#femosphere

By: Bettina Arndt

Published: May 18, 2026

The warning signs have been there for decades. Back in 1983, American author Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a powerful book – The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment – arguing that a male revolt was underway.

Since the 1950s, she suggested, men had begun rebelling against the breadwinner ethic – inspired by Playboy culture, the counterculture, and a desire for personal freedom. They were rejecting the cultural ideology that had shamed them into tying the knot and becoming a good provider, lest they be seen as immature, irresponsible, and less than a real man.

Ehrenreich understood that marriage was the mechanism by which society harnessed male productivity. Remove the shame, and the yoke comes off.

Forty years on, the yoke has disappeared. In April 2026, the American male labour force participation rate hit its lowest level since records began in the 1940s, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. One in three American men – roughly 33 per cent – were not working or actively looking for work. The overall male participation rate for men aged 16 and over stood at just 67 per cent, down from 73.5 per cent two decades ago and from 87 per cent in the postwar years when Ehrenreich’s story begins.

The trend is not confined to America. Australian men’s workforce participation has fallen from around 79 per cent in 1978 to approximately 71 per cent today, while similar declines – though less dramatic than in the United States – have occurred in the UK and Canada.

The marriage collapse runs in lockstep with the workforce data. According to US Census Bureau data, married-couple households made up 71 per cent of all US households in 1970 – today just 47 per cent. As University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox documents in his 2024 book, Get Married, the marriage rate has fallen 65 per cent in the last half century.

Australia tells a similar story. The marriage rate has more than halved since 1971, from 13 per 1,000 people to just 5.5 in 2024 – and much of the slack has been taken up by de facto relationships which carry the legal obligations of marriage but none of its commitment or permanence. The numbers are moving in one direction only.

Ehrenreich had made the argument that marriage and productivity were inseparable – that the same mechanism which got men to the altar got them to work. The data suggests she was right.

What Ehrenreich did not fully reckon with – could not have foreseen in 1983 – was that the inducements for tying the knot would collapse. The shame mechanism has disappeared, yes, but the incentive has simultaneously imploded. The product on offer has changed beyond recognition. If you want to understand why men are voting with their feet, you need to look not just at what marriage now costs them – and the costs are severe – but at what it delivers. Increasingly, what it delivers is a pretty dud deal.

The following is an observation and opinion of some commentators that may help shed some light on the issue.

The modern woman: a prospectus

Some studies show they are the most miserable, anxious, and insecure cohort in living memory – hardly great marriage material.

Many married women go off sex – and the husband who objects is seen as the problem.

Many women don’t actually like men very much. The more educated she is, the higher the contempt.

Increasing numbers of women have gone full throttle left – and three quarters of college-educated women in some studies won’t even date a man who votes differently.

The education system contains anti-male rhetoric and it has, in some cases, colonised corporate and institutional life, turning universities and workplaces into man-repellent factories.

Yet their hypergamy is still running hot. Despite outnumbering men in education and careers, statistically some women still demand a tall, equally high-status unicorn.

The modern female threat-detection system is hyperactive. Almost any male behaviour – silence, opinions, jokes, breathing – gets flagged as a red flag.

Many women are well-versed in the lucrative economics of divorce, and there have been reported incidents of false allegations being used to eliminate tedious shared parenting.

What rational man reads this list and thinks: yes, that’s exactly what’s been missing from my life?

To examine more carefully what is going on here, let’s start by looking at the latest addition to this sorry reckoning. I’m referring to the finding published in New Statesman last month: that many young women don’t like men. A Merlin Strategy poll of young Britons aged 18 to 30 found three times more young women than young men held a negative view of the opposite sex. Only about 50 per cent of women had a positive view of men compared to 72 per cent of men feeling positive about women. For women under 25, it was even starker: only around one-third (35 per cent) reported a positive view of men.

This applies particularly to professional and managerial young women of whom, according to some polls, just 36 per cent hold a positive view of men, compared with 61 per cent of working-class women. In other words, the contempt for men is most concentrated in educated, middle-class women – precisely the demographic that has benefited most from feminist gains and whose prospects are objectively the strongest.

The contempt for men is hardly surprising – that’s what they have been taught. Mary Harrington, a British journalist and cultural critic who writes on Substack, frequently critiques what she calls the ‘femosphere’ – the online feminist spaces where women bond through shared grievances about men.

‘The online feminist scene often feels like one long group therapy session for women to compare notes on how awful men are,’ she writes, suggesting this makes men the universal scapegoat, where ordinary male behaviour is routinely framed as toxic or oppressive, while women’s collective resentment is rewarded and amplified. ‘Casual, low-level male-bashing has become the background hum of progressive online culture.’

Encountering these women isn’t much fun for men. Reddit recently published this telling comment: ‘It’s exhausting. You might be having a decent conversation, then she drops a casual “men suck” comment like it’s small talk. Feels like you’re starting every interaction with a presumption of guilt.’

My good friend Janice Fiamengo has just written a blog taking issue with media stories using the New Stateman data to declare young women hate men. Janice points out that only 3 per cent of the women surveyed had a very negative view of men. She also takes comfort in the fact that a majority of the women felt at least ‘somewhat’ or ‘very safe’ around men – but to me a 51 per cent majority is still pretty alarming. Ditto the fact that only 52 per cent felt they could trust men.

From the male perspective this still means a hell of a lot of distrustful women out there, which is a grim prospect when it comes to prospective partners.

And an awful lot of crazy, neurotic women.

Not only does this toxic climate encourage women to be wary of men, but growing up in a hate-fuelled online sewer takes a toll on their mental health. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has long been warning that the toxic world of social media would lead to a rise in mental health problems – particularly in girls and young women. ‘Since the early 2010s, young people across the developed world are becoming more anxious, depressed and lonely. The increases were even greater in young women,’ he said.

Recent large-scale surveys (Ipsos 2025–26 across 31 countries, Gallup 2025) are showing Gen Z women currently report the highest recorded levels of anxiety, persistent sadness/hopelessness, and depression of any female generation at the same age.

Around 33 per cent of young women feel anxious or worried about the future ‘almost all the time’; 40 per cent of Gen Z workers feel anxious or depressed at least a few times per week, according to recent 2025 surveys.

Not much fun for their partners. Last year Psychology Today had a stark warning for men about these women as marriage prospects. ‘The saying “happy wife, happy life” may have some validity, but the lesser-known saying “anxious wife, miserable life” has research-approved validation. […] The more neurotic the spouse is, the less happy the relationship – but women’s neuroticism seems to carry more weight in the overall marital happiness equation.’

Then there’s the intriguing issue of married women turning off the tap, leaving sex-starved husbands as the norm. For as long as anyone can remember, men were shamed into showing up economically. Society has absolutely nothing to say to women who stop showing up sexually. One obligation was enforced by church, law, and community for centuries. The other is now abrogated on the grounds of bodily autonomy.

So here we have the portrait of the modern woman as marriage prospect: miserable, anxious, politically radicalised, contemptuous of men, often sexually rejecting, and trained to see menace in ordinary male behaviour. And yet the puzzled chorus from commentators, economists, and policymakers continues: Why won’t men commit? Why won’t they work?

The approved explanations are dutifully trotted out. The economic story: men have been displaced by automation and globalisation. The health story: opioids, disability, mental illness. The educational story: men are falling behind women in universities and therefore in the job market. The cultural story, favoured by progressive commentators: toxic masculinity is preventing men from adapting to a modern service economy. All of these contain a grain of truth. But they do not account for what is really going on. The obvious explanation – the one staring out of every data table – is intentionally ignored.

Marriage was the primary incentive for sustained male economic effort. It has always been – Ehrenreich knew it in 1983, and the economists have now confirmed it. There’s an economic research paper – The Declining Labor Market Prospects of Less-Educated Men – which establishes that the prospect of forming and providing for a family constitutes a critical male labour supply incentive, and that the decline of stable marriage directly removes it. Researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas calculated that declining marriage rates are responsible for roughly half the drop in the hours men work.

Remove the marriage, and you remove the responsibility. The data has been telling us this for decades.

But here is what nobody in the mainstream conversation will say: it is not only that marriage has become too costly and too legally treacherous for men – though it has. It is that many young women themselves have become, to put it plainly, not worth having. A third of young British women don’t trust men. In some polls, more than half of educated young women view men negatively. They may arrive at relationships pre-loaded with grievance, fluent in the language of red flags and emotional labour, primed by algorithms that have fed them a diet of male failure and female outrage since adolescence. When this happens, they are, by their own account, anxious, miserable, and politically furious.

What rational man, surveying this landscape, concludes that what his life is missing is a legally booby-trapped commitment to a woman primed to be impossible to keep happy.

Ehrenreich feared in 1983 that if the shame mechanism collapsed, male productivity would follow. She was right. What she could not have anticipated was the other half of the equation – that the feminist revolution would produce not a generation of fulfilled, generous, companionable women, but one that is, by every available measure, angrier and unhappier than any before it. The yoke is off. The men have looked at what’s on offer. And many have, with considerable rationality, decided to go and play video games instead.

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Men also have to reckon with female intrasexual competition. This is popularly known in the guise of competitor manipulation (e.g. women advise women of similar attractiveness to cut off more hair).

But also manifests as Crab Mentality. Or, "single women keep women single."

By: Debrah Soh

Published: Apr 24, 2026

On any given day, you can casually scroll on social media and unearth a plethora of freshly posted videos of single men and women recalling nightmarish dating experiences to their followers.

“When he says, ‘I’m big on honesty’ and lies about his height while you’re literally looking at him,” reads the caption of one young woman’s post.

“I can’t tell you how many doors I have opened for these women, and I hear, ‘As you should,’ instead of ‘Thank you,’” winces a 24-year-old man.

This genre of content capitalizes on humiliating and antagonizing the opposite sex. Women are portrayed as entitled, manipulative freeloaders seeking marriage to destroy a man’s life. Men are seen as serial predators and duplicitous creeps; in one TikTok survey, women said in the forest they’d rather encounter a bear than a man.

The damage has been deep, particularly among young people. While there has been much criticism of the “manosphere” and its associated peddling of misogyny to boys, analogous female-centric online communities – the “femosphere” – thrive as well.

Femosphere influencers encourage women to be calculating in their interactions with men and to use them for their money, akin to how some men will use women for sex. The femosphere is similarly noxious in its promotion of misandry to girls, yet it has elicited milder, if any, consternation by comparison.

Leaving this bias unchecked has had serious consequences. Poll findings published by The New Statesman suggest that a generation of young women have been radicalized by online content, moving further left in their politics and harbouring full-fledged hatred of men.

Young women, especially those with white-collar jobs, have more negative views of the opposite sex than men do. Only 50 per cent of women polled (aged 18 to 30) said they have a positive view of men, while 72 per cent of same-aged men had a positive view of women.

For women under the age of 25, this pessimism was more pronounced – only about a third reported a positive view of men. Although the manosphere’s anti-woman ideology has been loud, it seems anti-male attitudes are more widespread.

In addition to polarizing content on social media, the educational system and a cultural desensitization to male suffering have produced this unfortunate shift in young women – including fomentinga sentiment that retribution against men is justified.

In higher education, young women are told they remain oppressed at the hands of men. In response, many scholarships and professional opportunities are offered explicitly to women (but not to men), despite the fact that women and girls areobjectively outperforming their male peers.

Regarding cultural trends, when pop superstar Sabrina Carpenter began killing men in her music videos, this further solidified her popularity instead of ending her career. I highly doubt a male musician nonchalantly depicting homicidal acts against women in today’s climate would enjoy the same acclaim.

Many young men are understandably aggrieved by this double standard. And the resentment on both sides has roiled the dating pool. Around the world, Gen Z men (aged 14 to 29) increasingly support traditional gender roles, with 31 per cent agreeing in one survey that “A wife should always obey her husband.”

A polling firm in Britain reported that young women state a clear preference for dating someone who shares their progressive politics, particularly on subjects like social justice, immigration, and President Donald Trump. Young men, however, typically lean to the political right.

How will this battle end? Studies have found that women become more conservative with marriage and motherhood, but as more young women eschew both due to women’s greater economic success and societal norms celebrating their singledom, the political gap – and lack of understanding – between the sexes will only grow.

Single men looking to settle down may feel inclined to downplay their right-leaning political beliefs to spark a woman’s interest, but this does not fare well for the longevity of a relationship. With such a stark misalignment in values, many young people are giving up on dating altogether.

Instead of engaging in an endless spiral of dehumanizing the other, men and women must call out sexism and cruelty on both sides. Our institutions and media should acknowledge that online extremism can occur from women and men alike.

Both sexes must recognize that every person they meet is an individual, not a member of a tribe. A stranger shouldn’t be held responsible for the hurtful things a previous partner did.

Consuming divisive content won’t make a person savvier on the dating market. It only lines the pockets of histrionic influencers and Big Tech.

Debra Soh is a sex neuroscientist and the author of Sextinction: The Decline of Sex and the Future of Intimacy.

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By: Lisa Britton

Published: Apr 23, 2026

Nearly ten years ago, I stood in the crowd at the first Women’s March, my phone camera in my hand and my notebook ready to document the historic day.

Ihad spent years advocating for girls and women, traveling to Africa, helping run workshops on self-worth, and cheering on every female milestone in boardrooms and classrooms. I believed in lifting women up.

But that day, something shifted.

I saw a little girl, no more than three years old, sitting perched on her father’s shoulders, wearing a tiny pink hat. She wasn’t old enough to understand the slogans or the chants, yet there she was, absorbing the message: the world is stacked against you, sweetheart. Society doesn’t value girls and to matter, you’ll have to fight like a man.

In that moment, I realized we were teaching the youngest among us to see themselves as victims before they could even spell the word. We were teaching them to be angry. I didn’t blame the dad, though. He thought he was doing the right thing: protecting his daughter, showing his solidarity. After my awakening, I left the march convinced that female victimhood was the most disempowering force imaginable. It was a cancer spreading through our culture, one that robs girls and women of agency, joy, empathy and real connections. I made it my mission to call it out. ‘This could truly help women!’ I thought.

Boy, was I naïve.

The backlash was swift. Women I had been friends with for years, who were supporters of girls’ education and mentors in STEM programs, laughed in my face. Some in DC literally walked me out of meetings. “You’re internalizing the patriarchy,” a woman told me. Another accused me of “gaslighting survivors.” I realized then that the very institutions meant to empower women had become factories for grievance. We were radicalizing girls to view every setback as systemic oppression and every man as the enemy rather than building confidence.

Fast-forward a decade, and the problem hasn’t improved. It’s on overdrive. Young men, sensing the hypocrisy of pop feminism, are shifting rightward in droves. They’ve watched boys get pushed to the back of the line for decades while girls received every resource, most of the scholarships, every “you go, girl” motivational talk, and all the attention for their issues. Now they’re tired of the constant blaming and shaming. As an advocate for boys and men as well for the past 8 years, I’ve watched the very real rise in misogyny closely. Online spaces have filled up with resentment on both sides, but while the “manosphere” gets endless negative coverage, the other side flies under the radar.

Female-led misandry is mainstream, and it’s in our schools, our media, our Hollywood blockbusters, and our university lecture halls. Podcasts hosted by women casually trash men as toxic, incompetent, sexist or irredeemable. TikTok feeds overflow with videos declaring “men are the problem” or “why I’m done with dating.” The hatred isn’t just on the fringes. It’s everywhere.

Look at the 4B movement exploding out of South Korea and now reaching corners of the West. Women there, and increasingly here, are swearing off romance, and they’re also rejecting fathers, brothers, and male friends entirely. No dating, no marriage, no sex and no children with men. It’s framed as liberation, but it’s really a full-scale withdrawal from half the human race.

We’ve all been drinking the Kool-Aid since elementary school: boys are bad, boys are privileged, boys must step aside so girls can shine and, don’t forget, “the future is female!” I grew up with it myself. We then wonder why, years later, young women look around and declare there are “no good men left.”

The divide between men and women is growing in all areas. A NBC News poll of Gen Z Americans revealed a concerning reality. Young men who supported Donald Trump in 2024 ranked “having children” as their top marker of personal success. For young women who backed Kamala Harris, it ranked near the bottom—12th out of 13 options. Instead, they prioritized careers, financial independence, and “doing the things you want.” High school girls today, according to Pew Research, are less likely than boys to list family as a life goal. Article after article in magazines and online outlets reinforces the message: being single is the ultimate power move! Who needs men? You can have it all—travel, promotions, and self-care—without the “burden” of boyfriends or husbands.

Women gobble it up, then double down: the reason they hate men is because “there are no good ones!”

The hypocrisy is frustrating. We spent decades telling boys to shrink themselves, to hand over the spotlight, that they’re inherently oppressive, and to apologize for their very existence. We designed schools to favor girls’ learning styles, poured funding into women’s programs, and celebrated every female first while boys’ issues like suicide rates and declining college enrollment barely registered. How exactly were “good marriageable men” supposed to emerge from that environment? An environment that demonized them and pushed them down? Once you recognize it like I have, you can’t unsee it.

More research drives the point home even harder. Privileged women with college degrees, professional jobs, and economic security drink the victimhood Kool-Aid the most. Studies from Harvard show they’re more likely than their working-class counterparts to believe the world is rigged against them. It makes a perverse kind of sense. When you’ve been handed every opportunity, ordinary struggles feel like injustice. Working-class women, who’ve more likely faced real barriers, tend to be more pragmatic. They know life is hard for everyone. But the elite narrative that I discuss in a recent piece for the Institute for Family Studies dominates our culture, and it’s poisoning all women, as we can see in the marriage rates of working-class women. At least the college-educated and professionally successful still have a pretty steady marriage rate by the time they're 45. Working-class women’s rate has dropped dramatically.

The most visible symptom of this disease is anger. A lot of women today are furious, and they don’t always know why. So they aim it at the nearest target: men. I hear my friends complaining all the time. Scroll through social media or tune into a campus protest, and the rage is there. There’s disappointment in dating, but it’s also a worldview that frames every male success as theft from women, every disagreement as misogyny or mansplaining, and even compliments as sexual harassment.

The New Statesman’s recent cover story, “Meet the Angry Young Women,” highlights this phenomenon. In it, British women in their twenties describe refusing to date or even befriend men with differing politics because “they don’t see you as human.” One student calls young men emotionally stunted for not weeping over global crises the way she does. The piece details how educated, middle-class women (despite their advantages) feel more pessimistic and alienated than ever. They prioritize activism over family and view motherhood as a threat to their identity. The article’s polling mirrors what we’re seeing in the think tanks I collaborate with: young women are twice as likely as young men not to want children, and far less likely to believe the system works for them.

The vast majority of young men have a positive view of women. The vast majority of young women under 25 have a negative/neutral view of men. Do you think this stems from experiences or from being taught since they were young that “men are bad”?

This isn’t empowerment. If you truly open your eyes, you recognize all we do is support women in the West.

Girls and women in the West are not victims. We have more opportunities, more resources, more legal protections and more social support than at any point in human history. Universities bend over backward for female students, corporations chase diversity quotas, and the media celebrates women in every field. 

Meanwhile, boys face a rigged game. They have barely any support or resources, they’re punished for normal boy behavior, and they live in a culture that treats masculinity itself as suspect. The data from the American Institute for Boys and Men on male disadvantage in education, mental health, custody battles, and workplace fatalities is overwhelming, yet we’re still teaching girls the opposite. We’re teaching them they’re victims, and they’re becoming radicalized because of it.

The women absorbed in this victimhood can’t see it. The cultural messages are too loud and too constant. From children’s books that cast boys as bullies to university Title IX offices that assume male guilt, the story is the same: women are fragile and men are dangerous. No wonder young women are angry. No wonder they’re opting out of relationships, families, friendships and even basic civility toward the opposite sex.

If we want safer communities, stronger families, and a less divided society, we have to treat female victimhood like the cancer it is. That starts with honesty. We must stop institutionalizing the blame game in schools, stop letting Hollywood and academia teach girls that men are the enemy, and stop rewarding grievance with likes, book deals, and speaking gigs. What we should be doing is teaching resilience. Teach girls that setbacks are normal, that men are not monsters, and that building a life with a good husband is one of the greatest sources of meaning and happiness for human beings. We should celebrate strong families instead of scorning and devaluing them. And we must all acknowledge that boys and men deserve support too, that their struggles don’t cancel out ours.

Mending the divide won’t be easy. It means women need to look in the mirror and admit we’ve been sold a lie, which is admittedly hard to do. Victimhood feels powerful in the moment, but it leaves you bitter. The data and trends all point to the same conclusion: young men are checking out, young women are doubling down on their anger, birth rates are plummeting, and disconnection and loneliness are epidemic. We can keep feeding the cancer, or we can cut it out now and start repairing what’s broken.

By: Scarlett Maguire

Published: Apr 15, 2026

The prevailing narrative is that young men, under the influence of the manosphere and enchanted by men’s rights activists and misogynists such as Andrew Tate, are being politically radicalised faster and in greater numbers than young women. The result is a gulf in political sensibility between young British women and men, who are now dramatically inclined to the populist right compared with other parts of the population.

It’s a compelling story, but it isn’t completely accurate. Instead, it is young women moving to the radical left that is widening the political gender gap among the under-30s. Merlin Strategy has surveyed, exclusively for the New Statesman, 2,000 British 18- to 30-year-olds to explore this phenomenon in more detail.

As expected, we found that there are significant divides between young men and young women – but they are not just confined to political views. Gen Z women are more left wing than their male peers when it comes to politics and economics. This generation of women is also much more pessimistic about the country and their own lives than men, and substantially more negative towards men than the men are towards women. Seventy-two per cent of men under 30 say they have a positive view of the opposite gender, compared with just 50 per cent of women of the same age. Thirty-eight per cent of men say they feel “very positively” towards women, while only 18 per cent of women say the same about men. This trend is particularly pronounced among women under 25, of whom just 35 per cent feel positively towards men.

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Men of this generation overwhelmingly think that they are understood by women and can trust members of the opposite gender, whereas women report much lower scores on both questions. The gap is much more pronounced when it comes to safety and consent. More than four in ten of the women surveyed said men did not have the same understanding of consent in sexual relationships that they did (25 per cent of men thought the same).

While much debate about declining birth rates focuses on prohibitive economic conditions alone, there is less focus on how younger generations of women feel towards the idea of motherhood. Young women are twice as likely as young men to say they would not like to have children (15 per cent compared with 8 per cent), and among white women under 30, this increases to one in five.

One in four young women say that their partner having different political views to them would be a red flag in a relationship. However, on particular political issues, women’s stance is more hard-line. Six in ten say they would find it difficult to date someone who disagreed with them on the Palestine/Israel conflict, or who did not share their views on Donald Trump. Seventy-four per cent say they’d find it difficult to be in a relationship with someone who did not share their views about social justice. Young women are also more likely than young men to say that they would not have a relationship with someone who disagreed with them over immigration.

Women under 30 are much more inclined to be on the left economically than men their own age, although both favour increasing government intervention and believe that it is more important to reduce inequality than it is to grow the economy. While young women are relatively evenly divided over whether they believe “it is unfair some people have more than others and we should redistribute wealth” (43 per cent) or that “people deserve to keep what is theirs, even if that means that others have less” (40 per cent), men are more decisively split: 37 per cent are inclined towards redistribution whereas 51 per cent are not.

Men of this generation are substantially more positive about capitalism (net +28), whereas women view it (+2) substantially less favourably than communism (+11). This is, in part, a consequence of how young men believe that “the economy works well for people like me” (48 per cent to 37 per cent), while women believe it works against them (43 per cent to 34 per cent).

We often hear about a lost generation of young men. However, Merlin Strategy’s research reveals that young women are more pessimistic across the board. They are less likely to say they feel “happy”, “ambitious”, “excited” and “fulfilled”, and are more pessimistic about the prospects of “being happy” for their “life generally”.

It is not surprising that young Brits, who face insurmountable levels of student debt, unaffordable housing and a higher youth unemployment rate than the European Union average, feel locked out of the British economy. The system is not working for them. What is striking is that women under 30 are much less hopeful about their own financial future and goals than men of the same age. They are net 21 points less likely than men to say they are optimistic they will earn more than their parents, and 19 points less likely to say they will be able to buy the house they want.

But this financial pessimism among young women does not necessarily reflect the reality of their position relative to young men. Among 16- to 24-year-olds, there are more women in full-time work than their male counterparts, with the average woman in that age group earning 9 per cent more than the average man. The rate of unemployment for young men is 6.3 per cent higher than for young women.

There are stark differences when it comes to questions of identity and national pride. Gen Z women are significantly less likely to say they are proud to call themselves British than Gen Z men (53 per cent compared with 68 per cent). Perhaps this is because young men in Britain strongly do not think the country is racist (29 per cent to 57 per cent), while women (43 per cent to 38 per cent) think it is. The divide is similar on the question of whether the UK is sexist.

These findings suggest a generation of women at odds with the country around them. And there are other, revealing divides that indicate what has driven these attitudes. Consistently, we have seen substantial differences along education, age, class and ethnicity lines, as well as by how much time respondents spend online.

Women who have gone on to higher education are substantially more to the left, particularly on economic questions, than those who haven’t. They have a significantly more favourable view of communism, feminism, environmentalism and socialism, as well as of figures like Greta Thunberg and movements such as Extinction Rebellion. They are also much more likely to say that the UK should pay slavery reparations, and are more supportive of increased state intervention and wealth redistribution.

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The disruptive impact of Covid-19 on this cohort should not be underestimated. A majority of Gen Z, across both genders, believe the pandemic had a significant impact on their lives and opportunities. This is much starker for 18- to 25-year-olds who were at crucial stages of school or university during lockdown. Six in ten women under 25 say Covid impacted their life and opportunities.

This “Covid generation” looks far more frustrated and radicalised than those aged 25 to 30. The younger members of the cohort surveyed – 18 to 24 – have more negative views of the opposite gender, the country and the status quo. Keir Starmer’s approval rating is -27 points with women under 25, compared with +17 points among their slightly older peers. Women aged between 18 and 25 are much more inclined to support slavery reparations and to think that the UK is racist. They are also more likely to believe that things are “stacked against me, no matter how hard I try”. They are dramatically to the left of over-25s when it comes to economics, and are significantly more likely to hold a negative view of capitalism than a positive one. Indeed, just 16 per cent of women this age hold a favourable view of capitalism, the same percentage that has a positive view of fascism.

There are no signs that the gender gap in cultural values among young people will close any time soon; in fact, it looks likely to widen further. Just 11 per cent of this younger cohort of 18- to 25-year-old women say they have a very positive view of men, compared with 25 per cent of those aged 25 to 30. They are also more likely than older peers to say they spend significantly more time with members of their own gender. Less than half (47 per cent) say they feel understood by members of the opposite gender.

There is also a substantial class divide among Gen Z women. Those in C2DE professions (skilled or unskilled manual workers, as well as the unemployed, or those dependent on the state) are more likely to say they feel happy, ambitious and fulfilled than their ABC1 (professional and managerial) peers, and are more likely to believe that if they work hard, they will succeed in life. Similarly, ABC1 young women do not think the economy works as well for people like them (21 per cent, compared with 39 per cent of C2DE respondents) and feel substantially less valued by society. Gen Z women in middle-class professions also view capitalism overwhelmingly negatively, compared with C2DE women, who have a positive view of the system. And young ABC1 women are substantially more negative about the opposite gender, too, with just 36 per cent of them holding a positive view of men, compared with 61 per cent of C2DE Gen Z women.

This divide also applies to political opinions and expectations. ABC1 women are much more likely to believe that the country is racist and sexist, and much less likely to say they are proud to call themselves British than their C2DE peers (41 per cent compared with 57 per cent). They have a more positive view of transgender rights and a less positive view of capitalism, and also favour reducing inequality over economic growth.

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Spending more time online appears to alter participants’ perceptions of the world around them. Those who are online for more than five hours a day believe that the option to have an abortion is under attack in the UK, despite parliament recently voting to decriminalise abortion up until birth. Gen Z women who spend a lot of time online also show heightened concern about climate change and the environment. They are more likely to say that climate change is the biggest threat to the world, and more likely to have favourable views of Thunberg, Zack Polanski and environmentalism. They also lean more to the left on questions of economics – for example, they are more inclined to agree that wealth should be redistributed and that it is more important to reduce inequality than to grow the economy.

There are also striking differences between white women of this generation and those from an ethnic minority background (with similar if not more pronounced trends among young men, too). Gen Z women from a black, Asian and minority ethnic (Bame) background are significantly more likely to say that they feel valued by society than white women their age. They are also less likely to think that the country is racist (Bame women are split 39 per cent to 39 per cent on the question, whereas white women believe the country is racist by 45 per cent to 37 per cent).

Those from an ethnic minority background are also more inclined to think that if they work hard in life, they will succeed; feel more positively about earning more than their parents; and are more content with their jobs and careers.

–

What young women think matters. Electorally, they are moving in great numbers towards Polanski’s Green Party – a trend that seems as though it will only get more pronounced. Though a proportion of this generation do not identify as either left or right wing, both young men and young women are enthusiastic about political figures on the populist left, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zohran Mamdani, Jeremy Corbyn and Polanski. Strikingly, Keir Starmer is much more unpopular with young women than with young men, as are – less surprisingly – Nigel Farage and Donald Trump.

There is something more fundamental going on here than shifts in voting patterns. Starmer will find it difficult to win back these young women, because their political beliefs are based on deeply held ideological and cultural values that they do not want to compromise. The cultural impact of a generation of women who feel their beliefs are incompatible with not just their male peers but with their country could dramatically reshape the UK.

==

Love this one.

It's literally the meme:

This one is also a crack-up:

Young white women – more than young black, Asian or minority ethic (BAME) women – believe they are marginalized in society.

Um, what? 🤣😂 What's going on, what are we doing?

https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_02f2d1b1-dbdb-4328-b8fe-768bf904c2fa

Summary Comparison

Women's side: At least 1 dedicated junior minister role (with "Women's Health Strategy" in the title), 1 Ambassador, a long-established 10-year strategy with multiple updates, dedicated parliamentary committee scrutiny, and integration into equalities structures. This has existed for several years.

Men's side: 1 recent 10-year strategy (2025), an internal governance/project board, and ad-hoc inquiries—but no dedicated minister, ambassador, or equivalent long-term named infrastructure.

By: Janice Fiamengo

Published: Jul 21, 2025

An Australian woman, Corbie Jean Walpole, who burned 23-year-old Jake Loader almost to death because she didn’t like his teasing, is appealing the sentence she received in May. That sentence was for seven years and six months, with a non-parole minimum of four years and six months.

Is it possible that a different judge will give Walpole something closer to the 25-year maximum?

News reports about Walpole’s sentence have not shown pictures of her victim’s burns. Jake Loader suffered third-degree burns to 55% of his body over his back, chest, arms, legs, and face, and had to undergo 10 surgeries after Corbie Walpole deliberately set him on fire.

After eight days in an induced coma and months in hospital, he is now unable to be in the sun and has trouble regulating his body temperature because his sweat glands were burned off in the attack. He can no longer carry on his work of mustering cattle in the Queensland outback. His financial future is uncertain, and his emotional as well as physical suffering have been immense.

[ Jake Loader before Walpole’s attack ]

What did Loader do that caused Walpole to pour a can of petrol over him and set it ablaze? He told her, while partying with friends at her house, that she would be better off in the kitchen making scones than drinking and drugging with the boys.

Because of that allegedly “misogynistic” remark (a silly term used by nearly every news site covering the story), Walpole was overcome with fury, which she described at her pre-sentencing hearing as feminine helplessness. “I was feeling overwhelmed by his presence and I didn’t know what to do,” she is reported to have said in explanation of her assault. “He was antagonizing me. He told me to go to the kitchen where I belong because I’m a girl. I gave it back to him and called him a misogynist.”

Here is a woman well tutored in womanly rage. Feminists have lectured us for years that men’s words directed at women can rightly be understood as “violence,” especially when they purportedly humiliate, objectify, or sexualize. In self-defense, then, Walpole poured a jerry can of fuel over her erstwhile friend and held her cigarette lighter near; when he challenged her to carry out her threat, she lit the inferno.

She then watched as other friends dragged the screaming man into a swimming pool to extinguish the flames. “What the f--- have I done, he just wouldn’t stop,” she reportedly said at the time, still engaged in self-justification. If Loader’s fate had been in her hands, the man would almost certainly be dead, and Walpole would still be playing the victim, claiming, as she did at her hearing, that she had meant no harm.

Now she hopes to avoid further prison time. A hearing date for her appeal to shorten her sentence has not yet been announced.

* * *

We’ve long known that women are given significantly lighter sentences than men for criminal wrongdoing. Law professor Sonja Starr published a definitive study in 2012, which found “large gender gaps favoring women” in such punishments. Women’s sentences are on average more than 60% less severe than men’s for the same types of crimes. As Starr demonstrated, women were also “significantly likelier to avoid charges and convictions entirely, and twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted.”

Our society’s far greater empathy for women causes female wrongdoers to be viewed as victims rather than perpetrators, more deserving of compassion, less responsible for bad deeds, less of a danger to society, and more likely to be rehabilitated than men.

Starr codified what many had already observed: that women expect to get away with deviant behavior, and often do.

In his 1913 book The Fraud of Feminism, British barrister Ernest Belfort Bax told how frequently juries and judges responded with leniency to women’s transgressions. In the case of murder, he alleged that “The evidence even to secure conviction in the case of a woman must be many times stronger than that which would suffice to hang a man. Should a conviction be obtained, the death penalty, though pronounced, is not given effect to, the female prisoner being almost invariably reprieved. In most cases where there is a conviction at all, it is for manslaughter and not for murder, when a light or almost nominal sentence is passed” (p. 37).

Bax described the women themselves as full of defiance and self-exoneration: “Female criminals are surrounded by a halo of injured innocence,” he quipped, “convinced of the maliciousness of [their] accusers” and of their own lack of responsibility (p. 51-52).

* * *

Walpole’s case perfectly fits the patterns Bax identified, in which violent women justify themselves and are rewarded with sympathy. At Walpole’s pre-sentencing hearing, inordinate emphasis was placed on her mental suffering, almost as if she were one of the innocent injured. She produced plenty of tears in court, portraying herself as dealing with depression at the time of her attack, answering “I wasn’t thinking” to many of the questions, and claiming she didn’t know that a cigarette lighter would be enough to set a petrol-soaked man ablaze.

Her legal representative went so far as to argue that jail time was inappropriate because she had been “provoked” by her old friend and because she was remorseful (though it’s difficult to find evidence that pity for her victim came near to competing with pity for herself).

The judge heard that Walpole continues to relive the horror of what happened, having developed post-traumatic stress disorder and an aversion to the smell of gasoline. She is allegedly haunted by the bewildered look on her victim’s face when he got out of the pool covered in burns.

(In fact, Walpole sent a tone-deaf text message to Loader’s girlfriend on the afternoon after the “mistake,” in which she seemed hardly worried about what had happened, saying she had “made a really stupid decision and I own that” and hoping Jake was “okay.”)

Judge Jennifer English did not accept the defense argument for a non-custodial sentence, but she did, ludicrously, characterize Walpole as one of those harmed in the tragedy, saying “This is a tragic case in so many ways for the victim and his family and for the offender and her family.” She also expressed her sorrow at having to incarcerate Walpole. “It’s never easy to send a young person, particularly a young woman, to jail,” she stated regretfully before giving Walpole a sentence that would make her eligible for parole by November of 2029.

Why was the judge reluctant? Walpole is a vicious adult who was unable or unwilling to control a murderous temper in response to teasing. Her statements of alleged remorse did not sound particularly contrite. “I find it very hard to believe the injuries that were caused were from my doing,” she is quoted as saying. She doesn’t seem to have recognized her responsibility for the attack or to have moved past shock and self-sorrow into genuine empathy and repentance.

It is also significant that Walpole’s horrific act (why wasn’t she charged with attempted murder?) is not her first assault. In 2021, news reports note, she was convicted of assault causing bodily harm in an attack on a (female) bouncer. Overall, she is a woman prone to violence and perhaps encouraged in it by the softness she has thus far encountered.

It goes without saying that if a man had hideously attacked a young woman, “provoked” by nothing more than cheeky jibes, absolutely no one would be interested in hearing about his PTSD, and the judge would not have had any second thoughts or regrets about putting him behind bars. His violence would have been widely reported—probably as a misogynistic hate crime (why was Walpole not charged with a hate crime? Stupid question)—and he would have been given significant prison time, especially if he had had a previous conviction for assault.

Feminist advocates would have seized on the story as evidence of the random terror men unleash on women to keep them in a state of fear. About Walpole’s violence, of course, feminists have nothing to say. No advocacy group is outraged at her lenient sentence or keen to express support for her victim. Some feminists have even used the case as a springboard to highlight sexual violence against women by sarcastically commenting that Jake Loader must have “asked” for the violence (get it?).

I hope that Jake Loader will sue Walpole in civil court over the financial and other hardship he and his family have suffered as a result of her brutality.

In an ideal world, the judge who openly admitted that she prefers not to put young women in prison should also be sanctioned, having impugned her own capacity for fairness.

* * *

For decades, feminist advocates have ignored or even encouraged female violence against men and boys by pretending that only men are violent and that a world with fewer men would be peaceful and just.

In a 1982 anthology of writings on women and non-violence (Reweaving the Web of Life), radical lesbian-feminist academic Sally Miller Gearhart recommended a gradual reduction in men’s numbers, through new reproductive technologies, to 10% of the human population (“The Future—If There Is One—Is Female,” p. 280), firm in her belief that with men reduced to a small minority, women would live together in harmony. Philosophy Professor Mary Daly, asked about Gearhart’s notion in interview, said it was “not a bad idea at all,” alleging that a “decontamination” of the earth would necessarily involve a “drastic reduction of the population of males.”

Recently, Professor of Law Mary Anne Franks has explicitly called for an increase in women’s (“justified”) violence against men in order to counteract an alleged gender imbalance. Law enforcement agencies, courts, civil authorities, and media should all support women’s quest for “optimal violence” (read the article if you can stomach it). Both the hypocritical double standards and the bloodlust are on vivid display.

These women are not twisted oddballs, reviled outcasts, penning their hate-filled screeds in dank basements on the margins of society. These are university professors and thought leaders, esteemed individuals holding prestigious positions that enable them to influence thousands. Mary Daly taught her unashamed female supremacism for over three decades at Boston College. Mary Anne Franks is a conference speaker and published academic. As feminist ideologues, they are not only allowed to argue for the literal worthlessness of male lives, but are paid to do so.

What do feminists want: recognition of women’s equal or superior moral capacity, or special exemptions when they break the law? Both, of course.

As Ernest Belfort Bax noted, “While what we have termed Political Feminism vehemently asserts its favorite dogma, the intellectual and moral equality of the sexes—that the woman is as good as the man if not better—Sentimental Feminism as vehemently seeks to exonerate every female criminal, and protests against any punishment being meted out to her approaching in severity that which would be awarded a man in a similar case” (The Fraud of Feminism, p. 46).

No one should be surprised at the result: violent women as self-absorbed and remorseless as Corbie Jean Walpole, who think the sickening gift of a four and a half year minimum sentence is too harsh and who fully expect, undoubtedly with an attorney’s blessing and perhaps some ego-stroking by family and friends, to have it reduced. Perhaps she imagines a future book deal and lecture tour about how valiantly she turned her life around following her (“tragic”) prank-gone-wrong. Perhaps she will discover a history of sexual and other abuse to explain her frenzied attack and secure her legal innocence.

It is to be hoped that Australian men will save themselves from her future temper tantrums by giving her a wide berth.

==

Victim set on fire, perpetrator most affected.

There's been a bit of an online movement for a while now where women are speaking about men, and women's rights and things like that - but it's in a sort of empassioned, obsessive way, every post is a variation on these themes. It is not based on facts, solely personal opinion. There is no attempt to create conversation or change, the apparent goal is simply to polarise. What they say is extremely weighted in one direction - only one gender can behave immorally or unkindly according to them. There is no sign of them showing hobbies, art, normal life - it's entirely a soapbox for an issue they seemed oblivious to for the first 90% of their lives, usually, and presently, spent surrounded by the men they are now criticising, for example they will say they have sons and a 20 year marriage before stepping on their soapbox. It always seemed a bit off to me, bearing in mind I've been online since 2004 and these women are 30-40+ and had nothing, and I mean nothing - to say on these topics until about 2 years ago, but the 'sl4ve advertisement' posted yesterday made things quite clear. (See link below)

I've been on the internet long enough to know these women pretending to be wise and enlightened now are the same ones who would viciously attack another woman for saying something incredibly mild ten years ago. What they are doing now is essentially their villain spiel; 'poor unfortunate souls' from the Little Mermaid, Scar's conversations with Simba.

It is so widespread and overt it's hard to grasp because realising the numbers of people doing this...there are large numbers of manipulative women now dedicated to pretending they are safe for their target victims. Just as the internet has always been utilised to help predators seek victims, and people used to use it appropriately cautiously - dragonlady255, no ages and faces and such - some women have now realised they can use their status as a 'femosphere' influencer to source victims for themselves.

These women are attempting to target, and present themselves as safe for vulnerable women e.g. divorcees with young children, teenage runaways etc, so they can utilise their labour and resources. Bearing in mind these women are also still presently surrounded by the men they now criticise, to me is resembles something akin to the role of a pimp/madam where they are the female face of a male enterprise.

They are, in effect, leading vulnerable women to themselves, and behind themselves are husbands, brothers, friends - but these femosphere women make sure not to visually or narratively represent them. You will rarely or never see a male face or presence on their account in order to pretend they are working independently.

The clearest display of the end goal for these 'enlightened' women was the veiled 'sl4ve' advertisement I screenshot. The goal of making your whole online image, an obsessive attempt to prove you're safe specifically to vulnerable women while not being one, nor having any experience with being one yourself, and the goal of their attempts to sympathise with the needy - is to lure the vulnerable and needy so they can take advantage of them.

Bearing in mind there is no sense of charity, no offer of help, all they share is polarised personal opinion intended to attract a specific audience. In fact, as we can see from the 'sl4ve advertisement' what they are offering their target audience sits somewhere between demanding months of unpaid 24/7 labour or a $7 per minute charge. They are attracting a certain audience while offering said audience nothing except a request for resources.

Normal kind people live their lives, working, creating, socialising. They don't create a persona solely for the purpose of baiting vulnerable women with fake 'sympathy'. They don't run 'women's circles' that cost thousands, they don't post hundreds of videos of their extremely one sided 'truth' about a specific gender. Enlightenment is not found through division and black and white thinking, nor rigid worldviews of restrictive, stereotypical male/female dynamics. It is similar to the manosphere, male influencers saying the most ridiculous things to easily influenced men, but more insidious because it comes in a better disguise. Just like the Disney villains they inadvertently emulate, it comes with a disguise of sympathy and empathy.

At least the manosphere people are exhibiting what more closely resembles an insincere political campaign, finding weak points and offering terrible and short-sighted 'solutions' to those issues. The female version of the manosphere identifies weak points, then attempts to crawl into their hearts and minds via a convincing imitation of sympathy. The goal of manosphere influencers is to get subscribers and podcast listeners, that is, career success for themselves. They don't care about targeting specific individuals. The female 'enlightened' faux feminists of 2026 are seeking specific female targets to extract energy and resources from in person.

See: the 'advertisement' And how many more 'advertisements' are there now as these women get more confident that their manipulation is working? The biggest target for them is women under 25 who won't know, as I do, that these 'opinions' emerged from thin air 2 years ago.

Recently, I saw a married woman with children post a campaign on Instagram to find a young blonde woman she met on a plane while traveling with her family. The young woman had helped her with a technical issue which made her flight smoother regarding seating arrangements. She didn't have a name, just blonde, 20s, Derry. The woman was sourced within 24 hours, her family and friends posting about her personal life in the comments and in messages, removing her privacy even though it was stated she herself had no social media. The woman's husband was not mentioned in any of this, but what are the optics of a man sending out an online search party for a young blonde he saw on a plane.

Because a marriage is a partnership, meaning in effect, the young blonde's privacy was sacrificed in order for both of them to 'find' her. The woman's husband now knows the young blonde's name, location, and ample personal details shared by family and friends. The implicit trust given to a strange woman that would never have been given to her husband had he posted the same request (it would rightfully be viewed as sleazy) but the end result - him getting her personal details - is the same.

Why are we trusting strange women on the internet, as if they materialised from thin air and their lives are not closely involving unseen others? Very few people exist as the independent character they represent themselves as online. People need to think of the full picture before implicitly trusting any female face. Because like in this instance, 'trust' can mean all the viewers of that viral post (which had 20k likes) know know the blonde woman's details. All the men behind the scenes now know the blonde woman's details.