What is going on with people?

[Emptyandsad]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/05/gen-z-men-baby-boomers-wives-should-obey-husbands

Society seems to be going backwards! I always thought that, generation after generation, we were generally, slowly, becoming more equitable...

It's the 20/80 theory. 80 percent of the women fancy the top 20 percent of men. If a woman is forced to "settle" for a lower ranking guy then she would.cheat on him with a higher ranking guy given the chance.**
It's a very lonely, miserable position to put yourself in. Plus I think some of them are suffering from body dismorphia. We are used to talking about the impact on girls of unattainable beauty standards and a constant obsession with looks because girls have always born the brunt of it with modern advertising. But with social media etc I think boys and young men are also being hit with the same pressures and it's mentally difficult for a teenager to cope with. The same way it always has been for girls and young women

**Pushed by online dating app "stats" and people who think they understand science and statistics more than they do. In reality the online dating stats tell us that when asked to choose men based on very superficial criteria women will use very superficial criteria to select men. (They will do this in a different way to the way men select women which is interesting.) And arguably it's not in dating apps interests for the people using them to find the lives of their lives anyway.

Exposure to violent porn from the young age. Gen Z has been brought up by pornhub and social media and we wonder why they have issues.

Andrew fucking Tate 😡

I'd imagine most of the respondents who said that didn't have a wife who 'obeys' them. They probably didn't even have girlfriend ever if that's their attitude.

Boomers who were surveyed will have possibly gone through trying to control their partners/ being controlled and knowing it doesn't work long term.

But they won’t.

Ten years ago I used to think humankind got continually better, but now I think we're going backwards. Trump etc., Andrew Tate. Could be because I'm now very old, but I'm still in the workplace and try to keep current and open minded.

I would say that this is a bit simplistic. The right and those with religious/sexist ideas have always existed, and voices telling men they should take on more traditional roles have been around forever.

For me, they are gasoline being poured onto the fire, but they aren't the actual cause of the fire. They are just opportunists looking to make cash out of the growing number of men who are desperate for something to justify the failure and hopelessness of their existence. But they aren't the cause of that crisis, just awful people using the crisis as an opportunity for fame and fortune.

Take away the podcasts and those men would just find another outline to try and add some reason to their lives.

And when I see comments like yours, I always wonder why it’s only the Mother blamed for basic things that the children haven’t been taught.

It kind of validates the foundations of the mindset that men shouldn’t have to be responsible for anything with their own children. Even when people say they disagree with what these men say, they will still blame a woman for them saying it.

Tbf, I don't think dating apps help - and I hear that lots of meeting people is done through apps. And generally you make your first decision on whether someone is a attractive based on a photo (men and women) and not on whether they have a nice smile, a friendly attitude, a similar sense of humour, that little frisson you get when you make a connection

Porn is really unhelpful too - and not just violent porn. If horny young men learn to get their rocks off on porn then
a. They learn a really unrealistic set of role models for physicality and behaviour, which makes ordinary humans seem inadequate
b. They get their jollies (the satisfying of one of the main drivers of human existence) without having to negotiate human relationships, without having to learn what makes a woman like them, without knowing the benefits of being open and vulnerable
b. They learn to live a life of isolation. Humans are deeply social animals; our interactions with one another are vital to our mental health. On line life is damaging

They will learn over time I guess. The idea that any adult has to “obey” another member of their family is laughable….

The article doesn't talk about the change in samples of people being surveyed though. A random sample of the baby boomer cohort in the UK would look very different to a random sample of gen z.

Gen z is much more multicultural. Considering the rise in immigration over the past decades from countries that are generally more conservative/religious than we are, it is surely unsurprising that there is a corresponding rise in people believing in strict gender roles.

It’s undoubtedly porn and social media and AI is making it all worse.

The manosphere is frightening. However don’t underestimate the impact of the whole tradwife culture and the ‘spend a day with me making my house perfect and producing perfect meals for my family’ culture. Young women need to be very wary of this.

The root of this for me is pretty simple, and thankfully probably temporary.

Societal attitudes always lag a generation or two behind societal change.

Take women's liberation as an example. By the mid 20th century we hit the point where society and technology no longer contained material, physical or economic barriers to women participating equally. Contraception had come, Jobs were no longer overwhelmingly manual labour, households didn't take a full time worker to run, state education was standard and long etc. etc. Everything was in place for women to have an equal place. Yet did all men (and women) magically adjust their attitudes overnight to this new reality? No.. it took another half a century to get to where we are now (I would argue that a girl born today is no longer at a disadvantage to a boy born today).

The same adjustment is happening for men. Over the last few centuries slowly the following practical changes have happened:

1. They are no longer likely to be depended upon to support their family, and can no longer rely on this as their only role or main purpose
2. They are expected (rightly) to take on half the family responsibility
3. Online dating disadvantages un-appealing men much more than traditional dating
4. They achieve lower results in school, and end up less qualified than their female peers in every subject (math's and science grades were the last ones to cross over a little while ago)
5. Up until 35 - they on average earn less than their female peers
6. Jobs and education increasingly require sedentary/concentration/social skills that they struggle with
7. They can't guarantee their wife will be forced to stay with them forever
8. Many can't buy their own home or provide a house for their families
9. Modern Video games are so addictive and amazing they hit their psychological needs better than real life

etc. etc.

I could keep going...

Now, I would argue that most of those are a GOOD thing and NEEDED to happen for a fair society and fair families...

But, as with any social change, you are currently experiencing the backlash of those who fail to adapt. The men who adapted are happy and not-sexist or resentful, but the men who failed? who couldn't adapt to the new ways of dating so are incels? Or who couldn't adapt to what a family man now is, and failed in their marriages? Or who failed to adapt to the modern job market and failed in their careers etc.

They are resentful, angry and desperate to blame anyone except themselves. Women, the older generations, immigrants, the rich, the poor, the politicians etc.

And - as I mentioned above, there are dozens of podcasts and platforms who, (while not the cause of this problem) will gladly tell those men what they want to hear.. for a price. adding fuel to the fire.

Isn't it more likely that it's just a reflection of the number of young Muslims in the UK now?

It's just contentious slop, designed to get the reader in a flurry.

We could also suggest men ought to work harder and earn more, grow bigger dicks, to keep it shut unless they have something useful to say, provide us with several homes, countless holidays and only suggest breeding when women desire it. They would also be called upon to never go bald, age, sag or wrinkle, and if they don't put the work in, daily, to build ample muscle, they can get the fuck out of my bed.

Let's not blame men for falling for this radicalised, attention mining pap.

glad to see reform joining the chat, lol.

That's a good point. I'm not denying for a minute that the manosphere plays a huge role, but the increasing influence of other cultures probably isn't great for British women. And if British women point this out, they get accused of racism, white feminism, etc.

Mmmmmm.

It's a global survey and therefore mixes up countries with vastly different cultures. In France, for example, sex as a marital duty is only being removed from law this year.

Also, it compares baby boomers now with Gen Z now, when is entirely possible that the answers would be very different if they asked the Gen Zers when they were the age the Boomers are, and vice versa.

I'm not sure the survey actually tells us anything meaningful.

Young men are less likely to have daughters than older men. That might have something to do with it.

😂it's so ridiculous

I don't think obey is a good word. Respect men maybe 🤔

A life lived through the lens of social media and the ability to be a bit of a keyboard warrior, saying whatever you want, quite often for shock value, without fear of reprisal, means many people espouse cunty views they never have to own up to in real life. I think there's probably a bit of that going on too.

Then there's porn and the likes of Andrew fucking Tate and his ilk being given so much air time and column inches, building a massive following and putting themselves out there as some sort of 'authority' on how women and girls should be treated. And some women and girls buying into that narrative thanks to mainstream media and pop culture and a lack of strong, independent female influence within their own real-life sphere who think that, to attract/keep a man or boy they have to put up and shut up with whatever shite behaviour is metered out to them.

Also, stupidity - an inability to think beyond the narrow remit some young men choose to exist in, a refusal to believe a woman can be a partner and an equal because they're so weak-minded they believe the shit Tate et al spout.

The whole trans situation is absolutely part of it too - the reductive nature of gender stereotyping parading as some sort of ability to 'be your authentic self' means there's a lot of men delighted they can now parade their fetishistic fantasies in public and portray femaleness like a pornified caricature.

Learned behaviour from the relationships younger people see around them - familial, generational domestic abuse and violence metered out to women by men.

And, sadly, thousands of years of ingrained, cultural patriarchy means women are still viewed as chattel the world over. Our 'value' is still so bound up in the way we look as opposed to what we can do and achieve.

Yeah both my children are Gen Z (both young adults) one of each sex and both in relationships for a few years, thankfully my son is nothing like that and my daughters b/f isn't either

Given the research was global and where it did differentiate it showed in the UK gen z attitudes hadn't changed proportionally from.boomers then No it has literally nothing to do with Muslims but nice try shoe horning that in... did you even read the article?!

Read the article. Its global stats. The UK ones have barely changed ffs