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”.
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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
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.
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:
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:
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.
To speak to that, back when software development was not a prestigious job, it was done mostly by women. The lead developer for the Apollo program’s guidance software is a woman, Margaret Hamilton.