The Rise of Gender Antagonism

The relationship between a man and a woman is one of the most basic unit of all human relationships and a determining factor of how healthy and stable a society is. It is also a necessary biological function for reproduction and the continuation of our species that brings happiness and meaning in life for all of us. Yet, there is currently an increasing divide between the sexes that started in the West and is rapidly spreading out to the rest of the world. What we are witnessing is the ever increasing antagonism between men and women of our modern world caused by the changing currents of our social conditions.

What is Gender Antagonism?

Gender antagonism is the friction and mistrust that arises between the sexes in spite of their mutual biological need for one another. It happens when the relationship between the two break down from being co-operative and mutually beneficial to being competitive with both sexes looking to gain the most out of the other while giving up as little as possible. Gender antagonism leads to dysfunctional relationships as both sexes still desire one another, but must constantly play a competitive game of power against one another. This creates a precarious situation where relationships are not entirely hostile and impossible, yet not entirely agreeable and trustful either. At a societal level, the rise of feminism marks the rift between men and women as traditional gender roles are challenged with new sets of standards being forcibly pushed and enforced upon men. With the feminist ideology, men and masculine identity are seen as both opponents and obstacles to be challenged and defeated.

We can see the symptoms of gender antagonism everywhere: Pandemic rates of divorce and broken marriages that lead many children to grow up without fathers; unhappiness and low levels of life satisfaction among married couples; feminists viciously shaming boys; a general imbalance of power in relationships that are driving men to reject relationships altogether, causing an entire nation to decline in population; and the ongoing madness of culture wars arising from clashing values and expectations in regards to gender identity, roles, and representations, and so on. These all signal the cultural decay of a society that is diseased and failing.

How did we as a civilization come to this point?

We must first understand the biological drives and social conditions that lead men and women to pursue a stable relationship which is the foundation for a family.

Biological Drives

On the most base level, both men and women need love, sex, and intimacy from one another as well as having the shared desire to produce and raise children of their own. This is no surprise as reproduction is the ultimate biological function of both sexes. These needs are the basic biological drives that attract the sexes towards one another.

Social Conditions

Biological drives alone are not enough of an impetus to create secure relationships for families to start. In fact, the observance of external material conditions is part of the biological drive to select the best mate under the best conditions. In our society, three main social conditions favour secure relationships in the form of marriage:

1. Mutual dependency as a result of differing but compatible gender roles. Historically, men have depended on women primarily to bear their children while women depended on men primarily to provide and protect both her and her children. These differing but compatible needs brought men and women together.

2. Balance of power in relationships where men and women have more or less equal level of attraction for one another. Without this balance of power, one without power will become despondent and needy, thus becoming vulnerable to exploitation by the one with power.

3. Family values that promote fidelity and commitment in both men and women towards building a family. Without these values, men and women would become self-centered and be driven solely by fickle emotions and financial benefits.

Our biological drives are more or less intact, so the main cause of gender antagonism is due to the gross transformation of the three social conditions that favour secure relationships. This is the outcome of the abolition of traditional sex roles.

Until very recently, men and women have always lived with largely separate gender roles that allowed one to be compatible with the other. Men were generally the providers and protectors while women were mothers and nurturers. Of course, these roles do have some overlap where men also take on the nurturing role to take care of the children and with women sometimes taking on the provider role by acquiring resources, but each of their separate roles have remained primarily intact for the most part. Men and women both desired and needed one another to have children and start a family, and their differing gender roles made them compatible with one another to form a union. This has always been the norm until the modern advent of “gender equality.”

With gender equality, the social roles have become blended together with women entering the workforce to become providers themselves—a role that was previously occupied exclusively by men. For the first time in human history, men and women were competing at the same level. Competition among men for power, resource, and sex have always existed, but this is the first time where two different sexes have been placed together for competition within the same realm. (This, of course, is exacerbated by the fact that the totality of human existence is now held within the sphere of economy and that there is little outside of it that differentiates the sexes). There are three consequences with this cataclysmic change that correspond to the disruption of the three social conditions mentioned above:

First, with the lack of difference between men and women, and the muddling of their social roles, the two sexes are becoming increasingly incompatible and even belligerent against one another. It may seem ironic that increased gender equality would lead to incompatibility and friction between the sexes, but everything becomes clear after understanding that compatibility comes with differing but co-operative roles and that friction results from competition among same or similar identities. To illustrate, think of how the tango dance works. Just as tango can only be danced when a man leads and woman follows, a relationship can only flourish when a man and a woman respects one another’s separate roles and co-operates to live in harmony. But if the woman, instead of following, decides to lead in tango, the partnership will become competitive and confused, making it extremely difficult for any dance to happen. The same happens in relationships where men and women become competitive with the lack of direction from men and a lack of compliance in women. To use another example, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s are two giant corporations that co-operate to form a major alliance for their mutual benefit. McDonald’s creates fast food restaurants to serve their food while Coca-Cola provides the drinks so that McDonald’s doesn’t have to invent and produce their own. Their alliance works because their businesses are different, but compatible. In contrast, Coca-Cola and Pepsi produce the same products, so they’re not compatible and are rivals instead. The same is true for the relationship between the sexes. With the increasing similarity between not only the social roles of men and women, but also their personalities and behaviours as well, there will be less co-operation and more competition.

Second, women’s usurpation of men’s roles has led to a massive imbalance of power in relationships. This is due to the fact that men have a much greater psychological need for love and sex than women. Women, on the other hand, have a much less need for men as they are now able to provide for themselves in addition to living in the safest and most privileged conditions ever known in history. Without the need for men’s ability to provide and protect, men’s collective value becomes severely diminished. To use the Coca-Cola and McDonald’s comparison again, women entering the workforce to economically provide for themselves is akin to McDonald’s inventing and producing their own drinks and not needing Coca-Cola any more. The result is apparent in our modern society where young women are overvalued by desperate men who continuously feed their egos with attention and validation. These women in turn become narcissistic and feel entitled to even higher quality men, which then worsens the imbalance of power even further. This imbalance of power is what leaves many young men feeling frustrated and disenfranchised. As a result, many of these men choose to disengage from relationships completely or lash out in anger with little to lose, sometimes even resorting to violence.

Third, societies of all cultures have understood the importance of family values. The matrimonial union between a man and a woman was considered sacred and is still very highly valued in all traditional cultures. It was understood that even with all the existing benefits of relationships, starting and maintaining a family had to be enforced by values to ensure the sanctity of these unions. As it stands now, traditional values are the last line of defence against the total dissolution of nuclear families, and they are being challenged time and time again by the feminist movement to maximize women’s power over men. In Western societies, we can already see that traditional values have been all but decimated. Without the economic incentive to marry early, marriage is often delayed for as long as possible. The result is the rise of hookup culture where genuine and committed relationships are difficult to form. (Not to mention all the developmental disorders associated with having children at a later age.) Without basic values and a sense of decency, relationships become shallow and meaningless.

The Result

The result of gender antagonism can only be generalized within the overall population as differences among individuals and individual relationships vary widely. Therefore, we will only discuss select social currents and trends that are observed today.

Destruction of Nuclear Families

The lack of compatibility between men and women combined with divorce laws biased against men are destroying marriages and leaving to children grow up without fathers. With the absence of fathers, these children are more likely to grow up with number of psychological and behavioural problems. Being aware of the high divorce rates and the alimony and childhood support they’ll have to pay for, increasing number of men are choosing to opt out of marriage. It’s also worth noting that even marriages that don’t end in divorce are often shaky with one or both partners feeling unhappy and dissatisfied.

Parasitic Courting Behaviours

With the dissolution of traditional relationships, what we have is the rise of narcissistic and predatory men and women who try to exploit the other as much as possible through deception and manipulation. Without mutual dependency and lack of traditional values, these men and women have little incentive to get involved in a relationship based on trust and devotion; it is seen as a burden now. Both sexes today are self-centered and see themselves as an individual unit. Relationships are now thought about in terms of what a person can gain for himself or herself. Mating is now a competitive, zero-sum game. On the male side, we have the pick-up artists and ‘players’ who use every trick and manipulation technique they can employ just to have sex with women; while on the female side, we have predatory and entitled women who search for men they can financially exploit while actively collecting other men to be used as utilities for their own benefit.

Decreased Happiness and Withdrawal

Gender antagonism and its resulting conditions affect both sexes negatively with decreased level of happiness and withdrawal. In spite of all the so-called “progress” and advancement of modern women that have been prematurely celebrated, both subjective and relative happiness in women are declining. Women today also suffer more mental health problems than men as they must juggle with many different social roles. Many men too, with their inability to come in terms with the prevailing changes of gender relationships, are increasingly withdrawing from society and disengaging from relationships altogether as well as having difficulties coping with life.

Hostility and Violence

Finally, when gender antagonism boils to a critical level, it leads to overt hostility and aggression. Women tend to start by being dismissive of men, feminists among them then move on to belittle and attack men by pathologizing all expressions of masculinity. Men, on the other hand, are responding to these attacks with a backlash of their own through Men’s Rights movement and by engaging in online communities such as TheRedPill and MGTOW to counter what they see as the feminist threat marginalizing men. The internet is rife with conflicts between men and women who try to impose their own gender expectations on the other or protect themselves from such efforts. All the while, these groups try their best to paint themselves as victims to garner sympathy and support from the bystanders of the conflict.

Despite the level of hostility, much of these conflicts between the sexes among the Western countries are usually limited within the confines of the internet, but it does occasionally spillover in the form of actual physical violence. Some of the more extreme examples of these violence have been observed with the advent of serial sex crimes in the late 60’s and 70’s (just as gender equality was taking place) and the more recent mass murders fueled by chronic feelings of alienation and hopelessness. However, increased sexual violence based on gender antagonism are also observed in countries that are witnessing rapid economic development and subsequent shifts in gender roles. These countries include Mexico (and the rest of Latin America), South Africa, and India. Whatever efforts that have been made to curtail the violence has not been effective as they do not address the actual cause of the problem. Not just that, but their efforts only end up marginalizing men even further and put even more pressure on to shame masculinity, which either makes men even more withdrawn and disengaged or more hostile from feeling cornered and threatened.

To be sure, some level of gender antagonism has always been present for the entirety of human existence. There have always been some friction over gender roles and expectations. Sexual violence has always existed as well in all societies regardless of cultural values and levels of economic prosperity. But what we are witnessing today is a new kind of antagonism that happens as a result of male and female gender roles being dissolved and merged together through systemic androgynization, fueled by the economic forces of our times. Gender antagonism is changing the very demographic landscape of nations as governments bring in foreigners in mass numbers to make up for the children that are not being born, and it is having a profound effect on the happiness of the individuals within all strata of society. As long as the current social conditions remain in place, gender antagonism will likely worsen and continue on as the bitter and unwinnable war where everyone loses.