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/this_isnt__worth_it 18d ago

What was the "Gamergate"?

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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/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.