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Gen Z boys and men more likely than baby boomers to believe feminism harmful, says poll

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

…

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

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

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

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

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246 comments

  • I'd wager that people who think that couldn't give you a coherent definition of what feminism actually is.

    God fucking forbid women receive equal treatment or autonomy over their bodies!

    • Is there a coherent definition of feminism that feminists agree on?

      (I think that people's opinion about feminism is commonly their opinion about self-identified feminists. It's fair to say "I believe feminism is harmful because the opinions I have heard self-identified feminists express have often seemed ridiculous, offensive, or counterproductive" without needing a definition of feminism that goes beyond self-identification.)

      • The definition I found that popped up on google pretty well sums up what I have always heard women say.

        The advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes

        It's really that simple. It's not a women over men movement. It's a movement to receive the same respect, rights, and inclusion that men have enjoyed basically forever. They want the right to make decisions about their body. They'd like to maybe not be victims of sexual assault and rape and staggering percentages (about 1 in 6 American women will be raped in their lifetime). They'd like to have a better chance at corporate leadership (10% of fortune 500 CEOs are women). They'd like to have more of a footprint in government (roughly 28% of the US congress is female and this is a record high).

        They just want equity and respect and they deserve it.

        • There's an essay that I agree with about that sort of definition.

          Here's a relevant excerpt:

          I feel like every single term in social justice terminology has a totally unobjectionable and obviously important meaning – and then is actually used a completely different way.

          The closest analogy I can think of is those religious people who say “God is just another word for the order and beauty in the Universe” – and then later pray to God to smite their enemies. And if you criticize them for doing the latter, they say “But God just means there is order and beauty in the universe, surely you’re not objecting to that?”

          The result is that people can accuse people of “privilege” or “mansplaining” no matter what they do, and then when people criticize the concept of “privilege” they retreat back to “but ‘privilege’ just means you’re interrupting women in a women-only safe space. Surely no one can object to criticizing people who do that?”

          Let's say that, for example, I affirmed my belief that people should be hired based on their ability rather than on their sex, but then I said that there are more men than women in software development mainly due to biological differences. That doesn't go against your definition, but do you think most feminists would react well to it? They didn't when James Damore said it, or when the president of Harvard said something similar...

          (This is despite the fact that it's commonly accepted that biological differences between the sexes are the main reason why there are more men than women who are violent criminals.)

          • As a man myself I'm just having a hard time sympathizing with other men who grief at a term like "mansplaining" and in that find the justifications for disregarding the crux of what feminism seeks to make right. Is the term thrown around too much? Sure, I bet it is. So are a lot of absolutely vile quips about women. I can empathize with why some women are as verbally antagonistic towards men as they are.

            To your other point. Are women underrepresented in STEM fields because they lack the ability to tackle those problems or because women have been historically directed away from those sorts of professions for as long as we have history to look back on?

            You can play some of this off to less women wanting X or Y job, but if you cannot acknowledge men holding 9 out of 10 CEO positions in fortune 500 companies as maybe being a symptom of major structural imbalances in favor of men, I do not know what to tell you. I've watched women be professionally undermined throughout the entirety of my working life.

            Also I missed your edit on your previous comment:

            (I think that people’s opinion about feminism is commonly their opinion about self-identified feminists. It’s fair to say “I believe feminism is harmful because the opinions I have heard self-identified feminists express have often seemed ridiculous, offensive, or counterproductive” without needing a definition of feminism that goes beyond self-identification.)

            Would it be then fair to say that, men broadly speaking are harmful because a not insignificant group of men rape about 16% of the female population? I think judging any group wholesale by the actions of it's most extreme cohort is problematic. And in this case we're talking about words women said that made some guys feel bad.

            I just don't buy into the counter argument to feminism and I think this quote sums up how a lot of men are feeling about the topic right now.

            When you're accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression.

246 comments