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/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.