Boys and men from generation Z are more likely than older baby boomers to believe that feminism has done more harm than good, according to research that shows a “real risk of fractious division among this coming generation”.

On feminism, 16% of gen Z males felt it had done more harm than good. Among over-60s the figure was 13%.

The figures emerged from Ipsos polling for King’s College London’s Policy Institute and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership. The research also found that 37% of men aged 16 to 29 consider “toxic masculinity” an unhelpful phrase, roughly double the number of young women who don’t like it.

“This is a new and unusual generational pattern,” said Prof Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute. “Normally, it tends to be the case that younger generations are consistently more comfortable with emerging social norms, as they grew up with these as a natural part of their lives.”

Link to study: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/masculinity-and-womens-equality-study-finds-emerging-gender-divide-in-young-peoples-attitudes

  • kescusay@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Seriously doubt this (and most polling these days). Gen Z is particularly unlikely to respond to polls or answer unknown callers in general. Until those issues in polling are solved, I take them with a grain of salt.

    • MicroWave@lemmy.worldOP
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      Looks like this was an online poll where you get paid if randomly selected:

      Ipsos UK interviewed online a representative sample of 3,716 adults aged 16+ across the United Kingdom between 17 and 23 August 2023. This data has been collected by Ipsos’s UK KnowledgePanel, an online random probability panel…

      https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/masculinity-and-womens-equality-study-finds-emerging-gender-divide-in-young-peoples-attitudes

      For what it’s worth, there’s a recent Gallup survey showing a similar trend that published a couple weeks ago:

      …Since 2014, women between the ages of 18 and 29 have steadily become more liberal each year, while young men have not. Today, female Gen Zers are more likely than their male counterparts to vote, care more about political issues, and participate in social movements and protests.

      https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-gender-gap-young-men-women-dont-agree-politics-2024-1

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        11 months ago

        That’s an interesting thing to note. If the people more likely to approve of Tate and his message are the ones looking for easy money then that could indicate a degree of selection bias.

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        11 months ago

        Your first link disagrees with the article you posted…

        And while younger people overall have a more favourable view of this phrase, there is a big gender divide in views among them: 37% of men aged 16 to 29 say “toxic masculinity” is an unhelpful phrase, roughly double the 19% of young women who feel this way. Correspondingly, young women (47%) are considerably more likely than young men (29%) – or any other age category – to find it a helpful term.

        By contrast, views among older age groups vary less by gender – although older men are more likely than younger men to say “toxic masculinity” is an unhelpful term.

        It sounds like the only change is you get women are more supportive of feminism than older women…

        • MicroWave@lemmy.worldOP
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          The first link is the study the article cites to. Also, I don’t think there’s a disagreement. The portion you cited refers specifically to “toxic masculinity,” whereas the article focuses on people’s reactions to “feminism.” Specifically, it mentions that 16% of Gen Z males felt feminism had done more harm than good, compared to 13% among those over 60, to support its claim.

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            11 months ago

            Looked at the pdf …

            The public think the oldest group of men are most likely to believe equal opportunities for women have gone too far – but it is actually men aged 30 to 59 men who are more likely to feel this way47% of the public think older men aged 60+ are most likely to believe attempts to give women equal opportunities have gone too far – the top answer given. But in reality, 20% of men aged 30 to 59 hold this view, compared with 13% of men aged 60+.

            For 16-29, it’s 5%

            So yeah, still not sure why you’re using a string of different articles, but they don’t agree with you main post bud…

            • MicroWave@lemmy.worldOP
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              11 months ago

              I’m not sure what you’re arguing anymore. I said the article focuses on the “feminism” portion of the study. This new portion you cited to is about “equal opportunities.” Look at page 15 of the PDF where it specifically shows 16% for men aged 16-29 vs. 13% for men aged 60+ with respect to “feminism” (the point of the article).

              • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                Thank!

                I saw the survey was just British respondents, but I didn’t know that question was specifically about British culture…

                Sorry, it’s really hard to follow all the omissions and misrepresentations a survey went thru to get to the post you decided should be the main one.

                But yeah, older people are going to remember what it was like 40 years ago and can see the good feminism has done.

                A teenager would have know first hand knowledge how bad it was even a decade ago.

                • MicroWave@lemmy.worldOP
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                  11 months ago

                  No worries! Sorry if my tone sounded harsh. Yeah, I agree with you that new articles can sometimes have tunnel vision.

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        11 months ago

        and how many people will click on an ad or email saying you’ll get paid to take a poll?
        is that a representative portion of the population or a very niche subgroup of desperate, gullible or extremely bored people?
        how/where was it advertised?

        polls don’t have to be bullshit, but they always are…

        • lud@lemm.ee
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          It sounds like you are sent the poll by snailmail and/or you are “recruited” that way and are then sent multiple polls over sometime.

          https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/uk-knowledgepanel

          It’s hard to get random people’s emails and still be sure that the samling is good. This way seems more reliable. The few serious polls I have ever been sent by the National Bureau of Statistics has always been sent by snailmail (or technically digital snailmail which is connected to my digital ID)

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            11 months ago

            technically digital snailmail which is connected to my digital ID

            do you mean e-mail? or is this some UK thing?

            • lud@lemm.ee
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              No, it’s a free service you sign up for which delivers all the snailmail you get from governments and others to a digital mailbox instead. It’s like instant snailmail.

              It functions using an app or website instead of email, so you login by verifying your ID and not a password. I think the service is fairly common where I live.

              You can also get some receipts via that service.

              The service automatically organises all your mail into folders for each sender and separately for receipts and payments. Sender folders wouldn’t work well for email because you get email for a lot of people and companies but with this service I have only collected 16 different senders over 3 years.

              You can also share your digital mailbox with other people.

              It’s very convenient and saves time and paper. So I highly recommend checking if anything similar exists where you live.

              I don’t live in the UK so I don’t know if they have anything like it.

                • lud@lemm.ee
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                  11 months ago

                  No, they send it through the service. Nothing ever gets printed.

                  The different companies and government organisations do have to support it though.

                  There are a few different companies that deliver the same service, the biggest (and first?) one is apparently used by almost half of the country’s population. Pretty much every service supports all the governmental organisations. Company support varies more.

                  One of the smaller (not small) service provider is owned by the goverment. I am thinking of switching to that one but I haven’t bother yet.

                  Apparently at least one of the smaller providers supports scanning of all physical mail but I have never had that.

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              11 months ago

              You just said you’d answer it however they want you to. The way they want you to is truthfully.

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                11 months ago

                LOL, this dude’s been lucky enough to never read a strategically worded political poll apparently.

                All polls are inherently biased in their wording. Almost no poll-makers are non-partisan, and the people most likely to complete polls are often the most biased.

                Statistics baybeee! They’ll tell you whatever you want if you structure your intake datum properly!

                • TSG_Asmodeus (he, him)@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  LOL, this dude’s been lucky enough to never read a strategically worded political poll apparently.

                  So why did women and men respond completely differently, if not because… they feel that way?

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                  11 months ago

                  What you meant is being communicated clearly. Why you think it’s some sort of conspiracy against big feminism or some shit is the confusing part.

                  They just want you to answer the poll legitimately.

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                  11 months ago

                  No, I don’t. You said you’d do whatever they want if they paid you, then immediately said you wouldn’t do it truthfully if they paid you to answer truthfully. It’s nonsensical.

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              11 months ago

              Of course not. Why would I care about telling the truth as long as I was getting paid?

              So is it just the men who are lying ‘to get paid’, or are the women too?

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                I didn’t say they were lying to get paid, I said if someone paid me, I would answer however they wanted me to answer. I speak for no one but myself.

        • astral_avocado@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          Good polling can be formated in a way to weed out people giving nonsense answers, it’s like the first thing you learn about polling in sociology or psychology, how to extract quality data.

    • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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      11 months ago

      Do you have any reason to believe zoomers’ willingness to respond to polls (compared to other zoomers) is correlated with their views on feminism?

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      11 months ago

      There are multiple studies showing the same thing. Denying it isn’t going to change anything.

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    11 months ago

    I’d like to warn all the Americans against generalizing based upon their personal experiences or beliefs here. This is a UK study that sampled a UK population. These results can’t necessarily be generalized to any other country, this is focused on the UK culture.

    • rustydomino@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      There was a recent story on NPR that addressed this. I can’t find it now but basically it said that all these studies in isolation have issues but now there appears to be a trend that transcends national boundaries and cultures.

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    11 months ago

    I find the internet is super good at locking people into echo chambers. For some reason, I feel especially keen on this when I was super into reddit over the last decade. I could FEEL just how a community would shift into just saying the same 10 things on repeat and any deviation would result in downvotes and messages in my inbox.

    But it’s not just reddit. Modern video feed algorithms and other social media just need to feed you the same stuff you’ve engaged with previously.

    So what ends up happening is young boys only see the videos of angry purple haired stereotype liberal feminist first year college student get SLAMMED/DESTROYED by Ben Shapiro or Jordan Peterson or a woman who is clearly saying something sarcastic with sad sigma male music in the background and all the comments are calling for her to be put in prison or death.

    And that’s not to say people don’t experience these types IRL and it morphs their opinions, my sister is this stereotype and is pretty fucking stupid and she will get into heated debates on Facebook about stuff she has no idea about. She’ll read a headline and form a whole mindset of bullshit around it and never verify if it was just a click bait article posted to Facebook to get ad revenue with no concept of journalist integrity. It’s really difficult talking to her about anything political because even though I’m pretty liberal/progressive myself, she’ll just say things that are factually wrong and when I try to talk to her about it she takes it as me disagreeing and won’t listen to reason or logic outside of her preconceived image of reality. Very difficult person

    I often have to look at her and remind myself that people like her are a very small portion of the population and aren’t really indicative of the masses.

    • BaskinRobbins@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      I swear rage baiting in the social media era has to be the most lucrative grift of all time. Even being super aware of it I still fall for it from time to time.

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      Modern video feed algorithms and other social media just need to feed you the same stuff you’ve engaged with previously.

      People should really stop saying this. Every YouTube ad I get and recommendation I get is crap now. It is like someone ordered the developers to break echo chambers by making sure people don’t get what they want. I am not a fucking kid, I know what I want to watch, and what I don’t want to watch. Tired of the anti trans bullshit I am constantly being suggested.

    • nifty@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I find the internet is super good at locking people into echo chambers.

      People do this to themselves because they find comfort in the familiar, like in real life. I am not sure echo chambers are a unique to the internet.

    • viralJ@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Probably not the comment you were expecting, but, what’s “sad sigma male music”? And why is it called that?

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    11 months ago

    Although I understand the importance of feminism, I never had the impression that feminists are good at PR. Somehow, most articles written by feministsI’ve read love to stereotype and bash men.

    • 520@kbin.social
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      Feminism is something with many internal factions. But yeah, the loudest ones aren’t usually interested in genuine discourse. Some of those factions can act every bit as unhinged as ‘persecuted’ Christians about total non-issues, like Oscars nominations despite womankind as a whole having some very real issues to worry about.

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          11 months ago

          Also, lots of people who say reasonable things have lies spread about them by misogynists and get made to look unreasonable

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            11 months ago

            That too, that too. There are a lot of times something sounds absolutely nuts without context (and reasonable with it) and that is frequently used against certain folks as well.

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      11 months ago

      That’s selection bias. Reasonable feminists usually don’t crow about being feminists, probably because they don’t want to be judged based on stereotypes about feminists.

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      Somehow, most articles written by feministsI’ve read love to stereotype and bash men.

      Does anyone have a link to any of these? I keep hearing recently that somehow this has been a thing for ages, but last I checked “wanting gender equality” was the driving idea of feminism, and that a large portion of women and men agreed with this.

      I’m in my early 40’s and I definitely haven’t seen some deluge of articles by women, who while proclaiming feminism, “stereotype and bash men.”

      EDIT: Seven downvotes, zero links. Pretty par for the course, guys. I’m not surprised, just disappointed.

      EDIT 2: To any men, or boys, reading this who have been assaulted, there are supports for you. Feminism is as much about getting you the support you need that you don’t have just as much as it is about getting women the support they need. I can’t cover every country here, but if you’re from Canada like me here is a government link to services for men and boys in intimate partner violence situations, and for ‘general abuse’ there is this link. There are people out there who care, please reach out to them.

      • bedrooms@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        Well, the problem is that nobody collects history of feminism articles they have read. I’m not gonna spend time on collecting them. Even if I did, you don’t know how fair my collection strategy would be. I have no idea what Google query would reproduce the samples the average person encounters these things online. So, to do this fairly requires a dedication akin to writing a scientific article on this topic… Nobody has the time.

        And if I presented such a survey, you’d do your own research to verify the results anyway. So, I hate to say this, but why not check the web yourself?

        If you don’t, I think the most feasible you could try is to summarize people’s replies.

      • Turun@feddit.de
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        11 months ago

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism

        Especially the history section will be relevant to you.

        When people complain about feminism they generally complain about forth wave or maybe third wave feminism. When people point out all the good feminism they usually mean first and second wave feminism.

        Edit: chances are you’ll have to watch with subtitles (it’s in German), but here’s a documentary (with commentary, because the documentary fucked up hard in some parts) about feminism: https://youtube.com/watch?v=I-OFCy-NrU4

        And here is an interview with one of the subjects of the documentary who felt wrongly presented (rightfully so): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tvPExRR_GRg

      • Derproid@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        Go take a look at the UN’s Twitter account on National Men’s day. Or I remember articles about how 1 in 4 homeless are women and it’s a tragedy for women. Honestly if you have seen articles like these before you’re either not reading many of them or you aren’t noticing what they are saying.

        • TSG_Asmodeus (he, him)@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Go take a look at the UN’s Twitter account on National Men’s day. Or I remember articles about how 1 in 4 homeless are women and it’s a tragedy for women. Honestly if you have seen articles like these before you’re either not reading many of them or you aren’t noticing what they are saying.

          So an article, and some twitter comments. That’s not exactly “…most articles written by feministsI’ve read love to stereotype and bash men.”

          • bostonbananarama@lemmy.world
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            How dishonest can you be? You specifically asked for a link to ANY of these. You got a response that gave you some examples, and you respond:

            So an article, and some twitter comments. That’s not exactly "…most articles written by feministsI

            You didn’t ask for most of the articles and it isn’t reasonable to expect someone to provide you 50-100 links.

            If you have a genuine disagreement with what they provided you should present that, but as it stands you’re being terribly dishonest and disingenuous.

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              11 months ago

              You got a response that gave you some examples, and you respond:

              What examples? The guy said look on twitter on National Men’s Day, and a reference to an article (without linking to it) for a hand sweeping ‘Most articles written by feministsI’ve read love to stereotype and bash men.’

              (EDIT: To be specific, here’s EXACTLY what I said:

              Does anyone have a link to any of these? )

              No-one here has linked to any deluge of ‘feminist’ articles that ‘love to stereotype and bash men’.

              What is the actual, legitimate complaint against this:

              Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes.

              • bostonbananarama@lemmy.world
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                What examples?

                The ones you were given.

                The guy said look on twitter on National Men’s Day,

                No, they didn’t. They told you to look at a specific account on a specific day.

                and a reference to an article (without linking to it) for a hand sweeping ‘Most articles written by feministsI’ve read love to stereotype and bash men.’

                Yes, which you could have easily googled if you wanted to read it.

                Regardless you asked for examples, and then upon receiving them stated “that’s most?”. No amount of examples was going to be sufficient, your response would have been the same regardless. Your original question was dishonest in that you weren’t interested in the answer.

                Edit: As for your definition, I don’t think anyone opposed that definition. Feminism is a large banner under which a lot of groups identify. So your extremely generic definition doesn’t encapsulate all persons or groups.

                • TSG_Asmodeus (he, him)@lemmy.world
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                  No, they didn’t. They told you to look at a specific account on a specific day.

                  Not the OP, and still not any links. ‘Go take a look at the UN’s Twitter account on National Men’s day.’ isn’t an article written by a feminist. ‘Or I remember articles about how 1 in 4 homeless are women and it’s a tragedy for women.’ that’s both not a link, and doesn’t ‘stereotype and bash men.’

                  Still waiting for a link of an ‘article written by feministsI’ve read love to stereotype and bash men.’ Feel free to post one.

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      11 months ago

      … just curious, but are you perusing a lot of feminist literature?

      I know I’m not.

      But what I do see are the articles that the right wing has decided are rage inducing and fair game and that they plaster everywhere to try to influence people.

      So … maybe worth some thought.

      • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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        11 months ago

        this is the correct analysis. true feminists are fine at PR, but unfortunately grifters who profit off of right wing ideas being spread have a vested interest in making feminists appear evil in order to maintain the status quo.

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        No. And I don’t think I’ve encountered these articles on right-wing webpages when I vistas there out of curiosity. I instead think some were rants on Reddit written by feminists (while I can’t recall how I encountered others). So maybe a selection bias on my side, or the loudest feminists get more upvotes even outside rightwing subreddits.

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      11 months ago

      Not everyone claiming to be a feminist is actually one. There’s a lot of misandrists that use the feminist label to spread their bullshit. But feminism in of itself is meant to be an egalitarian movement, it’s about equality. It was never meant to bash men or make them unequal to women.

      I do agree however that many feminists often look away when these type of people spew their garbage out into the public. I think especially women need to make sure to tell these people where to stuff it and that their shit isn’t welcomed.

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        11 months ago

        A good chunk of the “feminist” who are guilty of it are also TERFs. To them, trans women are just creepy men, and trans men are women trying to cheat into getting male privilege. They started from a place of hating men, and that’s where they went.

        Feminism as a whole has also been trying very hard to kick them out of the club. That’s difficult when there’s no central authority figure who dictates what is and is not feminism, but TERFs don’t last long at most of the meetups.

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      That has nothing to do with feminists as a whole, it’s just how the media works. You don’t get clicks without controversy. The vast majority of feminists I’ve known irl are chill people.

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    Feminism has a branding problem. The name itself makes it sound like it’s about putting women above men. People who don’t know better—the kind of people who are disproportionately young—will judge feminism based on the name.

    Calling it feminism made sense when everyone “knew” women were generally inferior to men, but since gender equality has become the mainstream view, the name had lost the context that made it work. Combined with the scope creep of feminism that causes it to encompass issues like disability rights and economic inequality, I think feminism is becoming indistinguishable from leftism.

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      11 months ago

      I think feminism is becoming indistinguishable from leftism.

      There might be a reason for that. Where on the right are you hearing strong advocacy for women’s rights and equality?

      • agitatedpotato@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        People in politics are painting infrastructure bills as progressive these days, so feminism is one of those leftisms just like repaving roads and fixing bridges that are years out of spec. The overton window must be the window on a plane because it wont stop moving.

    • Drewelite@lemmynsfw.com
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      11 months ago

      Problem is that the branding issue is a problem for women too. The vast majority of feminists are great folks who want equality. But it also attracts the self important types that want to use victim status to get ahead or just generally put the other side down. And they’re usually the loudest “feminists”. That perpetuates the branding problem.

      • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
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        11 months ago

        I think this problem is always going to exist when we’re talking about large political or philosophical movements. There’s no Council of Feminism who gets to decide who “counts” as a “real feminist”. I’ve met self proclaimed feminists whose views are what I would describe as actively anti-feminist, but there’s nothing I can do to change that.

        An example that comes to my mind is how I grappled with the existence of Trans-Exclusionary-Radical-Feminism and it’s adherents (TERFs). It wasn’t just their transphobia I had beef with, but so much of their supporting worldview made me want to proclaim that they are “no true feminists”. That felt intellectually disingenuous though, because who am I to say what “true feminism” is?

        I’ve come to terms with this kind of discomfort, and it’s something that has affected to what extent I call myself a feminist. I still do, but like any word, it’s utility depends on context and often it’s just not a useful label when it covers such a wide diversity of viewpoints. Certainly it shouldn’t be seen as a synonym for “good”, which is perhaps how I sometimes thought of it.

        • Drewelite@lemmynsfw.com
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          11 months ago

          Well put. This is a very salient observation! But as OP said, I think feminism is a particularly bad name. It comes across to many as equivalent to misandrist, matriarchist, or a female only club. Rather than anyone in favor of equality for women.

    • lone_faerie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      11 months ago

      Feminism is leftism and leftism is feminism. It’s always been that way because it’s all about the same issue, equality. Women’s rights, civil rights, trans rights, they’re all fighting for the same thing. One of my favorite quotes comes from Fannie Lou Hamer, civil rights and women’s rights activist, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free”

      • ccdfa@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free”

        This is like a main tenet of existentialisme, at least as it’s described by Sartre and De Beauvoir. To anyone reading, check out the very easy reads of Ethics of Ambiguity by De Beauvoir and Existentialism is a Humanism by Sartre.

    • johannesvanderwhales@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I think it’s important to remember that feminism is as much a political movement as a philosophical one. How things should be versus how to fix things are different.

    • Muyal_Hix@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      “the scope creep of feminism that causes it to encompass issues like disability rights and economic inequality, I think feminism is becoming indistinguishable from leftism.”

      Why do you say that like it’s a bad thing?

      • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Because not everyone is a leftist.

        If movement A wants to achieve B and C, then people who don’t want C won’t support movement A (probably), even if they want B. If A just wants B, then everyone that wants B will support A, which makes B way more likely to happen at the cost of C being slightly less likely.

    • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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      11 months ago

      edit: Replacing what I said, still trying to figure out the best way to word this sorry yall.

      The branding problem was intentionally created. Leaders in the manosphere profit off of young men subscribing to misogynistic beliefs. While movement PR is important, I would not be so quick to assign blame because this this has been an attack decades in the making, bolstered by social media algorithms.

      • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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        11 months ago

        The only conclusion I can take from your screed is that you completely misunderstood everything I said. I’m not defending assholes like Peterson and Tate in any way.

        • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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          11 months ago

          Rereading what I wrote and I get why you thought I misunderstood. I edited my original response as well. Sorry about that.

  • mightyfoolish@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    The wording here is really important. We don’t know how masculinity and feminism are being defined here.

    Stuff that began with “woman’s suffrage” are honored by people in this age group. They think it’s normal women vote, have jobs, leave the house etc. Some of this stuff probably isn’t even “feminism” to them but just “normal.”

    Remember that these guys are on social media a lot more than us and see those words misued frequently for click bait, etc.

    • BluesF@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      But that misuse of the word is harming the overall cause. It’s not like the need for feminism has evaporated, although it has surely evolved, and if young men think it’s harmful… Even if what they think is harmful is not an accurate representation of what feminism is, they aren’t going to be supporters of what it actually is if it has the name attached.

      Maybe it is time for a new movement with a new name.

  • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    Well the propaganda is working. Surprise, surprise, distribute unfiltered hate speech and people will start believing in this hate speech.

  • AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I think a big part of the problem is that, among younger Americans especially, both men and women that refer to themselves as feminists conflate it with benevolent sexism, and not the same sets of social rules for both genders.

    Benevolent sexism is a tough concept to swallow for men. It means respecting and practicing the old mores men practiced with women, with none of the toxic expectations. Things like expectations of men being the breadwinners, running to get the door, etc aren’t compatible with a desire for equality, especially when correctly rejecting the trade-offs those perks used to be tied to.

    The first waves of feminism cleared the way, but in having done so, the newest generation of women are asking “but why don’t I get these cool perks I heard about” and men are answering “because we no longer get the social power that facilitated that cool stuff.”

    Everything is trade offs.

    • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Men were never required to “hold doors open” or “be the breadwinner”. They only did those things during a certain time in a certain place and for a particular reason: to make women like them. You don’t have to do that now and it has nothing to do with “feminism”.

      Women worked for money and opened doors for thousands of years. This may be surprising to some people, but in many places women used to manage all the money because they were going to town and selling products every market day.

      If you’re a male farmer, you are basically interchangeable with any other farmer. Women had to be good at math and negotiating. “Women be shopping” as they say.

  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
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    To be fair—they’re asking people to judge the effect of a movement, but only one of the groups remembers what things were like before the movement. It could just be that more gen Zers honestly don’t know the answer.

  • paddirn@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Is this just a cyclical thing that will swing back and forth like a pendulum? Feminism surges for a few years, following a big sort of zeitgeist-defining event (#metoo being the recent one), but then it sort of just gets taken for granted, attention lags, and a quasi counter-feminist movement emerges that pushes back against that. Have we had this happen before in the past few decades? I feel like recently at least I’ve seen a lot more men online bemoan the fact that nobody is paying attention to their inner-world. It’s not even men bringing up or attacking feminism as a problem, I feel like more of the arguments are careful not to go there, more that society in general just doesn’t care that much about men’s emotional world. I would assume that along with that, you’d have some men pushing back against feminism or as seeing it as having over-extended itself.

  • taanegl@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Ah yes, confused men want to uphold the tradition of mysoginy, misandry, the very patriarchy that subverts men to be stupid soldiers and labourers, sacrificing emotional intelligence and their individuality to become stereotypical puppets of the powers that be.

    MGTOW energy Indeed. Just the kind of weakness a grifter like Tate loves to exploit.

    Dumbasses.

  • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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    The problem is the so called Third Wave Feminism, which is far too often just middle and high-middle class women trying to obtain special benefits for themselves by claimimg the whole group they were born into “is a victim” (even though they themselves were born into and are amongst the most priviledged 1% of people in the World) and hence “must be compensated” in some way which is discriminatory against all those not in the group and which is invariably in a form that is mainly usefull for middle class and high-middle class well educated women in well-of western nations. Hence things like Quotas or the practice of Benevolent Mascism in power situations such as in Court (for example the whole gender-discriminatory idea that the Mother should be prefered as the custodian of children when a couple separates).

    This is generally neither fair, nor equal (you know, the whole judge and treat people based on what they do, not based on the genetics they were born with) and even has zero positive effects for the vast majority of women out there who aren’t the well-of scions of well-of families in well-of countries: you get loud noises about the “glass ceiling” that stops well-of women from maximizing their income from being in the upper classes, not about the 3000% difference in incomes between those above said glass chieling such as corporate CEOs and the average worker, which includes most women.

    This shit isn’t Leftwing, it’s just a “make believe leftie” facet of “Greed is good” Neoliberal Capitalism: personal upside maximization hidden behind “the group” so that it doesn’t just look like naked greed, hence why you see this mostly supported by Liberals in Anglo-Saxon nations, not traditional Lefties.

    Previous generations of Feminism (and those who still now fight for Equality and Fairness) are the ones who are deserving of tremendous respect and support, not these pampered, priviledged, greedy people who happen to have been born with 2 X cromossomes and who want to maintain the discriminatory and prejudiced treatment of people base on the genetics they were born with, as long as theirs is the group getting benefited by that discrimination.

    It’s thus not surprising that amongst those who are not in the groups that benefits form the discrimination these people defend and are exposed to this highly moralistic variance of greed is good, grow negative about it. The thing is made even worse in the US because Politics ther is entirelly in the Moral space (people have no genuine choice on how the Economics is managed in that country since both sides of the Power Duopoly do the same in that field) so you end up with equally pro-descrimination groups on the other side, who just differ in who gets favoured by said discriminationand face off against these, muddling the whole “equality” domain.

    It’s pretty hard to find a space if you’re genuinelly pro-Equality and pro-Fairness and not be confuse by either side of selfish fucker as being in the other side of selfish fuckers.

  • Tak@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    I’m betting that 16% suffers with toxic masculinity.

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      11 months ago

      This is exactly why it’s not a helpful term. We are all suffering from it, all genders alike but in different ways.

      The phenomenon referred to as toxic masculinity is a trait of society, not individuals. It’s the sum of all destructive societal expectations placed on men, the whole “don’t cry, repress your feelings, you must be the strong one” thing. It causes men to be emotionally repressed and potentially violent or self-destructive, and also causes society to associate leadership and strength with men alone, contributing to a glass ceiling effect for other genders.

      A lot of people hear “toxic masculinity” and associate it with “men bad”, that’s why it’s not as constructive a term as it could be.

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        11 months ago

        “A lot of people hear “toxic masculinity” and associate it with “men bad”, that’s why it’s not as constructive a term as it could be.”

        Specifically, people have been told that it means masculinity is toxic rather than a specific type of masculinity.

        • HauntedCupcake@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          It sits in the same realm as “mansplaining” to me. There’s an actual academic background behind it that’s largely fair and reasonable, but I mostly see it misused as a way to attack men

  • Zink@programming.dev
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    11 months ago

    Young men/boys thinking we don’t need feminism reminds me of healthy people thinking we don’t need vaccines. Just because we’ve improved the world and made a problem less of a thing doesn’t mean we can now forget about it and move on.

    There is a lot more to it than that, as evidenced by all the replies already.

  • Clbull@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I can’t say I’m surprised that people like Andrew Tate, Steven Crowder, Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro have gained quite the social media following. Society has failed a lot of young men, and the oligarchy that controls our world has a lot to answer for.

    Men are disproportionately affected by a lot of the socioeconomic issues currently plaguing the Western world because despite decades of progress towards creating an egalitarian society, men are the ones who are negatively impacted if they cannot provide. Look at the US and how judicial decisions on child custody and alimony are heavily favoured towards women as a very good example of this.

    And before you dispute me on this notion, can you offer any other explanation for why the biggest role model for a lot of teenage boys is some bloomy rind dick cheese who looks like a spitting image of the Stonks meme guy?

    • MirthfulAlembic@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Because their content is controversial, thus driving engagement, thus being favored by the algorithms of many social media platforms. I still get recommended some of their garbage on YouTube, despite never having watched anything remotely similar to it.

      Younger people tend to be easier to influence, and they often lack the experience to smell bullshit. And the more people hear something, the more likely they are to believe it.