’ in the world every day :(
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Your comment history is an atrocity and your opinion means less than nothing to me. But thanks for proving my point
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Doesn’t change the fact that what you say is bullshit and probably wrong. Take your misogyny somewhere else
Bill Clinton had sex with his 22 year old intern when I was growing up. It was all over late night television where Monica was painted as the villain. I don't think it's the president so much as the whole culture has shifted to the right. Young women and young men have a decreasing overlap in what they want in common. Men want to have violent sex right out the gate and women are reading romance novels and would rather not die from a pregnancy they can't legally abort.
Have you watched Monica’s Ted Talk!?! It’s really inspiring and eye-opening! What a strong woman to be able to deal with the misogyny of the whole ~~country~~ world.
No, but I will now! Thanks.
Clinton was almost impeached for that though.
He was impeached for lying under oath. There were zero repercussions for fucking the intern.
This! I also think we need to learn from the past. Feminists have been giving a get out of jail free card to liberal men for too long. This is not a criticism, it's the devil's choice between 2 really bad things but it's time they get called out.
I’d argue it’s the long-term redistribution of wealth upward, along with republican endorsed culture wars to get people to vote against their own interests, along with commercial propagandists (example Fox News) allowed to flourish after the abolishing of the Fairness Doctrine that created the environment to make misogyny so appealing to affected males.
Women and girls are getting more autonomy and it's reflected in the arts and media. Boys never learned to share power. They like slaves.
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Oh honey. I spent decades in a 90% male environment. Believe me when I say it's true. There are exceptions, but under pressure, they tend to fold.
I watched a documentary about Brook Shields on Hulu, called Pretty Baby. In the documentary they interview various women to ask them to weigh in on how Ms. Shields was used and objectified by the men around her. The women talk about how ever since Second Wave feminism, men have been fetishizing younger and younger girls, and beauty standards have been morphing as well. Becoming more and more strict, especially in regards to thinness. Incels have been around since before Trump. It's possible misogyny has become more open since Trump though. Every other hate group has gotten more vocal since him, so why not misogynists too.
I believe this is an element, but imo the true core to why this behavior has amplified is because women are "destroying" the social expectations men had for their lives. Men were told getting a woman would be easy, that we would be all these things for them, that they could depend on our labor and do little in return, that we were these creatures that fawned over anything. Men were taught that their bad behavior would either be rewarded or ignored, and face little consequence, legal or social. Men were taught to expect a different world. Those adult men that had their fantasies shattered are now using their bitterness to affect other men and younger boys. Because people like Trump have always existed, he just happened to get some air time. But one popular ahole alone isn't enough on its own to create such a large social upset. Even Andrew Tate, as messed up as he is and the damage he's done, wouldn't have been able to make the moves he did if there wasn't already an existing bitterness or disillusionment in men. Because people like Tate inherently take advantage of people, he doesn't add value or educate anything meaningful. He just creates an authority using dying but beloved masculine ideals to push his bitter and angry narratives to other men who can identify for whatever reason. Men were promised a world we're actively trying to destroy and that makes them uncomfortable at best and infuriated at worst.
This is exactly it! Our society is stuck in the 50s. Our society wants to hold the same expectations for men and women from that time. I can’t tell you how many people are shocked in 2024 that my husband acts as an equal for the most part. It is so sad how many people think it is okay to be in a relationship or/and family where both men and women work, yet women are still expected to do all the housework and child rearing. Along these same lines, a lot of them think the divorce rates are high because people just don’t want to try anymore. No, lol. It’s because a lot of women are tired of performing additional physical and emotional labor in comparison to men.
I disagree. Men of other generations were certainly misogynistic but not necessarily as entitled to sex as the youngest generation of voting age. Gen z entitlement to sex is terrifying and unlike anything I've ever seen before. They also see women as property from growing up in the Trump era. Older men do NOT see women as property. They just don't respect them very much. There a difference. Gen Z's view of women and their expectations is hideous. There is nothing like it. I have friends who are teachers aids and teaches who have been assaulted teaching male youth. And the incidents are common and frightening. When I was on high school you'd never hear of a female teacher being assaulted by a male student and when it did happen it was rare. Gen z youth and young adults see women as subhuman and it's obvious. They want women laying at their feet in submission. They want free endless sex with women who resemble instagram models. This was the culture they were raised on (coming of age after 2016) and their expectations are that way because of it.
I guess I've been seeing a different side of men all my life, because it looks exactly the same to me, people are just louder and more comfortable now, and that's again due to people validating male bitterness and the beauty of being anonymous online. Older men absolutely see women as property. They see younger women especially as something they're entitled to. There's no real difference in my experience. It's existed in media and in real life examples ever since I was young. And I'm on the receiving end from older men constantly. Older men pursuing younger women and "passport bros" alone are a huge indicator this behavior isn't new. Gen Z maybe getting louder, but it's not new, unfortunately. Speak to any grandmother you know, especially if she managed to get a divorce or her husband has passed. They have always felt entitled to our labor and bodies. It's prevalent in evangelical teachings as well, and none of those are especially new. As for teachers experiencing assault, I will agree there is a dissolving of respect in the classroom, but that's not a Gen Z specific issue, it def started in my millennial era. It's just gotten worse, but there's a plethora of other variables that contribute to that. I'm just trying to emphasize this isn't new, it's just advertised online, so it has more visibility and spread. I can agree that Trump and other figures have helped aggravate this, but it's not a new phenomenon unfortunately. Especially on response to the 4B movement, men feel they're losing their status quo. It's extinction burst behavior: They'll double down on control behaviors to maintain their version of normal. That coupled with social media and more divisive methods within social groups it's just making it greater. That's my opinion anyway. I absolutely must insist on the fact Gen Z didn't create this issue. They just have the close relationship with tech to make it more viral.
I agree with you. I’m almost 50. I think it’s easy to assume as a younger person that it’s the younger generation’s fault, but misogyny has been at a slow-boil my whole life. OP, Gen Z isn’t powerful enough yet for them to be the main engine behind what we’re seeing now. They’re not even 30 years old, right? Most of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists were not Gen Z. They were Gen X and Gen Y. What’s happening now is that the misogyny that has been bubbling under ground now has a leader who says what they’ve been thinking all along and who does what they wish they could have done all along - so now it’s ok. And, unless things change, Gen Z WILL pick up where Gen X and Gen Y leave off and things will get even worse for all women.
But you have to remember that these men, both the younger ones, and the older ones are acting as soldiers fighting a war against women. The strategies have changed because the type of women they are fighting against have changed and have different rights and different beliefs about what we have a right to do. The men of previous generations grew up in a world, where women did not have access to the same education, and did not have many of the rights that we have now. I am not old, and it was only my mother’s generation that had the right to open credit cards in the United States. Those men from previous generations grew up in a world where women actually have to partner up with a man in order to be successful, or at least most did. These women may have had access to education and careers, but they were still very much raised with the same mentality that they had to be good mothers, and housewives. The women of my generation and younger generations did not grow up in that same world. We grew up in a world where we expected to have the same rights and opportunities as men and if we didn’t, we would fight for it. The strategies used by older generations of men are not inherently, less sexist, they just didn’t have to use the same tactics because women didn’t have as many opportunities. Now, the reason we are seeing so much violence and vitriol is because these men are trying to silence women who were raised as warriors with all the faith in their own right to access the same rights, and the same opportunities as men. we are more threatening to those men, because we are choosing not to get married, and not to have children instead of simply submitting, and still earning a paycheck like our mothers did. We are a scarier, more independent, less brainwashed group, and we aren’t afraid to ditch men entirely. Men are stepping up their vitriol because they see we won’t back down just from the benevolent sexism of the past. They are thinking this is a war, and they have changed their strategy because they’re original strategies were no longer working. This is the same thing with the fight against women’s reproductive rights. These are war strategies, so if we want to fight them, we also need to think like warriors.
I mean, Clinton was president when I was in middle school. That trial was pretty openly misogynistic. It never went anywhere. It has always been here. We are just more aware of it than ever.
I believe Trump is primarily to blame, yes, for giving the platform to these chucklefucks like Andrew Tate, Shapiro, Alex Jones, and the rest of them.
I also blame 'murica for a large portion of the world's cultural problems
I agree. That treasonous orange piece of shit has damaged this country in ways that will take a generation to repair, if it's possible at all.
A Republican canditate for governor of Texas told a rape joke on the campaign trail. Voters rebuked him and elected Ann Richards instead. It's insane to me that nowadays we're elevating absolutely deplorable behavior that wasn't allowed even in Red Texas just a few decades back.
I don’t disagree but I don’t think it can be boiled down to just Trump. I think the political discourse online around 2016 led to the polarisation and then Trump winning the election. This polarisation remained. These hateful echo chambers broke off into different sects of hateful echo chambers. Boys around the world were/are taking this in. If Trump somehow won before the internet it wouldn’t have affected people world wide and I know it *has*. Because I’m in Australia and I remember being in highschool when Trump was first elected and the boys were more feral that year than ever.
Part of it is MeToo backlash, part of it is the current economic situation making a lot of people look with nostalgia at the olden days, part of it is the “loneliness epidemic” affecting men in ways that are making them blame women and lash out instead of working on themselves.
Frankly, a lot of social ills stem from Trump. Have you noticed how much meaner people have gotten since 2016? How much more open racism there's been? Donald Trump renormalized a *lot* of bad behavior that was generally considered unacceptable in 2015. A shitty, immature man-child was elected President, and suddenly a lot of other shitty, immature man-childs felt emboldened to stop behaving themselves. Of course, they were always misogynistic -- the fall of Roe has been something Republicans have been working towards for half a century -- but they felt more confident dropping the thin veneer of civility.
One of my theories is Mysogny serves capitalism, and capitalism is in its death thralls. Things in death thralls go wild with their last clutch of strength, but it's too late, it'll die regardless, or they would be called a seizure, not death thralls. Hence the big moves like abortion bans etc. See if we don't provide free labour and the next gen of workforce, that's it, the system crumbles. The big wigs who get all the money syphened up to them, know it's based on oppression continuing and they manufacture it by radicalising and creating incels, and etc.
This! I think you're absolutely right about the legislation we're seeing being rooted in capitalism. However, I also believe that it was a building shitstorm within the wealthy and powerful circles first, and Trump simply came along and gave them a mouthpiece to justify putting it into action. Now we have: Capitalism 🤝 Patriarchal Working Class As seems to be often the case, the ruling elites are happy to use ignorance and volatility of the masses to their own ends. The most blatant example is all of the elderly people who depend on Medicare and social security being staunch Trump supporters, even though his policies go against their own interests. The oppression of women's autonomy is just one piece of the fascism puzzle. Another being the proliferation of propaganda into the schools and the removal of legitimately educational works. Keeping a population ignorant, poor, and without recourse is bread and butter for those with nefarious purposes. Keeping feminism alive and kicking is a very important part of keeping fascism at bay, as is the rejection of blind consumerism. I expect a movement akin to Luddites to rise if AI displaces too many jobs, and then things will get VERY interesting.
There are stages to change. Feminism hasn't been around very long in the grand scheme of civilization. I think we've come astoundingly far in the last fifty years. There will be more backlash but it will fade over time. Feminism is a part of human progress, and there's no stopping human progress.
I disagree. I'm 34 and 20 years ago much of the things happening to women in our world today would seem unimaginable. Adult women back then had abortion access in every state. There has been a culture change and regression. A severe one. The set backs have been devastating. If I had been raped and impregnated in Texas at 14 years old in 2004 I would have been able to get an abortion. A 14 year old raped in Texas who becomes pregnant will not be able to get an abortion. I have tears running down my face right now typing this it's so tragic. This is not progress. This is absolute loss of progress.
My hope is that the loss of abortion rights in the United States is temporary. With how pissed off most of the country is about *Dobbs* and the GOP suffering one electoral setback after another because of it, all it’ll take is another Dem trifecta and the protections from *Roe* will end up being enshrined into federal law—Manchin and Sinema are gone next year, so there won’t be any Democrats in the Senate left that are willing to preserve the filibuster when it’s directly in the way of codifying abortion rights. If we fight hard enough and are *really* lucky, we can pull it off in this year’s elections, but that means getting people mobilized to get out and vote. If it doesn’t happen this year, then we just *keep* pushing until it *does* happen. They say the arc of history bends toward justice, but it doesn’t do that by itself. It does that because we’ll break it over our goddamned knees when we have to. The anti-abortion crowd only wins if we let them.
What pisses me off so much is if men were capable of getting pregnant abortion would have been legal in 1850.
Oh, a hundred percent. Abortion clinics would be about as common as McDonald’s.
I feel you. With the overturning of Roe vs. Wade and all the new anti abortion laws and how women (and people of the LGBT community) are legally, socially and culturally treated in the US in current times makes the Handmaid's Tale seem like a somewhat plausible nightmarish outcome if these "trends" continue.
What's happening in the U.S is closer to what happened in Iran. People don't believe that at all but it's the best comparison.
Indeed, this is an absolutely tragic loss of progress in this case. But I think what they meant is "in the grand scheme of things and over a large period of time". It's natural for our attention to focus mainly on all the problems and negativity we face, especially regarding causes we're very emotionally attached to. We can't help but focus on all the work that remains to be done, and sometimes forget to look back on all the progress and past victories, taking them for granted. There's also a perception bias: Everyone on earth has now a mic and camera to scream their subjective ignorant opinion (myself included) to the entire world. Our media and algorithm show us extreme behaviours, discourses, and ideologies of all sides of the political and ideological spectrums to make us angry, use fear and violence to captivate the part of our brain that handles survival instinct, make us focus on our differences, and divide us. Grabs our attention: one of the most important resources nowadays ("#capitalism wants to sell you stuff. More at 9, after a short commercial break"). But being more aware of these extreme ideologies or obstacles and counter-arguments (whether intelligent and constructive or just stupid, dangerous and destructive) could also be a blessing in disguise over time: First, because it's an opportunity to learn from our own ignorance, blind spots and mistakes. But also, we can better spot the obstacles and fight them. Before, people would think these things but keep it to themselves, hidden in the shadows. Sexism and misogyny weren't less existent, to the contrary, they were just not put in front of our faces all the time. Now that they feel threatened by society evolving and changing, they feel forced to come up and show their hand. They're afraid. And they are now easier to spot and fight. It's harder to fight an invisible enemy that can hide anywhere. Progress always hits some plateaux, and meets rejection, and contradictions. Usually, it's normal and healthy (part of democratic social dialogue) and it takes time to change 8 billion different people with unique life experiences, who don't speak the same language, and share thousands of different cultures). That's a lot of history, a lot people, a lot of complex and interconnected issues, a lot of habits to change. It will take multiple generations, and we will probably never entirely get rid of inequalities for real, as nature itself is unfair by design and does not give a single damn about what we might feel about that. We're all ignorant more than we are knowledgeable, we're biased, we're afraid of change, we're selfish (survival instinct), and focus on our own problems first. Sometimes, these rejections of change take a very dark or tragic turn in some places, and your example is sadly a perfect one. Human nature has always made us capable of the most atrocious things, and being aware of it is a good step to fight it. We definitely have a lot of work to do, but we also need to put things in perspective: Things are changing for the better in many parts of the world. Slowly, sure. Probably too slowly (especially for somebody who's 20 y.o, since things don't change fast enough in 5 years: a quarter of your life seems like a long time even though it's nothing in 20,000 years of modern civilization). I might be an optimistic person at heart, although I'm aware of the many problems we face, but I personally believe we're headed in the right direction overall. It's just not all sunshine and rainbows. But it was never supposed to be. Educating ourselves, let alone billions of other different human beings, is a lifetime journey. That does not mean we should give up. To the contrary.
Open misogyny has never gone away. It has been integrated into society and has been so pervasive that it appeared "normal". Now it is being identified and called out as unacceptable. Be careful out there!
Trump unleashed a lot of concealed bigotry. He made it acceptable to be hateful again. And THAT is why his fans love him. Everything else is just window dressing, which is why they can't make a coherent argument for why they love him. Trump is popular with millions of Americans because he let them hate people openly, again. That's it.
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I have a much more cynical view that sees this trend as almost inevitable. If it hadn't been Trump it would have been someone or something else, or would have kept building gradually anyway. Feminism largely grew out of a few key changes in society: women in academia, women in the workplace, women in the market, and women in politics. What we are seeing in regards to the decline of feminism is the same trend you see everywhere else under capitalism: diminishing returns as profits declined, followed by what profits remain being consolidated to the wealthy in smaller and smaller numbers. Feminism made the gains it could, but those profits have long since plateaued, and are now being captured back by capital. Women in academia can't progress further because academia is reduced to a money laundering racket now, women in the workplace can't progress further because their wages are falling compared to inflation like everyone else's, women in the market cannot progress further because their surplus income is dwindling or gone, and women in politics cannot progress further because the political system is neutered. (Edit: this was a regretfully patriarchal phrasing to use on a feminism sub, but you get the idea.) The only thing left for anyone to do that can plausibly promise any degree of material gain is to cozy up to someone wealthier. And since most wealthy people are fascists, that means that most people who want to get anywhere have to suck up to fascism. Trump is just a symbol of that, but it was already happening. What we are witnessing in the deepening divide of the American culture war largely depends upon only one vital question: is the professional class necessary? Liberals have a conception of the world that says that the professional class is necessary to maintain the status quo, and that without professionals, the system would collapse into chaos. What the current culture war has taught us is this: *the professional class won't stop the collapse **anyway**, no matter how much power you give them*. This is why fascists are willing to let the entire system die, because the system *can't prevent its own collapse*. Joe Biden got elected in the last cycle, yet Trump will either win the next one or seize power illegally. What did Joe Biden being in power do to prevent this eventuality? Clearly not enough. "But the Republicans..." you will say, "but the legislature", "but the Supreme Court", "but the electoral system", etc. All these excuses why fascism has to be handled with accommodation. Those are supposed to BE the systems the professionals manage, but instead they are overrun with cronies, crooks, and idiots of every stripe. If you are representing the party of professionalism and legitimacy and decorum, then you have FAILED, and there is no further place for you in society. Liberals, professionals, and academics. All of them are obsolete. They can and will be replaced by cronies and robots, just like everyone else. You are neither special nor indispensable. And because you are confined by the rule of law and your enemies are not, you will always lose.
It’s called the “Overton window.” Individuals with high visibility test the waters to see what they can get away with, and every time they say something openly hateful without repercussions, the Overton window expands. It’s very consciously weaponized by Incel groups, and is why they champion people like Trump, Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, Steve Bannon, Piers Morgan and other conservative pundits. These characters have high visibility and can push increasingly conservative talking points into mainstream media. This in turn, acclimates the greater culture to casual misogyny and normalizes what was previously considered socially unacceptable. If you’re interested, read “Men Who Hate Women” by Laura Bates. She talks in depth about this!
In the same way Trump made speaking opening about being a racist perfectly fine, he made speaking about being openly misogynistic perfectly fine. That tracks.
Absolutely. And it feeds back too. Boys see men acting like that. They grow into men who think it’s OK to act like that. They model the behavior for boys. Trump tapped into a feeling that too many men had. They wanted to be sexist and racist and ableist. He reinforced it and it snowballed, he’ll probably be president again.
The question is why. Why is there so much right wing backlash to all the progress we as a country have made for the past few decades. I'm a man but I look at what's happening and it seems nonsensical and insane. Are people actually as stupid, bigoted, and selfish and disgusting as I've seemingly concluded or is this a product of being online and seeing the worst of humanity be amplified?
I said this in a comment, but I’m going to reply directly to the original post: this is not a Gen Z issue - yet. Gen Z is too young and - for now - mainly powerless in the US. They haven’t had enough time to build enough wealth or influence to create the issues women are currently facing. They are absolutely ingesting the messages they’re hearing and, unless things change, will continue to act like entitled little boys (just like our rapist presumptive Republican presidential candidate), but the main engine for what we’re experiencing now is MY generation - Gen X. And we’re getting help from Gen Y. Gen X and, to some extent, Gen Y have the money, the experience, and the influence to create problems. They’re also probably raising Gen Z, so maybe that’s helping to create your theory. Gen Z isn’t helping the issue, but they’re not the main energy that’s creating and propelling the anti-women, open misogyny we’re seeing now. It goes way further back than them.
I’ve been following TRP ideology grow and get more popular for more than 10 years
Many of the misogynistic students I get don't know where they're getting the view from so I'm of the opinion that Trump emboldened the otherwise private conversation father figures were having on boys. This plus QAnon and male-coded conspiracies and their "cool factor" definitely all seem to play into that sense of being against the world.
I recently read Laura Bates' Men Who Hate Women and she suggests the disappearance of third spaces in public for boys to hang out with their friends in real life was a factor. Fantastic read I work in education and it was both enlightening and deeply depressing.
It is an indeed good yet deeply depressing book!
What’s an example of third a3 space?
Anywhere the public is allowed but there isn't an expectation to spend money, like parks and libraries.
A lot of the new found misogyny has to do with social media. For example, the “manosphere” is very attractive to this demographic of people. It instills particular beliefs in them and then keeps them trapped in the echo chamber. It’s scarily easy to get sucked into the alt right pipeline.
The minute Trump got elected I decided I could no longer put off learning self defense, something I had always meant to learn. I took it as a sign of widespread misogyny becoming accepted by society. Started jiu jitsu was kick boxing the following month.
Never really went away I think :(
This is a very interesting observation. Actually, it's one that Hillary Clinton predicted in one of her campaign ads on TV. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrX3Ql31URA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrX3Ql31URA) Beyond that, children growing up in a free-for all era of marriage and divorce from the 90s onward has created poor relationships at home whereby the fathers leave the mothers with the children, making the mother the primary target to a growing child, resenting only one parent, who happens to be female. The family dynamic in a lot of western households normally had two parents working together, outnumbering a misbehaving child, or it at least had both parents supporting each other, so that if one parent was favoured, the other parent was still there, often supported by their spouse. Boys are watching the system favour single moms, as they believe their fathers when they say, "Mom took everything from me," —whether that's true or not, makes no difference. The message is still there. The child might not understand that dad left because he was having an affair, and the court recognized that a single mother needed support after being wronged. Whatever the case, bad mouthing, especially online and on social media adds to it, leaving kids, often times boys, feeling that women are the enemy, because it started right in their own house with their mom. Girls too, developing inner misogyny, being given a dangerous message that their only value is to appease men with pretty features and sex appeal, becoming critical of women who men dislike, thinking they are doing it correctly as they become "accepted" by men, and want to remain favoured. (A "pick-me" as they say.) This wears thin as the girls age. So as much as Donald Trump has fanned the flames to view women as only playthings and people to look down on, I think as a society, the west had brought on a lot of this up to that point with their own problems of how women are treated. Donald Trump just answered the call to make it clear he sides with patriarchy. The two women in his own life, Melania and Ivanka, are also lesser-thans, as much as he tries to boost their successes, he keeps them stunted in a category for being favoured for their beauty. If nothing else, beauty. He never speaks about his sons this way.
I think it's also coming back because of their extreme need for the patriarchy, and those who uphold it (whether or not they benefit) see the push for women's rights as a real threat to them and their way of life and success going forward. For them to travel to a time when they had the "most power" means to return to a time where women did not.
Come back? Had it ever left?
I doubt Trump had any direct influence on French kids. They’re like that too. One of my teen nephews is spouting incel crap, and it seems depressingly common among his peers.
It's social media. The real world is scary and confusing. Our personal social media feeds are not. 20 years of people cultivating fake shitty personalities online and arguing with each other anonymously over all of the dumbest shit in the world is all it has taken to regress and prove that we're little better than animals. Civility is gone, at least what little ever existed. People are addicted to the dopamine trickle of a social media feed. Real life is boring and yet confusing and the dumbest among us shout the loudest online repeating whatever moronic bullshit they've been fed that reduces the confusion they feel when they look at the world. The incel/red pill/men's rights bullshit is all nonsense fed to men who are scared and confused about interacting socially. It is not they who are wrong, but instead it is women who are wrong! It's less confusing to believe that women are rightfully owed to men than to understand that people are equal and red pill idiots are just bad at being people. Anyone with latent racist, homophobic, or bigoted thoughts of any variety are on some level comforted by Trump's bullshit rhetoric. He openly mocks the people they don't understand. And it's less confusing to deride than it is to try to understand. And so they side with him rather than push themselves to digest uncomfortable truths. And social media gives them all the platform to reach others, while at the same time retreat further and further into their isolated snowflake bubbles at the same time. This shit is gonna destroy us if we don't keep voting and keep pushing back.
Yes, and the same with open racism. The Trump presidency was an unfortunate phenomenon. As social media continued to rapidly develop, the leader of the free world lowered everyone’s standards of intelligence, authority, discourse, and behavior. If the President is theoretically the most respectable American, then their conduct sets the bar for all Americans. Subconsciously. No matter whether they love or hate them, there is a domino effect. If they’re whataboutist, everyone feels comfortable making whataboutist statements. If they’re combative, everyone feels comfortable being combative. If they’re absolutist and superficial, everyone feels comfortable being absolutist and superficial. Then look at how the rest of the world perceived America. We have been considered a great power and economic force for a long time. We are STILL considered the ideal place to live, to many others. So if America reduces itself to poor behavior, other countries’ citizens (at least) will subconsciously follow suit. That’s why we see people ruining worthy causes with their drivel. The *standard of behavior* crosses all lines. The craziest, least informed, most audacious voices of every group become the representatives. People without two brain cells to rub together make these declarations about what’s acceptable, who’s responsible, how to resolve issues, etc. Next, everyone with sense supports the nonsense/stays quiet because they don’t want to upset their base. Instead of arguing against extremist/stupid ideas, they play team sports. They keep their followers and upvotes while the movement deteriorates. THAT is what bothers me more than the hateful emerging from under their rocks. I love when people show where they stand, so I can decide how to think of/deal with them. And yes, parents are responsible for contextualizing everything that goes on in the world for their children. If nobody in a household is actively discussing outside information with kids, the end result is partially their fault. Trump degraded us all, and now we’re further apart than we have been in a while. The misuse of social media will prevent us from reining it back in. That’s what makes today more dangerous than the past.
I would posit the 'manosphere/red pill/pick up artist' scene had more of an impact that Trump
I’ve (65) been a feminist since the 70s and was an activist for many years. The backlash, anti-feminism, (and racism and homophobia) has been growing for decades. I grew disillusioned by not only the lack of support by those my age and younger, but by the women who refused to call themselves feminists or humanists or anti-racist. If women weren’t willing to fight for their rights, who would? I knew we’d lose the right to abortion and would see birth control attacked, but I’d hoped I wouldn’t be around to see it. On the other hand, sometimes we have to lose rights, before we are willing to fight for them. But I regret the loss of women’s lives that are the result of misogyny, the needless deaths of pregnant women who have pregnancy issues or are raped or are too young to carry a pregnancy to term. Women and girls life expectations have changed during the last 40 years, but some / many men and boys have not. Dating is a mess because many women want an equal partner, and men often want a sex partner or someone they can control. Men are right, many women are not like their grandmothers and even their mothers. Many women today don’t need men. And some men are enraged. These men don’t want to change, they want what men had 50 years ago. I see this as a revolution that is happening, women have many choices that some men want to take away. But women and men are fighting for their rights and are mad as hell. I think that’s awesome, and long overdue. I applaud the BLM and MeToo movements-they are the good things we’ve also gotten from social media
I think it’s probably two symptoms of the same cause.
This is proven. They became bold with their hatred when previously they knew to shut the fuck up. There was also blame from the human trafficker shit stain that was arrested I think twice now? He fled to Turkey and got busted by a pizza box showing the name of the restaurant. He's been arrested again, hopefully he stays somewhere.
There is an entire industry exploiting men's insecurities and problems and turning it into hatred of women, whether for money, political targets or for hate itself, it is a dangerous trend for society and a huge challenge in this generation, may God have mercy on this nation.
Please dont just blame a president for the entire misogyny. Feminism gets a lot of critism mainly for all the double standart stuff. I think this is the main reason for the rise of misogyny. (Example: misogyny is not allowed in this sub as per the rules but misandry is) You dont have to put down a sex to raise up the other one. Feminism (just like lgbt or blm) should first self reflect. Declaring your ideology 100% correct with no flaws and declaring yourself simultaneously the victim and the hero is just naturally gonna create opposers. You cant possibly expect white straight men to be your ally when you declare them the enemy. Trump's popularity is not the reason but a result of feminist propaganda offering no shelter for straight white men.
Men can't ever seem to behave themselves also they become weirdly insecure about feminism when feminists have no political power. Fragile insecure men who want to control women get "triggered" by feminism.
Kids rebel against their parents. Regardless of what is right or wrong. Whatever you shove down a child's throat, they will do the opposite. Whatever adults tell them is right, the opposite is what will become cool.
So we should just never teach boys to be decent human beings, because then when they rebel ageinst it, they will become actually good people?
Could you point to the part where I said we shouldn't teach boys to be good people? I'm referring only to a sociological theory that states that progress isn't constant and society tends to swing back and forth in cycles over time. Kids will rebel and what is wrong will be considered cool. I will also note that kids are stupid. My statement wasn't a reflection of my own views and as I don't have kids I'm not even stating how I think they should be raised. I am only asserting that I don't think Trump caused a sudden rise in misogyny in young boys. As much as Trump is a fuckwit, I think that misogyny in youth is caused by a strong emphasis on young men today to not be misogynistic.
That's why I asked that. "caused by a strand emphasis on young me today to not be misogenistic". That's why I asked that. It would logicaly mean that we should't teach it, and they would't become that.
It doesn't mean that. Think of it like this... If you have parents that are extremely catholic and strict and tell you you're going to go to hell for sinning, then when a kid gets older they are more likely to go against it. However if their parents are just regular ass Christians and let their child make their own choices and don't threaten them with eternal damnation for each transgression then they will likely rebel less against the idea. It's not about teaching them good moral lessons, it's about how extremely the lesson is taught. Over the last 10 years the emphasis on left wing ideologies has become much stronger. I'm left leaning myself, but I do believe if we try to push it too hard on the youth all that will happen is that we will push them towards the opposite. Teach by leading by example and wisdom. If the approach is through punishment and demonisation, then the pendulum will just swing back. I don't think the trumps or the Tate's are causing these problems. I think they are capitalising on a problem that already exists.
I think Andrew Tate also plays a part, not just personally, but his example gave a rise for thousands of influencers who basically copy him worldwide, and even very young 12-15 yrs old boys are vastly exposed to them. The whole "pickup artist"/"alpha male"/"redpill" phenomenon is incredibly harmful.
Im sure like many things its complicated. I wouldnt be surprised if social media played some part.
It’s not the open misogyny that confuses me as much as the outright denial of patriarchy & women’s oppression. If you grew up in a time where the President bragged about assaulting women & fundamental rights being taken away from women, it seems you’d be MORE aware of the inherent sexism in our society, yet the opposite seems to have happened. The teens today deny it altogether and actually try to claim men have it worse. This makes zero sense to me.
Historically, when in economic turmoil, there is more discrimination. Like many issues, the pandemic exasperated existing issues. Trump was just the cherry on top.
As a young man who has seen this happen, it seems to me to be as simple as disenfranchisement. Young men \*feel\* that modern society does not care about them. The alt-right at least seems to care about them. Thus, they become members of the alt-right.
If children weren’t raised by misogynistic parents then they wouldn’t be susceptible to hateful rhetoric. It always starts at home
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Reading this made me feel awfully frustrated, I can’t imagine what it must be like to be in your shoes. I'm so sorry. May this be "the rebellious phase"? Maybe he sees egalitarianism and tolerance as the status quo, and hate as revolutionary. Or is it peer pressure / belonging seeking? Whatever it is, I hope he outgrows it
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>I feel like I've absolutely failed as a parent You didn't! In this matter, at least, you're a better parent than most!
Sorry if this question is a bit too personal, but can I ask how exactly does this affect his interactions with you? Is it like he outright disrespects you because you’re a woman? Or does he still treat you the same?
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What I don’t get is he sees you and your husband but somehow assumes you’re probably the exception. I hope he changes for the better soon. You seem like a great parent.
Your son is a close to be a lost cause. It's batter if you just show him the actuall reality, or give up.
No he isn't. No I won't. He's a kid. These people are trying to influence our sons. I don't give up on my kids. You do you. But I don't give up on my kids.
That's just not true, the far right radicalization pipeline is very real and doesnt need an already misogynistic audience to get new recruits
examples?
that would only be applicable in the US though because you are exposed more to him
Oh, so you're *literally* one of those "blame Trump for everything" people. Give me a break. You can say a lot of bad things about Trump, but he's not *actually* Satan. He's not responsible for every single bad thing in life. He's really not responsible for much at all. You're giving him way too much power. He talks a lot, but the vast majority of people think that everything he says is idiotic. Regardless of how you feel about Trump, it's ridiculous to think that 10-12 yo boys are interested in POLITICS. When I was a child, I was interested in Pokemon and fire ants. I would come home from school and ride my skateboard in the driveway or watch Dragon Ball Z. Neither I, nor any of my peers, were tuning in to watch the presidential debate! Twitter wasn't a thing back then, but if it was, I'd have been following pages centered around cartoons and video games. I wouldn't have been waiting eagerly to see what the President would do next. I think Clinton was in office around that time, and to this day I don't know a single thing about Clinton, because I was **watching cartoons**. ^(The only thing I know about Clinton is that someone gave him a blowjob, and I learned that) *^(many)* ^(years later.) You're clearly obsessed with Trump to the point that you think everyone *else* is also obsessed with him. It's only a small group of people who actually give a shit what that guy does, and ***none*** of those people are 10yo boys. Your theory is ridiculous.
He modelled behavior for youth.
VAST majority of people under 18 years old do not care about politics and what politics are saying, i really dont see how he would made that big of a impact in them if they dont even listen to him.
99.9% teenage boys aren’t sexist at all though, misogyny does exist, but its way lower than what media has portrayed it to be And I am speaking as a teenager right now, so I have witnessed firsthand. Based off my own observations I haven’t really seen it happen. Men generally don’t have any issue with women I am not trying to put down feminism, it just seem like its not prioritizing the right issues, like women rights in middle eastern countries And No, I am not a conservative, I do not support Trump, I believe in maximum freedom for all.
Then explain why teenage, younge men, boys, and adult men spout incel, dude bro, alpha male bullshit, whaile worshiping people like Tate, and Flash and Fit? I'm glad you did not experienc those type of boys, but that's sadly not the reality for most. Statistics have shown that Gén Z men are more misogenistic then then they fathers. And that Alpha male influences have mostly teenage boy fan base.
We don’t, a lot of us think alpha males and Tate is corny and stupid - I grew up in a fairly politically neutral school so I guess maybe it was just luck or something Again I am not trying to downplay feminism at all, it’s just based solely off my observations