Antifeminist backlash

[Rosa Partizan]

Have you guys noticed that some conservative attitude has been strengthening during the last 10 years or so? It appears to me that it's grown stronger since more people are gaining awareness for feminist issues, like, patriarchy's striking back. When I was a kid, toys were pretty gender-neutral, LEGO ads for boys and girls looked the same, now girl's LEGO is pinkish and barbie-ish and stuff and boys get the whole rocket science-thing, y'know. The same goes for clothing. Here in Germany, I noticed that people open up more for conservative ideas. More young people are getting married (which is not the very worst problem, of course, but it shows something), but what really stroke me is that many young people were marching at a pro life-demo in Berlin last weekend or so, and that a pro choice-post on FB by the Green Party was massively criticized, with almost everyone showing reactionary pro life-attitudes. A close friend of mine was having an abortion some weeks ago, and she's in a rather progressive, leftist surrounding, so it baffled me when she thanked me under tears and told me I was the ONLY one that supported her getting an abortion, while everyone else was like, don't do it, this should be only a solution when your life is at stake. And she's 25 and her friends aren't much older...c'mon wtf? What else have you noticed about this backlash?

[Bala Perdida]

Yeah, I've seen things like this. Maybe not exactly the same, but I feel like anti-feminism is a growing trend. It's annoying as fuck. I used to watch a guy online about who made atheist rants, but now he's intolerable since he started going on an anti-feminist offensive with fan support. Also the whole "how come there isn't men shelters?" argument is getting increasingly common. I mean it's a decent point to make sometimes, but it's annoying since I only hear it used to discredit feminism and women struggles. The people who say that don't even try to help any abused men, or give them advice on seeking help.
The pro-life thing, well in my culture, even here in the USA, abortion is almost never thought of. If it's even mentioned as an alternative, even at the earliest point of pregnancy, you're shouted at with drunk christian moralism about the non-existing child's life. If you're a pregnant women, they consider you at fault for getting pregnant. I'm pretty young, so all my friends I've seen get pregnant have gone through with it to my knowledge. There may be some that got an abortion who never mention the incident, or have become socially scorned to the point of not being mentioned anymore. All I know is the pro-life scene can be considered visible here in northern California. The other night I was out on the street and noticed what used to be a local planned parenthood, closed down and turned into a daycare. Also a local church has a pro-life banner near a freeway entrance that I constantly pass. The amount of pro-life propaganda and abortion misinformation is really concerning (if not scaring) me.

[Tim Cornelis]

^Sure... But is it increasing, a real trend?
I don't know.

[Red Son]

I have noticed this too and it fuels my pessimism about progressive attitudes to gender, sexuality etc ever becoming the norm - I don't know how the reactionary and bigoted beliefs get killed off forever (progress has definately been made in the last few decades but it is slow going).
See a lot of kids TV ads with all the tedious 'girls like babies, make-up, boys and pink, yay!' and 'boys like cars, guns, bang, whoosh, whoa' stuff. I'm sad now :(

[#FF0000]

I think a big part of this, in America at least, the destruction of what used to be known as "men's work" (talking about factories and the like -- the kind of thing that involved unions and 401Ks and all the things that secured the white-picket-fence middle class existence). These jobs either don't exist as they used to or aren't viable options, leading a lot of men to take up jobs in industries that were either once considered "women's work" or just employ a lot of women. These kinds of jobs and the security they provided were a big part of American masculinity and so losing these things is a p. big deal to a lot of men -- especially slightly older men.

plus, conservatism is attractive during crises, and what we're dealing with now is a p. big one.

[consuming negativity]

I think I agree with you, but I just think this is part of a larger trend of conservatism rather than something specific to women. There have always been steps forward and backward, socially speaking, and it would shock many people to learn that there were large empires in antiquity which had, among other things, abolished slavery, had extensive welfare programs, and even enacted animal welfare laws. To explain it away as merely "reaction against feminism" would be to ignore the global shift toward social conservatism and neoliberalism in the last several decades that encompasses a lot more than "just" women's issues. Plus, I'm not even really sure that we could consider this a reaction. Sure, it makes sense logically-speaking, and I'm not saying I think you're wrong, but there are a lot of possibilities that could explain things completely or partially in combination with any number of others. Can any of them be tested, proved, or disproved? I dunno.