The 2024 Ipsos survey answers the question of “Have we gone so far in promoting women’s equality that we are discriminating against men?”
The graph below provides the result of interviewing a total of 24,269 adults, from the countries of Japan, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, U.S.A., Argentina, Belgium, Chile, Colombia, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand, and Turkey.
Results:
This survey provides robust data about men’s issues becoming recognized by greater numbers of men, rather than wishful guesses and copium regarding an increase in awareness. It confirms a thought I’ve entertained, over the last five years, that Gen Z men are standing on the cumulative activism of the three previous generations of men, while holding the new line…. and its an impressive line. All of which goes to prove that “changing the cultural narrative” is a successful men’s rights enterprise, albiet one that takes a few generations of collective male teamwork to effect change. Political changes will certainly follow as politicians smell which way the breeze is blowing.
It’s worth noting the real movers, as shown in the above graph, are Generation X who made the biggest cognitive jump of all gens: a full 10% increase on the former generation. The only other issue I’d like to touch on, in passing, is the small percentage of Gen Z men who slag off at boomers for being mindless simps to women; the same minority of Z’s who fail to understand that thier emerging resistance to gynocentrism and misandry is a recapitulation of each generation’s knowledge that went before them, stages of awareness they’ve accumulated unconsciously, and who have now added a bit of thier own to the multi-generational stack of awareness. This is referred to as “cultural recapitulation learning” where stages of previous cultural innovation are incorporated into one’s mind before adding a new layer to the same.
Cultural recapitulation theory
Professor Kieran Egan’s theory of “cultural recapitulation” provides a captivating framework for understanding human cognitive development over time, suggesting that individual growth in knowledge mirrors the broader evolution of human understanding across cultural history. This interplay between personal awareness and the historical progression of ideas helps us to understand how contemporary shifts in perception, such as those revealed in the above survey of men across generations, might reflect this recapitulative arc, unfolding anew as each cohort engages with its cultural moment.
The accumulating awareness of men’s issues across Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z aligns elegantly with Egan’s vision, extending cultural recapitulation beyond formal education, and into the grassroots evolution of societal consciousness. The survey’s findings stand as an elegant testament to Egan’s theory: a recapitulation not merely of knowledge, but of awakening where each generation refines its inherited questions, inching toward a fuller, if contested, grasp of men’s issues and equality.
In this interplay we see the dual helix of growth—personal and societal—twisting upward together. The Boomer’s nascent feeling of unease surrounding gender roles, the Gen X rebel’s defiant querying of gender issues, the Millennial’s analytical map of the gender territory, and Gen Z’s ironic remix form a continuum, with each stage providing an echo of the previous one as it stumbles toward enlightenment. As male awareness of discrimination rises, so too does the promise of a culture that, through recapitulation, learns to see itself anew, with its vision sharpened by the cumulative insights of those who came before.