And propagandists are exploiting that as well. They feel all their issues with the changes in dating and relationships in general are the fault of "the left" and women in general, there are no shortage of people waiting to jump on those points for their own financial and political gain.
The problem in marketing feminism to young men is it many of them have not personally experienced, or at least understood, how being a man gives them advantages in society as opposed to women. Young men also have a difficult time understanding how easily they can be viewed as toxic, creepy, or even dangerous without self control and respect for others.
I wish I had an answer, most of the young men in my life are more right leaning and think "feminazi" is a legitimate wat to describe left leaning people.
Most men have experienced the stifling gender norms that force them into a box: they're not allowed to cry or show any feeling other than anger, there's no such thing as non-sexual touch or romance, women don't like sex so trying to get close to them is inherently rapey and goes against their desires.
Feminism fights against that trap, that men are only men if they check certain boxes. That's what's toxic: telling men they're not allowed to be certain ways.
So yeah, feminism does have a lot to offer men. Toxic societal expectations are bad for everyone.
The actually surprising shift is that Gen Z men are more conservative and less likely to identify as supporting feminists than Millenials.
I don't know how common it is, but I saw a specific instance on social media (I want to say instagram?) where the comments on something were ordered and displayed (some hidden) completely differently based upon the user's gender. Just based upon that single profile attribute the entire comments sections looked completely different.
I think those stories were a little overblown. They're less likely to be feminists but that doesn't mean they're more conservative. The IPSOS study is full of loaded questions and nothing to actually nail down what men think of women's rights. Just feel stuff like, "are you a feminist? Has women's rights gone too far in your country? Are men asked to do too much?"
What they needed to ask was actual policy questions, "should women receive the same pay as men? Should women be able to hold office and work jobs? Are there jobs that should be off limits to women?"
I'm willing to bet you'll find more gen Z answering yes yes no, while also believing the feminist movement has gone too far.
"Feminism" is like philosophy in that over time it makes certain wins, and the discussion around that topic gradually sheds the label.
In the same way that ancient philosophers were establishing the disciplines we now call mathematics, geometry, and physics, or early modern philosophers were establishing what we now call economics and political science, and mid-century/postwar philosophers were establishing what is now called computer science and information theory, the history of feminism is notching wins and making them normal:
In Anglo American law, women were able to own their own property beginning in the early 19th century, starting in the American South (somewhat ironically driven by southern concerns about preserving the institution of slavery).
Women were allowed to be considered for credit and banking services, equal to men, beginning in the 1970's.
Women earned the legal right to equal pay for equal work in the 70's, even as cultural attitudes in many circles still considered that to be government overreach (even today).
Marital rape and other forms of domestic violence were outlawed pretty recently. The last state to criminalize marital rape did so in 1993, the same year that Jurassic Park came out in theaters.
Liberalized divorce rules throughout the 80's allowed women to leave abusive husbands more easily.
Most gender segregation in official government institutions were dismantled in the 1980's and the 1990's, including the abolition of male-only universities, and laws imposing different legal drinking ages between men and women.
Today, many of us who were alive when these rules were in effect think of them as totally backwards. Nobody is seriously advocating for a return to denying women the right to have their own bank accounts, or giving husbands the right to rape their wives without consequences.
But the cultural understanding of the meaning of feminism rarely considers preserving past wins, even recent wins. People only think of it as fighting for something in the future.
That's because it's not the same feminist movement as it was when millennials were gen z's age.
The last questions are what feminism used to be (what millennials liked). Nowadays, however, feminism is plagued by not-feminist people, that instead of wanting equality want women superiority. That's the feminism gen z knows about, and the men don't like it. That's also the reason they answer "no" to "are you a feminist?" But they support actual feminist policies. The definition of feminism has changed.
EDIT: just for reference: my county (Spain) recently put porn under a passport with limited uses per month. Why did they do that? They claim feminism. Does that sound like feminism to you?
I think people are so easily swayed by what they’re told about themselves that very often when the women are told that they’re more liberal, they adopt it to be good group members, and when the men are told that they’re more conservative, they adopt it to be good group members.
Edit: Which is not intended to counter what you said about forced breeders, which is absolutely true.
Dave Montgomery of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram asked Hutchison if the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision should remain in effect. “What concerns me about that is that we would then have some states that would allow abortion as the baby is coming out of the birth canal,” Hutchison responded. “I would never support that. I have voted against it, and I would not want that to be the situation in any state in our country. And that is why I have stated that position.”
“So you would not support the overturning of Roe v. Wade?” asked KERA's Shelley Kofler.
“What I’m saying,” replied Hutchison as the crowd began to chuckle at her discomfort, “is you’re going to have abortion havens.”
This was a relatively liberal Republican who had taken office back when Texas a purple state, spouting the same nonsense Trump vomited up Tuesday night 14 years ago. A woman who ran 17 years early on
Her detractors are circulating an old clip from a debate during her first run at the Senate, in 1993. In it, she said, “I am very comfortable that Roe v. Wade is working very well.” Her position was that there should be no government intervention before viability (which she placed in "the six-month range") but that states should be allowed to establish “reasonable restrictions such as parental consent.”
Her 2010 shift did not cause women to jump ship for the Democratic Party. Far from it. Texas only got redder over the next decade.
I think a big part of that was people genuinely believing the lies that the GOP was churning out. Maybe they've simply lost their Sidam touch or maybe Americans are finally cracking wise to the bullshit, some 40 years after the War on Abortion really kicked off.
But you can't just hang your hat on "Women are being treated like chattle" because that's been the national norm for centuries. What's really changing is that women now seem more reluctant to fill that role than in prior eras.
it's not a new 'policy' but Dobbs v. Jackson is definitely a new result. Their decades long plan of stacking the courts is finally paying off for them.
This is a common man-o-sphere narrative but most people, within their own circles, have healthy intergender relationships. We talk about rapists, abusers, and incels as rapists, abusers, and incels - those folks can be women or men. While women are justifiably cautious around strange men late at night that doesn't mean all men are abusers, rapists, or incels.
By the study it looks like there was no breakdown by orientation... but I'd assume it's mostly a heterosexual trend. The LGBT+ community is overwhelmingly liberal leaning for pretty obvious reasons and while conservative trans folk exist they're comparatively rare.
I think we need to take polls of Gen Z men with a massive grain of salt. Polling is already pretty fucked right now, but Gen Z is absolutely the hardest to poll.
Gen Z is the hardest to poll but when you're polling within Gen Z specifically it seems like there isn't a huge response bias - I believe the bigger issue you're thinking about is that when intergenerational polling (i.e. a lot of presidential polling atm) is done there is a massive amount of error correction needed to properly scale response numbers from Gen Z - or Gen Z needs to be intentionally oversampled due to their low response rate - to avoid undercounting Gen Z...
There's an additional complication that as the youngest voting cohort it's difficult to predict how active they will be in voting. It tends to be that once you've voted a few times you're much more likely to vote in future elections and its hard to predict with younger folks how active they were in the last election and how many new voters will be convinced to join the electorate.
That last point is why I constantly harp on about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, that seems to be a really important issue for Gen Z voters and if Dems have an underwhelming position (even if it's clearly better than Trump openly calling to just genocide Palestine) then turn out will suffer and Democrats will underperform.
This article actually describes women supporting leftism. It's just that the USA only supports right-wing ideologies like liberalism. The MSM can't even admit or understand that leftism is a thing.
I know Republicans have taken away a Women's Right to Healthcare while Empowering Men's Right to Rape and now want to take away a Women's Right to Divorce but this is FAKE NEWS! REAL WOMEN are Republican and REAL WOMEN Vote for the Party who want to allow Fathers to Rape their Daughters!
Obviously this is because of Marxist professors or whatever it was Elon said and not at all because conservatives seemingly saw the handmaid's tale and decided that it was an instructions manual
I mean sure because conservative women are supposed to be either stuck in the kitchen and nursing children, a husband's sex slave or a mouthpiece advocating for the first two.
Social conservative positions have just gone off the rocker and left most women behind, being mocked, insulted and threatened. Examples are the childless cat lady comment and recently Musk's abhorrent outburst re: Ms. Swift.
One party selected a rapist as a presidential candidate and has repealed healthcare rights. I don't think it puzzling why they aren't popular amongst women.
Weird. Maybe you don’t know many women or you live in a city where people can’t afford a place to live on their own, in which case both women and men suffer.
My wife has always made more than me, and I’m totally cool with it!
I'm in a college town. State College, PA. Yes, it's affluent enough to make home ownership unattainable for most. Even amongst the non-students in the area, financially independent young women simply don't exist.
I own a yoga studio downtown and so I must admit that I talk to a fair amount of young women, albeit in a professional setting.