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There is a lot of talk today about the political radicalization of young men. Men are moving to the right, they are becoming conservative, they are becoming nationalists.
Perhaps the time has come, however, to point out that young women are also currently undergoing political radicalization.
A recent issue of the progressive magazine “The New Statesman” deals with the increasingly clear left-wing political commitment of young women. The title of the issue is “Angry young women” and refers to “a new feminism that is shaping Britain”.
But interestingly, young women’s new radicalism is not just about their views on political issues such as immigration, gender equality, minority rights or climate policy. It is also about their views on men.
Here we should remember that when we talk about the radicalization of young men, we often include the so-called “manosphere” where critical views about women in general often flourish. The Manosphere does not only gather young men who have conservative or perhaps even anti-feminist views. Above all, it is about men who have in common that they have a fundamentally negative view of women’s willingness and ability to live up to the various roles that functioned as love partners, wives or mothers.
A term that often recurs here is “incels”: young men who have given up hope of meeting a woman and who instead begin to view women with hatred and contempt. Another common term here is “black pilled”, which means that someone has not only seen through what they see as the deceptive nature of women, but who has also given up all notions that any woman could possibly want them any good.
Young, radicalized men therefore dislike women. But – and this is now emerging in The New Statesman considered to be a progressive publication – according to a new survey, it turns out that young women in the UK have a significantly more negative view of men than young men have of women. 72 percent of men under 30 are said to have a positive image of women. And that may sound a little. But what is remarkable is that only about 50 percent of young women have a correspondingly positive image of men.
The survey is presented in a video on YouTube where Scarlett Maguire, founder and director of polling and research company Merlin Strategy, and Emily Lawford, who is online editor at The New Statesman, discuss the results. It is remarkable, they both say, that there is so much talk about masculine toxicity and about young men’s hatred of women at the same time as it turns out that young women have a significantly more negative image of men than vice versa.
This is a sensitive subject. Many people don’t even want to touch on the subject. The reason is probably that anything that can be perceived as criticism of women or as a problematization of women’s way of living and thinking in our modern societies risks being classified as misogyny. But here are two women who themselves seem to be part of a relatively progressive intellectual environment who highlight what can be described as remarkable results.
We already knew that young women vote for progressive parties to a greater extent than men. But now we also see that women have a more negative image of men than men have of women. And this applies especially to the new generation.
At the same time, we know that many women support the new conservative forces emerging in the EU and in the Western world in general. Strong female personalities such as Marine Le Pen, Marion Maréchal or Giorgia Meloni are examples of women who have not chosen the new progressivism.
But the fact remains that we often hear that young men are radicalized to the right and that their radicalization is to some extent expressed in a dislike of women. At the same time, it turns out that young women are also radicalized politically and that their antipathy towards the opposite sex is stronger.
How is it that we have talked so little about this? Could it be because our publics today are to some extent characterized not only by progressive but also by feminine thinking?