Seems like this subreddit has recently appeared criticising a lot of the toxic misogyny that is apparent among GenZ boys/men.
Shit like this thread gives a good example of the mindsets young women are dealing with among these guys: https://www.reddit.com/r/FuckYouZoomer/comments/1gv5pdl/date_with_a_typical_podcast_bro_brainrotted/
Maybe this isn't the space that will properly counter it, some of it is deeply reactionary, but there seems to be an energy and interest building in countering it now. Enough people seem to view it as a problem.
You have a point. Before, this kind of opinion was sort of the default, or at least it would be something newlyweds would fight about because the men expected this, they just didn't say it out loud. At least that's what I remember from people my age and older when they got married, plus popular culture showing late Gen x and older millennial men being pretty much large children.
I think the biggest difference now is that the abuse and the expected subordination has become part of the conscious gender performance of men, the subtext of toxic masculinity has become text, and it's somehow more menacing and scary this way.
CW: discussion of abuse, Texas
spoiler
Again, I don't know that much about how Zoomers are behaving, but when I was a kid in Texas this was definitely in force. Violence from adult men towards women and children, violence from boys towards boys they viewed as having lower standing, girls, and women. It was a very deliberate and brutal enforcement of patriarchy. The men would sit in the living room, drink beer, watch football. The women, who had jobs and were raising the kids, were expected to do all the cooking and cleaning and were subject to verbal abuse in the form of teasing and heckling while doing so. Kids who made noise, were noticed by adult men, or god forbid spoke up for themselves or stood out in any way were subject to verbal and physical violence from men which the women supported and reinforced.
Again, idk what's really going on with zoomer men, the ones I know are pretty normal, but ruthless, overt, violent patriarchy has been around.
Jesus. I'm glad I grew up in a family context with nearly no men so that wasn't the case. There was patriarchy and misogyny all around, but at least not in the private space, and not from men, just because there weren't any around.
I think the key word in my observation was conscious. I used to see men enforcing the patriarchy violently when I was younger, but it wasn't articulated through the overt expression of an ideology of mysogyny, it was the hegemony reproducing itself. Now I see an element of intentionality to it in the nastier zoomers I've interacted with.
Yeah, it was real bad. I was able to get out after a couple of years and ended up somewhere that, while still full of problems, was overall much more chill, with much less gendered violence and much less repressive of individuality
I am starting to really appreciate my soft spoken and sweet father. Never raised a finger against anyone, helped cook and never instilled any of these reactionary patterns in us
If you haven't already read The Will To Change there's a great few chapters all about this kind of thing, I look forward to seeing you in the reading group.