25% of Teenage boys in Norway think ‘gender equality has gone too far’ with an extremely sharp rise beginning sometime in the mid 2010s
https://i.redd.it/jngcda50r7we1.png
by Antique-Entrance-229
25% of Teenage boys in Norway think ‘gender equality has gone too far’ with an extremely sharp rise beginning sometime in the mid 2010s
https://i.redd.it/jngcda50r7we1.png
by Antique-Entrance-229
27 comments
SOURCE: [https://osf.io/preprints/osf/7z2va_v1](https://osf.io/preprints/osf/7z2va_v1)
the data looks at the ideological polarisation between boys and girls in Norway from 1989-2023, it also concludes that the sharp rise in both right wing support and right wing self identification amongst boys mostly (40-50%) comes from an opposition to modern feminism
Dating apps and social networks messing with the social side of sexuality and its tensions.
Social media is cancer for children.
And some adults too
Considering that girls receive higher grades, higher grades compared to test results, girls make up the majority that receive higher education yet still has a lot of additional initiatives to get more girls there, have an easier time getting jobs with many high prestige firms having special programs for women even though their recruitment is already skewed towards women.
It’s not strange that young men think it has gone too far, most things they’ve experienced is favouring girls yet we still talk like more has to be done in favour of them.
Admittedly I’m more familiar with the Swedish data on things, but can’t imagine it being much different in our western neighbour
Or maybe instead of banning, regulating, etc maybe we should debate whether they’re right or have any valid points.
The teenage boys number isn’t the most interesting data point… The teenage girls number also show an increase. Sure, the increase isn’t nearly as big but it still shows an increase.
Such pools are… not really informative. What does it mean that “it went too far”? Researcher should dig deeper then that.
While I would strongly disagree that women are “too equal” nowadays, I would agree that the debate over gender equality has taken up way more space than it deserves.
One could get the impression that it is the most pressing and important issue of our time.
But not all women are by default the most oppressed people in our society. Some of them are actually extremly priveleged.
Very unpopular opinion, I know. Sorry.
>“These results suggest that the gender equality issue has the most potential to account for over-time changes in ideological polarization—if such views are related to ideology.”
The interesting part is that the question asked was simply if gender equality has gone too far. It’s not clear what that means and that’s probably part of the issue. I wonder which rights these boys would want rolled back to “make it even”.
Norwegian here. Boys are probably influenced by the shit on TikTok and stuff, but it’s also worth mentioning that boys have visibly started falling behind of girls in school results, admission to higher education and even to the police education. Norwegian schools have somewhat failed to teach boys as well as girls, and boys are starting to show that frustration.
A problem is that several political parties have chosen to go with the mocking route instead of listening. Calling the boys losers, incels and so on, instead of actually listening and trying to understand. A result of this has been more young men (but also young women) going to the right wing parties instead, Høyre and FrP. Especially FrP has had a lot of growth the last year. But recently they have started declining a bit again, we’ll see how the coming September election turns out.
Edit: please don’t see my comment about mocking boys as some sort of political agenda for several of the political parties. I do think that the political parties as a whole are starting to see that boys also can struggle.
Poor White young boys are consistently the least favoured demographic/most left behind in any European countries that keep this kind of statistics.
Perfect prey for Tate and his grifters because their country have abandoned them under the guise of the ” cis white privilege ”
Nope, the random Sven/joe does not live the life of the top 1% and yet is judged and villified on that basis. Being made the antagonists within its own society.
Doesn’t mean that gender equality has gone too far, but serious shit need to be redressed toward that demographic if we want to avoid large scale manipulation.
Not that 4th wave feminism doesn’t have some bat shit crazy fringe grifter like Tate which is not addressed either.
Norwegian here. The problem these boys are describing isn’t equality, it is the inequality towards boys in certain areas that has emerged recently.
Studies have shown that girls get better grades for equivalent work, more girls are admitted to higher education and there are still many incentives and programs favouring girls even though most inequalities have been removed, so these programs now build inequalities in favour of girls.
They aren’t against equality, at least most of them aren’t, they are against what they perceive as inequality against them.
And they do have some compelling arguments. Even the law named the “equality act” says that its purpose is to promote “women and minorities”, not to promote equality.
I think that they are in many ways right, and make som great points, but not always.
I know I’ll be labelled an incel for this opinion, but fuck it I’ll throw my hat into the ring.
I can see where young men are coming from when it comes to this and it isn’t solely the influence of ghouls like Andrew Taint. Here in my country we have conscription and only one gender is forcibly conscripted. Meanwhile the supposedly “egalitarian” feminists don’t say a word when it comes to this. I get why the military wants men, but while young men are in the military young women are siting in university classes, which exacerbates another deference between the genders: women have a way larger higher degree attainment in my country than men.
Also for some reason fields which have more males “need” to be equalized meanwhile fields which are dominated by women are no big deal. For example, I remember when I was in uni there were two separate scholarship programs to encourage women to study IT because it’s a male dominated field. Meanwhile my field (Childcare), which is dominated by women has no such scholarships, hell during my 4 years of study I didn’t see a single man, my lecturers were women and all the students around me were women.
Boys have (across most of EU and NA):
– lower results in terms of education
– considerably higher suicide rates
– have a much, **much** harder time finding casual sexual relationships if they’re bellow average looking
– are being told about “toxic masculinity” all the time while being taught nothing about “positive masculinity”
– are being subjected to toxic, sexist rhetoric like would you meet a bear vs a man in a forest and many other examples of male-hostile “jokes”, while being sharply reprimanded if they do it the other way around.
I personally think they’re actually right at least from their own perspective. The lack of understanding for their struggles and blaming of TikTok instead in this comment section just highlights that this a real problem young men and boys are facing.
I think this kind of thing was inevitably going to happen in western countries. Today’s boys and men had nothing to do with any of the grievances women had in the past but they are still blamed for everything. As if they alone are somehow the only privilege brokers in society.
Anyone who isn’t seriously trying to understand what is behind this and who just writes it off as social media influence is taking an oversimplified view of the root causes and will not be effective in reversing the trend. Makes are doing poorer in most academic measures, have higher rates of suicide and have increasing mental health issues. And yes, many of them are shamed and stigmatized. Meanwhile society seems not to care and devotes the bulk of its attention elsewhere.
Seems the comment section here have already made up their mind and blames this solely on toxic social media? Let me try to nuance this from a Norwegian standpoint which may explain some of this trend.
– (2023)There is a significant amount of gender points given to females at universities, even though females already are in majority. One example is the prestigious engineering degree in Norway called Industrial Economics. They weren’t satisfied with only [42% woman, so after the gender points, the female rate was 67%! ](https://www.dn.no/utdannelse/ntnu/samordna-opptak/gjeninnforing-av-kjonnspoeng-okte-kvinneandelen-kraftig-pa-indok/2-1-1490341)
– The Norwegian gender equality law also specifically says that it should favour woman, which has gotten some attention “[This Act shall promote equality between the sexes and aims in particular to improve the position of women.”](https://lovdata.no/dokument/NLO/lov/1978-06-09-45#:~:text=527)
– (2023) There is also a new law saying every company of certain shape and form must have 40% of each gender in the board, which might be very hard for some industries like plumbers, construction workers where 95% of the workforce are men.
(And keep in mind that Norway is already ranks extremely high on gender equality. [typically on 3rd place internationally.](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gender-equality-by-country))
And knowing some influencers in LGBTQ+, it did.
But sadly we’ll have to go through the full way around to finally find an equilibrium…
I think this issue is much more nuanced than just “social media is frying people’s brains”.
You have to keep in mind that young men have never experienced the extremely patriarchal society that we were still living in just 20-30 years ago.
Young men only see all the initiatives to promote women in both education and business, women’s quotas, all the programs to get women into men-dominated fields but none to get men into women-dominated fields, etc. and subsequently feel like they are being treated unfairly. They have never experienced the advantages of this bygone patriarchal society but yet feel like they are getting “punished” for a past during which they weren’t even alive.
It also doesn’t matter what the actual numbers and statistics say because feelings usually win out over facts in these matters.
You then add all those misogynistic social media personalities into the mix that sing the praises of bygone days where men were providers and women were homemakers, amplifying the aforementioned feelings and you get a perfect storm of young men who just want to punish women and people who took this rose-tinted fantasy of a perfect life away from them.
Gender equality is not caring about people’s gender.
Positive discrimination is obviously a form of discrimination and it is not very surprising, that the negatively affected people despise it.
A lot of people here blaming social media and brainwashing, but that alone is too simple of an explanation that shuts down the ability for us to have a more valuable conversation.
I remember that in [2019](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50805822.amp) Obama called women “indisputably better leaders than men” (indisputable; yet there’s no scientific or historical basis to actually support that). This is just one example, but there are plenty of statements that take it a step further than just “equality” (e.g. “the future is female”).
In my opinion, this is wrong and it only serves as free ammunition to some of these social media content creators to get men on their side and create the narrative that things have “gone too far”.
It’s also not a secret that some companies try to get more female representation, which eventually ends up being favouritism rather than equality in the eyes of many.
So, perhaps this is just an example of some Hegelian backfire; where one extreme feeds another extreme (even if amplified by social media).
For the record: I don’t think gender equality has gone too far at all, there is so much that needs to change. I support women, I care about women, I think women deserve all the same opportunities as men and should not be sexualized, and assaulted as much as they have been. Nor treated like fools for being women in male dominated industries.
But the discourse has become so negative towards men that those angsty young men feel like they can’t talk about their problems as a man without being attacked. Women can discuss their problems as much as they like.
If a man mentions there are quality problems they will be attacked and overshadowed completely by the problems women are facing, if you try to even have any kind of discourse you get labelled a misogynist. Naturally young men need to get their frustrations out and end up in male-centric bubbles where they just feed off each others anger. This happens when you push people too far, they arc up and become defensive and just stop listening.
I am not saying this is a good thing that young men are changing their minds, but these are the reasons it happens and a few things you can’t have a real discussion about which heavily affects young men still finding their feet.
You can blame social media, but social media influencers wouldn’t have an audience if there wasn’t people feeling frustrated about all these things who engage with it. I don’t become a flat earther just because flat earth videos exist.
1. Marriage and divorce. In most court systems around the western world the courts will always side with the mother, even if they are an alcoholic, a junkie, and abuser, whatever. The man will be left with nothing most of the time.
2. Sentencing for criminals – a woman will always get a lighter sentence than a man.
3. Dating – a woman will rarely date a man who is “below them”. Either earning less salary or just not as attractive / tall enough. I get it, people have preferences, but if a man does not want to date an overweight woman he is a misogynist. If a woman will not date a short guy, that’s perfectly acceptable.
4. Women can objectify men and it is fine. A man objectifying a woman is an awful person. It should be the same.
5. Nobody seems to care that there are female dominated industries, and not really any efforts are made to correct that.
6. Employment – an attractive woman with the same qualifications is more likely to be hired at a place with diversity incentives than a man, even if the company is already diverse.
7. Men get shit on all the time and apparently that’s fine to do. I remember being 18 and that pissed me off, I was just a teenager, I would this that I didn’t create this system, why am I being punished for being born as a man?
from my experience here in the uk, i’m going to be out of school for good this summer, and i can attest i’ve been prohibeted from going on a fair few school trips because they were only for girls, things like trips to banks, law firms, engineering firms, gender neutral places that i would have liked but i couldn’t go because of my gender, now i dont think feminism has gone to far, but if i were a tiktok addict and fell into the wrong echo chamber that might be different, so i can see where these boys are coming from.
now i know programs like this are important, and help girls, but boots on the ground, i dont get to experience the sexism girls face, i do get the experience the blocks in my path in the name of fighting sexism, but frankly the cure to descrimination against girls isn’t to just start discriminating against men too. i’m sure overall women still have it worse, but by definition a man will never get to see that. the fix is more oppertunities to everyone, promoting change in opinion from the men who make it harder for women, which would be done by raising them in a school system where they see girls thrive, get to see girls be just as capable as them. policies like girls only oppertunities only build resentment
I know this might be unpopular, but there are areas especially in countries with a very high quality of life, where due to prior inequality women now have more privileges in some areas. In IT for example getting hired as a woman in the EU at least is infinitely easier. Most IT companies (all 3 I’ve worked for thus far) have to submit a monthly diversity report. Because mainly men go for these jobs, pretty much any women will be automatically hired if they apply, regardless of experience. This is obviously just one example, and there are other areas where it swings the other way still.
It’s worth noting this is something they are told, not something they’ve learned through life experience or deep thought. They’re just repeating what the right wing propaganda network shoves in their faces.
Now ask them to explain what “equality going too far” means.
Because they can’t.
How can equality go too far?
Equality that can go further is literally inequality
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