Are things worse now than they were 5 years ago?

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I'm in my 20s, and having spent the better part of the past year online, I'm starting to feel like things are way worse for women now than they were, say, 5 years ago.

Hop on to your local Facebook page for uni students, and there are tons of posts talking about how 'sex work is work' and that camming or doing OnlyFans can even be 'empowering' for women. Below those posts? Men talking about how lucky women are to be able to earn a 'fortune' from such endeavours. Should I feel lucky that I can take my clothes off for the internet?

These guys swear up and down that they are progressives and that they respect the hustle but when they're rating all these women and giving them descriptive, derogatory nicknames and compiling them into lists based on what sex acts they perform on camera, I just can't see the respect.

Hop on to one of the biggest forums on the internet and the whole place is filled with men my age saying it's a women's world. You'll see posts claiming how good women have it by being able to monetise their bodies via camming, OnlyFans, sugar daddies etc, how women can get promoted just by sleeping their way up, how things like anal/choking/spitting are 'baseline' now and that not liking porn is a sign of insecurity.

It's not just a small group, but thousands and thousands of posts everyday regurgitating variants of that. You can't tell someone's gender on that forum, of course, but a lot of self-proclaimed women seem to vehemently agree with all those points too.

Has it always been like this? When I was graduating from sixth form the predominant message was that women are not men's playthings, but their equals. What happened to that?

Am I the only one, of my generation at least, who sees the power imbalance that inadvertently follows the normalisation of all that? Logically I know I'm not but it doesn't always feel like it. It's certainly not something I can mention to some of my friends as I can already imagine the names I'd be subjected to behind my back if they knew I held such views.

Maybe as the percentage of men suffering erectile disfunction continued to increase, something may be done.

It doesn’t matter that it already affects women, once men find that they are unable to achieve orgasm, it will become important to remedy the situation.

As with all things, until it affects a large proportion of men negatively it will be dismissed.

@BlackWaveComing

It's worse. Very regressive. Women and girls on a backward slide under a thin veneer of 'progress'.

Agree. I have teenage daughters. The eldest says “I wish it was the late seventies or early eighties Mum, when you were a teenager” and I can’t believe it but I agree.

@WoolOfBat

I think it is a problem with masculinity these days. I believe that many boys and men are lost. This is what Jordan Petersen taps into. There seem to be a big push for men to be “understanding”, “woke”, “equal” etc and some may feel the need to pretend.

There is also the social media which has normalised behaviours that were unacceptable years ago. A bunch of kinky weirdos have found each other and believe that they are normal (as opposed to disgusting) and call out anyone who “kink shames” them.

Somewhere in this insecure boys and men feel that they have no natural place, feel that they need to be quiet about a lot of things and get even angrier. Then they watch “advanced” porn which is purported to be so normal and think it is great. They can take their anger issues out on women in an accepted way.

I agree with so much of this. I do think some men want to push back against how much their role in society has changed. But it's not socially acceptable to do that, so they subvert women in different ways, and they see porn as a way to feel that domination.

I can see why some young men look around at society and how women's rights are constantly talked about in the media etc. and think they are hard done by, and want to reassert some power.

I find it strange how they think that selling yourself online is some power game, and b!tch and moan that women can make money from our bodies, without realising or acknowledging how degrading it is, and the psychological toll it can take.
The women who usually participate in this are often economically and socially disadvantaged, and have very little other options.

Also throttling/rough sex which is now now thankfully a crime (ffs). When did assault and death become ‘empowering’? Women like being battered and raped for fun? I must’ve missed that memo.

I was just saying the other day, I really think the 90’s were the best time to be a teenager. Looking back at my teen years I could cry for how awful it must be to be a teenager now, my DD14 has less freedom and more harassment than I ever had.

www.msnbc.com/opinion/men-are-becoming-more-violent-against-women-around-world-google-n1265072?fbclid=IwAR0Q7PhmBzUtqr18NRsKxb1Ro1VIZK68KjRB_fFewMIiTNmks5q5_4AiWsE

Depressing article. CW, femicide, violence. etc.

I think girls know it and it is just their gender conditioning holding them back from outright rage.

@TurquoiseBaubles

I'm beginning to think we need a dose of good old-fashioned shame. Some behaviour is just not acceptable and we should be able to call it that. Back in the 70s and 80s we were encouraging girls not to be ashamed - of their bodies, their opinions, their pregnancies. Moving away from church rule, and (we thought) from the patriarchy, girls and women could stand up and shout "this is me, and I matter".

But like many things the pendulum seems to have swung. We are now not allowed to criticise any behaviour. Kink-shaming is now prudish, suggesting that sex acts are kept behind closed doors is laughed at, porn is normalised and glamorised. SWIW means that women and girls who take part cannot be criticised, but also that the men using those women are also above reproach.

Women are called Karen for trying to uphold safeguarding. Girls are sneered at for listening to advice from older women who have, of course, been there, seen it, and been negatively affected by it, and want to show younger women that there is (or should be) another way.

It this "anything goes" society women and girls are, as they were in the past, at the bottom of the pile. Few of the new behaviours negatively affect men.

I read a really interesting article last year about the end of guilt.

It was talking about the fact that with the decline of religion, and the rise of psychoanalysis, we were supposed to be able to get ver feeling guilty, we would just get over things and go on to live in a happy integrated way. But what actually happened is that people still feel guilty, not only about personal things we do wrong but also about things like colonialism or privilege or things we can't really control, that this is being pushed as necessary and good, and there is not actually a way to expunge it.

So as a society we've actually got a "guilty to the nth generation" thing going, at a higher level than ever.

I think you could maybe say something similar about shame, in the sense that the attempt to get rid of it to create more healthy people hasn't really worked particularly well. We are now supposed to feel shame about all these collective sins, but not about all kinds of direct things we might do or think.

And then we've discovered that really, shame about certain things might be important to a functioning society.

It struck me in relation to something else the other day that we seem to be switching from a morality that was very inwardly focused, though scaffolded by external social norms, to one that is mainly externalised but driven by rather vague emotions. I'm not sure this is the improvement people wanted.

@highame

Sweeping generalisations LemonRoses and I'd love to know who these 'red neck' types are? We have working people in the UK

Was Trump’s government not right wing? Or Johnsons? Has Patel’s and Farage’s language of hate not bred intolerance? The BBC suggests the doubling of hate crime in five years is Brexit related. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-48692863

Red necks might well be employed, as they are in the USA. I refer to the crass and limited, politically reactionary people who voted for the emperors new clothes. Nothing to do with whether they work or not and everything to do with their ill thought through flag waving, ‘real men’ mentality.

Which is the sweeping generalisation? Division and propaganda breed hate and a tolerance of the unacceptable. You only have to look at Johnson to see there are a lot of dullards who think his immorality is just him being a bit of a jack the lad, getting things done regardless of human cost and level of corruption. That creates a culture where many people feel they can behave as they wish.

It isn't the right wing types really pushing porn and the commodification of sex, though, is it?

Yes, I think they are 😢😢

Yes, things are definitely worse for girls and women and I despair that people don't realise this.

Agree they're worse.
Girls and young women are telling everyone about the appalling levels of sexual abuse and harassment they're subject to: www.everyonesinvited.uk/

Unfortunately adults in schools are far too busy shoehorning males into girls' changing rooms, toilets and dormitories at the behest of Stonewall et al and completely failing to listen to girls and take effective action to stop the abuse.

I was choked when I was very young but I had no illusions that this was not with my consent or an activity that I would have ever thought of seeking. This was in the early seventies.

And yet people think the massive rise in girls saying they are boys, getting medication that will permanently change them and damage their fertility, having mastectomies, is them “being their true selves” .

@SmokedDuck

It isn't the right wing types really pushing porn and the commodification of sex, though, is it?

Perhaps not, not my area of expertise, but far right men target abuse at women politicians. Sends a strong message to their followers, doesn’t it?

Women have traded their feminism progress for cash.

In the UK it is the right wing Conservative party that has given us two prime ministers. Prime Ministers not voted for by the voting public, but by the members of the Conservative party.

It is not the Conservative party who has the problem in the UK, every other political party has gone woke.

Sorry should say two female prime ministers

I have found abusive language is a thing for assholes across the political spectrum.

I think also that porn watching is likely across the political spectrum, and respect for women generally. There is certainly a kind of vaguely right wing secular male who tends to get into MRA stuff and bad evolutionary psychology.

But at the political level it is these left wing governments and activists who are pushing for sex work to be made legal, who say having issues with porn is prudish, and all the sex positive stuff. And the activists behind a lot of it can be quite abusive and misogynistic themselves.

@Fucket

In the UK it is the right wing Conservative party that has given us two prime ministers. Prime Ministers not voted for by the voting public, but by the members of the Conservative party.

It is not the Conservative party who has the problem in the UK, every other political party has gone woke.

And those same Tory’s who plotted against May, They weren’t exactly respectful to Thatcher.

Better woke (whatever that means), than corrupt, racist, sexist, poverty causing, sleazy, unkind and entirely dishonest, no?

@LemonRoses the Conservatives have always been ruthless with leaders who've lost their shine. The fact remains that Labour politicians have a long history of standing up for rather iffy causes (PIE for example). No surprise that they are now supporting decriminalisation of prostitution despite the human trafficking involved. If they really wanted to help victims they'd support the bill to criminalise the customers of this underworld.

I’m no defender of the Conservative party I only voted for them because of the anti-Semite magic grandpa in charge of the opposition. But facts be facts, I could be wrong but has there even been a female Labour leader?

If Labour could sort itself out I’d happily vote
For them again, especially as I live in a swing constituency.

I used to be a member of the libdems until Cleggy stood with Cameron in the spring sunshine, looking like they’d fallen in love with each other and Clegg abandoned all his morals for a chance to sip at the cup of power.

Fucket no leader, it’s true but much more balanced cabinets and labour appointed first woman to the cabinet and first black woman MP.

In line with the last five years part of the question, Theresa May was set up by a bunch of hooting male yobs. Cameron et ilk regularly made/make seriously misogynist and derogatory comments, in the house, to women.

Johnson’s treatment of women is just appalling. Taken the way women are treated back about fifty years.

@toffeebutterpopcorn

Of it was such a great thing the boys would be pushing the girls out of the way to do it. But they don’t. They just ‘benefit’ from it don’t they?

And all the ‘I bought a flat after 2 months on flashyertits.com’ stories. Absolute crap!

Just had a conversation with an 'acquaintance' of mine (we're all in this alumni WhatsApp group for our course) and from his point of view, to quote him, 'If you think about this logically, most men would be happy and in fact, find it a turn on to send nudes to a bunch of women. If we can make a fortune off of it it's a no brainer.'

Of course, if you mention that they can make money in the gay market, it's suddenly a big no-no because they are not gay.