Research shows that humor has been a powerful tool in feminism, helping to bring people together and inspiring collective action on pressing issues. Even feminist memes featuring Ryan Gosling have influenced men to become more supportive of gender equality.
At the same time, the internet can divide just as much as it connects. The world is still far from equal, and for every empowering platform, there is a misogynistic podcast promoting ‘traditional values’ and urging women to revert to their roles as housewives and caretakers.
The Survey Center on American Life found that more than half of American women consider themselves feminists, with Gen Z women leading the way at 61%. However, millennial men are the only male group where more than half identify as feminists. Boomer men, as expected, were the lowest at 38%, but surprisingly, Gen Z men were just above them at 43%.
Trends show that each younger generation, for the most part, strives to be more equal and inclusive, which makes the growing hostility of young Gen Z men towards women particularly troubling.
“These old-fashioned, regressive ideas are having a renaissance, through your masculinity influencers—your grifters, like Andrew Tate,” says Mike Nicholson, who holds workshops on ‘Progressive Masculinity’ for teenage boys. “As soon as I mention feminism, you can feel the shift in the room; they’re shuffling in their seats. I can see them look at me, like, ‘I used to like you.’”
Why, in a society that celebrated the #MeToo movement 7 years ago, does feminism seem to face so many setbacks? Around the world—from America with its recent overturn of Roe v. Wade, to Poland where the far-right party has been pushing for stricter abortion laws, and all the way to Japan and South Korea, where harsh criticism of gender equality persists—people are questioning the persistence of men endorsing these outdated ideas.
Experts argue that men are harboring a lot of resentment. Many are falling behind in education, facing economic issues, enduring a loneliness crisis, and struggling to express their emotions, leading to increased suicide risks in the past decade.
As a result, they find solace in the ‘manosphere,’ an online space described by researchers Eva Bujalka and Ben Rich as an overlapping collection of men’s support communities that have emerged in response to feminism, female empowerment, and the alienating forces of neoliberalism.
“The manosphere appeals to its audience because it speaks to the very real lives of young men under the above factors—romantic rejection, alienation, economic failure, loneliness, and a dim vision of the future,” explain Bujalka and Rich.
“The major problem lies in its diagnosis of the cause of male disenfranchisement, which fixates on the impacts of feminism. Here it contrasts the growing challenges faced by men with the increasing social, economic and political success experienced by women.”
Many young men turn to the manosphere not out of hatred for women but out of “a desire to dispel uncertainty about how the world around them works,” say Bujalka and Rich. However, the repeated narratives about the inferiority of women from popular internet personalities like Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, and Elliott Hulse are driving them to it.
The anti-women narrative is worsened by social media algorithms that turn harmful ideas into entertainment and group similar topics together. Researchers at University College London and the University of Kent studied young people involved in radical online content to identify which teenage boys might be vulnerable to radicalization. They created TikTok accounts for different archetypes, each with specific interests like masculinity or loneliness, and then watched over 1,000 videos suggested by TikTok’s ‘For You’ page over a week.
At first, the content matched the interests of each archetype. But after five days, the algorithm began showing four times more misogynistic content, including objectification and sexual harassment, increasing from 13% to 56% of the recommended videos.
Despite these challenges, women and their allies are actively fighting back against sexism. Marches and protests, especially global events like International Women’s Day, encourage millions to demand institutional changes for equality. Online, women are creatively combating misogyny with viral trends that mock podcasters who belittle them. In everyday life, people are practicing ‘microfeminism’—small acts like giving women credit for their ideas in meetings or prioritizing their voices in conversations.
