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.”
This is the result of a long-term, political strategy.
Anyone remember GamerGate? There has been an extreme backlash against feminism since the mid-2010s which GamerGate was a part of. (GamerGate in itself was part of a wider strategy that the far-right began to use on 4chan in the late 00s.)
Steve Bannon (then EIC at Breitbart) pushed GamerGate’s anti-feminism into the mainstream right-wing politics because he saw it as an opportunity to recruit young men. Unfortunately he was right and his strategy has paid off, forming an anti-feminist alliance that has become a core belief of right-wing parties all around the world. It has creeped into the mainstream with figures like Andrew Tate who fulfill the role of recruiting young men for even more extreme anti-feminist, far-right content.
This was the background noise that these young men grew up in. Many of the influencers they followed would tell them endlessly how feminism is to be blamed for bad games (during GamerGate) and - in general - how feminism is to be blamed for most ills of modern society. That young men were effed over by capitalism and patriarchy was - of course - deliberately omitted.