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Kelly, settling down's avatar

I was really enjoying this refreshing and unexpected piece until I got to this part, where it seemed to slide back into boring ole modern politics:

-- The evidence of Western young men's "sexist resentment" against women is their agreement with the statement "Advancing women's and girls' rights has gone too far because it threatens men's and boys' opportunities." To me, a Gen X woman, there is an ugly edge to the *wording* of this statement, but I think, given a poll, I would probably check "yes" here. It certainly wouldn't be a vote in "opposition to women's rights" as the y-axis suggests, but rather a concern that men and boys are really struggling. For example, is the reason women outnumber men in graduate programs by 1.6 to 1 because so much effort has been put into giving them "opportunities" from the zero sum game that is university admissions? That's what I would understand that poll question to mean.

--The tendency for young men to agree with the statement "Foreigners living in Germany should better adapt their lifestyle to that of Germans" is presented as evidence of their "xenophobia." It's interesting to see the sex and age differences in responses here, but is a positive answer to this question really xenophobia? (Noting that it appears that nearly everyone in Germany agrees with the statement, since 10% is the highest value!) Who, living in Germany and seeing Turkish families who have lived in Germany for five generations and still don't speak German, would disagree that they should "better adopt the German lifestyle"?

In an evenhanded and intriguing article, it was disappointing to see seemingly mundane political ideas presented as sexist resentment and xenophobia.

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TonyZa's avatar

Filter bubbles are not a thing for right wingers as we are constantly bombarded with leftist messaging like this article.

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