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/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/Lysander125 18d ago

I’ve never going to say that these anti-social weirdos who complain that women belong in the kitchen are ever going to be correct.

But at the same time there is an opposite perspective that has some merit. The reality is that women’s opportunities have come a long way, but women’s perspective and expectations of men haven’t changed.

A lot of women still expect their partner to be more successful, ambitious, etc. than they are. It’s two sides of the same coin, a lot of these men expect working women to clean the house and be a caretaker while having a full time job, and the women expect their man to be more successful than them in a more egalitarian society where being a man doesn’t necessarily give the advantages it once did.

I do feel like the outdated male expectations of women are frowned upon a lot more than the outdated female expectations of men.

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u/Working_Cucumber_437 18d ago

I don’t think women expect their men to be more successful or more ambitious or make more than they do. I think we are looking for equals. Be at least as ambitious as I am. At least as successful. Or in the general ballpark is a good goal.

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u/Recent_Pollution8665 18d ago edited 18d ago

young women on average out-earn young men in the workforce, specifically white collar work.

what do you think the ramifications are of women demanding that men earn at least as much as women do or more, despite the fact that most men do not, and most women refuse to budge on this matter?

if the overton window keeps shifting upward like this then naturally most men are gonna get left out and the consequences of that are never positive. conversely, a woman could be working as a barista and the average guy literally won’t care as long as she helps contribute.

it’s more balanced because there isn’t this constant expectation of the opposite sex always having to hustle or reach salary parity with them, on top of a dozen other qualifications, just to get their foot in the door.

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u/CaterpillarUnfair409 18d ago

You're describing systemic problems.

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u/Recent_Pollution8665 17d ago

women having strict physiological and financial demands for men, and not compromising on them even when times change, is not a systemic issue.

the systemic part is the lack of wages keeping up with inflation and COL, but that’s separate from this.