America has spent years worrying about angry young men who blame women.
We have heard about the “incel” phenomenon, the manosphere, toxic masculinity and online communities where frustrated young men sometimes turn their disappointment with dating, careers and life into resentment toward women.
Some of those concerns are legitimate. A man who believes women are responsible for everything wrong with his life has embraced a destructive worldview.
But new survey data raises an uncomfortable question: What happens when women begin viewing men through much the same lens?
According to data highlighted by the Survey Center on American Life, 66 percent of Democratic women ages 18 to 29 said men’s behavior or actions contribute “a great deal” to the challenges women face in American society.
Among Republican women of the same age, the figure was just 18 percent.
The divide persists among older women as well. Among Democratic women ages 30 to 49, 54 percent placed that degree of responsibility on men. Even among Democratic women 65 and older, the figure remained 48 percent.
Men were asked the reverse question: how much women’s behavior or actions contribute to the challenges men face.
Overall, only 16 percent of men said women contributed “a great deal.” Young Republican men—the demographic frequently portrayed as particularly angry or resentful toward women—registered 26 percent.
Those numbers don’t prove that millions of women “hate men.” Nor do they mean that women don’t face genuine problems involving discrimination, abuse, abandonment or irresponsible men.
But the enormous disparity deserves examination.
Why have so many young women come to understand women’s difficulties through the actions of men?
Part of the answer may be that Americans increasingly interpret life through the language of group grievance.
For decades, influential corners of academia, activism, entertainment and popular culture have described relationships between men and women primarily through concepts such as patriarchy, privilege, oppression and power.
Social media has intensified the message.
A young woman scrolling TikTok, Instagram or other platforms can encounter an endless stream of videos about “toxic men,” narcissistic boyfriends, abusive husbands, weaponized incompetence, male privilege and reasons women supposedly don’t need men.
Algorithms discover what makes people angry and give them more of it.
Men experience their own version.
A frustrated young man can quickly enter an online ecosystem telling him women are shallow, feminism destroyed marriage and modern dating is hopeless. Soon both sexes can inhabit digital worlds supplying endless examples of why the other side cannot be trusted.
The result is not liberation.
And increasingly, men and women appear to be drifting into different cultural and political worlds.
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That matters far beyond elections.
Men and women are supposed to date each other, marry each other, raise children together, build homes together and care for one another through sickness, financial hardship and old age.
Those relationships become extraordinarily difficult when people approach one another as representatives of competing classes.
Imagine entering a marriage already believing the opposite sex is largely responsible for the problems facing people like you.
Every disagreement can become evidence.
Every disappointing boyfriend confirms what social media said about men. Every failed relationship confirms what an online influencer told a young man about women.
The grievance becomes self-reinforcing.
This is where Christians should recognize something deeper happening.
The Bible never pretends men are naturally virtuous or women naturally virtuous. Scripture is remarkably unsentimental about human nature.
