Note that this poll only targetted around 3000 UK adults aged 16+. Nonetheless I personally think the trend this poll highlights is worrying and worthy of discussion.
Also note I changed the original title to not use the terms “Gen Z” and “baby boomers” since I think putting in the ages is clearer.
Some choice quotes:
On feminism, 16% of [16 to 29-year-old] males felt it had done more harm than good. Among over-60s the figure was 13%.
One in four UK males aged 16 to 29 believe it is harder to be a man than a woman.
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.
The figures emerged from Ipsos polling for King’s College London’s Policy Institute and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership.
“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.”
But Duffy said: “There is a consistent minority of between one-fifth and one-third who hold the opposite view. This points to a real risk of fractious division among this coming generation.”
Prof Rosie Campbell, director of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s, said: “The fact that this group is the first to derive most of their information from social media is likely to be at least part of the explanation.
In the meantime, social media algorithms are filling the vacuum, she said. “This could be something that changes when young men enter the workforce but we can’t take that for granted given how important social media is in the way we understand ourselves.”
I think that in the past it was also simpler for men to express their sexuality, at the detriment of women. Perhaps some men feel left behind as they don’t know how to move forward with society. Kind of like those people in Japan who never leave the house because the social rules go over their heads.
The hikikomori are more of an extreme case of “staying in the closet”: they are people who, when they fail to meet some expectation (like finishing their studies, or getting a job), decide to retreat to a safe space (their room) in order to not bring shame to their families, while at the same time the families cover up the fact to avoid bringing shame to themselves and the recluded person.
I think modern toxic masculinity is more of an action-reaction thing: women get some rights, at the expense of men’s rights to abuse them, so some men push back against the loss of what used to be their right… without stopping to consider whether that right was fair or not in the first place.
Makes sense. It’s interesting how many hypothesis we have in our discussion here. I wonder if there’s any studies into this.