- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
Boys and men from generation Z are more likely than older baby boomers to believe that feminism has done more harm than good, according to research that shows a “real risk of fractious division among this coming generation”.
…
On feminism, 16% of gen Z males felt it had done more harm than good. Among over-60s the figure was 13%.
The figures emerged from Ipsos polling for King’s College London’s Policy Institute and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership. The research also found that 37% of men aged 16 to 29 consider “toxic masculinity” an unhelpful phrase, roughly double the number of young women who don’t like it.
“This is a new and unusual generational pattern,” said Prof Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute. “Normally, it tends to be the case that younger generations are consistently more comfortable with emerging social norms, as they grew up with these as a natural part of their lives.”
Link to study: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/masculinity-and-womens-equality-study-finds-emerging-gender-divide-in-young-peoples-attitudes
Feminism has a branding problem. The name itself makes it sound like it’s about putting women above men. People who don’t know better—the kind of people who are disproportionately young—will judge feminism based on the name.
Calling it feminism made sense when everyone “knew” women were generally inferior to men, but since gender equality has become the mainstream view, the name had lost the context that made it work. Combined with the scope creep of feminism that causes it to encompass issues like disability rights and economic inequality, I think feminism is becoming indistinguishable from leftism.
I think it’s important to remember that feminism is as much a political movement as a philosophical one. How things should be versus how to fix things are different.
Isn’t this the same rationale for ‘All Lives Matter’? You want to remove the history of oppression and pretend we’re equal, despite trump and tate and the incels. Feminism was and is necessary, the US is removing womens right to bodily autonomy and you’re pretending it’s all over.
Feminism is leftism and leftism is feminism. It’s always been that way because it’s all about the same issue, equality. Women’s rights, civil rights, trans rights, they’re all fighting for the same thing. One of my favorite quotes comes from Fannie Lou Hamer, civil rights and women’s rights activist, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free”
So “humanism”?
Problem is that the branding issue is a problem for women too. The vast majority of feminists are great folks who want equality. But it also attracts the self important types that want to use victim status to get ahead or just generally put the other side down. And they’re usually the loudest “feminists”. That perpetuates the branding problem.
I think this problem is always going to exist when we’re talking about large political or philosophical movements. There’s no Council of Feminism who gets to decide who “counts” as a “real feminist”. I’ve met self proclaimed feminists whose views are what I would describe as actively anti-feminist, but there’s nothing I can do to change that.
An example that comes to my mind is how I grappled with the existence of Trans-Exclusionary-Radical-Feminism and it’s adherents (TERFs). It wasn’t just their transphobia I had beef with, but so much of their supporting worldview made me want to proclaim that they are “no true feminists”. That felt intellectually disingenuous though, because who am I to say what “true feminism” is?
I’ve come to terms with this kind of discomfort, and it’s something that has affected to what extent I call myself a feminist. I still do, but like any word, it’s utility depends on context and often it’s just not a useful label when it covers such a wide diversity of viewpoints. Certainly it shouldn’t be seen as a synonym for “good”, which is perhaps how I sometimes thought of it.