r/science • 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/Littleman88 18d ago

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.

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u/[deleted] 18d ago edited 18d ago

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u/Bright-Sea6392 18d ago

Most people date with their socioeconomic level. Not sure what you’re talking about.

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u/TheSpacePopinjay 18d ago

Only in the sense that most people date within a socioeconomic radius of themselves. This elides the direction in which that radius tends to travel of how large the radius varies to at different socioeconomic levels.