A growing network of online communities known collectively as the “manosphere” is emerging as a serious threat to gender equality, as toxic digital spaces increasingly influence real-world attitudes, behaviours, and policies, the UN agency dedicated to ending gender discrimination has warned.
You make some good points, but i cant resist the thought experiment:
Is there even an incentive for solving women’s problems? Patriarchy can use women to portray the ultimate evil; influencers can use that portrayal to criticize women, engage in rage bait, get attention and secure brand deals.
Capitalism can appease men to promote consumerism wrapped in misogyny. Corporations can capitalize on women’s loneliness and low self-worth.
I have noticed that women with low self-worth find meaning in work, which ultimately profits corporations, the money they will earn will be expanded on consumerisms/additions which again can be profited by capitalism and corporate.
The rich can have as many resources as they want, so why solve it? Other than individuals (women) taking matters in their own hands and rescuing each other I don’t think there is enough incentive to help women as community or whole
I understand your thoughts experiment, and I assure you that I am not assuming that this thought comes from a place of malice. The second thing is that I would be using an LLM model to fix my grammar, so it might sound like an LLM response, and my word choice might not be as precise as native ones.
I want you to understand that my comment wasn’t in contrast to women but to society. Helping women isn’t coming from goodwill or a soft spot but as a means to an end. What end? Exercising soft power for powerful people¹, brownie points for PR², and more consumers for capitalism.³
Saving women and children is still shown as a positive attribute, not as some general attribute. The thing is, people doing this are well aware of that. Recently, when Trump blocked the USAIDs and some other beneficiaries that helped victim groups, a lot of people who championed feminism and the welfare of the weak straight up on camera started babbling about how the USA will lose its soft power in other countries. You can call me naive, but it baffled me. You don’t have to pretend that there is no soft power, but at least keep people’s welfare as the central piece of your argument or concerns.
Brownie points: Saving women or appearing to work for helping women is used for PR by political figures, corporations, and people who want to be at the center of attention. Though recently, this one isn’t going very well because, due to the internet and the large availability of information, it is very easy to check for credibility. However, there is still enough bias that can be exploited.
How can I explain this one? Think about it: you don’t want half of your customers locked away and banished when you can sell them consumerism as rebellion (the search for cigarettes as feminism).
If you paid attention, all these three situations are beneficial only as long as women are presented as victims or oppressed. Since there is no David without Goliath, we get men as the oppressor or ultimate evil.
No, these both can’t be promoted to the same extreme, as it will lead to people resorting to gender roles while expecting others not to, creating extremely competitive conditions for men, as the patriarchy will push the gender role of men asking out, taking financial responsibility, etc. If we assume misogyny is high too, they will soon check out of the dating scene, leading to a fall in the birth rate, which isn’t too great for capitalism. We have a whole country as an example of why capitalism’s incentives don’t lie with promoting misogyny; can you guess that country? :::Yes, it is South Korea.:::
For capitalism to thrive, it needs just enough modulated patriarchy and misogyny where men remain competitive with each other, and even those who give up remain consumers in the form of some consumerism addiction. If misogyny and patriarchy are promoted enough and spiral out of control, people will check out of society.
I can’t comment on this, as it was anecdotal from my side, and this can be anecdotal from your side.
You are completely wrong on this one. The divide is very important. If they (the rich and powerful) let go of this illusion of helping women or the underprivileged or making it all appear as meritocracy, it will turn into rich vs. poor, and this has never worked in favor of the rich. To maintain this illusion or facade that they are not the perpetrators of the current worsening of society, they need bogeymen, which, of course, we know who they are, and make them appear as saviors they need victim too, and we are back to square one.
You know what is ironic? This portrayal of bogeymen and its consequences isn’t backfiring on the rich and powerful but is becoming a tool to exchange power between different factions of the same wealthy individuals.