Across much of the world, men and women think alike. However, in countries that are economically developed and culturally liberal, young men and women are polarising. As chronicled by John Burn-Murdoch, young women are increasingly likely to identify as ‘progressives’ and vote for leftists, while young men remain more
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.
"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?"
Or might it possibly correspond to the fact that girls outperform boys scholastically? Might the modern numbers reflect not female privilege, but the elimination of previous bias against women?
The same argument could me made about racial disparities in education. Would it be acceptable to say that this isn't a reflection of systemic bias, it corresponds to the fact that some ethnic groups outperform others scholastically?
Most would say that disparities in scholastic achievement is a manifestation of systemic racism. The same can, and should, be said about gender disparities. Fix whatever is keeping boys from succeeding.
What a poor faith analogy that completely ignores the well-documented fact that systemic sexism has in fact been affecting women all this time. Funnily enough, the only "ethnic group" that has maintained an overwhelming edge that began to decline with the removal of social barriers to the competition has been White students, which does not particularly support your assertion that men are the disadvantaged group here. If the only thing "keeping you from succeeding" is that your competition is no longer artificially hindered, your edge was never fairly earned.
Systemic sexism against boys in education is well documented. Pro-female bias in teachers is well researched [1]. The disparities are much smaller in anonymized standardized tests than non-anonymous grades awarded by teachers.
This tendency to immediately dismiss the notion that boys and men can be systemically disadvantaged is a big reason why they don't see feminism as a movement pursing equality. If you want to see what's driving this political divide, take a look in the mirror.
You could also look to employment discrimination, and how women are more incentivized to seek out higher education to combat their disadvantages in the hiring process, whereas men are more easily able to secure similar positions without commensurate degrees. Have you perhaps considered these angles at all?
And “ adapting their lifestyle to that of Germans” no doubt also refers to Abandoning their extreme patriarchal, gender norms for the more liberal German ones, no?
Really enjoying this - agree with Tyler Cowen's blog comment. 😃
A few random thoughts:
Judith Rich Harris notes in The Nurture Assumption that boys and girls (kids) are happy to mix until group opportunities reach a certain threshold, then they fracture along sex lines. Lines up nicely with your observations.
Have you read Geraldine Brooks' Nine Parts of Desire, written about her time as a Middle Eastern correspondent? Again, echoes as I read your article.
Exactly. The entire article is heavy with pro-liberal anti-male bias. The author is the feminized media, and her analysis sums up to the argument that men should be more liberal and more like women. No effort to meet in the middle here with any understanding of men, so no surprise that the gap continues to widen.
I enjoyed reading this but you almost have to laugh at how the feminized public culture mentioned, which I will say is part of a broad public narrative/conscience, literally cannot acknowledge or offer examples of how this negatively affects boys and men, or specific negative behaviors being enforced onto them (even by women).
Only the other way around do I see examples being included here which is expected yet still frightening and it’s getting really tiring. You mention online filter bubbles that men inhabit and some of their tendencies yet fail to mention that for women, instead just simply saying they exist. Same goes for gendered expectations and norms. They are largely discussed for women but not for men.
We need more examples and need to do better, as there are most definitely male issues that need to be addressed & uncovered, and they seemed to have only gotten worse in the past few decades. The feminized public culture is incredibly biased and can’t or won’t acknowledge that, which is a problem because it affects us all, and if the divide strengthens and there are consequences we all suffer.
You need to cover the responsibilities and burdens that men involuntarily had to take, because that's what their gender role was.
That does not mean I am justifying men having more chances in society. Women should have as equal chances as men have. I am just saying that men were as much victim of gender role as women were.
I really think women should be able to choose what they want and take the responsibility. Men should be able to choose what they want and take the responsibility regardless of gender role. That is the right feminism.
"“Who pays for dates?” is currently trending on the Western manosphere. Collectively, men bemoan unfairness. “If women want equality, they can share the tab!” I hear this same issue repeated by many 20-something men. As a cold, rational empiricist my internal monologue is,
“This is just a personal preference. Some people enjoy traditional gender roles (e.g. some men enjoy sexual dominance and/or financially providing for their girlfriends ). Those people can sort and select in the dating market”."
Woman complains that traditional gender roles are unfair, Alice has lots of sympathy. Man complains that traditional gender roles are unfair, "it's just like basic economics dude just sort and select in the dating market."
LOL!!! I am laughing! This is a good challenge! I think that as long as personal relationships are not abusive or harmful, then we can recognise these are just personal preferences. And these are totally different from government or employer discrimination.
Yes, it is. But J.S. Mill would say that the state should prevent harms. Domestic violence is a harm. We can also have open conversations about unfairness (eg one party doing all the low status drudgery). But there's also a point where you recognise that humans have personal preferences, eg some people are homosexual, others have a foot fetish, others enjoy shibari. And those non-harmful preferences are their own.
So can we have ‘open conversations about unfairness’ (in date paying norms) or are those conversations only allowed when they are complaining in the right direction?
What about complaints that the state systematically favors women in divorce courts, or disfavors men in conscription? (Don’t have personal experience of either thankfully but this seems to be common knowledge). Are those legitimate topics for complaint, or again, is complaining about state discrimination only acceptable from one side?
If the state discriminates against fathers that is bias. If only men are conscripted that is bias. Yes, of course, people should talk about anything. But I'm just pointing out that some men enjoy showing care through provision, just as they may enjoy sexual dominance.
My sister worked in family court. Men very rarely ever wanted custody in the first place, and yet somehow we all "know" that the courts are unfairly denying men their much-hoped for custody of their children. Worth asking who is repeating this narrative, and why.
Can we talk about unfairness in date paying norms? Sure, but about what? Generally my policy and that of my friends is that whoever asked pays the first time, and if that's the guy, it allows for a nice segue into "You got this one, so I'll pay the next time, when are you free?" If I don't intend to see him again, I'll pay half. Does something about that seem unfair?
I do think that, in person-to-person interactions like dates, it is in everyone's best interest to establish your hopes upfront if you'd like to deviate from social expectation. If you'd like to split the bill, please make that known ahead of time instead of paying and then blaming and resenting us for it, as we've known a not insignificant number of men who would be insulted by women offering to split or pick up the bill, taking it as an insult to their "ability to provide."
We began our investigation of child custody aware of a common perception that there is a bias in favor of women in these decisions. Our research contradicted this perception. Although mothers more frequently get primary physical custody of children following divorce, this practice does not reflect bias but rather the agreement of the parties and the fact that, in most families, mothers have been the primary [*748] caretakers of children. Fathers who actively seek custody obtain either primary or joint physical custody over 70% of the time. Reports indicate, however, that in some cases perceptions of gender bias may discourage fathers from seeking custody and stereotypes about fathers may sometimes affect case outcomes. In general, our evidence suggests that the courts hold higher standards for mothers than fathers in custody determinations.
It depends on the applicable definition of “never,” but generally, this is untrue. The most recent available Census statistics show that fathers represent around one in five custodial parents—an improvement over the 16 percent of custodial parents reported in 1994. However, studies indicate that dads simply do not ask for custody as often as mothers do, and courts generally do not award what is not asked for in that regard.
A Massachusetts study examined 2,100 fathers who asked for custody and pushed aggressively to win it. Of those 2,100, 92 percent either received full or joint custody, with mothers receiving full custody only 7 percent of the time. Another study where 8 percent of fathers asked for custody showed that of that 8 percent, 79 percent received either sole or joint custody (in other words, approximately 6.3 percent of all fathers in the study)
This basically sums up the enormous double standards of the “feminized public culture” that the author mentions. This is why we will never get anywhere and why the gender divide will continue, because there are inherent biases and double standards people refuse to acknowledge if it doesn’t agree with that public narrative or doesn’t benefit them.
The same “sympathy gap” that exists (believe this is a documented phenomenon as well, but it’s just what I will call it for now) sees women’s issues as actual issues that need solutions (especially to “make up” for gender equality), but men’s issues as faults, or doesn’t acknowledged them, or research them, or give them much thought; they’ve also become heavily politicized which is a barrier to any progress.
Think feminization of education and all the educational/economic issues and biases that come with it, legal/judicial biases, family court biases, mental health… These obvious issues are not treated with the same respect or consideration. Things will probably only get worse if we don’t acknowledge we are interdependent and if we have a system that only acts on the current favorable public narrative.
The empathy gap in favour of women is definitely somthing that needs researching. In my dissertation for my psychology degree I conducted an experiment that found men received less empathy for a distressing situation than women, dogs and even cats!
There are countries in the world where boys have fewer rights to bodily autonomy than animals. There are countries where ear and tail clipping is banned but genital mutilation of boys is not.
In my experience, the "who pays?" question is more complicated. You have women who are primarily equality feminists but want men to pay on dates as a sort of reparations (for gender pay gap, more spent by women on clothes/makeup) or as a test of interest. Then you have men who are mad about paying on dates BUT DON'T WANT TO SPLIT THE BILL; they either want a very cheap environment (like a coffee date or walk in the park or "netflix and chill"), or they want to pay for dinner/drinks but get angry if it doesn't lead to sex. For men like this the mindset is of suspicion about being used and wanting to get the most for the least.
I confess, I have not researched these attitudes. I have no idea if this is real. My non-academic take is that the people you describe sound extremely stressed.
Can't speak for zoomers (millennials like me are already out of touch at this point) but in my day the common line was "whoever asks should pay" - advocated by women who espoused equality and an abandonment of gender roles in general but seemed to never ask men out, and who for some reason thought the "whoever asks should pay" standard only applies to dates, not to asking your friends to join you for dinner.
The problem is lack of a universal standard of who pays, money being used as a marker for emotional investment, zero sum ideology where the person investing more is seen as losing, and suspicious attitudes promoted by one-gender media. My experience is there are way more men who want "man pays but woman has to pay back with sex" (which is not traditional; trad is man pays regardless) or "man pays but on the cheapest date possible" than women who see men paying as "reparations", but I haven't done polling on this.
So much interesting data and thought here, thank you for pulling it together. I'm wary of a tendency to 'pathologise' the right more than the left - eg resistance to immigration is not evidence of xenophobia. I also note that while you say the right tends to misunderstand the left, the only research I've seen on this found that conservatives tend to understand liberal positions better than vice versa. Filter bubbles - hmm, I think this hoary idea needs to be put out to pasture. As you point out yourself, people who grew up pre-internet lived in restrictive filter bubbles, more so than younger generations do now. On radicalisation - not sure about the evidence for this. There's been more than one study finding that the YouTube radicalisation effect does not exist. Although I have to admit this goes against my intuitions! But these are quibbles. I'm interested in the broader question of whether this divergence is wholly bad - in some ways I can see it being a good thing - plenty of opportunity for partnerships-as-Allport-projects!
No, women no longer pour teas and give you services like that at work. You are going to get sued if you make them do that. Time has changed.
No, most men do not install hidden cameras to film women undressing, because that is a serious crime. And we do not laugh with criminals about criminal activities they have done. There are criminals everywhere in the world. That does not mean everyone in the world is criminal.
I see your point and I know what you are talking about. I really do. but your article is way too biased.
You need to have fair perspectives from the both sides. You are assuming one as a victim and the other as a inferior villain. This kind of view just widens gender gap much more.
Dear Dr. Evans. I left twitter but I'm still reading your posts and listening to your podcasts
I've written a post where I try to complete yours. I miss in your analysis why young women are voting for far left parties. If men are the reason behind polarization, why do not women vote for centrist / moderate parties? I think young women are as frustrated as men are. But for different reasons. https://derechomercantilespana.blogspot.com/2024/01/que-impulsa-la-polarizacion-ideologica.html
This post really strikes me as a mix of dismissal and condescension. The idea that breaking filter bubbles and changing algorithms will stop this trend implies that the complaints of men aren't rooted in real world problems, that they're just inventions of social media.
I can say with certainty than men are victims of sexist hiring policies in my field (tech). Two out of the three companies I've worked at had explicitly discriminatory policies. One outright prohibited men from a segment of each quarter's headcount. Of course, this was presented as "bonus" headcount for women rather than prohibiting men. But this is the exact same thing: if I have 30 headcount plus 20 "bonus" headcount exclusive to women it's identical as having 50 headcount, 20 of which are off-limits to men. Another set a quota of 40%, despite software developers and electrical engineers - who accounted for nearly all engineering roles - being ~20% and 10% women respectively. This isn't merely "threatening men's and boys' opportunities" it's explicitly curbing them.
A lot of the men I know that are drawn to "manosphere" content say they're frustrated with the unwillingness or inability of mainstream to address, or even acknowledge the existence of, sexism targeted at men. Conspicuously absent from the suggestions on how to close this gap is a bullet point about actually addressing anti-male sexism.
What a thought provoking article. I don't think you nail the root causes- social conservatism, and high ingroup preference tend to be predicted by a lower placement in the socio-economic spectrum and particularly a lower level of education. It why many demographics are currently switching position. The key driver is education. Younger higher status higher income White and Asian males are moving to the Left, whilst White males from poorer backgrounds, African American males, Latinos and recent migrants from legitimate immigration channels (other than H-1B1) are all switching Right (because economic research proves that more migration is worst for recent migrants) .
Economically, high migration is good for business, good for GDP and ensuring people in the top quintile (especially the top decile) make more money. However, high migration of the non-selective kind is terrible for males at the lower end of the educational spectrum, as well as for social spending (because the revenue base declines on a per capita basis).
The fallacy is the 'everyone moves up' myth. Some people move up, primarily on the basis of educational level of attainment- but if one is blue collar in the West then the effects of mass migration on a personal level have been disastrous. Douglas Adams was right when he argued that often the question is more important than the answer. Economic questions that don't look at the socio-economic spectrum and net contributions to tax revenue minus tax expenditure per citizens are worse than useless because they are highly misinformative. These aren't the only factors- both offshoring and automation have played a substantial role, but only by degrees compared to the unlimited labour supply of people willing to work longer hours for less money in unsafe working conditions. It certainly doesn't help that credentialism and Western snobbery has meant that electrical engineers and doctors who should be displacing the highly educated and reducing their incomes in the West often find themselves by necessity working jobs as janitors or car mechanics.
It's all down to economic interests. The solution is the type of migration practiced by Australia up until the early 2000s. By offering specific protections against migration for the blue collar class, their Populate or Perish policy able to achieve double the rate of foreign-born citizens without any of the cultural friction found in other Western countries. It also helped build a network of universities in the developing world, because it created demand for an educated workforce in the same way that America's H-1B1 program did.
I largely agree with the arguments about misogyny, but it's important to note that dating apps have been disastrous for both young men and young women. Young college women report being willing to endure painful and unconformable sex on the first date with their male college peers because of scarcity and competition, whilst young men might as well not bother with dating apps at all, outside of the college scene. Going to the gym and eating healthily might help when you're thirty have have a good job, but research shows that the ideal swipe for men is highly attractive and 18 to 22, when for younger women its early thirties, attractive, tall and with a reasonable good job. 18 to 30 males simply need not apply- no matter how good they look.
The other issue is self-selection in a more diverse media landscape. Contrary to some arguments (especially academic studies by bad actors who used multiple content creator accounts by the same authors to prove false correlation with polarisation to the extremes) most search engine curation and platforms push heavily towards the corporate centre Left. It's why progressive content creators are entirely correct when they complain about being supressed as much as conservatives- because they aren't part of the corporate centre Left.
But the far more powerful force is the ways in which people were selecting for content. Before YouTube altered its algorithms, men were more likely to search for content on economics, whilst women were more likely to search for issues relating to social progress. The fact that economics is generally somewhat more popular amongst conservatives and libertarians, whilst social progress is the preeminent political occupation of progressives meant that the various platforms sorted men to the Right and women to the Left, even though this wasn't necessarily their current political affiliation.
Thanks for this great read, super well researched. It’s unfortunate though imo that your writing, while sharing your sophisticated meticulous research, also reveals apparent bias wrt to your personal sympathies, that can be alienating. In short, while your model is neutral, your chosen examples are one sided suggesting that only men can learn from women and are harmed by segregation never vise versa. You also display zero sympathy for men’s challenges. It’s a shame really. Your analysis is great and the argument convince but the tone and one-sidedness of the chosen examples detracts and distracts.
I'd like the author to cite the sources of her data. Who conducted the research and how, where is it published, etc?I don't accept common sense assumptions as facts. Scientific proof of her assertions is almost impossible to pin down.
I'm done with people underestimating men, and writing off the entire gender based on distraught, young outliers.
I think you discount the decline of religion in America. I often see discussion of the missing third place as well in this topic but I think most people are blind to the fact that that used to be the church.
Whether socialized or biological women tend to be more empathetic and emotional than men by these tendencies have been restrained in the political sphere by our culture up until now. We know for a variety of reasons that those traits are correlated with progressivism. Even your article shows a massive slant towards this mindset.
Do you think a factor in gender ideological differences in the west could be the number of men vs. women who attend university? Women have been the majority of university students for a while now with the gap growing even larger. We know that there is a growing gap in political ideology if you have have a university degree compared to if you don't. Could the gender divergence be downstream of an education divergence?
Great point. University education could encourage liberal beliefs. So it's certainly possible. But I think if we look at the very specific beliefs (hostility towards immigrants, and a feeling that women's rights are a threat), this seems more like men's concern for their relative status. In South Korea, more men go to uni.
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.
"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?"
Or might it possibly correspond to the fact that girls outperform boys scholastically? Might the modern numbers reflect not female privilege, but the elimination of previous bias against women?
The same argument could me made about racial disparities in education. Would it be acceptable to say that this isn't a reflection of systemic bias, it corresponds to the fact that some ethnic groups outperform others scholastically?
Most would say that disparities in scholastic achievement is a manifestation of systemic racism. The same can, and should, be said about gender disparities. Fix whatever is keeping boys from succeeding.
What a poor faith analogy that completely ignores the well-documented fact that systemic sexism has in fact been affecting women all this time. Funnily enough, the only "ethnic group" that has maintained an overwhelming edge that began to decline with the removal of social barriers to the competition has been White students, which does not particularly support your assertion that men are the disadvantaged group here. If the only thing "keeping you from succeeding" is that your competition is no longer artificially hindered, your edge was never fairly earned.
Systemic sexism against boys in education is well documented. Pro-female bias in teachers is well researched [1]. The disparities are much smaller in anonymized standardized tests than non-anonymous grades awarded by teachers.
This tendency to immediately dismiss the notion that boys and men can be systemically disadvantaged is a big reason why they don't see feminism as a movement pursing equality. If you want to see what's driving this political divide, take a look in the mirror.
1. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01425692.2022.2122942
You could also look to employment discrimination, and how women are more incentivized to seek out higher education to combat their disadvantages in the hiring process, whereas men are more easily able to secure similar positions without commensurate degrees. Have you perhaps considered these angles at all?
And “ adapting their lifestyle to that of Germans” no doubt also refers to Abandoning their extreme patriarchal, gender norms for the more liberal German ones, no?
Right. And the end of things like this: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/austria-swimming-pool-rape-theresienbad-vienna-iraqi-refugee-a7473441.html
Really enjoying this - agree with Tyler Cowen's blog comment. 😃
A few random thoughts:
Judith Rich Harris notes in The Nurture Assumption that boys and girls (kids) are happy to mix until group opportunities reach a certain threshold, then they fracture along sex lines. Lines up nicely with your observations.
Have you read Geraldine Brooks' Nine Parts of Desire, written about her time as a Middle Eastern correspondent? Again, echoes as I read your article.
Great work.
Thanks for the book recommendations! Appreciate your comment.
Filter bubbles are not a thing for right wingers as we are constantly bombarded with leftist messaging like this article.
Exactly. The entire article is heavy with pro-liberal anti-male bias. The author is the feminized media, and her analysis sums up to the argument that men should be more liberal and more like women. No effort to meet in the middle here with any understanding of men, so no surprise that the gap continues to widen.
I enjoyed reading this but you almost have to laugh at how the feminized public culture mentioned, which I will say is part of a broad public narrative/conscience, literally cannot acknowledge or offer examples of how this negatively affects boys and men, or specific negative behaviors being enforced onto them (even by women).
Only the other way around do I see examples being included here which is expected yet still frightening and it’s getting really tiring. You mention online filter bubbles that men inhabit and some of their tendencies yet fail to mention that for women, instead just simply saying they exist. Same goes for gendered expectations and norms. They are largely discussed for women but not for men.
We need more examples and need to do better, as there are most definitely male issues that need to be addressed & uncovered, and they seemed to have only gotten worse in the past few decades. The feminized public culture is incredibly biased and can’t or won’t acknowledge that, which is a problem because it affects us all, and if the divide strengthens and there are consequences we all suffer.
Agreed.
You need to cover the responsibilities and burdens that men involuntarily had to take, because that's what their gender role was.
That does not mean I am justifying men having more chances in society. Women should have as equal chances as men have. I am just saying that men were as much victim of gender role as women were.
I really think women should be able to choose what they want and take the responsibility. Men should be able to choose what they want and take the responsibility regardless of gender role. That is the right feminism.
"“Who pays for dates?” is currently trending on the Western manosphere. Collectively, men bemoan unfairness. “If women want equality, they can share the tab!” I hear this same issue repeated by many 20-something men. As a cold, rational empiricist my internal monologue is,
“This is just a personal preference. Some people enjoy traditional gender roles (e.g. some men enjoy sexual dominance and/or financially providing for their girlfriends ). Those people can sort and select in the dating market”."
Woman complains that traditional gender roles are unfair, Alice has lots of sympathy. Man complains that traditional gender roles are unfair, "it's just like basic economics dude just sort and select in the dating market."
LOL!!! I am laughing! This is a good challenge! I think that as long as personal relationships are not abusive or harmful, then we can recognise these are just personal preferences. And these are totally different from government or employer discrimination.
Isn't "the personal is the political" a core tenet of second-wave feminism?
Yes, it is. But J.S. Mill would say that the state should prevent harms. Domestic violence is a harm. We can also have open conversations about unfairness (eg one party doing all the low status drudgery). But there's also a point where you recognise that humans have personal preferences, eg some people are homosexual, others have a foot fetish, others enjoy shibari. And those non-harmful preferences are their own.
So can we have ‘open conversations about unfairness’ (in date paying norms) or are those conversations only allowed when they are complaining in the right direction?
What about complaints that the state systematically favors women in divorce courts, or disfavors men in conscription? (Don’t have personal experience of either thankfully but this seems to be common knowledge). Are those legitimate topics for complaint, or again, is complaining about state discrimination only acceptable from one side?
If the state discriminates against fathers that is bias. If only men are conscripted that is bias. Yes, of course, people should talk about anything. But I'm just pointing out that some men enjoy showing care through provision, just as they may enjoy sexual dominance.
My sister worked in family court. Men very rarely ever wanted custody in the first place, and yet somehow we all "know" that the courts are unfairly denying men their much-hoped for custody of their children. Worth asking who is repeating this narrative, and why.
Can we talk about unfairness in date paying norms? Sure, but about what? Generally my policy and that of my friends is that whoever asked pays the first time, and if that's the guy, it allows for a nice segue into "You got this one, so I'll pay the next time, when are you free?" If I don't intend to see him again, I'll pay half. Does something about that seem unfair?
I do think that, in person-to-person interactions like dates, it is in everyone's best interest to establish your hopes upfront if you'd like to deviate from social expectation. If you'd like to split the bill, please make that known ahead of time instead of paying and then blaming and resenting us for it, as we've known a not insignificant number of men who would be insulted by women offering to split or pick up the bill, taking it as an insult to their "ability to provide."
We began our investigation of child custody aware of a common perception that there is a bias in favor of women in these decisions. Our research contradicted this perception. Although mothers more frequently get primary physical custody of children following divorce, this practice does not reflect bias but rather the agreement of the parties and the fact that, in most families, mothers have been the primary [*748] caretakers of children. Fathers who actively seek custody obtain either primary or joint physical custody over 70% of the time. Reports indicate, however, that in some cases perceptions of gender bias may discourage fathers from seeking custody and stereotypes about fathers may sometimes affect case outcomes. In general, our evidence suggests that the courts hold higher standards for mothers than fathers in custody determinations.
https://amptoons.com/blog/files/Massachusetts_Gender_Bias_Study.htm#:~:text=Fathers%20who%20actively%20seek%20custody,may%20sometimes%20affect%20case%20outcomes.
Myth: Fathers Almost Never Get Custody
It depends on the applicable definition of “never,” but generally, this is untrue. The most recent available Census statistics show that fathers represent around one in five custodial parents—an improvement over the 16 percent of custodial parents reported in 1994. However, studies indicate that dads simply do not ask for custody as often as mothers do, and courts generally do not award what is not asked for in that regard.
A Massachusetts study examined 2,100 fathers who asked for custody and pushed aggressively to win it. Of those 2,100, 92 percent either received full or joint custody, with mothers receiving full custody only 7 percent of the time. Another study where 8 percent of fathers asked for custody showed that of that 8 percent, 79 percent received either sole or joint custody (in other words, approximately 6.3 percent of all fathers in the study)
https://www.dadsdivorcelaw.com/blog/fathers-and-mothers-child-custody-myths
No acknowledgement of your own hypocrisy or narrow minded prejudicial thinking. Just laughs. Typical.
This basically sums up the enormous double standards of the “feminized public culture” that the author mentions. This is why we will never get anywhere and why the gender divide will continue, because there are inherent biases and double standards people refuse to acknowledge if it doesn’t agree with that public narrative or doesn’t benefit them.
The same “sympathy gap” that exists (believe this is a documented phenomenon as well, but it’s just what I will call it for now) sees women’s issues as actual issues that need solutions (especially to “make up” for gender equality), but men’s issues as faults, or doesn’t acknowledged them, or research them, or give them much thought; they’ve also become heavily politicized which is a barrier to any progress.
Think feminization of education and all the educational/economic issues and biases that come with it, legal/judicial biases, family court biases, mental health… These obvious issues are not treated with the same respect or consideration. Things will probably only get worse if we don’t acknowledge we are interdependent and if we have a system that only acts on the current favorable public narrative.
The empathy gap in favour of women is definitely somthing that needs researching. In my dissertation for my psychology degree I conducted an experiment that found men received less empathy for a distressing situation than women, dogs and even cats!
There are countries in the world where boys have fewer rights to bodily autonomy than animals. There are countries where ear and tail clipping is banned but genital mutilation of boys is not.
In my experience, the "who pays?" question is more complicated. You have women who are primarily equality feminists but want men to pay on dates as a sort of reparations (for gender pay gap, more spent by women on clothes/makeup) or as a test of interest. Then you have men who are mad about paying on dates BUT DON'T WANT TO SPLIT THE BILL; they either want a very cheap environment (like a coffee date or walk in the park or "netflix and chill"), or they want to pay for dinner/drinks but get angry if it doesn't lead to sex. For men like this the mindset is of suspicion about being used and wanting to get the most for the least.
I confess, I have not researched these attitudes. I have no idea if this is real. My non-academic take is that the people you describe sound extremely stressed.
Can't speak for zoomers (millennials like me are already out of touch at this point) but in my day the common line was "whoever asks should pay" - advocated by women who espoused equality and an abandonment of gender roles in general but seemed to never ask men out, and who for some reason thought the "whoever asks should pay" standard only applies to dates, not to asking your friends to join you for dinner.
The problem is lack of a universal standard of who pays, money being used as a marker for emotional investment, zero sum ideology where the person investing more is seen as losing, and suspicious attitudes promoted by one-gender media. My experience is there are way more men who want "man pays but woman has to pay back with sex" (which is not traditional; trad is man pays regardless) or "man pays but on the cheapest date possible" than women who see men paying as "reparations", but I haven't done polling on this.
So much interesting data and thought here, thank you for pulling it together. I'm wary of a tendency to 'pathologise' the right more than the left - eg resistance to immigration is not evidence of xenophobia. I also note that while you say the right tends to misunderstand the left, the only research I've seen on this found that conservatives tend to understand liberal positions better than vice versa. Filter bubbles - hmm, I think this hoary idea needs to be put out to pasture. As you point out yourself, people who grew up pre-internet lived in restrictive filter bubbles, more so than younger generations do now. On radicalisation - not sure about the evidence for this. There's been more than one study finding that the YouTube radicalisation effect does not exist. Although I have to admit this goes against my intuitions! But these are quibbles. I'm interested in the broader question of whether this divergence is wholly bad - in some ways I can see it being a good thing - plenty of opportunity for partnerships-as-Allport-projects!
Just few corrections for the South Korea part.
No, women no longer pour teas and give you services like that at work. You are going to get sued if you make them do that. Time has changed.
No, most men do not install hidden cameras to film women undressing, because that is a serious crime. And we do not laugh with criminals about criminal activities they have done. There are criminals everywhere in the world. That does not mean everyone in the world is criminal.
I see your point and I know what you are talking about. I really do. but your article is way too biased.
You need to have fair perspectives from the both sides. You are assuming one as a victim and the other as a inferior villain. This kind of view just widens gender gap much more.
Dear Dr. Evans. I left twitter but I'm still reading your posts and listening to your podcasts
I've written a post where I try to complete yours. I miss in your analysis why young women are voting for far left parties. If men are the reason behind polarization, why do not women vote for centrist / moderate parties? I think young women are as frustrated as men are. But for different reasons. https://derechomercantilespana.blogspot.com/2024/01/que-impulsa-la-polarizacion-ideologica.html
This post really strikes me as a mix of dismissal and condescension. The idea that breaking filter bubbles and changing algorithms will stop this trend implies that the complaints of men aren't rooted in real world problems, that they're just inventions of social media.
I can say with certainty than men are victims of sexist hiring policies in my field (tech). Two out of the three companies I've worked at had explicitly discriminatory policies. One outright prohibited men from a segment of each quarter's headcount. Of course, this was presented as "bonus" headcount for women rather than prohibiting men. But this is the exact same thing: if I have 30 headcount plus 20 "bonus" headcount exclusive to women it's identical as having 50 headcount, 20 of which are off-limits to men. Another set a quota of 40%, despite software developers and electrical engineers - who accounted for nearly all engineering roles - being ~20% and 10% women respectively. This isn't merely "threatening men's and boys' opportunities" it's explicitly curbing them.
A lot of the men I know that are drawn to "manosphere" content say they're frustrated with the unwillingness or inability of mainstream to address, or even acknowledge the existence of, sexism targeted at men. Conspicuously absent from the suggestions on how to close this gap is a bullet point about actually addressing anti-male sexism.
"Far-right" "far-right" "far-right"... what is "far" about it? Why does writer after writer act as though slightly right of Karl Marx is "far-right"?
What a thought provoking article. I don't think you nail the root causes- social conservatism, and high ingroup preference tend to be predicted by a lower placement in the socio-economic spectrum and particularly a lower level of education. It why many demographics are currently switching position. The key driver is education. Younger higher status higher income White and Asian males are moving to the Left, whilst White males from poorer backgrounds, African American males, Latinos and recent migrants from legitimate immigration channels (other than H-1B1) are all switching Right (because economic research proves that more migration is worst for recent migrants) .
Economically, high migration is good for business, good for GDP and ensuring people in the top quintile (especially the top decile) make more money. However, high migration of the non-selective kind is terrible for males at the lower end of the educational spectrum, as well as for social spending (because the revenue base declines on a per capita basis).
The fallacy is the 'everyone moves up' myth. Some people move up, primarily on the basis of educational level of attainment- but if one is blue collar in the West then the effects of mass migration on a personal level have been disastrous. Douglas Adams was right when he argued that often the question is more important than the answer. Economic questions that don't look at the socio-economic spectrum and net contributions to tax revenue minus tax expenditure per citizens are worse than useless because they are highly misinformative. These aren't the only factors- both offshoring and automation have played a substantial role, but only by degrees compared to the unlimited labour supply of people willing to work longer hours for less money in unsafe working conditions. It certainly doesn't help that credentialism and Western snobbery has meant that electrical engineers and doctors who should be displacing the highly educated and reducing their incomes in the West often find themselves by necessity working jobs as janitors or car mechanics.
It's all down to economic interests. The solution is the type of migration practiced by Australia up until the early 2000s. By offering specific protections against migration for the blue collar class, their Populate or Perish policy able to achieve double the rate of foreign-born citizens without any of the cultural friction found in other Western countries. It also helped build a network of universities in the developing world, because it created demand for an educated workforce in the same way that America's H-1B1 program did.
I largely agree with the arguments about misogyny, but it's important to note that dating apps have been disastrous for both young men and young women. Young college women report being willing to endure painful and unconformable sex on the first date with their male college peers because of scarcity and competition, whilst young men might as well not bother with dating apps at all, outside of the college scene. Going to the gym and eating healthily might help when you're thirty have have a good job, but research shows that the ideal swipe for men is highly attractive and 18 to 22, when for younger women its early thirties, attractive, tall and with a reasonable good job. 18 to 30 males simply need not apply- no matter how good they look.
The other issue is self-selection in a more diverse media landscape. Contrary to some arguments (especially academic studies by bad actors who used multiple content creator accounts by the same authors to prove false correlation with polarisation to the extremes) most search engine curation and platforms push heavily towards the corporate centre Left. It's why progressive content creators are entirely correct when they complain about being supressed as much as conservatives- because they aren't part of the corporate centre Left.
But the far more powerful force is the ways in which people were selecting for content. Before YouTube altered its algorithms, men were more likely to search for content on economics, whilst women were more likely to search for issues relating to social progress. The fact that economics is generally somewhat more popular amongst conservatives and libertarians, whilst social progress is the preeminent political occupation of progressives meant that the various platforms sorted men to the Right and women to the Left, even though this wasn't necessarily their current political affiliation.
The dividends of high migration wear off over time. Migration inflates house prices. Make houses unaffordable and ypu have a lot of demotivated men.
Thanks for this great read, super well researched. It’s unfortunate though imo that your writing, while sharing your sophisticated meticulous research, also reveals apparent bias wrt to your personal sympathies, that can be alienating. In short, while your model is neutral, your chosen examples are one sided suggesting that only men can learn from women and are harmed by segregation never vise versa. You also display zero sympathy for men’s challenges. It’s a shame really. Your analysis is great and the argument convince but the tone and one-sidedness of the chosen examples detracts and distracts.
How is this article well researched?!? She uses personal anecdotes and generalizations.
I'd like the author to cite the sources of her data. Who conducted the research and how, where is it published, etc?I don't accept common sense assumptions as facts. Scientific proof of her assertions is almost impossible to pin down.
I'm done with people underestimating men, and writing off the entire gender based on distraught, young outliers.
All the evidence is hyperlinked. Just click.
I wonder how much of this is just educational divergence. Women have been going to college at a greater rate than men for decades.
A couple of points
I think you discount the decline of religion in America. I often see discussion of the missing third place as well in this topic but I think most people are blind to the fact that that used to be the church.
Whether socialized or biological women tend to be more empathetic and emotional than men by these tendencies have been restrained in the political sphere by our culture up until now. We know for a variety of reasons that those traits are correlated with progressivism. Even your article shows a massive slant towards this mindset.
Do you think a factor in gender ideological differences in the west could be the number of men vs. women who attend university? Women have been the majority of university students for a while now with the gap growing even larger. We know that there is a growing gap in political ideology if you have have a university degree compared to if you don't. Could the gender divergence be downstream of an education divergence?
Thanks for the great article.
Great point. University education could encourage liberal beliefs. So it's certainly possible. But I think if we look at the very specific beliefs (hostility towards immigrants, and a feeling that women's rights are a threat), this seems more like men's concern for their relative status. In South Korea, more men go to uni.