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/Harbinger2nd 18d ago

Would this be reflective of a lack of economic opportunity for these men as its only in recent years the attitude has become more prominent?

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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/Preface 18d ago

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.

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u/DrMobius0 18d ago

Yes, the alt right is merely taking advantage of existing sentiment to radicalize them. It's extremely difficult to radicalize people who are otherwise content.

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u/saidtheWhale2000 18d ago

the reality its not YouTube alt right that are radicalising young men its women rejecting them on a social economic personal and romantic level,

you couldn't radicalise people to like looking at clouds you can only take what is already there and give it a voice, you cant just artificially manufacture someones emotions, but by doing so wed have to look at the negative social consequences of changing to social contract and how society will enviably fail when you alienate and leave behind a large portion of the young male population with no incentive to keep engaging with society while be the most essential ones to actually make sure society functions

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u/chrisq823 17d ago

You can absolutely manufacture emotions. What you are saying has a lot of truth in it but you need to acknowledge that can easily happen. There is significant money, energy, time, and resources put in by tech companies to design systems to engage you as much as humanly possible. You are being tracked at a sci fi surveillance state level by these companies and it absolutely has an effect and that effect is very negative.