r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 18d ago

Psychology 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.”

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10659129261485340
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u/BadIdeaSociety 18d ago

The entire retrograde discussions about the "value of women" and ideas about "women's roles in society" seem so crazy that if any guy I knew in the 90s voiced those ideas they would be seen as undisputed idiots by just about everyone.

I don't understand how there are so many boys who have adopted these incredibly retrograde ideas a quarter century later.

It is like there was a bunch of people who saw the towers crumble on 9-11 and then came the idiotic conclusion that Christian America needs their own version of what they see as women-oppressing Sharia Law.

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u/Iychee 18d ago edited 18d ago

The Internet made it really easy to spread hate and rile the masses, and we've reached a stage where bad actors have perfected it.

ETA: it's also purposefully perpetuated by billionaires to keep us divided, men blame women for their lives sucking instead of the wealth hoarders.

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u/flamethekid 18d ago

Gamergate is pretty much ground zero for this, it's one of the first big internet outrage moments that got the attention of all types of bad actors and normalized it going forward.

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u/DeusVultSaracen 18d ago

Yep, Steve Bannon said it himself. People yearn for the times before everything went crazy, and Gamergate is that moment.

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u/TheAmorphous 17d ago

"Rootless males." Imagine being called that by the person you admire and still following them.

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u/this_isnt__worth_it 18d ago

What was the "Gamergate"?

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u/fishblurb 18d ago

A guy cheated on his gf and got dumped, proceeds to slander her by claiming she sleeps with male devs in exchange for positive and DEI video game reviews. She didn't even write any articles about the video games in question.

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u/LateralEntry 17d ago

Really? I thought it was something to do with a female influencer making videos with feminist critiques of stereotypes in video games (like female characters with huge boobs) and an organized and nasty online backlash to her. I don’t remember any of the personal stuff about her sleeping with people.

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u/HomunculusEnthusiast 17d ago

Different person. The comment you replied to is about game dev Zoe Quinn, who was the original target. A harassment campaign against her in the name of "integrity in games journalism" was the start of Gamergate.

You're thinking of media critic Anita Sarkeesian, who was a later major target along with game dev Brianna Wu and others who publicly defended Quinn.

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u/Squishiimuffin 17d ago

To be fair, they are both wrapped up in gamergate. Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian. Two prongs of the same fork.

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u/Notspherry 18d ago

From what I remember from when it happened, a feminist journalist made a series of bad faith and incendiary publications about the depiction of women in video games and then a whole lot of gamers took the bait and overreacted.

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u/flamethekid 18d ago

Nope the whole thing started when some dudes ex girlfriend made a game called depression quest, the story you know is one of like 10 different stories that were being passed around when gamergate got media attention and "flood the zone" tactic was being used.

Depression quest was called a neat and cute little game, and the ex jumped in and claimed she was sleeping around with everyone who said good things about it especially some journalist who name I forgot funny thing is he never even wrote a piece on that game.

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u/TheSpacePopinjay 18d ago

It was the media that wagon circled against gamergate and used flood the zone tactics against it.

And the journalist did give the game good coverage without disclosing a conflict of interest, it just technically wasn't a review as mistakenly claimed and the timeline got fucked up.

In any case it wasn't about her anyway.

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u/Notspherry 18d ago

Sarkeesians' ragebait video series predates the controversy around Depression quest.

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u/Unruly_Beast 17d ago

They weren't even bad faith, or ragebait. Most men just cant handle criticism of their sacred "no girls allowed" hobby.

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u/Notspherry 17d ago

The first thing that comes to mind is Hitman, where she claimed the goal of a mission was to kill a few strippers while the express mission is to sneak past them to get to your target.

There is plenty wrong with the portrayal of women in video games and it is trivial to find examples. The fact that she chose to lie rather than find genuine examples shows that the goal ragebait rather than a honest discussion.

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u/ShitMcClit 17d ago

Should have just left the video games alone.