No wonder men are opting out

To examine more carefully what is going on here, let's start by looking at the latest addition to this sorry reckoning. I'm referring to the finding published in New Statesman last month: that many young women don't like men. A Merlin Strategy poll of young Britons aged 18 to 30 found three times more young women than young men held a negative view of the opposite sex. Only about 50% of women had a positive view of men compared to 72% of men feeling positive about women. For women under 25, it was even starker: only around one-third (35%) reported a positive view of men.

This applies particularly to professional and managerial young women of whom just 36 per cent hold a positive view of men, compared with 61 per cent of working-class women. In other words, the contempt for men is most concentrated in educated, middle-class women - precisely the demographic that has benefited most from feminist gains and whose prospects are objectively the strongest.

The contempt for men is hardly surprising - that's what they have been taught. Mary Harrington, a British journalist and cultural critic who writes on Substack, frequently critiques what she calls the "femosphere" - the online feminist spaces where women bond through shared grievances about men.

The online feminist scene often feels like one long group therapy session for women to compare notes on how awful men are," she writes, suggesting this makes men the universal scapegoat, where ordinary male behaviour is routinely framed as toxic or oppressive, while women's collective resentment is rewarded and amplified. "Casual, low-level male-bashing has become the background hum of progressive online culture.

Encountering these women isn't much fun for men. Reddit recently published this telling comment:

It's exhausting. You might be having a decent conversation, then she drops a casual "men suck" comment like it's small talk. Feels like you're starting every interaction with a presumption of guilt.

My good friend Janice Fiamengo has just written a blog taking issue with media stories using the New Stateman data to declare young women hate men. Janice points out that only 3% of the women surveyed had a very negative view of men. She also takes comfort in the fact that a majority of the women felt at least "somewhat" or "very safe" around men – but to me a 51% majority is still pretty alarming. Ditto the fact that only 52% felt they could trust men. From the male perspective this still means a hell of a lot of distrustful women out there, which is a grim prospect when it comes to prospective partners.

And an awful lot of crazy, neurotic women. Not only does this toxic climate encourage women to be wary of men, but growing up in a hate-fuelled online sewer takes a toll on their mental health. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has long been warning that the toxic world of social media would lead to a rise in mental health problems – particularly in girls and young women. "Since the early 2010s, young people across the developed world are becoming more anxious, depressed and lonely. The increases were even greater in young women," he said.

Recent large-scale surveys (Ipsos 2025–2026 across 31 countries, Gallup 2025) are showing Gen Z women currently report the highest recorded levels of anxiety, persistent sadness/hopelessness, and depression of any female generation at the same age.

Around 33% of young women feel anxious or worried about the future "almost all the time"; 40% of Gen Z workers feel anxious or depressed at least a few times per week, according to recent 2025 surveys.