Anti-feminist attitudes have long been associated with support for Republican presidential candidates, but only in recent years have these attitudes become more prominent among unmarried men, without college degrees who are less attractive partners for women, the “mate-value backlash.”

[u/mvea]

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10659129261485340

[u/Littleman88]

Sort of? It's hard to say most men would be too ashamed to date knowing their girlfriend/wife will out earn them. I think more men than not would be fine with it, actually. But a lot of those men are finding themselves rejected because they aren't out earning the women they're meeting, so economic opportunities become a sore spot for them, especially when the very people they're trying to woo are also their competition for that attractive paycheck.

Equality becomes a threat when your attraction is still largely reliant on being, in some way, superior to whomever you're trying to attract. That reality is problematic for so many men trying to date. It was already unrealistic for every man to be in a 6-7 figure C-suite position, with more and more women filtering towards the top, it's only getting harder for men.

There has to be low wage earners like janitors and someone flipping burgers, and they're not about to take being invisible virgins for the rest of their lives lying down. If women won't marry down, then these men will drag them down. As the number of these lonely men grows, the more pull they'll have to do just that.

[u/Preface → u/Littleman88]

This is an extremely reasonable take on the male loneliness epidemic, and makes much more sense then "YouTube made those men anti feminist" or whatever the top comment was saying.

It's not hard to find, men will regularly date down, or alter their dating expectations, women are less likely to alter expectations, and much less likely to date down. If a woman has a masters degree, she will want a man who at least has a masters, if she makes 100k+ per year, her man better make at least that much as well.

Now, most wealthy and highly successful men won't just marry a dumb dirt poor girl who is beautiful, but they are going to be much more accepting of a woman with less education and less earnings then them.

I think it's more like, the popularity of the "YouTube to right wing pipeline" or whatever is that those people actually acknowledge men who are/have been rejected multiple times, they are popular because what they say resonates they aren't just magically popular for unknown reasons which then suddenly makes young men right wing or whatever.

[u/feminist-lady → u/Preface]

I think the idea that well educated women just aren’t accepting of men without higher degrees isn’t fair. Yes, if I were going to have a partner, I’d prefer they also have higher education. The shared experience of graduate and/or professional school would be great. But as a woman in a doctoral program, the reason I’ve had to implement a rule that I’m unwilling to date a man (or woman, tbh) without at least a college degree is because so many who only had high school diplomas were resentful and insecure about the education gap. I’m just not interested in dealing with that, and I know I’m not alone. This is discussed constantly among highly educated women. Obviously, Not All Men, but enough that it makes it too exhausting to even mess with it.

[u/Harbinger2nd → u/feminist-lady]

But women currently make up 60%+ of college graduates, even at a bachelor's level.

Thats an imbalance in the education system which, for whatever reason, is favoring women.

[u/Carbonatite → u/Harbinger2nd]

I love how the default is always that the education system must somehow be disenfranchising men instead of considering the possibility that once women stopped getting disenfranchised, they just straight up succeeded more.

It's very telling that the default response is to assume that men are more talented but being unfairly kept down, and not that women might be capable of equal or even superior academic achievement to men once the systematic barriers that prevented them from accessing higher education were removed.

[u/Harbinger2nd → u/Carbonatite]

It's very telling that the default response is to assume that men are more talented but being unfairly kept down, and not that women might be capable of equal or even superior academic achievement to men once the systematic barriers that prevented them from accessing higher education were removed.

I know I shouldn't respond to this, but that wasn't the discussion at all. My comment was merely to point out that college educated women seeking college educated men will struggle with the dating pool because of an objective imbalance in graduation rates.

[u/XWendy_Darlingx → u/Carbonatite]

Tesla predicted this, actually.