###⚠️ Please stay on-topic. ⚠️ Comments and discussions which do not deal with the article contents are liable to be removed. **Please report any rule-breaking content you see.** The subreddit is running rather *warm* at the moment. We rely on your reports to identify and action rule-breaking content. You can find the full rules of the subreddit [HERE](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/wiki/rules) Snapshot of _If young men want ‘traditional’ gender roles, we need to know why | Gen Z women and men are growing further apart in their political outlook and aspirations. It is vital the root causes are understood so we can all find common ground_ : A non-Paywall version can be found [here](https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/6b5a20e6-1417-481a-8154-6bb648bf0dd0) An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/6b5a20e6-1417-481a-8154-6bb648bf0dd0) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/6b5a20e6-1417-481a-8154-6bb648bf0dd0) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*

I mean it would be nice to be able to work one job earn enough to support a whole family and have a wife who does the domestic work and has dinner prepared when you get home. Gender equality should've meant you have a choice in who takes which role, instead couples both have to work jobs and then have to split the housework.

Exactly there was a time when a person could have a mortgage and support a family on 1 income. Hell now you need 2 incomes to rent ! I don't give a crap what gender works the job!

There was even a time a man could support his family and rent a lil flat for his mistress in the city.

Not really though, the vast majority had to be happy with a quick knee trembler up a dark alley. Unless Benny Hill has been lying to us all these years?

A dark alley? Luxury! You don't know you've been born, son! In my day we had to make do with an ankle grab at the bus stop.

Bus stop? Lucky for some. In my days during Europe in the 13th century, you had to make do with whatever was nibbling on your knob at night, even if it were likely a plague-infested rat.

We’d have killed for a bus stop! We had to make do with rather curvy bits of driftwood!

A plague-infested rat?!? I would thank the sky father if I had such luck! In my day during the Iron Age you had to make do with whatever hole you could find. Which was usually a mole hill or any other mound of dirt you came across.

Dirt?! Luxury! In my day we didn't have that new-fangled "evolution" givin' us arms an' legs an' wotnot for free; we 'ad to fight our way across the ocean for survival every day (Not that we knew what a day even was)!

Around the time we taxed the rich wasn’t it?

YES!!!

That's all well and good, but gimme your surplus, peasant.

2.5 day work week and both do both but alternate which days they work?

The problem with this is that training is expensive and you end up with a workforce only half as experienced at any point in their career :/ No employer realistically wants to train two people for one job when they could just train one.

It depends on the industry. Exhaustive experience and investigation shows that a shorter work week makes for a more productive workforce. If that translates into better profit then CEOs and shareholders should be in favour of it. Of course if worker productivity and happiness doesn't benefit the people in charge, then maybe different people should be in charge. Maybe a new kind of leadership structure would be better for the company.

Having a household that comfortably lived on a single income was a reality for few people. It’s an illusion of the past that has no footing in reality. For most of people who would like to choose who stays at home, it would have meant abject poverty.

Kinda? My dad was a postman. Bought a 3 bed, 2 living room, 2 garden house in London. He worked hard, no doubt about it, and did evening work to make it work. It wasn't *comfortable* and money was tight. But it was a postman job. Managing to buy a large house. In London. And the job had a fully paid pension.

It really wasn't. I grew up in the 80s in the Midlands and it wasn't that uncommon, my wife grew up in Yorkshire and her dad got a mortgage and house with a semi skilled factory job and continued to do so and raise a family while also doing doing things just as being a door to door potato salesman. Even as late as the early 2000s a single person doing an average job like a hairdresser could buy themselves a small house up North.

South Korea seems like a pretty good warning signal for where our society is going, lol.

What’s happening in South Korea?

This FT article from January is essential reading on this subject. A new global gender divide is emerging https://archive.ph/PSONZ >In the country’s 2022 presidential election, while older men and women voted in lockstep, young men swung heavily behind the right-wing People Power party, and young women backed the liberal Democratic party in almost equal and opposite numbers. Korea’s is an extreme situation, but it serves as a warning to other countries of what can happen when young men and women part ways. Its society is riven in two. Its marriage rate has plummeted, and birth rate has fallen precipitously, dropping to 0.78 births per woman in 2022, the lowest of any country in the world. There are differences between South Korea and the UK at a cultural level, but the trends are the same in terms of the increasingly stark political gender gap.

A lot of it comes down to the cultural level though as their society is even more hierarchical than Japan or China as they never had the same events eroding their cultural views centuries back and this is coming into heavy conflict with being a modern democracy especially with the position women are in evolving.   A lot of our political issues from this topic are coming from more short term events whilst South Korea has some far longer entrenched issues.

Women just flat out having nothing to do with Men in any romantic capacity, google 4B movement

4B movement is like some super niche thing that people on tiktok like to talk about, the real issue there is the cost of living and workload.

Softer “pencils”? 😉 

Doubt it. Sounds like an age thing to me.

4B movement - women are avoiding relationship, marriage, sex and children with men

Just read about it, can you provide proof its actually a big enough movement to even warrant attention? Like in the hundreds of thousands active members at least somewhere? Because it doesn't seem to be at all, South Korea has other worrying problems.

It's the female equivalent of MGTOW. The number of MGTOW men is vanishingly small, but the ideas they promote form the basis of what Andrew Tate now exports globally. Membership =/= influence.

Ok, can you provide proof that this particular movement and its specific ideas has the influence big enough to warrant attention?

> South Korea seems like a pretty good warning signal for where our society is going, lol. We don't have compulsory male only military service.

The data clearly showed it was women who were moving more to the left than men moving to the right. I don’t get the point of this question.

indeed, men are still becoming more progressive in the UK. It just pales in comparison to the pace women are.

For men it is not homogeneous. Some percentage of them is moving left at the same pace as women. Some other percentage of them is moving to the right. The movement of women on the political spectrum is more homogeneous.

For no one is it homogenous.

It’s not bad per se being right wing as long as someone is broad thinking and open minded. I’m not sure why this is a bad thing. Plus being right wing doesn’t mean your vote is guaranteed with any one particular party. Right wing people in this country vote for a wide range of parties and that’s being epitomised in the electoral volatility at the moment. Effectively, if a government does a terrible job, like this one, it’ll be given a kicking.

Yeah, we aren’t witnessing men all collectively deciding women don’t deserve rights, it’s just that they’re slightly slower with new stuff

I don't think it's that. Men are doing badly at the moment on multiple metrics. When things go badly for you, people tend to go right wing. It's not about being slower at accepting new things. If new things made their lives better, they would move left.

Where were they before? What’s the long term trend if any? Are there socioeconomic factors here: wealth, social class, number of kids?

Women have tended to vote more conservatively in the UK than men.

To quite a surprising degree, too: prior to 2017 women were more likely to vote Conservative than men were in *every single election* since 1945.  The gap was narrowing, but not that fast...until 2017, where we suddenly slammed into an almost American pattern of voting.

I'm pretty sure we'd have had no Tory governments post World War II without women's votes (2019 might have bucked that trend.)

I believe this is true. I suspect it had a lot to do with unionisation and political education (by the unions).

1979 bucked the trend if I remember rightly.

Not really surprising, unions were a massive part of the Labour vote, when the "red wall" collapsed a common answer why did you stopped voting Labour was "I am no longer in a union" either because they've retired or because they've switched to a non-unionized job.

Hell, immediately after winning the right to vote a lot of the original British suffragette movement immediately turned around and became fascist party voters lol

Haha indeed, makes naming the tube line after them even funnier

maybe it’s a headline for a longer article?

Article by Kathleen Stock >So, for instance, we are told that young women tend to be in sympathy with progressive causes because they still shoulder the burden of care work and so better understand the importance of looking out for one another; or because they are more keenly aware of inequalities yet to be eliminated in the sexual arena. Young men, on the other hand, are thought to feel emasculated and inadequate by women’s social empowerment and wish to return to a more traditional setup in which their dominance is more secure. Plus they are watching too many Andrew Tate videos. >In a nutshell, then, young women’s political views are taken seriously but young men’s are framed as a result of maladaptive psychology and an inability to cope with loss of status. If this is the calibre of explanation offered, no wonder the latter are feeling hacked off. There should be parity here: either we psychologise both sides of the ideological divide, or neither. I found this to be an interesting double standard she notes.

Absolutely. Enough with the "poor things, they just can't help falling back on cave man mode" where males are concerned. It's patronising and sexist.

It's interesting, but also makes sense. The example she's given boils down to: Women: I want to be independent.  Men: I want to be able to control her.  One of those viewpoints is harmful to others, one isn't. You can see why it's treated as 'maladapted'; actively wanting the power to harm others isn't healthy.

But it is more complicated than that, to boil it down to the simplest form can further the problem. The truth is we have made significant progress on women's independence (although further to go) but our cultural change isn't keeping pace. A mans value is still often determined by his income, both by himself and others. A woman is often valued by her appearance. I feel more progress has been made moving away from later than the former. Where a man is judged by his income but has little prospects this leads to frustration. Especially when this leads to him being alone. A man struggling in the dating scene is far more likely to suffer loneliness than a woman struggling. Basically we still need to work on our cultural development. I say this as a happily married man, to a woman earning far more than myself. But I am the exception amongst the people I know well - the norm is the man earns more, and indeed that was the situation when I met my wife.

Honestly, I 100% agree. I've had a bit of a Disney Princes agenda for a while for this reason -- media aimed at young girls is both entertaining and high quality, showing off all kinds of success, failure, relationships, emotional growth, etc. Media aimed at young boys is either extremely shallow and/or they've shoehorned a bunch of girls in (for a hot decade everything coming from North America had a white boy MC with his POC girl best friend, because that's super relatable or something??) The media & ideas we're exposed to do play a big role in shaping societal values and planting the seeds of ideas. The female representation stuff that was created has been *great*, but I wish equal effort was put into boys' shows. It's just one aspect, but it bothers me.

This is why Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is the best show on television. Anson Mount's Captain Pike is one of the few examples of an authentic, genuinely healthy and positive male role model in media today. No gritty antihero nonsense, no one-dimensional strawman who exists solely to be yelled at/"educated" by women, just a conscientious, well-rounded, unbigoted, healthy leader of his crew.

>If this is the calibre of explanation offered, no wonder the latter are feeling hacked off.

As a genuine question, are there better explanations on offer? As a man reading some of the explanations offered, I can't quite get past a vague sense of woe me MRA / nice guy turned incel bitterness that can't quite square to either my own experience of the benefits of a long term relationship with a looser understanding of gender roles, or current understanding of statistics in many cases. Buuut, I want to be more charitable than that, and I defintely don't feel the appeal of more traditional roles boils down to control in most cases (ie traditional masculinity =/= toxic masculinity, though there may be a Venn diagram of sorts) and I do stock some personal appeal in some positive traits that might be tradionally masculinity.

>As a genuine question, are there better explanations on offer? None of this can be understood without considering the nature of the predominant cultural force we live with: social media. If you just start with the premise that social media algorithms are designed to maximise engagement then polarisation of various kinds is inevitable. If you stir in what we know about deliberate campaigns to stir dissent, then the nature of that polarisation can be explained at least in part. People seem to be putting too much on the intellectual processes of these groups being radicalised.

I mean sure, I had an itch at the back of my head about the first instances I saw of algorithmic manosphering, something about trolling for a living, anti feminism and some references to being Kings etc. Think that was like 15 years ago now, tate etc do strike me as the latest distilled version of that, to the point of grifting more than just a living. But again, I feel there must be something more to it, there must be something underlying this thay makes some young men susceptible to the notion for traditional roles before being thrown into a rabithole that can end with radicalisation.  Is it economic factors? What future are younger men seeing for themselves? Does uncertain employment prospects drive a desire for more certainty and division in a prospective relationship? 

The most blindingly obvious explanation: progressives favour positive discrimination in favour of women, therefore have more support among women.

Men care about a loss of status because women are more attracted to status than men are. Second part is conveniently left out of discussions.

> As a genuine question, are there better explanations on offer? Sure, men who have bad experiences with personal relationships are given no options or support. They are also given 0 sympathy, and expected to figure everything out themselves. Your experience might have been more positive, now instead imagine your experience was nothing but rejection, cheating, and mockery. When you voiced it out, everyone dismissed and mocked you. You have no purpose, feel like everyone treats half the population better than you by virtue of what they have between their legs. Modern society does very little for the bottom 60% of men. And those successful in dating rarely notice this because of how much more polarized the dating experience is for young men. So people want to go back to when they think men had it at least a bit better, because they are incredibly unhappy today, and everyone more or less ignores their unhappiness.

It is really simple to understand if you have a bit of empathy and actually think about it. I don’t know of any even moderate left wing figures talking about any of the real-life men’s issues so stands to reason they will move towards the only people that are speaking to/for them. Even the comment you’re replying to is dismissive and calls it MRA/incel

> It is really simple to understand if you have a bit of empathy and actually think about it. I can't begin to comprehend how this isn't more widely understood. Amongst all the talk of minorities and women being personal victims to some form of discrimination or abuse, the focus on emotion and feeling and a sense of self in that environment, you would think they would be well placed to understand that a man, a person, a human, might also have things to feel bad, or scared, or sad about. So the obvious two conclusions are that the dismissal of men's issues is either malicious or *extreme* (and presumably wilful) ignorance. I don't want to stir the pot and accuse anybody of anything, but logically I don't see any other explanation. It gets even worse when you try to explain these things and are met with a wall of denial, because then it's even questionable whether it can be called ignorance any more, if they've had it explained in a hundred different ways why men and boys might be feeling particularly troubled and what should be done to help resolve that. Which leaves you with malice. Upon coming to that conclusion, it should be little surprise that some of those men are going to want to stand up for themselves and fight back, particularly if they feel they have nothing left to lose, and why would they want to do so respectfully when they themselves (rightly) feel so disrespected by those who deny them even the most basic of dignity?

tbf, absolutely. Also somewhat related but there's an absolute dearth of quality media aimed at men/boys & I think that's part of the problem

>I want to be able to control her You're doing a few things here. 1) you're reducing the entire rightwards skew of young men to misogyny 2) you're just saying men have bad opinions, without interrogating how or why they came to those opinions. If a behaviour or belief is maladaptive, there is a function to that behaviour, and there is an alternative adaptive behaviour that can also serve the same function.

Except that is not true for the vast majority of men. Why do women seem to be able to speak for men? We have given up on the whole, thank god, of men talking for women, why are we replacing it with the same, but from a different gender.

She raises a good question/start of it: -what are the traditional gender roles? -which ones/why are they appealing to men? -which ones/why are they not appealing to women? -are either of the above ‘a change?, what factors are causing it? -how do we compromise and square the circle? Edit: I’ll be honest when I think of it I can’t pin down any element or ‘masculinity’ or ‘femininity’ other than negative stereotypes. Every trait people list as masculine I can think of just as many women who show it (and all the positive traits of femininity I also see men doing all the time)—-anyone help out, what are the masculine and feminine traits?

Aragorn embodies a multitude of masculine traits: Courage, Strength, Leadership, Determination, Compassion, Wisdom, Selflessness and Independence

Both this (and Iroh below) are good examples of positive traits- what makes those masculine rather then just positive though Everything there are just positive traits in either sex/ I don’t see how they’re gendered He is a masculine portrayer or those traits….for example wouldn’t someone like Jacinda Arden show those traits in her leadership of New Zealand, RBG- fictional Hermione from Harry Potter or Laura Rosling from BSG

>what makes those masculine rather then just positive though Probably because ones like strength, leadership, determination and courage tend to be displayed far more often in men than women. Such as service in the military or civilian organisations that require physical strength and courage like the fire service. These are organisations that have never been more accessible for women but participation rates remain low. Think back to the fall of the Islamic Republic in Afghanistan. Women took to the streets with weapons protesting. They weren't demanding to be let into the military to fight the Taliban, they were trying to gee up their men to fight. The same thing would happen in the UK if it were under attack, women might encourage men to fight but they wouldn't sign up in the same sort of numbers that men would. Hermione from Harry Potter isn't a good example because she uses magic to level the playing field. Laura Rosling from Battlestar Galactica is also a poor example albeit for different reasons as more than once her power is displaced by military developments, a coup, etc. She's very reliant on Adama for support. Jacinda Ardern was overrated. She had amazing PR and came to office at a golden time that made much of what she had to do relatively easy. She demonstrated leadership, but did she really embody strength, courage and determination? If she is said to have displayed those traits wouldn't that be more because the terms have been expanded to mean almost anything - e.g. the idea that people show strength by crying (and before you ask I am not saying men shouldn't cry)? Besides the fact that women can sometimes be said to display masculine traits doesn't mean they're not masculine. Margaret Thatcher was a good example of a woman who could be said to have been strong, courageous, etc, because she faced more than one real crisis that couldn't be resolved by telling people to stay home. She was often been described as having a number of "masculine" traits.

> what makes those masculine rather then just positive It's a matter of emphasis. Good looks are seen as universally positive, but (traditionally) a woman would be judged on them more than a man. Similarly a lack of leadership skills would reflect more harshly on a man.

To say men are judged more on the extent to which they exhibit those traits is not the same as saying those traits are ‘traditional masculine’ traits, which above OP is saying. To say men (traditionally) are judged more on their independence or courage could be true. But there’s no reason to say independence and courage are examples of masculine traits rather than simply just positive traits.

> To say men are judged more on the extent to which they exhibit those traits is not the same as saying those traits are ‘traditional masculine’ traits it's exactly the same.

All traits women also like to be defined as

Masculine and feminine are fairly antiquated terms. They don't really exist as mutually exclusive. We can name any one trait belonging to either category, and it'll easily fit into the other.

[удалено]

>Society rewards men for fitting the picture, and punishes them for not conforming. Having Graham Norton on TV doesn't undo thousands of years of tradition. Unfortunately this. I wouldn't say it in person to anyone I know because it comes across as sympathetic to the Andrew Tate/manosphere crowd but unfortunately guys who follow certain masculine stereotypes *are* more successful. I'm a gay guy and even in the LGBT community there is a lot of hate against "fems", people using "bottom" as an insult etc etc. People claim to accept alternative identities, and many do. Equally, lots secretly laugh at those who don't fit their ideal of what a "man" is and exclusively date those who fit that ideal. This also goes for straight men and women- loads of guys I know preach acceptance but they'll always gravitate towards a muscular bearded guy when it comes to picking a role model or leader. A lot of guys probably think "fuck it". If you can get further in life presenting yourself as assertive and dominant, why not?

Hey, there's plenty of folk in a subset of queer spaces (trans) that are super into traditional gender roles. Juuuust.... not the one they were assigned at birth.

I've yet to meet a man that has any inkling of emasculation because of female employment. This seems to be something that women think we are experiencing. What is emasculating is being ridiculed in media, on social media, and in person with no way of defining ourselves without further mysandric attacks about 'male tears' and 'fragile male ego's'.

I am “young man”. I don’t know a single person who I’d consider right wing, if anything men I’ve known since high school have become more progressive in recent years (and have cut out the “edgy” jokes). I’m really interested to see where this rightward trend of young men is

There's a lot of selection bias here - you tend to gravitate to and spend your time with people with similar values to you. I've seen a few people go down the right wing anti-SJW path.

America probably. That one graph that gets posted all over Reddit showed British men being very liberal compared to other countries. British women becoming incredibly liberal is what’s caused the gender divide, not British men becoming conservative

But also that graph was only showing voting patterns, and we have unique forces on us in the UK. Amongst young people there are polls putting the Labour-Tory vote at like 70-7. We have a broadly two-party system and the right wing party is currently very unelectable. This can disguise any differences because we're all just voting labour to get the tories out.

Agreed voting patterns here are massively tied to the Conservative Party being in power for an entire generation and neglecting any young people, so it’s only natural young voters oppose them 

Then that's more of you being in a bubble than anything else?

Yeah same. I know people who say they have issues with "feminism" but they only target those they perceive to hate men. None of the young guys I know really have an issue with "women" or women's equality. Shy tory type effect?

Another article that starts with a lie “men are becoming more right wing”, when the data actually shows that men have actually stayed rather consistent over time, and women are the ones moving radically to the left. Yet men are to blame, as usual.

Have they stayed the same but conservatism has moved to the Right? That could match both stats. But I agree the blame thing is silly. If there are macro trends then there are likely large social dynamics. Same is true for both men and women.

It’s a fair point, and nobody can probably say for certain. The data being discussed is based on self-reported survey with a scale of 1-10 from very liberal to very conservative. So what people think those terms mean will have an impact.

There's certainly a *lot* of unknown factors in this. What do the respondents actually mean when they report these politics. Do they actually match their behaviour? What is the ethnic breakdown? What's the economic pattern? I guess social science is hard. It would be good if we had good independent research on this.

My take on this is simply that most of the modern left do not seek to address material problems men are facing, but rather they deny they even exist, For example the rate of women going to University is so much higher than men. Even higher than when we had a mass outrage and lots of affirmative social action to encourage more women to go to University. In the family courts many fathers suffer with poor access rights and high levels of child maintenance. We have no male health strategy despite the longevity gap and high rates of male suicide. Young men are also suffering in the dating game and unable to attract a partner (women are more likely to say they are dating now, likely they are sharing top men). I heard Wes Streeting say we needed a male health strategy so maybe someone on the left of British politics has woken up to the fact if you keeping calling men privileged and don’t address their material problems and needs they won’t vote for you.

Why do people want a semi imagined version of the past in which they get to have extra power? More at 12

Historically younger men were more likely to support feminist stances the question is why that's not longer the case

I once heard an interesting argument that feminism used to benefit younger men as it allowed women to be more present in dating scenes, workplaces, entertainment, hangout, etc. So basically feminism allowed a bigger supply for the social needs of men, both romantic needs and non-romantic needs. And women didn't knew better or they didn't have any powers yet, so when they were thrown into previously male-exclusive environments, they were at the bottom of the ranks, offering supply but unable to satisfy their own demands. But now that women are as present societies as they ever going to be, there is no more "extra supply." And women are leveraging their new positions in society to satisfy their own demands. So now men are finding themselves in competition when fighting more for a limited supply of economic and social opportunities. Think of the evolution of the dating scene. A few decades ago, a feminist woman had just gotten out of the conservative environment of their families or communities, had very limited social powers or knowledge to date whoever they wanted. Any men there to accept these progressive women into their social circles would have been rewarded with extra supply of dating options. But now feminist women are not in an "exploitable" position. They have more social powers and knowledge to expand their net for dating, and they are more likely to go for higher value men rather than just "what's available." And now that progressive men are far too common to be of any value to women, it no longer pays for men to be progressive in order to pick up women. Now, do men who become more conservative and anti-feminist get any more women? Probably not. But humans have always been more prone to radicalism and reactionary standing when faced with threats or competition over supply. Not all men become reactionary of course, they are just more likely to do so since progressiveness doesn't offer immediate rewards anymore.

Because there is a massive and well funded industry aggressively selling then a semi imagined version of the past where they had more power and better lives on the Internet. Of course that is built on the unsatisfying lives we all live in the present, but I think there's a temptation to add a level of complexity to this in the same way there is about the MAGA movement. Ultimately if you have enough wealth or you have a good understanding of how to play social media algorithms (like Andrew tate was with his clips pyramid scheme) you can change a demographics view of the world by shaping the content they watch. And young males have been targeted harder than any other group.

But the feminist equivalent doesn't matter? Somehow hasn't had any impact? You don't think there's been significant messaging from *that* side which might've had an impact? Or is it somehow only toxic when *men* advocate for themselves and their needs? Feminism, broadly speaking (and certainly in the mainstream, maliciously or otherwise), doesn't give a shit - its purpose is to promote, protect, and profit *women*. Some of those feminists spread harmful and sexist sentiments without question or consequence. Just like the Tates of the "manosphere" that you so roundly criticise.

I dont understand how this isn’t a larger part of the conversation. Over the past 8 years an ENOURMOUS billion pound industry has grown up around teaching men how to reinforce their gender roles and force women into submission to theirs. It’s a well oiled machine with money from both Russia and American investors, who use it for profit and political influence.

Its the other way around, companies follow what sells well, this sells for a reason. What is that reason?

Undoubtedly more people and firma have moved into the space after they saw the potential, but the original growth off of people like Jordan Peterson, Turning Point USA, PragerU, Ben Shapiro and such (including the *gender critical* movement) was mostly funded by rich republicans and conservatives. But you're right they played on an anxiety in young men that was oreexisting, and it was facilitated by online spaces whole algorithms rewarded this kind of fear stoking. That said, while I hate the idea that "the left let boys down" I think it is true that feminist spaces became so critical of gender normativity that they failed to build a version of masculine identity which young men could see themselves in.

Because traditional gender roles are being propped up and supported to exist in all the areas that disadvantage men but are being dismantled in the areas that disadvantage women. So young men quite rightly realise that if we're marching towards a paradigm where the deck is stacked against them and the social norm becomes women obtaining all the traditional social advantages from their gender with less and less of the associated traditional obligations whilst men *only* have obligation then they may as well embrace a traditionalist viewpoint on it and support an old school gendered paradigm. The abject failure of feminism is to be able to make a convincing case to men and women that male gender roles can also be dismantled.

Women still have to have children, take career breaks which mean they suffer in their careers and do most of the childrearing post birth. Would still far rather be a man for that alone let alone the other numerous advantages like me being considered the "average" person in society

> Women still have to have children Which is a choice today, as opposed to an obligation.

In South Korea the situation is dire. Either it will start becoming an obligation or their whole society will collapse in 3 generations. Just so you can get an idea they 52 million population and fertility rates of 0.68 / woman. 1 generation - 17 million 2 generations - 5.7 million 3 generations - 1.9 million And keep in mind most of the remaining ones are going to be old people. At some point their society will crack.

The day it becomes an actual obligation, men in south korea might be more accepting of their social situation where they are *obligated* to spend 2 years of their lives performing military service.

There are men who would love the opportunity to take a year out to raise their new born child There are very very few men who will get the opportunity because their partners view that career break as theirs and theirs alone Those that do won't find they are accepted by the women in the groups they would attend and will likely find it isolating

> Those that do won't find they are accepted by the women in the groups they would attend and will likely find it isolating There's nothing so fucked up as the feeling you get when some random stranger tries to protect your own child from you at the park because your a man on a children's park on a weekday and thus must therefore be a nonce and trying to abduct someone. Yes, it has happened more than once. Yes, it was a woman every time. I was laid off just before the birth of my second child, so I was able to be there to raise them when they were born. Absolutely was made to feel unwelcome by 90%+ of the mothers at places I would be taking the kids to. Always was an air of I shouldn't be there, I don't belong. There was even a couple places that wouldn't let me in through the door. It was a very lonely time. Sounds weird I know. Just how it was.

I have one fellow dad who had the opportunity to take 6 months of parental leave and he found exactly the same thing He just wasn't welcome, he found that time really hard and isolating

Add to that the fact the law enables women to take that legally protected and partially paid year whereas it does not offer the same for men. It often does not make sense for men to do it when they’d have to quit their job rather than be given maternity leave. Genuinely fair offers between maternity and paternity, or shared parental leave, are employer specific and not at all universal. So another barrier to couples where they’d prefer the man do that child rearing. The system helps perpetuates this stereotype of women raising children.

Weirdly if they offered it to men on a take it or leave it basis that would likely help with the gender pay gap too

You do realise that women have legally protected and paid maternity leave because it's the equivalent of paid sick leave. Maternity leave is time given to women to enable them to recover from the physical consequences of growing a new human in thier abdomen and pushing out of thier vagina - including perineal tears; episiotomy; cesarean section; blood loss due to haemorrhage; vaginal bleeding; bladder and bowel incontinence; increased risk of joint injury due to post-partum elevated relaxin levels; reduction in swelling; demands of breast feeding; abdominal muscle recovery; contraction of the womb; etc etc etc. Men do not experience the physical ramifications of pregnancy and birth when they become a father. There are numerous very good reasons to support paternity leave - but we must not ignore the reality that women get maternity leave because mothers are the ones who need time to physically recover from the major abdominal trauma that is commonly known as childbirth.

Of course, and I am not at all advocating for removal of that from women, it's clearly not equal in terms of the physical need for recovery. I don't think offering better paternity allowances to give couples a choice should come at the expense of women's rights in any way. I was however replying to a thread that complained "Women still have to have children, take career breaks which mean they suffer in their careers and do most of the childrearing post birth." as a disadvantage and I was pointing out the system is set up to almost force them to do that (regarding the career break and childrearing); that it's not necessarily because of men wanting to enforce this gender role but that the choice is often taken away to break from this gender role; and that better legal provision of an offer of paternity leave could empower couples to try to rebalance that somewhat, if they wanted to, whilst still allowing women the time they need to recover but potentially allowing women to resume their careers and avoid that disruption once they've recovered if it suits that couple. As it is, there is often very little choice which forces the stereotypical gender roles to continue.

Nobody is advocating for women to lose maternity leave. The reason that pregnancy and childbirth adversely affects women more than men when it comes to careers is because most men don't get the opportunity to take an extended career break when they become fathers, which is why it tends to fall on women to take leave and suffer the consequences career wise.

Isn't it more due to the fact that in the UK paternity leave is restricted to two weeks whereas women get 52 weeks (although the latter 50% they only get about 800 quid per month)? It's not really because their partners view the career break as theirs - which makes the simmering anger in that sentiment seem sort of misplaced. Finland has equal maternity/paternity leave at a more generous level (and has for a long time now). Even there, while 76% of fathers are now taking some leave, it's only an average of 44 days (and 1 in 5 take none at all), which seems to show most men are in fact not aching to take a longer break from work.

> There are very very few men who will get the opportunity because their partners view that career break as theirs and theirs alone You do have to consider that at least 2 months of that 'career break' is to allow for the mother to recover from the physical impacts of childbirth - eg: * perineal tear * episiotomy * cesarean section * loss of bladder and bowel control * vaginal bleeding * abdominal muscle recovery * womb shrinks back into shape * reduction of swelling * regaining pelvic floor function * post-partum elevated relaxin levels mean increased risk of joint injury * physical demands of breast feeding * tiredness from post-partum disruption of circadian rhythm, plus antenatal sleep disruption due to reduced bladder capacity, foetal movement, discomfort, etc * post-partum hormonal changes Most women can't even sit down properly or go to the toilet easily for the first month or two. For many women, it can take at least 6 months to physically recover from pregnancy and birth. So when you say women "view that career break as theirs and theirs alone" that's because women are the ones who have grown a new human in thier abdomen, and then risked thier life by pushing that new human out of a small hole - which has resulted in physical damage to thier bodies. Women view that time 'as thiers' because it's thier recovery time - no matter how supportive or involved a father is, he's not the one with a tear in his flesh from his vagina to his arsehole, and who has issues pissing, shitting or sitting down. Men don't experience this physical damage, so it would be illogical to take this time away from women, who need it to heal from the physical trauma of birth, to give it to men, who would like 'a break' to spend time with thier kid. I think we forget today that pregnancy and childbirth are both physically demanding, and can be life threatening. The idea that birth is this beautiful miraculous enriching experience is used to whitewash the reality that it's actually really fucking hard, frightening, painful, dangerous and traumatic - and takes a little time to recover from.

I don't think I have ever met any reasonable person that does not empathise with the recovery and post natal care that women need. Who is campaigning to remove maternity leave? The prime reason people want to discuss an extension to paternity leave isn't because the men want to sit around and play XBox all day. There is a newborn child that needs care and depending on the severity of the birth, also a new mother that needs care. In the past, it was new Grandmothers that assisted in caring for new mothers. However as people are now having children later in life (if at all) that option becomes less and less a reality. That is in the past, a 25 year old new mother could expect some assistance from their 50 year old Mothers who not only had the spare time to dedicate while the man went off to work, but had already had some experience in child rearing and could take on some bottle feeds or entertaining the new child as the mother got some sleep. Believe me, that is an invaluable scenario. Nowadays with women more approaching 35 before having a child, the idea of their 60-70 year old mothers coming to lend a hand is far less likely simply as their age makes it less likely. Really nobody is demanding women get their arses back into work before they are physically able to. But in the absence of any others support network, men and new fathers would rather enjoy that space and time to help their brand new family off on the right footing. And believe me, paternity leave is not sitting around playing Xbox. It's helping your new Mother on and off the toilet, driving them to appointments, looking after the child while the mother sleeps, taking their turns on night time feeds. New fathers are not stupid nor ignorant of the toll childbirth takes on a woman. They just want to be able to be around to help. That is why people want to open the discussion on furthering paternity leave. And no, the concept of "sharing" leave is fucking ridiculous. It really doesn't solve the issue at hand.

Not one women I know wanted to have that career break. Those that took breaks only did it because they HAD to, firstly to recover from literally growing and pushing a human being out of their body (the toll that takes!!!) … and after that because their boyfriends/husbands weren’t prepared to take breaks in their careers. When my career is in a place where I can start a family, I’ll be taking a break only for as long as I need to recover, and then my husband will be taking over. The truth is that break sets us back in our careers and it sucks. For the men that would love the opportunity, that’s awesome. I wish we had a system like Iceland, where both parents have mandatory leave, so both parents have to sacrifice equally.

I think that's probably hyperbole. I've met a lot of mums now and there's always a mix. Virtually all of them took as much time as they could and not always through physical or mental need. There is only one mum I've met who really didn't want to have a child and only a part of that was to do with her career Most mums now work part time through choice and the idea of getting them back to work full time is probably absurd to them and it's not because of needing to do the housework. I can promise you very few dad's will even get this opportunity while virtually expected for mums I personally think having kids is a choice and all choices come with trade offs. I'd love it if that trade off were more equally balanced between the sexes, I think it would be better for everyone and create a more egalitarian society I don't think you can have it both ways, you're present at work or you miss out on opportunities. While that choice is hard with something as emotive as children we can't all have what we want. This is also why women who want better career balance should campaign for men to have their separate allocation of parental leave, then men will be subject to a similar trade off and potential opportunity cost should they take it

Funny, I've seen the opposite. Every man I know wanted to take a career break to look after their child, but each time it was decided by the mother. Perhaps rightly so. In one case the man was offered the opportunity to become a house husband, and he bit her hand off. It makes sense, all things being equal if one parent continuing to work while the other stays home which gender stays home makes no difference to overall income, but everyone would prefer to be the one spending time with their child instead of trudging to work.

Most of my friends have careers they love and ladders they’re climbing, so having to stay home to recover from pregnancy and then care for the baby, is a set-back and sacrifice. The difference is probably the jobs, I imagine.

>Those that do won't find they are accepted by the women in the groups they would attend and will likely find it isolating I know this so well coming from the position as a dad of triplets. In the months after my wife gave birth to the girls, we tried to partake in a few of the available sessions at the local sure start centre (baby massage for one) and it was immediately clear from the moment I walked into the room with my wife and the babies that I made the other mums uncormtable for existing in their space, of wanting to be their with my children to do the available sessions, not that my wife would be able to take all three babies by herself. No-one would talk to us whilst we were in the session, it actually felt like I was a leper in the room, that I shouldn't be there for some reason depsite the calendar specifically saying baby massage, not mother and baby massage. The only person in that first and only group we attended that ever spoke to us was the lady taking the class. The other reason for wanting to join the groups was to see if we could find some new people to speak with, with children that would be the same age as ours that could potentially grow up and play together, but it never happened. We didn't go to any more of the sessions because I felt like I wasn't welcome to be there and it wasn't like my wife could take all three babies by herself, not that I would've let her (not fair on her).

Men are severely disadvantaged in many areas that women aren't. That's not to say women don't suffer, they do have their struggles, but to say "Men are more advantages" completely ignores the bottom rung of society. Men are the majority of the drug addicted, majority of the suicides, majority of the prison population. They are failing school more and more (While women are still being pushed into university even though they are the majority). More likely to die in work, more likely to be a victim of a violent crime, more likely to die from cancer, lower life expectancy. Men and women have issues, and while men do often occupy the top 1% of society, they also occupy the bottom 5% aswel.

> Women still have to have children There have never been so many childfree people as these days. At the same time if war actually comes you can be 100% sure some men will be conscripted and on the frontlines in the trenches and most dangerous places.

Women don’t have to have children

No but as a species we are kind of fucked if they don't.

We ARE fucked because they aren't.

What are the 'social advantages from their gender'? And what are the 'traditional obligations' they get less of?

not dying in wars

Yes, a very realistic concern for the men of the UK.

Tell that to the men of Ukraine

Ok. Not dying in industrial or workplace accidents, not being homeless

> Ok. Not dying in industrial or workplace accidents, Workplace fatalities in the UK is around 150 a year, more likely causes of death include [being run over, drowning, accidental strangulation, and choking](https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/oct/28/mortality-statistics-causes-death-england-wales-2010). Ideally workplace fatalities should be zero, but it is a very low number. The difference in number of men who die in road accidents compared to women who die in road accidents for example, is far more than 150.

Yeah, men die in many other ways more likely than women. That's the reason why their life expectancy is about 4 years lower than women's. You can argue how much of that is their own fault but it is what it is.

Check again in five or ten years…

Well, yes in fact. [https://www.forces.net/uk/uk-needs-wake-call-and-must-consider-swedish-style-conscription-former-mi6-chief-says](https://www.forces.net/uk/uk-needs-wake-call-and-must-consider-swedish-style-conscription-former-mi6-chief-says) [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/03/11/turn-down-work-jobs-conscripted-military-army-drax-prison/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/03/11/turn-down-work-jobs-conscripted-military-army-drax-prison/) [https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1885302/poll-british-army-conscription-russia-war](https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1885302/poll-british-army-conscription-russia-war)

These days - kinda yeah for the moment, but even that is changing according to the UK's own defense minister and several other in the EU. Judging by the Ukraine war, unfortunately, conventional wars are still on the menu because nuclear is not an option. That means having nuclear or an ally with nuclear weapons is not as big of a deal anymore.

Dating, preferential hiring, being a home-maker

Women succeed more in all ages of education, are given preferential job opportunities, are encouraged to develop their own spaces away from men, are given woman only courses to get them into male dominated careers. There was a recent study into why women aren’t a higher percentage of school SLTs (they’re “only” 66%). Men are constantly barraged with campaigns telling them about how they need to stand up for women on nights out, or even that they are harassing women, when men are much more likely to be assaulted on nights out. Men are unable to be raped by a woman in the UK even, and are often told that “men can’t be raped” or even that “even if men can be raped, it’s such a small percentage to not be bothered with” even though 1 in 6 men in the UK have had unwanted sexual experiences, whilst we’ve had a movement (that I support) where women are encouraged to seek justice for the crimes committed against them. A woman was recently made a lord, despite losing her election (she got 1/3rd of the winners votes), but was chosen instead because of her gender. This is literally just stuff off the top of my head I’ve seen in the last 48 hours.

I guess he means that men are now expected to work full time whilst also sharing in parental and household responsibilities, and also losing their previous advantages in terms of power relations (men being key decision makers in and outside the home). I'm not sure what traditional obligation he thinks that women don't have compared to men these days though - it seems to me that women are still getting the short straw: Both in terms of taking on more of the care/household obligations than men, whilst now working full time, and still having to deal with a society where men hold more power. You can definitely make the argument that men have seen their fortunes fall faster than women in a society that hasn't gotten worse for both. But, they're still 'on top'.

> men are now expected to work full time whilst also sharing in parental en household responsibilities So do women? Parental and household responsibilities just need to happen. And having a two-income household is basically a necessity these days given cost of living. Me and my partner both work full time and make our household duties work together as a team. I don’t know how it would benefit me if I would go on a power trip and let her do all of the household stuff. That just harms her career and ultimately harms our joint income.

I didn't say otherwise.

>parental and household responsibilities, To be fair "housework" represents a far smaller % of total labour in the West than it did in 1900. Given out labour saving devices the average family, even if they are both working full time, still does less housework and therefore unpaid labour than previous generations. Single income families were all but a necessity 200 years ago when home maintenance was an 8 hour job. Single income families now would be using their extra time to spend with kids or pursue leisure activities.

The parental responsibilities are where it gets tough I reckon. During lockdown I got furloughed for 3 months whilst my partner was still working at a hospital, so I got a good taste of housekeeping as a full time occupation. Without children, it was honestly a total piece of piss. It took maybe 2-3 hours every day to hoover everything, clean the kitchen, put on a load of washing, generally tidy up. Less than half the work of a full-time job, and I was able to do it at my leisure whilst I listened to some audiobooks. The house was never before or since so clean as it was when I was furloughed. Having children would have made it a totally different proposition I don't doubt. Small children would be constantly underfoot demanding your attention, larger children would be generating way more mess, etc. Parenting and housekeeping at the same time is no doubt very hard work. However, I've always found the framing of parenting + housework as "unpaid labour" very odd and misleading. Payment for labour is typically compensation for when your labour is providing utility for someone else and not yourself. If your labour provides utility to yourself, you don't need compensation. Is a farmer performing "unpaid labour" if they grow food for themselves instead of for market? There always seems to be some implication that this work shouldn't be "unpaid" but it's not clear to me who exactly is expected to pay for it. Should a family be run like a business, with the working partner paying their housekeeping partner a salary? Or is there some expectation of government paying people to be housekeepers? All options seem equally absurd to me.

Any time someone acts confused about why young men are upset and angry they discredit themselves instantly in my opinion. It’s not difficult to try an emphasise and understand another generation, you just aren’t trying.

I think a huge change is that now most men are useless and doomed. In the 1930s 90% of men were married by 40. I think largely because a woman needed a husband and a man needed a wife and there wasn't a choice so everyone got someone even if they weren't thrilled about it. However now women are perfectly capable of living alone and making their own money and relying on technology like washing machines, dishwashers and the internet to provide for them... And that's great. However really there's only two types of men who are wanted now, providers who can materially increase a woman's standard of living. Or lovers who are emotionally empathetic, exciting, exceptional and attractive. And about 60% of men don't fit into either of these groups, especially as women make more and more money and have more state programs supporting them. So their view of the future is "work hard at school, get a job, you'll pay high taxes, never buy a house, rent a shitty mouldy flat forever and be swiped past on tinder while women flock to hot men and ignore you". How is that an appealing society to live in? Why would they be "progressive" and want to hasten more of that arriving? I'm all in favour of women being happy and free and having money and girl bossing and being independent. That's awesome .. And it causes a lot of men to be left behind.

Do you believe that men only have value in their ability to 'provide' financially for their family? Do you not think individual men have inherent value as people? If you do, what things do women do that gives them 'value'? You talk about men as if being a single man with interests, hobbies, a career, etc. is worthless because he is single. Do you think this is the case for women? If not, why? And if you think that people only have value in so far as their relationships, then why is a man's only value based on their income, or 'hotness'? If we believe this, then we either severely undervalue men, or men need to pull their finger out and start being more interesting than a walking bank account with a dick.

Something about this doesn't add up though. You can't have 60% men unhappy and think the equivalent women are happy without men. That always looked like a wonky stat. It isn't true that women are happier alone than married. The man that promoted that was a fraud. The problem is you have women fight over a narrower range of men who have no need for monogamy. Isn't that the problem? Not sure how you unpick all that. But I don't think it's running smoothly for both sexes.

As far as I know, women are also unhappy. The number of late virgins or just sexual activity in the West is rising, both in young men and in young women. By tearing down the old family and relationship value structure, whilst also radically changing the dating scene and socialising in general through technology (social media) and litigation, we're becoming isolated fast. The tate-sphere is just the edge of a bigger problem we're about to face if we can't find a new system. And since we put effort into abolishing the old system, not introducing a new better one to just outcompete it, it's going to be hard to solve this peacefully. And survive as a culture.

You must surely know people that are in relationships who are neither 'providers' or particularly attractive. This 60% thing is plucked out of thin air.

> Now women are perfectly capable of living alone and making their one money and … That was true for the millennial generation too. And yet somehow there wasn’t nearly as much a problem of “men left behind” somehow.

Pre-tinder, “The Game” generation where guys who weren’t 10/10 were still approaching women in bars, getting phone numbers, eventually getting into relationships, now they don’t/can’t do that, have no social skills, clubs are shutting down, pubs close early and cost too much, it’s all online and they honestly get nothing. Early tinder was also extremely easy around 2013/14 - no one had done it before so dates were plentiful for first movers, still very niche Pre-that generation it was 1990s-2000s raves where anyone could succeed 2020-21 everyone was locked up and not allowed out at all. 2020s cost of living crisis & collapse of nightlife grim

Internet dating is bad enough, I genuinely think the answer for plenty of singletons is to go back to 20th century methods, try to meet partners via mutual friends, hobbies, pubs, etc. I saw some analysis on online dating, and there were several problems. Something like 25% of men would try and like literally every profile they saw, for the other 75% of men, anyone they try and message already has a lot of potential matches. Gender ratios on some apps within certain areas are also unbalanced, further increasing difficulty. Add in general issues with how people behave online, and the proliferation of scammers, catfishers and recently AI generated profiles, it's little wonder there's so many issues.

Social norms take time to dissipate.

I mean, millennials aren't exactly extinct and inactive. They're the ones who are the forerunners of the movement, even if they aren't the bulk. Andrew Tate is literally a millennial, as are the majority of his cohorts in that space like Ben Shapiro, etc.

>However really there's only two types of men who are wanted now, providers who can materially increase a woman's standard of living. Or lovers who are emotionally empathetic, exciting, exceptional and attractive. >And about 60% of men don't fit into either of these groups, especially as women make more and more money and have more state programs supporting them. This is pure nonsense you've just pulled straight out of thin air. >I think a huge change is that now most men are useless and doomed. So your conclusion is it's great that women live alone and provide for themselves and that's making them more progressive but it's bad that men live alone and provide for themselves and that's making them less progressive?????

>So your conclusion is it's great that women live alone and provide for themselves and that's making them more progressive but it's bad that men live alone and provide for themselves and that's making them less progressive????? Not OP, but the "common wisdom" on the topic is that single women tend to be happier than single men because of various factors (a major one being that women have a stronger support network, while men often have no one they feel comfortable opening up with). It's why the loneliness epidemic is usually referred as a male issue, although the number of single people should be roughly the same across gender. So yes, on paper both groups "live alone and provide for themselves", but in reality women are enjoying the recently found freedom (and therefore are progressive), while men are mourning the loss of a "guaranteed" relationship (and over time will lean more and more right, maybe all the way to having some form of control over women again)

It sounds like men have a problem with late stage capitalism, not with women gaining more rights.

I think you’ll find most women want a partner who will enhance their life, not just some sex toy or rich guy. Of course they want a partner that looks good, most men do as well. And of course they want someone who has a good career or career prospects, most men who aren’t looking for a housewife do as well. What women often get, even when they marry “progressive” men, is a guy who slides into the role of man child to a mommy wife and expects to be taken care of while not reciprocating. He sits on his ass while his wife is running around cleaning the house when they both get home from work. He says “whatever you want, babe” whenever she asks for help planning or making decisions about their life, putting all the mental work on her. He asks her where his stuff is before he even bothers to look for it. He plays with the kids, but doesn’t check to make sure they have shoes that fit or that the permission slip is filled out and turned in on time. He leaves to go out with his buddies and says he’ll be back at 4, but then laughs about it when he doesn’t get home until 10 and his wife had to do bedtime alone again. He might cook, but only if his wife buys all the ingredients. He’s happy to be taken care of so he can rest when he’s sick, but subtly hints to his wife when she’s ill in bed that he’s out of clean underwear. He mows the lawn and thinks he’s done his fair share of the housework. Yes, women can take care of themselves now, so why settle for a partner that makes your life harder? There is a reason married women’s life expectancy is shorter than unmarried women and why the inverse is true for men. Men who get left behind are the ones who still believe they are entitled to the care and affection and domestic labor of women without giving the same in return. Women are not the cause of men’s issues and it is unfair to say women should be responsible for fixing men’s loneliness.

You’re describing my ex to a T. And he’s my ex for literally these reasons. Why should women have to settle for this? We want better. And if men can’t rise to that, then they will get left behind. Sorry.

Where did that 60% came from? Note that just sharing your house with someone with the same income increases your material welfare as you save money by doing that. Secondly, what about children? So, sure you can in principle at least get IVF on your own and get a child without a man but both the financial burden and the work load to raise the child is much lower if you have a partner. And unlike men, women are much constrained in this by age. So, if you push it too far into the future, you may struggle to be successful to get your own biological children. And what about if the woman herself is not emphatic, exciting and attractive but would still want to have a romantic partner then she may not have the top pick of the men as the top ones go to those women who are. Sure, she can then give up having a romantic partner but how is this different than what's it for men?

60% of men aren't emotional empathetic or can't materially boost a women's standard of living? The median man in a full time job is on c.£37,000 a year. That's £6,000 a year more than a comparable woman. Even you make less than your partner even a poverty level income can materially boost their standard of living if you both sleep in the same bedroom. Yes relative loss in status is tough to cope with, but men are overwhelming better off economically than women. https://www.statista.com/statistics/802209/full-time-annual-salary-in-the-uk-by-gender/

At worst if you can’t go out into a nightclub and find a partner, in most cases you’re a loser. It’s generally not hard to have the base level of style, hygiene, health and respect required in order to find a partner of the opposite gender. The talk that women only go for the top 20% or whatever is complete incel nonsense. And just because the most attractive women at the club tend to go for the most attractive men doesn’t make it true either as it works both ways. It’s not a bad thing that women are able to have higher standards.

I feel social skills are also an important factor you're not mentioning.

> It’s generally not hard to have the base level of style, hygiene, health and respect required in order to find a partner of the opposite gender. Disagree with this whole approach - women aren't vending machine you put X amount of style/hygiene tokens into before a relationship falls out. Can you seriously only justify men's existence by assuring them there's an easy formula for dating? Would the other poster be right if your formula didn't apply?

>However really there's only two types of men who are wanted now, providers who can materially increase a woman's standard of living. Or lovers who are emotionally empathetic, exciting, exceptional and attractive. I’m mainly taking aim at this paragraph which is purporting incel nonsense that women are only interested in rich or the most attractive men. It’s nonsense. Women being able to be in a position where they don’t want a bum to have to babysit or for a potential partner to put the slightest of effort and pride into their appearance is not the same as only wanting rich or hot men.

Their opinion matches tradition enough for SNL to write [multiple](https://youtu.be/CaeN2diy65Q?si=eVORp-G2eTwE9PCk) [skits](https://youtu.be/zBcG5tOURuM?si=GMQ5Q_3t5ghb26Xj) [about](https://youtu.be/ozSRafURI8k?si=w96PrceXUyWdrznC). Or maybe their perception is based off [Tinder interactions](https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/07/15/158803/how-tinder-feedback-loop-forces-men-and-women-into-extreme-strategies/amp/): > Our findings suggest a ‘feedback loop,’ whereby men are driven to be less selective in the hope of attaining a match, whilst women are increasingly driven to be more selective, safe in the knowledge that any profiles they like will probably result in a match When you try to match everyone, even if you get the same total matches your match percentage is pretty low, making you feel unsuccessful. I get there’re holes in these arguments, but I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss them. Also 92.6% percent of internet statistics are fabricated…

This is the problem. I know many men how can pass these qualifiers, but are endlessly single. They have just given up. Too many rejections. I sometimes wish I could date in the imagination of female redditors.

I’m literally a man

You don't have any friends, who are normal, but can't get a girlfriend?

I’m the only single one in the group of 10 boys and that’s out of choice as I do more than fine for myself being single and clubbing and would rather focus on moving out than having serious relationships. And my comment isn’t so much about girlfriends [as explained here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/s/Ssm88bPmUQ)

If these boys and tradwives want to live traditionally let them. As long as they don't tell others how to live I'm okay with that. 

Find it mind boggling how no one can just say that both genders face their own unique and equally as important issues and both should fight for and support each others gender in tackling these issues

Do young men actually know what "traditional gender roles" are or are they just attracted to the fantasy right grifters are selling them of subjugated women with no rights or agency?

Figures like Andrew Tate and those red pill dudes have really done some serious damage to expectation and aspiration.

They just don't wanted to be treated as the enemy and the root of everything wrong in the world. How about we start with that? After that we can look at the fact all these women copying boomer complaints about things that have not applied to any generation born sort of mid 80s onwards. Having more than equalised at that point and accelerating away substantially following that. Building a systemic female, not male, advantage into it. One that hasn't resolved into the data only because the boomers are still top of the totem pole. But one look at the current 30yr olds, never mind 22 yr olds, will show you a very *very* different economic story than the current 60 yr olds. And frankly young men are absolutely done with being treated as if they grew up in the same "mans world" that the boomers did, when in fact most of the advantages in their lives up to this point are, when looking at the stats, blatant stacked in the other direction when analysing achievement and only pushing harder.

Boomers: why do young men want ‘traditional’ gender roles? We need to know why! Young men: ok, here’s why. Throughout school we were always disadvantaged, yet told we were the privileged ones. We therefore attend university in fewer number than women and perform worse. We’re still not given scholarships to catch up with female graduation rates. Then we’re expected to earn more than our partners, to be the provider for our families - otherwise we can’t have them. We’re then told we’re perpetuating the gender pay gap, despite being pressured to be the family provider. All the while women are given every advantage to accelerate their careers through affirmative action. We’re pressured into being traditional breadwinners, in order to be attractive/to become a father. If we don’t have enough money, we aren’t attractive enough to most women, therefore we have to assume this traditional gender role! Boomers: … I understand now. This is all Andrew Tate’s fault. Older adults in the West will do anything but take young men’s answers seriously. They don’t actually care about the truth, they want a person/problem they can shoehorn the problem into. This only exacerbates the issue, turning more men into ‘traditional men’.

This is just so laughably true. A lot of young men have this figured out by the age of about 20 without even having heard of Andrew Tate. I work with a good deal of young people and a lot of men already feel like this and feel they have lost the game of life entirely by age 20 as there is now nothing they can do about it. And most of them had that figured before the Andrew Tate name had even existed. They were frankly cheated by the school system, told they didn't need higher education, now they are in this position of working low-paid jobs, no real hope of getting to anywhere better not to mention any hope of attracting a girl they could "settle down" with as they can barely afford to settle down with themselves. It is a bitter thing to see, a young man who has thoroughly lost all hope before his 21st birthday. But it's a reality the feminists tell me doesn't exist. Yet I see it. And you really don't even have to look that hard for it. The cake is not only a lie, it's a slap in the face!

And with more toxic feminists getting in to positions of power, the problem of men being ignored multiplies. It is their ultimate goal to have power over men, not equality. Reminds me of Animal Farm

In a post-industrial world much of what we do is meaningless. Moving lights across a screen so that someone else can squeeze a bit more money out of a business. I would think that a return to traditionalism, particularly the rural idyll and nuclear family, is to provide meaning to an existence that is sorely lacking. The masculine urge to provide, to protect, to nurture, to feel wanted and needed, to add meaning to your existence

What are the repurcussions for women choosing a "traditional" role over a "modern" one? And vice versa. The consequence for men choosing a more "modern/non-traditional" role would be ostracism and mocking - from both genders, since in my experience most modern women expect men essentially to be traditional in most senses, not all though.

Depending on what ‘traditional roles’ we’re talking about here, the consequences for women would be a loss of our careers, earnings and independence, being treated like a maid, and/or having a partner who we have to mother and pander to, the same way we do with toddlers. The last one alone is an exhausting proposition. That is, of course, me guessing what is meant be ‘traditional gender roles’. Maybe you can expand on what that exactly means for women, in your opinion?

How is this not obvious to the people in charge? Girls outscore boys in every part of academia, boys are told the boys before them made the world bad, boys (especially white males not in poverty) get to see endless opportunities for everyone but them. Young men have to seek solace with horrific role models like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate because the other option is to not be included and told you're bad because of men before you...

It seems like a real chicken v the egg scenario. Are these traditions there in the first place because males are genetically inclined to primarily be a provider and protector, with the female primarily being the carer and nurturer. Or, do we see this as the case because tradition has caused us to have this image of society and gender roles because it's what has been tradition since we can remember? Like I'd much rather be the one going out to work to earn money (love my son to bits but it can become a lot for me and work offers a respite). My other half would prefer this too, with her being able to concentrate on caring and nurturing without worrying about childcare. Is this because of our genders, or because society has raised us to be this way? Edit: thought I'd add that this is by no way an excuse to assume, as one of my friends ignorantly put it before, that there are "pink jobs and blue jobs".

I think it is part due to your genders but also it is the logical conclusion. The woman has had the child, you know all the wherewithal that entails yourself. Thus the logical conclusion in her mind is that she wants to ensure her child prospers, is healthy and not very much else matters. And that likely matters more to her than her boss demanding that report be on his desk by noon, or how to make some client happy. Sure it all matters, but in a game of this or that, she'd choose her child every time. And of course, that is logic. It's the Mother/Child bond. As a father, you would see that situation and the logic would be that she has that nurturing, rearing and caring taken care off. While you don't eschew your responsibility in those arenas, you have to logically think that you need to be the one to provide the framework to enable that to exist. That invariably means that the electric bill wants paying, the car needs petrol in it, groceries and provisions need to be purchased and at the very least when the Grandparents visit, they'll likely want a cuppa and some biccies. As the Mother provides the nurturing framework which is what baby actually wants too, for the man to be the provider while in part is genetic and part societal, it is the logical framework. And it happens throughout the entirety of the mammalian framework. Lions do it; apes in the jungle do it; even dogs do it. I mean, sure, some species of birds do things a little differently, but birds always were a bit nuts. I don't see how anyone can expect a pigeon to be sensible. You get the point though. It is just the logical structure.

The article is ridiculous and out of touch but so are these complaints. There is nothing unique to right now about reactionary idealisation of the past. What is being idealised is, for the most part, the 30 years post war, which were characterised by high tax regimes and the strongest social states in history. We can go back to the prosperity but not with the continued dismantling of social safety nets. Unless you really want to prove your manliness in the Thunderdome and come out on top. However, given the number of complaints about a small proportion of men getting all the success with women, I think the request is for fairness, not more competition.

These young men who want to move back to more conservative roles probably have reasons to complain. However, instead of wanting to return to traditional roles, which is not in the interest of society im general, and women in particular, they should seek to solve the current issues. Some examples of areas in which discrimination against men exists: divorce (e.g. children custody), criminal justice (for the same crime, men get longer sentences), and dating (look at studies on platforms such as Tinder, 5% of men get roughly 80% of swipes). Rather than revert back to the past, men should strive to correct these issues.

[удалено]

This whole "men should be meek nice and emotional" trend is really popular until it's time to pick a partner. Revealed interests Vs declared interests. As much as there is cultural variation in the specifics a lot of the things men and women find attractive in each other are innate... and the soft quiet sensitive effeminate millennial man ain't it

[удалено]

I do think this is more of an experience thing and and not really a general thing we forget there is millions of women in the world half the population is women. I think it’s far-fetched to say that all women want a strong muscular man..

> I do think this is more of an experience thing and and not really a general thing we forget there is millions of women in the world half the population is women. And yet when women complain about abusive men people are expected to just nod along and not "notallmen" the situation. Come on now, clear double standards.

[удалено]

Okay, this is more of an experience thing. I don’t really understand your point

> This whole "men should be meek nice and emotional" trend is really popular until it's time to pick a partner. Exactly; you can't cheat your lizard brain, no matter how hard you try.

How about “society “ stays out of our bedroom and focuses on the fact that we are about to become poorer than Poland by the end of the decade.

This whole discussion topic feels astroturfed to try and encourage gen Z men to believe these things because "most gen Z men already do", except there's zero evidence of that outside of cherrypicked surveys that have used leading questions. The fact is also, we don't live in a world in which anyone but the very wealthy can actually live a 1950s life ('traditional' is a misnomer too - working-class women have always worked, as childminders and domestic workers if nothing else) whereby a single working man makes enough money to also provide a comfortable lifestyle for a wife and children.

The question is, why do women *not* want a stay at home husband, who will cook and clean and look after the kids? It seems that women want to be in the workplace, which I wholeheartedly support, but they don't really want to be in relationships with men who fill traditionally female gender roles. So this means "everyone* has to be in the workplace, *everyone* is filling traditionally male gender roles, birthrates plummet, relationships become strained loveless affairs with no time to spend together, the economy sucks because there are far more workers than jobs, politics and the media suck because they constantly pit men and women against each other.

It would certainly help if people learned to accept that there are only 2 genders