Dec 18, 2025 09:51 PM
In the opening scenes of the 1975 French film Black Moon, a literal armed war between the sexes didn't bode well, either...
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Equal but Separate: How the Gender Divide Is Rewiring America
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/equal-...r-AA1StchB
EXCERPTS: These views echoed Marxist doctrine long embraced on the left. Both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels dismissed marriage as tied to the “mode of production,” seeing the monogamous, male-dominated family as doomed by the end of capitalism. Engels associated “marital bliss” with “leaden boredom.” The influence of these views can be heard in the Black Lives Matter movement’s calls to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure,” and in the writing of the nominally conservative columnist David Brooks, whose 2020 article in The Atlantic was titled “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake.”
These ideas have flourished, in part because of broader changes that include globalization and free trade that eroded employment stability in the West; consumer culture that exalted individual autonomy over family ties; technological changes, especially the rise of social media and ubiquity of pornography, that further loosened interpersonal ties by enabling people to live in relative isolation. As San Diego State psychologist Jean Twenge has argued, young adults today are “more likely to embrace unrestrained self-expression and prioritize autonomy in personal behavior” compared to older Americans.
Each change was individually defensible. Collectively, they rewired the moral operating system of modern society. Even many women who reject the feminist label were taught that dependence equals danger. Men were told that their instincts are suspect. Community gave way to individualism. Obligation gave way to preference. Tradition gave way to self-expression. The hidden lesson: You are safest when you need no one.
[...] Today, 47% of women have college degrees, compared to just 37% of men – a gap that has widened dramatically. In 1995, white women and men had equal rates of college completion at 29%; by 2024, 52% of white women held degrees compared to 42% of white men. The disparity is even more pronounced among black Americans.
[... At least since author Tom Wolfe dubbed the 1970s the “Me Decade,” the self has become ever more primary. Relationships are evaluated not by commitment or endurance but by their capacity to affirm identity, a natural product of a diminished tie to family. Children, once culturally assumed, now appear as optional additions to an already curated self.
As their economic and social dominance has slipped away, men increasingly feel estranged. Young men, particularly on campuses, are castigated as toxic, aggressive, and born misogynists. These prejudices, while sometimes reflecting a chauvinistic reality, have become common even in the sanctity of psychological practices. In elite literary circles, many male writers are tossed into the cornfield, reflecting a media bias about the dangers of masculinity.
Many young women are showing their own dismay with men. Hence the rise of “heteropessimism” which a 2024 article in the New York Times described as “an explosion of young women who say they are deleting dating apps; female celebrities (among others) who have taken vows of celibacy or identify as “self-partnered”; divorce memoirs by older millennial and Gen X women expressing profound disillusionment with heterosexual marriage; and trends like “boysober,” which preaches the virtues of “decentering men” to focus on self-improvement and platonic relationships.”
In a related phenomenon, today more than 28% of all young women, notes Gallup, identify as LGBTQ, almost three times that for young men.
[...] An unwillingness to tolerate different political views cuts across the left-right spectrum, but is especially pronounced among the whiter, better-educated, and most progressive segments of the electorate, notes a survey done for The Atlantic. Female college students, particularly those on the left, display markedly higher levels of ideological intolerance than their male peers and are significantly more likely to refuse to date someone with opposing political views. This pattern extends well beyond campus.
A 2020 YouGov poll found that nearly half of Americans say they would feel at least somewhat upset if their child married someone from the other political party, a dramatic shift from the negligible concern recorded in mid-20th-century surveys. Pew likewise reports that about seven in 10 Democrats looking for a relationship say they would not consider dating a Trump voter, a stance especially common among younger women. The result is a kind of relational toxin: politics now short-circuits attraction, friendship, and even the possibility of basic trust across differences.
[...] In the U.S., young male voters increasingly support Donald Trump. Long oriented to blue-collar jobs, many young men also face an environment with little opportunity for high-paid work, partly a result of the globalization of markets, and many simply drop out of the workforce. The share of U.S.-born, working-age (16 to 64) men not in the labor force is nearly twice as high as in 1960, rising from 11.3% to 21.7%. If the same share of U.S.-born men were in the labor force in 2025 as in 1960, there would be 8.9 million more of them in the labor force.
This alienation extends to politics, institutional distrust, and seems to correlate with lower levels of contact even with peers. Some drift rightward; others retreat from civic life entirely. The Spectator’s examination of whether education systems are radicalizing young men reveals how ideological hostility, moral suspicion, and institutional neglect contribute to a growing sense that young men are culturally dispensable.
Thus, their increasing support of Trump, the prototypical alpha male, is unsurprising. This is also evident in the racist and often misogynistic chat on young Republican websites. Some have also drifted into rabidly antisemitic groups such as the Proud Boys. This is not just an American phenomenon. European men under 30 increasingly embrace the traditionalist right, for example, backing the AFD in Germany at roughly twice the rate of women, a pattern common across the continent... (MORE - missing details)
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Equal but Separate: How the Gender Divide Is Rewiring America
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/equal-...r-AA1StchB
EXCERPTS: These views echoed Marxist doctrine long embraced on the left. Both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels dismissed marriage as tied to the “mode of production,” seeing the monogamous, male-dominated family as doomed by the end of capitalism. Engels associated “marital bliss” with “leaden boredom.” The influence of these views can be heard in the Black Lives Matter movement’s calls to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure,” and in the writing of the nominally conservative columnist David Brooks, whose 2020 article in The Atlantic was titled “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake.”
These ideas have flourished, in part because of broader changes that include globalization and free trade that eroded employment stability in the West; consumer culture that exalted individual autonomy over family ties; technological changes, especially the rise of social media and ubiquity of pornography, that further loosened interpersonal ties by enabling people to live in relative isolation. As San Diego State psychologist Jean Twenge has argued, young adults today are “more likely to embrace unrestrained self-expression and prioritize autonomy in personal behavior” compared to older Americans.
Each change was individually defensible. Collectively, they rewired the moral operating system of modern society. Even many women who reject the feminist label were taught that dependence equals danger. Men were told that their instincts are suspect. Community gave way to individualism. Obligation gave way to preference. Tradition gave way to self-expression. The hidden lesson: You are safest when you need no one.
[...] Today, 47% of women have college degrees, compared to just 37% of men – a gap that has widened dramatically. In 1995, white women and men had equal rates of college completion at 29%; by 2024, 52% of white women held degrees compared to 42% of white men. The disparity is even more pronounced among black Americans.
[... At least since author Tom Wolfe dubbed the 1970s the “Me Decade,” the self has become ever more primary. Relationships are evaluated not by commitment or endurance but by their capacity to affirm identity, a natural product of a diminished tie to family. Children, once culturally assumed, now appear as optional additions to an already curated self.
As their economic and social dominance has slipped away, men increasingly feel estranged. Young men, particularly on campuses, are castigated as toxic, aggressive, and born misogynists. These prejudices, while sometimes reflecting a chauvinistic reality, have become common even in the sanctity of psychological practices. In elite literary circles, many male writers are tossed into the cornfield, reflecting a media bias about the dangers of masculinity.
Many young women are showing their own dismay with men. Hence the rise of “heteropessimism” which a 2024 article in the New York Times described as “an explosion of young women who say they are deleting dating apps; female celebrities (among others) who have taken vows of celibacy or identify as “self-partnered”; divorce memoirs by older millennial and Gen X women expressing profound disillusionment with heterosexual marriage; and trends like “boysober,” which preaches the virtues of “decentering men” to focus on self-improvement and platonic relationships.”
In a related phenomenon, today more than 28% of all young women, notes Gallup, identify as LGBTQ, almost three times that for young men.
[...] An unwillingness to tolerate different political views cuts across the left-right spectrum, but is especially pronounced among the whiter, better-educated, and most progressive segments of the electorate, notes a survey done for The Atlantic. Female college students, particularly those on the left, display markedly higher levels of ideological intolerance than their male peers and are significantly more likely to refuse to date someone with opposing political views. This pattern extends well beyond campus.
A 2020 YouGov poll found that nearly half of Americans say they would feel at least somewhat upset if their child married someone from the other political party, a dramatic shift from the negligible concern recorded in mid-20th-century surveys. Pew likewise reports that about seven in 10 Democrats looking for a relationship say they would not consider dating a Trump voter, a stance especially common among younger women. The result is a kind of relational toxin: politics now short-circuits attraction, friendship, and even the possibility of basic trust across differences.
[...] In the U.S., young male voters increasingly support Donald Trump. Long oriented to blue-collar jobs, many young men also face an environment with little opportunity for high-paid work, partly a result of the globalization of markets, and many simply drop out of the workforce. The share of U.S.-born, working-age (16 to 64) men not in the labor force is nearly twice as high as in 1960, rising from 11.3% to 21.7%. If the same share of U.S.-born men were in the labor force in 2025 as in 1960, there would be 8.9 million more of them in the labor force.
This alienation extends to politics, institutional distrust, and seems to correlate with lower levels of contact even with peers. Some drift rightward; others retreat from civic life entirely. The Spectator’s examination of whether education systems are radicalizing young men reveals how ideological hostility, moral suspicion, and institutional neglect contribute to a growing sense that young men are culturally dispensable.
Thus, their increasing support of Trump, the prototypical alpha male, is unsurprising. This is also evident in the racist and often misogynistic chat on young Republican websites. Some have also drifted into rabidly antisemitic groups such as the Proud Boys. This is not just an American phenomenon. European men under 30 increasingly embrace the traditionalist right, for example, backing the AFD in Germany at roughly twice the rate of women, a pattern common across the continent... (MORE - missing details)
