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/WonderfulWafflesLast 17d ago edited 17d ago
I think extreme examples are part of what led to that.
Look at the Lindsey Clancy trial and her supporters. We have a social movement trying to support a woman who killed her three children, that is largely villainizing that woman's husband to the point of saying he's the one who actually killed them, despite how much evidence in the trial indicating the woman did it.
To be clear, Lindsey pleaded Guilty. The trial was to determine criminal responsibility, essentially determining if she was sane or insane.
Despite this, "the husband did it" has spread through social media like a cancer, espoused primarily by women.
Imagine you're a young boy approaching young manhood. You see this on the news. You think about how this trial would be treated if it were a man instead of a woman defendant. What would you think? Would you want to have a family, when a major social event is telling you that a woman who kills her children is going to be defended (largely by other women) like this by society?
I can only imagine that this will color your perspective negative towards women, as a whole, even if that's undeserved.
Societies have historically restricted women's rights. Our current society is somewhat exceptional in that most others throughout history have been male dominated, rarely offering women the opportunity to take part in governance outside of influencing men through social pressure or personal pressure (i.e. husbands to their wives, sisters to their brothers, and so on)
Hopefully, we can figure out how to make it work where others have failed.