In the CIS survey, released this week, on perceptions regarding equality and gender stereotypes, there was a lot of data, but almost all the media highlighted the same one, because it was impossible to ignore: 44% of men believe that Feminism has gone too far and now they are the ones discriminated against. 32% of women think the same, according to the Center for Sociological Research.
The digestion of these overwhelming results is leading to several debates, the first of which is about the survey itself. Doubts arise about whether it was well planned or if it served those results too much on a plate.
The members of Proyecto Una, a group that analyzes how far-right speeches spread on the Internet and is now preparing a book titled The Virality of Evil (Descontrol Editorial), believe that this is the case. “No survey is done from neutrality, but in this case it seems quite clear that they wanted to obtain a response. In the survey itself there are other questions that demonstrate that the majority of society has incorporated feminist values. There are very positive responses when it comes to considering whether gender equality creates a more just society, or whether men should support women and take part when they see sexist behavior. But, for whatever reason, it has been decided not to focus on the results.”
Political scientist Berta Barbet, from the Politikon collective, does not see much political intention in the question and points out that it is common in surveys to offer this type of statements and ask the respondent to say whether they agree or not, but she does believe that this controversial question “has a point of non-neutral affirmation.”
To begin with, it was a double question: feminism has gone too far and now it is men who are discriminated against. “The two things can be confused in the answer; There has been a lot of analysis focusing on the second question and my intuition is that the results start more from the first.” Those who are dedicated to surveys know that it is common for those questioned to say more than yes, that they agree with something, than that they don't, as a matter of courtesy, and well-designed and well-crafted surveys find a way to filter those results so that are more reliable.
Another thing that happens in a sample of this type is evident: the more vehement the extremes are, the more altered the average is. “Yes, there is that 44% of men, we point out that the vast majority of them come from conservative or ultra-conservative positions. If you read the results calmly, you realize the enormous bias it presents at the level of class and ideology. When you are asked to rate feminist or LGTBIQ groups from 0 to 10, the animosity is greatly exacerbated,” Project Una warns.
Although the bulk of the men surveyed feel they feel quite or a lot of sympathy for these associations (that is, they score between 7 and 10), this is neutralized by the 15% of men surveyed who give a round 0 to the feminist groups. “It is important to note that there have been political parties and groups that have made this unrest and this visceral reaction their propaganda engine,” the group points out.
In the study it is clear that those who make up the 44% of men who are refractory to feminism are the voters of the right. Only 13% of men who are between 1 and 3 on the ideological scale (1 being “very left-wing”) believe that feminism has gone too far, compared to 74.4% of right-wing men.
Political scientist Barbet senses that a reciprocated romance is taking place between machismo and the right-wing and far-right parties. “The right-wing parties are benefiting from making an anti-feminist discourse, but voters are also assuming positions that are more comfortable for them. Before the emergence of Vox, support for feminism was higher in all polls. Now that speech that was previously viewed with bad eyes is being normalized, and the right-wing parties are courting that voter who thinks that they can finally say that freely.”
The day-to-day life of the Spanish political struggle, for example, has normalized the fact that Vox councilors in city councils are absent when there is a minute of silence for a victim of gender violence. And the party, and also a wing of the PP more identified with the style of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, have seen in antifeminism a way of articulating a discourse that is profitable for them, as experts such as Laura Arranz, from the Complutense University of Madrid, have highlighted. , in a study published in the magazine Más Poder Local, or the jurist María Eugenia Palop in the essay The extreme right and antifeminism in Europe: key ideas. Palop points out that the other concepts that make up the extreme right ideology are derived from antifeminism as a core idea, in aspects such as migration or the family.
Those men who express their rejection of the current drift of society primarily through what they consider gender policies that, according to their vision, have ended everything that was good would respond to what the American sociologist Michael Kimmel, considered the father of studies on masculinities, baptized him as “the aggrieved man.” In his book Angry (White) Men (Captain Swing), which is based on Trump's victory, greatly facilitated by the votes of those men, he draws the profile of that figure, who is defined politically by grievance, by feeling that The state only legislates in favor of some minorities, including women.
The other devastating fact from the CIS survey is that 51% of young men, between 16 and 24 years old, strongly or somewhat agree with this statement, that feminism has gone too far and now they are the ones discriminated against. There are more aggrieved men there than among Pedro Sánchez's friends - the President of the Government said at the time that his friends "in their 40s and 50s" had come to feel bad about some policies of the former Ministry of Equality , led by Unidas Podemos–.
Although it is true that 94% of young people agree with the statement "equality between men and women contributes to making a more just society" and that the survey shows egalitarian values on issues such as the distribution of domestic work, sexual violence and the wage barrier, it is also undeniable that there are reasons to be alarmed by an increase in anti-feminism among young people.
The barometer of the Reina Sofía Center of Fad Juventud has been pointing out the same thing for years, that, for example, denial of gender violence is growing. Last year, 23% of young men between 16 and 29 years old answered that “gender violence does not exist, it is an ideological invention.” And the progress of the next barometer, according to one of its researchers, Daniel Calderón, “shows an advance of machismo among young people.”
The sociologist points out that all the meters confirm what any secondary school teacher can already observe in his classroom, a polarization and a gender division. “We see a greater number of young girls who consider themselves increasingly feminist, and in boys a greater rejection, a greater confrontation with these labels, which is exaggerated in adolescents. The idea is that younger people feel attacked," he says.
These same kids find in the so-called Manosphere, the network of streamers, twitchers and YouTubers who encourage anti-feminist ideas, an inexhaustible provider of content that confirms their bias. “The so-called ‘Manosphere’ has a key role,” Calderón points out, “in recent years there has been a great explosion of feminism in society and that has generated the emergence of these reactive discourses. “They see in that discourse a community of support in the face of the insecurities posed by the questioning of their masculine identity.”
That idea, that of the reaction to progress, is the one that the feminist Susan Faludi codified in her classic essay Reaction, published in 1991, and in which she explained how in the eighties everything that denied what was achieved by the second wave of feminism in the seventies.
Has the peak of the reaction been reached? Probably not. “The situation is going to get worse – predicts Daniel Calderón – because it is combined with other youth concerns, such as developing a life project or becoming emancipated; “The vision is establishing itself among these reactionary groups that the government only works for minorities.” The ABCs of the Wronged Man.
