Male Bashing Is Not the Same as Female Empowerment
The troubling gender divide emerging among kids
The day after Miley Cyrus’s megahit, “Flowers,” a song about female independence, won two Grammys, the parent of a 16-year-old straight girl I see in therapy happened to leave me a voicemail asking if I could help her daughter not despise men. She added, “She’s got a good dad, and her brother has a good heart when he’s not being a jerk, but she and her friends act like they’re too cool and independent to date. Apparently it’s more fun to bash men”
I couldn’t help but think of the catchy lyrics to Cyrus’s song, written in response to her breakup with her ex-husband:
Mm, I didn't wanna leave you
I didn't wanna lie
Started to cry, but then remembered II can buy myself flowers
Write my name in the sand
Talk to myself for hours
Say things you don't understand
I can take myself dancing
And I can hold my own hand
Yeah, I can love me better than you can
Basically: “I don’t need anyone because I’ve got me!” Interestingly, Cyrus revealed that she originally wrote that last line as, “but I can’t love me better than you can,” and added, “The song is a little fake-it-til-you-make-it.” Is that what our daughters are doing: faking their independence until men are superfluous? I think what Cyrus means is that finding self-love is essential, regardless of whether or not we have a loving partner. But can the tweens and teens belting out these lyrics understand that, or are they hearing it as a decree to reject other (riskier) sources of love?
With dating and sex on the decline among teens, and marriage at an historic low, I’m increasingly hearing concerns from parents about their daughters’ anorexic love lives. When I started my psychology training in the 90s, this was not the complaint. Instead, parents wrung their hands about boy craziness, unprotected sex, and relationships they disapproved of. Why is it that, increasingly, young women don’t trust men or at least are more vocal and insistent about their disdain?
If my patient’s mom had known I’d just written a book about the detrimental effects of growing up in a sexist culture, would she still have turned to me? I don’t know but I think, actually, I’m the right person to ask, not only because I’ve spent a lot of time helping girls work through their negative experiences, but also because I don’t hate men. (What I loathe is the patriarchy but we’ll get to that in a minute).
I may not hate men, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t indulged in the very satisfying endeavor of male-bashing (despite having a good dad, several brothers who are hardly ever jerks, and a pretty decent husband). When a guy treats girls in ways he’s been taught are acceptable — valuing her appearance and sexuality to the exclusion of the rest of her humanity, leading her on, pressuring her into sex, acting like everything’s great until the second he breaks up with her — or just doesn’t have the ability to directly express genuine feelings, whether positive or negative, he can cause real pain. It feels really (really) good when you’re hurt and lonely to join the pride of other injured lionesses saying “men suck.” To be clear, I’m not suggesting these are simply the vengeful words of the wounded. Confusing, degrading experiences with boys are common, so why wouldn’t girls come to that conclusion?
Which brings us to the patriarchy. Patriarchy is a mouthful — too buzzy, academic, and feminist for some. But really, it’s just easy shorthand for a culture that assumes men are more intelligent and capable than women. I see it as an indisputable force shaping girls’ sense of selves and self esteem (and I write plenty in my book about how crappy it is for boys too). Think about it. Our daughters are chronically underestimated, dismissed, talked over, and expected not to “get uptight” about the endless jokes at their expense. They watch television with mostly superficial, trivial reflections of themselves, read books in school featuring mostly male protagonists, and receive history lessons that are essentially a record of men’s lives. They read news pieces written mainly by men about personally relevant issues that were decided almost exclusively by male politicians. The systems they rely on -- modern democracy, medicine, and the justice system – were all created by and for men. Heck, even their playing cards will tell them Kings are more powerful than Queens. When girls and women are given credit, it’s usually for being more emotionally intelligent and nurturing, but those are used as a stranglehold on them.
Despite my staunch belief and all the research showing people in good relationships are happier, I can get on board with the independence and confidence in Cyrus’ lyrics. I don’t think women’s independence (read: feminism) is going to be the downfall of humanity, much as some love to predict that. Women’s progress happened because enough women were miserable and tired of being treated as second-class citizens. Feeling empowered is a basic human right and the reason why I don’t think women are faking the exhilaration that comes with autonomy.
But that doesn’t mean men (or relationships) are unnecessary.
The easy answer to the growing disdain for men is their bad behavior (and yes, #notallmen but #enoughmen that it has a significant impact on the lives of women), coupled with the growing permission women have to expect better. After witnessing their grandmothers and mothers being treated poorly, girls now have the opportunity to seek redemption for entire generations. That terrifies conservatives who are scrambling to roll back legal abortion, affirmative action, and no-fault divorce—those things that have allowed women to achieve economic and social stability independent of men.
And yet, there are no easy answers.
It’s true, there’s a growing mismatch between women and men, girls and boys, and eventually a reckoning will need to occur—one that doesn’t idealize the 1950s. Women deserve equality but that trajectory is being hampered, not helped, by defaulting to gender divisiveness. There are, at least, three cultural forces that are working against this necessary and healthy striving for more humane relationships for women. The first is the echo chambers of the internet which, as you’ll see, is also the match that lights the tinder of hyperindividualism and the radicalization of young men.
1. Echo Chambers
Within the gender culture wars, frustrated women have forever complained that men are self-centered, cheating jerks or simply dense emotionally and useless domestically. But in the echo chambers of social media we’ve upped the ante; men are toxic narcissists who are gaslighting women for kicks, or they’re bumbling fools and “beefcakes” who can barely tie their own shoes. To be sure, some men are problematic (just as some women are). But leaving the toilet seat up or not putting his underwear in the laundry, while careless or inconsiderate, doesn’t make him a malignant narcissist who thinks only about himself.
It’s no wonder why there’s so much content about abuse on social media: one in four adolescent girls aged 15–19 has experienced physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner, and verbal abuse is likely higher. Having online spaces where women can identify abuse or simply find validation for their frustrations is vital, but the lines have been blurred. Girls hear all men are lying assholes so they’re scared of being hurt and manipulated. They’re turning to influencers who teach them how to avoid “catching feelings” or to become the manipulators themselves.
Women deserve to have control over their own lives but shouldn’t be duped into believing they can control everything. Relationships are hard and messy. Love is scary. Yes, patriarchy has limited men’s relational abilities and put women in danger, or at least saddled them with exhausting emotional labor. But relationships are integral to our wellbeing, and hours of hearing about the evils of men only serves to increase the gender divide rather than help bridge the gap so that heterosexual girls and boys can one day find more fulfilling relationships.
2. Risk-Aversion
Anxiety has skyrocketed, especially among girls, and today’s teens are risk-averse, less interested in sex, drugs, and crime than teens were just two decades ago. That may sound good, but it also extends to things that are healthy for kids, like friendship and romance. In these tenuous times with worsening climate issues, financial instability, and a pandemic, kids might be retreating from intimacy because they’re too focused on their growing anxiety to make space for that which comes with dating. But the negative messaging girls get about boys and men on social media compounds their anxiety. One girl I see in therapy told me she’s seen one too many girls sobbing on TikTok to ever want to date.
speaks to what the gender divide on social media is like for her generation: “…even for those of us who can see through it and scroll past it, it gets in our heads, gets in our subconscious, makes us think about the opposite sex like some kind of adversary. Which is worrying for everyone. But especially worrying for teens and pre-teens flooded with it in their most vulnerable, formative years, before they’ve had any real experience of the world and each other. Before they’ve even tried to trust someone.”And with technology at their fingertips, teens have constant companions and endless opportunities for finding someone else, a passive activity that can be done anytime, anywhere—usually from the safety of their own rooms—creating the illusion they don’t need intimacy, even as they wonder why they’re so lonely.
3. Hyperindividualism
Long before the internet, we, as a species, were becoming increasingly isolated. Since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve been leaving our families, placing careers over community, and raising children without our village. Last year, the United States Department of Health and Human Services said we’d reached a pinnacle, and published a report titled "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation."
Dating apps and social media make it so we can “talk” (the apt new word for flirting) to people forever without ever having to meet them face-to-face. Or if there is any dating occurring, it’s often in the form of the less threatening, less committed “situationships”—relationships that remain undefined or aren’t “going anywhere.” There are upsides to this, such as sexual empowerment for women, similar to what men have always enjoyed. But some surmise that this generation is just being more pragmatic, focusing on fostering individual stability before diving into relationships. There’s something eerie about focusing on individual stability at such a young age; a time when sexuality usually flourishes and relationships help us get to know ourselves and provide practice for future partnerships. My guess is that pragmatism is just a way to couch anxiety in our hyper individualistic values.
4. The Radicalization of Young Men
For the first time ever, young men are more likely than their fathers and even their grandfathers to believe that feminism is damaging. According to the British Financial Times, there are countries on every continent where an ideological gap has opened up between young men and women. As girls lean increasingly liberal, their male counterparts are becoming more conservative. “In 2019, less than one-third of young men reported that men experienced some or a lot of discrimination in American society. Only four years later, close to half (45 percent) of young men now believe men are facing gender-based discrimination.”
How did we get here?
The #MeToo movement, the election of Donald Trump, and the reversal of Roe v. Wade have all deeply influenced the political climate and the political perspectives of young women. As women’s voices grow louder and their insistence on equal rights stronger, some young men equate women’s empowerment with male emasculation. To them, “The future is female” isn’t just a slogan, but an existential threat, especially if they’re inundated with videos calling them useless. They see gender politics as a zero-sum game, where advocating for one side inevitably thwarts the other. Enter Andrew Tate (self- proclaimed “misogynist” now awaiting trial for rape and sex trafficking) and other “manfluencers” who target lost teenage boys with extreme masculine ideals and male supremacy.
Playing on these boys’ loneliness and overexposure to online content, the manosphere explains women and feminism are responsible for their feelings of inadequacy, pushing them to the right politically and potentially radicalizing them into ideologies of hate.
Even if boys have escaped Andrew Tate and his ilk, fear of femininity is in the air they breathe. Just as they avoid pink, crying, and nursing careers, straight young men may still feel the need to affirm their masculinity by differentiating their politics from the political agenda popular among young women. To bring it back to dating and relationships in the era of empowered role models, Gaby Hinsliff writes in the Guardian, “Why on earth would the Swiftie generation want to settle down with men who seem to hate them, ranting on dates about how feminism has gone too far and scoffing at ideas they hold dear?”
No wonder songs about buying your own flowers are popular among the ladies. Plug that into the echo chamber though and around we go again.
Should We Really Be Harping on The Patriarchy?
It may sound like I’m arguing that feminism is alienating boys and is responsible for the chasm between hetero girls and boys. Is it possible it’s making our daughters feel like victims and our sons like villains, scaring everyone? Feminism, indeed, calls for us to recognize our layers of privilege, or lack thereof, and understand how they serve us, demanding a more equal distribution of power. But most strands of feminism recognize that a patriarchal culture’s version of masculinity, and the license it gives men to use their privilege to step on women, is harming men too. It makes for lonely relationships and boys who are too busy trying not to be feminine to figure out who they are. Few women are looking for an inversion of the patriarchy as portrayed in the Barbie movie (well, at least not for more than a week or two). The film used a tactic to show how ludicrous and unjust patriarchal culture is, but it played right into the fears of young men.
It’s certainly not women’s responsibility to comfort men, make themselves smaller, or date someone who doesn’t view them as a social equal. But I do believe we have a responsibility to look at the big picture and see if it’s leading toward the desired outcome. I’m not so sure the commercialized Girlboss/Yaass Queen feminism—the one our boys have the most access to—is ultimately all that empowering for girls, fun as it may be. My hope is that by giving our children a nuanced, more complete understanding of feminism, sexism, and male-centrism, we’ll be able to instill actual girl power while also humanizing boys in the eyes of girls (because boys, too, are flailing in this outdated culture) and raising boys with more empathy and respect for girls.
Relationships are important for everyone and isolation isn’t empowerment. Straight kids need our help forming healthier, more equal relationships, not encouragement to give up on them altogether.
I agree with Taylor’s callout of “powerful writing.” This was really well done and perfectly articulated the nuances that have made me concerned with how modern feminism is playing out. Thanks for this take!
I'm a dad of two young boys aged 5 and 1, and meanwhile I work as a youth mentor for teenage boys across the region where I live.
Seeing the horrifying messages teenage boys are getting from online "influencers" and even their own social circles terrifies me a little. And it creates a cycle in which young women then distrust even good-hearted young men, leading the young men to become even more disenfranchised and bitter.
But informed, nuanced, powerful writing like yours on this subject helps give me confidence and hope. I really appreciate your expertise and perspective!