Over half of all men now think that feminism has gone too far. They believe that women took something from them. But that didn’t happen overnight. Someone sold them that idea. Someone profited from that idea. And as ever, we’re footing the bill.
When Donald Trump secured his re-election, Andrew Tate responded with a simple two-word post: “Thank God.” He didn’t feel the need to elaborate, because the people who mattered already got it.
Tate is banned from most major platforms for good reason. He’s dealing with some serious criminal charges right now. The guy has openly called himself a misogynist. He’s even talked about physically hurting women, like hitting and choking them. And despite all this, he’s still got a lot of teenage boys looking up to him like a role model.
If that doesn’t tell you something about where we are, nothing will.
And if you’re asking how did we get here? The answer is not complex. It was built. Deliberately. By people who profited from it.
In the UK, a surprising number of young men, 50% to be exact, think that feminism has gone overboard and is now making it tougher for men to get ahead. This eye-opening statistic comes from HOPE not Hate, a group that keeps a close eye on far-right extremism. They decided to share this finding because it turns out that having anti-feminist views and being radicalised are more connected than you might think. It’s not just a coincidence, but a real pattern.
This isn’t about men being incompetent, it’s about them being intentionally singled out. There’s a big difference between the two.
The Industry Behind the Ideology
The manosphere isn’t a movement. It’s a market.
Tate’s rise to fame wasn’t just a coincidence. He actually worked hard to build a business that thrives on the idea that men are victims. He sells all sorts of things like courses and memberships, which are basically just a pyramid scheme disguised as a way for guys to come together. The message he’s selling is pretty simple: if your life isn’t going great, it’s probably because of women.
Let’s be clear: the algorithm does the heavy lifting. Anti-feminist content generates clicks. Clicks generate revenue. And platforms have every financial incentive to keep serving it up. Nobody stumbles into this. They are led there.
Why Equality Feels Like a Threat to Some
These men aren’t just being negative, they really believe they’ve lost something. And even though their idea might not make sense, their feeling is still genuine.
The facts are clear. There’s still a big gap to close. Women in top jobs get paid about 83 pence for every pound men get. When it comes to startup money, women get less than 2% of the total funding. And out of the top 500 companies, only 7% have a female boss. These aren’t just opinions, they’re the reality women face every day in the business world. The idea that feminism has gone too far just doesn’t add up when you see the numbers.
This Got Political. Fast.
Project 2025, the 900-page governing blueprint built by the Heritage Foundation, names it plainly. Women’s independence is the threat. The male-headed household is the goal. It calls for eliminating offices focused on gender equity, dismantling Title IX protections and rolling back the workplace rights that allow women to participate in public life as equals. Since Roe was overturned, more than 20 US states have enacted abortion bans or severe restrictions.
DEI programmes that took decades to build were gone within days of Trump’s inauguration.
What the Evidence Tells Us and What We Can Do With It
When a movement actually starts to make a difference, that’s when the real pushback happens. It’s not about a movement failing, but about it succeeding and making waves. What we’re seeing isn’t a sign of losing, it’s a sign that we’re making progress big enough to scare those who like things just the way they are. So what do we do with that?
- Media literacy as a structural tool. When women in business use their influence, their followers, and their professional reputation to share good journalism, they can help create a different story that the mainstream media really needs. Women are in a great position to make a difference by using their platforms to amplify important work and create a counter-narrative that can help stop the spread of extreme ideas.
- Economic pressure on platforms. Advertisers pay attention to what consumers are saying, and organised campaigns can push them to make changes. Female entrepreneurs and leaders have significant spending power and influence over brands, which can be a major factor in driving change.
- Sustaining the shift from competition to conscious collaboration. Over the past decade, a significant change has taken place. Women are moving away from competing with each other and instead working together and supporting one another. Women are forming networks where they help each other out in their careers, fund each other’s businesses, and speak out publicly to get more women into leadership positions. Companies that have a good balance of men and women in leadership roles are 20% more likely to do better financially, according to McKinsey data. Doing what’s right for women and doing what’s good for business are, it turns out, the same thing.
Every time someone tells you gender equality has gone too far, you now have the full picture behind that sentence. The influencers. The algorithms. The politicians. The business model that depends on enough people believing it.
Knowing the mechanism is the first step. The second is refusing to let it work.
