I’m Not a Soldier in the Battle of the Sexes

[Celeste Chalfonte]

This looks like an interesting piece, but I can't get past the paywall, which seems to require not just payment for the article but a monthly subscription. Michele, I think you subscribe?

Young women are miserable for so many reasons. But in certain media outlets, you’re only allowed to acknowledge one: the shortcomings of men.
By Freya India

Free Press

[Michele]

On it but have to go to my laptop. Give me a few minutes.

[Michele]

I'm Not a Soldier in the Battle of the Sexes
By Freya India


Why are young women so unhappy? Rates of anxiety disorders, depression, and self-harm are soaring; in the U.S., almost one in three teenage girls seriously considered suicide in 2021. Read the mainstream press and you will overwhelmingly find the same answer: teenage boys, misogyny, masculinity, Andrew Tate. For years, blaming men has been the accepted explanation for our misery.

Into this climate landed a viral cover story from the flagship magazine of the British left, The New Statesman, headlined “Meet the Angry Young Women.” Gen Z women in Britain, they found, feel unhappy, hopeless about the future, and hostile toward men. According to new polling, around 72 percent of young men say they have a positive view of women; only half of young women say the same about men. And while just 7 percent of young men have a negative view of women, 21 percent of young women have a negative view of men.

The piece itself was balanced, finally acknowledging that the “femosphere”—left-wing female influencers—also “reinforces this hostility toward men.” But plenty of commentators still read the report as yet more evidence that men are the problem; even an op-ed offering an economic explanation for the angriness of women couldn’t help but conclude: “a woman can choose to subjugate herself to a man, or to the man.”

But blaming men does not make sense. It can’t explain why, as The New Statesman’s polling found, “more privileged women are the most pessimistic of all.” Or why women in middle-class professions feel less valued by society, and less hopeful about their futures, than working-class women. Or the way some of these young women talk about men they supposedly love: one describes her boyfriend as “a fucking Labrador” and says she is likely “the adversity in his life.”

To me, the most interesting thing about this piece about Angry Women was that its findings were presented as revelatory, even “enlightening”; on the New Statesman podcast, the writer said she was “really, really surprised” by how “negatively” young women spoke about men.

But I, and many others, have been writing about what’s happening to young women for years. It’s just that when I say young women are angry and radicalized, I mean something else. I mean they are being worn down by constant messaging that men are the problem. From every corner of mainstream culture we are warned about men, reminded to always put ourselves first and never let our guard down: Therapy influencers insist that any discomfort in our relationships is a red flag; self-help content presents other human beings as burdens holding us back; progressive feminism makes us feel as if trusting another person is a trap; most of our waking hours are spent on platforms that profit from keeping us afraid and angry. Girls are growing up in a world where their most natural human instincts, to love, to attach, to need other people, are seen as suspect, naive, dangerous.

I explore all of this in my new book, GIRLS®: Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything, which came out in the UK in February and publishes in the States on May 5. In it, I tried to resist a single explanation for how lost young women are feeling, offering many theories for our unhappiness: family breakdown, collapsing communities, a loss of faith, then the rise of social media, online porn, AI chatbots. Basically every foundation for a good life fell apart just before we were born, and we were sold substitutes and simulations.

Young women are being worn down by constant messaging that men are the problem.

I don’t have all the answers, and won’t always get it right. But the reaction I’ve had to my work has, at times, been confusing. For trying to understand what’s happening to young liberal women, while refusing to play into the battle of the sexes, I’ve been called dangerous and “alt right”—or dismissed as having nothing important to say. According to a review of my book in The New Statesman itself, I “can’t save our girls,” and my conclusion—that girls should see themselves as worth more—is “psychobabble.” Other interviewers are more interested in politics than any of my arguments—grilling me about abortion, gay marriage, Reform UK, and Turning Point USA. One reviewer in The Guardian insisted that “a detailed catalogue of all the horrible things that have happened to young women on the internet isn’t useful,” and is instead “a bit of a grift.”

Suddenly, a conversation about girls is not interesting. I think I know why. My book isn’t party-political, but it reaches conclusions that some on the left find uncomfortable. I make points that some would see as “right-wing coded,” even though to me they seem uncontroversial: Maybe religion was a stabilizing force in society; maybe it’s good to grow up with both your parents in the same home; maybe limitless access to online porn affects our ability to love one another.

I find that progressives often don’t want to acknowledge these possibilities at all, to face that families have broken down, to admit that the online world is doing anything to relationships, none of these things matter, unless you target the argument toward men—unless it’s about absent fathers specifically, unless it’s about porn designed for male tastes, unless it’s about how men behave on dating apps. Social media is bad but mostly because of misogyny and the manosphere; online beauty trends are bad but only because they are decided by the patriarchy. I can’t help but think this is what choice feminism taught us: not just that every choice a woman makes is empowering, but that every bad choice a woman makes is because of men.

Try to avoid that framing, try saying something complex and merciful toward men, suggest that maybe young women’s unhappiness comes from choices we are making or the direction our culture has taken, mention the industries making millions from our misery, and suddenly you are suspect. You probably hate women; your point of view is irrelevant. Even The Daily Mail, running an excerpt from my book about the social media monster that exploits young women’s anxieties, added “. . . and makes men rich” to the headline, even though the extracts were about female influencers. Some journalists interviewing me seem to expect that this is where I’m going, almost nudging me toward a crescendo and conclusion, waiting for me to turn it all on the men, to reveal the real villain at the end. I’m left with the feeling that the only conversations worth having are those with the approved assumptions, that reach the right conclusions. If you think differently, there must be a hidden agenda.

The worst part is, we have been here before. Throughout the 2010s the media tried this tactic over and over, shutting down those concerned about young men, smearing them as misogynists or far right. In 2014, for instance, Christina Hoff Sommers was called a “pandering anti-feminist goon” for raising the alarm about how a lot of guys in college were terrified of being falsely accused of sexual assault—something we now know happened far too often. This did not make the problem go away; if anything, it made things worse, leaving a gap for grifters and opportunists who don’t even want to bridge the gender divide, arguing that we are all better off apart.

When young men began to struggle, the acceptable response was to blame men. Now that young women are struggling too, the acceptable response is, still, to blame men. I’m through with that. I’m asking us to consider that this very attitude—the vilification of our fathers, brothers, boyfriends, husbands, colleagues, half of the humans we share this world with, our teammates in this lonely and loveless time; this wicked insistence that the problem is the opposite sex and the constraints they put on us—is what is actually making young women unhappy.

My conclusion is that both sexes should be brave enough to come together, that we need each other more than ever before, that there is nothing wrong with men or with women but plenty wrong with a world trying to wrench us apart. And if that’s a dangerous message, well, what have we done?

[scott]

I'm so glad that my kids have grown up immune to this nonsense. The problem never was screen time, it was always unsupervised screen time and disconnect. The problem being described by Gen Z kids is because their entitled parents outsourced their responsibility to TV, apps, and the media.

[Celeste Chalfonte]

I'm so glad that my kids have grown up immune to this nonsense. The problem never was screen time, it was always unsupervised screen time and disconnect. The problem being described by Gen Z kids is because their entitled parents outsourced their responsibility to TV, apps, and the media.

It all, always, comes down to parenting and role models. HRH was playing age-appropriate computer games by the age of 3, instant messaging with her substantially-older cousins up in Virginia by 4. One of us (Mom or I or Nova) was right there, and we were right there right up until she was an adult. Computers and the internet are amazing tools, used wisely, but wise (and appropriately skeptical) use must be taught. She also learned not to believe everything she read or heard, to play physical games and use her imagination, to read real books, to do research and question the source. This is a case in which immunity, as you put it, requires both inoculation against foolish thinking and exposure to it in the wild; there's no substitute for practice when it comes to intellectual and social skills, just like physical ones.

[80zephyr]

From the article: I think I know why. My book isn’t party-political, but it reaches conclusions that some on the left find uncomfortable. I make points that some would see as “right-wing coded,” even though to me they seem uncontroversial: Maybe religion was a stabilizing force in society; maybe it’s good to grow up with both your parents in the same home; maybe limitless access to online porn affects our ability to love one another.

These points are uncontroversial. It is maddening that the left seems to believe these points are wrong.

Mark

[Celeste Chalfonte]

From the article: I think I know why. My book isn’t party-political, but it reaches conclusions that some on the left find uncomfortable. I make points that some would see as “right-wing coded,” even though to me they seem uncontroversial: Maybe religion was a stabilizing force in society; maybe it’s good to grow up with both your parents in the same home; maybe limitless access to online porn affects our ability to love one another.

These points are uncontroversial. It is maddening that the left seems to believe these points are wrong.

Mark

Religion can certainly be a stabilizing force, except when it's a destabilizing force or a tool of a destabilizing force (e.g., Northern Ireland, the Middle East). Doesn't mean it should be mandatory, or even dominant.

It was definitely good for me to grow up with both my parents in the same home, as I had 2 parents who loved us and each other, modeled teamwork and responsibility, weren't drunks or druggies or abusive, worked hard and taught us how to be good people, and were proud of their kids. Many people I've known had parents who stayed in the same home but were terrible spouses and/or parents, were drunks or abusive or both, lived well above their means, markedly favored one child over another, and made everyone around them miserable. Others I've known came from "broken homes" that were much the better for the absence of the defective parent, and managed to have a happy childhood, a good role model, and grow into healthy, functioning adults thanks to the good parent who had the sense to leave the bad parent/spouse. It's one thing to recognize the value of a 2-parent household; it's another entirely (and demonstrably false) to say that only one family configuration is valid and capable of producing happy, well-adjusted, responsible adults.

"Limitless access" to anything, including SpongeBob or Disney movies, is indicative of a failure to parent. Adequately parented people are, as Scott said, pretty much immune to garbage, be it weirdo cults, pornography, "incel" "culture," or any other harmful effects of the online world.

[80zephyr]

Religion can certainly be a stabilizing force, except when it's a destabilizing force or a tool of a destabilizing force (e.g., Northern Ireland, the Middle East). Doesn't mean it should be mandatory, or even dominant.

It was definitely good for me to grow up with both my parents in the same home, as I had 2 parents who loved us and each other, modeled teamwork and responsibility, weren't drunks or druggies or abusive, worked hard and taught us how to be good people, and were proud of their kids. Many people I've known had parents who stayed in the same home but were terrible spouses and/or parents, were drunks or abusive or both, lived well above their means, markedly favored one child over another, and made everyone around them miserable. Others I've known came from "broken homes" that were much the better for the absence of the defective parent, and managed to have a happy childhood, a good role model, and grow into healthy, functioning adults thanks to the good parent who had the sense to leave the bad parent/spouse. It's one thing to recognize the value of a 2-parent household; it's another entirely (and demonstrably false) to say that only one family configuration is valid and capable of producing happy, well-adjusted, responsible adults.

"Limitless access" to anything, including SpongeBob or Disney movies, is indicative of a failure to parent. Adequately parented people are, as Scott said, pretty much immune to garbage, be it weirdo cults, pornography, "incel" "culture," or any other harmful effects of the online world.

This is false. Studies have shown that the nuclear family is much better for children. Can kids be raised up to be good adults in other ways? Sure. But it doesn't work as well. And the sad thing is, is that most divorces today are not due to abuse, etc., its because the couple simply didn't want to be married anymore.

Again, from the article: I make points that some would see as “right-wing coded,” even though to me they seem uncontroversial.

These points should not be controversial. They are common sense.


Mark

[Newman]

Religion can certainly be a stabilizing force, except when it's a destabilizing force or a tool of a destabilizing force (e.g., Northern Ireland, the Middle East). Doesn't mean it should be mandatory, or even dominant.

I do think religion should be "dominant," in the sense of pervasive, but I'm as aware as any of us that "dominant" is twin to "coercive."

As a "stabilizing force"—similarly, where "force" means "influence" rather than "imperative"—as protection of individual worth and liberty, religion is gossamer-thin, subject to manipulation by humans, such as in the examples you give. And maybe religion has always been twisted to support whatever bestiality we endure, from child sacrifice to slavery.

Yet in the last century or two we've also tried out major societies that pointedly outlawed faith, and we've discovered doing so always pours unimagined hell and misery upon us.

It's a close and ugly contest, not least because as I'd put it, God is created in the image of man often as not.

But over the millenniums the edge goes to religion as a force for good, and like "the miracle of compound interest" the result is the miraculous prosperity and freedom we share, and proportionately the desperate rage of those determined to destroy it.

[Celeste Chalfonte]

I do think religion should be "dominant," in the sense of pervasive, but I'm as aware as any of us that "dominant" is twin to "coercive."

As a "stabilizing force"—similarly, where "force" means "influence" rather than "imperative"—as protection of individual worth and liberty, religion is gossamer-thin, subject to manipulation by humans, such as in the examples you give. And maybe religion has always been twisted to support whatever bestiality we endure, from child sacrifice to slavery.

Yet in the last century or two we've also tried out major societies that pointedly outlawed faith, and we've discovered doing so always pours unimagined hell and misery upon us.

It's a close and ugly contest, not least because as I'd put it, God is created in the image of man often as not.

But over the millenniums the edge goes to religion as a force for good, and like "the miracle of compound interest" the result is the miraculous prosperity and freedom we share, and proportionately the desperate rage of those determined to destroy it.

Can't argue with any of that...well, I could, as an exercise, but I actually don't.

[Newman]

Spoken like a retired lawyer.

[Celeste Chalfonte]

Spoken like a retired lawyer.

Not retired, but yeah, I've been known to argue for the fun of it. Nova and I used to do it all the time. It drove Honoria crazy. She doesn't like conflict, so everybody's supposed to just agree with her.

[scott]

This is false. Studies have shown that the nuclear family is much better for children. Can kids be raised up to be good adults in other ways? Sure. But it doesn't work as well. And the sad thing is, is that most divorces today are not due to abuse, etc., its because the couple simply didn't want to be married anymore.

Again, from the article: I make points that some would see as “right-wing coded,” even though to me they seem uncontroversial.

These points should not be controversial. They are common sense.


Mark

"Studies have shown" is pseudo-intellectualism used by people who haven't actually done much research.

[80zephyr]

"Studies have shown" is pseudo-intellectualism used by people who haven't actually done much research.

Add just a touch of common sense, and you should arrive at the same conclusions.

Mark

[scott]

Add just a touch of common sense, and you should arrive at the same conclusions.

Mark

I think it's common sense that studying history of abuse shows your point to be wrong. Isn't it common sense to you that a focus by parents to raise their children with love is more important than who they do it with?