Daniel Cox is a data scientist who runs the Survey Center on American Life. He observes that some young liberal American women display measurable evidence of mental distress and even despair. He opines:
One recent event was especially significant for young liberal women: #MeToo. Even as public interest in the #MeToo movement recedes, its influence remains considerable. In recent interviews with young women, we found that the #MeToo movement was incredibly salient—for many, it was a transformative experience that informed their views on relationships, sexism, and gender equality.
... As the #MeToo movement gained traction, many women began to reevaluate their understandings of the way American society treats them. Gallup polls reveal plummeting levels of satisfaction with the treatment of women in the last few years. In 2016, 61 percent of women said they were satisfied with the way women were treated in the US. The next time Gallup asked this question, in 2018, feelings of satisfaction had fallen dramatically. Today, only 44 percent of women report being very or somewhat satisfied with the treatment of women in American society.Sounds plausible to me. Women are having a moment of being more appropriately aware that our aspirations are impeded by the sexist and misogynist elements in our society -- like, say, Republican judges and Donald Trump. And, too often, though by no means always, men in women's peer groups can be oblivious and unsupportive.
There's a universal antidote to depression that arises from seeing the world as it is. That's to struggle to make things better, in this case, a revived 21st century feminism. Will current distress generate a new feminist wave? It might. It seems as if every few years we experience a new such eruption -- and will continue to do so as long as women realize we won't have the equality we expect and deserve without demanding it,.
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I was going to give Mr. Cox's distressed musings a pass, until I ran across this: The Real Reason South Koreans Aren’t Having Babies. Wow! The conflict between the sexes could be so much worse.
On the days she’s feeling most generous toward men—say, when she sees a handsome man on the street—Helena Lee can sometimes put her distaste aside and appreciate them as “eye candy.” That’s as far as she goes: “I do not want to know what is inside of his brain.” Most of the time, she wants nothing at all to do with men.
“I try to have faith in guys and not to be like, ‘Kill all men,’” she says. “But I’m sorry, I am a little bit on that side—that is, on the extreme side.”The ghost of Valerie Solanas lives in South Korea?
[Helena] Lee is part of a boycott movement in South Korea—women who are actively choosing single life. Their movement—possibly tens of thousands strong, though it’s impossible to say for sure—is called “4B,” or “The 4 No’s.” Adherents say no to dating, no to sex with men, no to marriage, and no to childbirth. (“B” refers to the Korean prefix bi-, which means “no”.)
They are the extreme edge of a broader trend away from marriage. By one estimate, more than a third of Korean men and a quarter of Korean women who are now in their mid-to-late 30s will never marry. ...
... “I think the most fundamental issue at hand is that a lot of girls realize that they don’t really have to do this anymore,” Lee told me. “They can just opt out.”That's some angry women.
According to this account, young Korean women find dating unsatisfactory and sometimes physically dangerous. Demographers are projecting that the Korean population is shrinking because many young women simply are not choosing to couple and have children -- and don't like the available male partners.
In the U.S., the similar trend is partially mitigated by widespread acceptance of female single parenthood, though that's a hard road for the mother. And new immigrants generally have been more likely to want and bear large families. If it weren't for immigration, we'd be on a demographic trajectory more like Korea's.
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