Pleasant Politics

I could only get through the first third. But the researcher was reporting that young men in culturally liberal and developed nations are more sexist than women their age, while older generations everywhere are not.

She speculates this is because the young men haven’t gained the status indicators of financial stability, housing, and an attractive wife (sic) that they see the older men had gained back when houses were plenty and women were forced to be with men for financial and cultural reasons. So the perceived reduced status, financial strain of modern times, and women’s rejections generates resentment and drives them online (where only the more extreme voices are generating content) and reinforces that resentment.

I think the women have valid complaints, plus there’s just the general difficulty of finding a good partner. But both of those together mean a greater rate of rejection (about one third of young men are unpartnered) than the men see compared to the older generation.

The article doesn't provide hard numbers to nail down on a wall and quote. However, I'll do my best to summarize and interpret.

So, in terms of, yes, young men are much more likely to say, "Yes, women could work, they can go out to clubs, they can do whatever they like, they can be totally free", and young men will support and vote for female leaders. So in terms of support for recognizing women’s capabilities, absolutely, younger generations tend to be much more gender equal, and that holds across the board.

The only exceptions are places like North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia where there’s no difference between young men and their grandfathers. But in culturally liberal economically developed countries in the West and East, young men are more supportive. But, sorry, I should have been more clear, they do express this hostile sexism, so this sense of resentment that women’s rights are coming at men's expense. But that’s not all men, right? And so it’s only a small fraction of young men. You know, many young men are very, very progressive and they’ll vote for Hillary Clinton, et cetera.

/.../

Women’s wages are approximating men’s. They can inherit parental wealth and buy their own property. So that means that women don’t necessarily need a man. So demand for male partners has plummeted because of that economic development and cultural liberalization. As a result, Pew data tells us that 39 percent of adult American men are currently unpartnered.

My interpretation:

• a) political support for gender equality is high, and probably is record high
• b) individual bitterness due to poor inter-gender relations is high, and could be record high

Typically, those processes have different outputs:

• typically, the output of A (theoretic support) is in the political realm
• typically, the output of B (bitterness) is in the individual realm.

To have the output of B enter the political realm, one needs a politician to translate bitterness into reactionary politics that aims to harm women's rights. To bring a boring example: an ultra-conservative opposed to the right of aborting a pregnancy.

Once the translation has been provided, the next question comes: are young men easier to co-opt into radical political movements? And the answer is undeniably "yes". Men are considerably less inhibited by risk, for reasons that are probably both social (how one is raised) and biological.

If a radical movement presents the perspective of considerable risk, but considerable gain, you'll typically find young men involved. So, some political offshoots of a situation where the state of affairs makes people discontent - both offshoots in revolutionary and reactionary directions (think of anarchists and neofascists) - you'll find young men heavily involved there (and often quite willing to beat the heck out of each other).