While it is easy to think that feminism causes women to have more choices, I believe that the political marches and activisms are just a small part of the story of women's role in society. I believe that a significant part is the elements of modern life that give women more choice to work outside the home and other things.
These things of modern life enable women to change their lifestyle and mindset, so that women, privileged women at least, are not obligated to do the tasks they were traditionally trained for in order to be marriageable. The changed mindset may develop a new view of women's role in society. Instead of being a part of a man's household, women are viewed as men's equals, companions, and competitors.
1. Electricity
By the 20th century, people had electric appliances in their homes. These made household chores shorter and easier to complete. Before that, women had to spend most of their waking days in the home, doing household chores like cooking, cleaning, and childrearing. These were time-intensive, laborious, and manual. Wealthier families might have servants doing this work, but poorer families might put all the housework on the wives and daughters of the householder. Electric appliances significantly reduced the amount of time spent on manual household labor, allowing women and girls to have more free time to do something else.
2. Birth Control
The invention of safe birth control allowed women to control their reproductive systems. That way, they wouldn't become accidentally pregnant in case of rape or sexual wantonness. It was the latter, sexual wantonness, that had made birth control a controversial issue, because it involved changing people's minds about sexuality. Conservatives wanted to conserve the old way of life, while liberals wanted to take advantage of this new technology and adopt promiscuous and sexually deviant sexual norms. Both sides had their strengths and weaknesses, and both sides took the issue viscerally.
3. Mandatory Public Education
In the past, investing in a girl's education was useless and a waste of money. What good would it do to give a girl the best education possible when getting an education did not mean getting hired for work, and she'd just be married off to a different family, taking away a considerable dowry from her natal family with her? (Because the son-in-law at marriage had taken a valuable asset from his wife's father, he might have the obligation to give money to his father-in-law.) It might be more economical to invest in the young lady's marriage potential, and that depended on what men were looking for in an ideal wife.
In some cultures, men wanted wives to have small feet or a plump body that suggested wealth. Raising daughters with proper skills was a mother's responsibility, even though that job could be transferred to a governess if the family could afford one. Young women were like little mother's assistants, helping Mom with the meals and cleaning and taking care of their younger siblings. In some cultures, young women might be taught music lessons, so they could attract a man of equal status and provide music for their new households. Maybe once in a while, a quirky father would educate his sons and daughters, but that was sporadic, not systematic. State-financed and religious-operated schools greatly relieved the burden for individual families to fund their children's education.
All of the things above are progress. However, they do not come without consequences.
Perception of Female Power
When women enter a male-dominated arena, they may be welcomed by higher-status males, while lower-status males may feel threatened. This generalization is supported by research on female gamers in the male-dominated video-gaming community. Basically, males in the competitive video game community organize themselves into a hierarchy. Higher-status males have little to lose, so they welcome, support, and interact positively with explicitly female gamers.
In contrast, lower-status males have so much to lose, because they view the females as competitors for the same ranks. It is plausible to think that ranking lower than a female is emasculating, shameful, and damaging to one's self-esteem. The lower-status males respect the pecking order and act submissively to the higher-status males, but they act viciously toward females, hoping to knock females out of the hierarchy.
If this male-against-female behavior applies to any male-dominated field, then that means something must be done to address the feeling of inadequacy among lower-status/lower-performance males, because this hostility towards females is just unprofessional, unethical, and inhumane.
My personal observation on GirlsAskGuys is that there are a lot of guys with issues. They have no job, are still living under their parents' roof, have no money, and have no girlfriend. Having a personal source of income, sense of identity, and independence is characteristic of adulthood.
Coincidentally, I find a lot of anti-feminist attitudes on GirlsAskGuys. On that survey (click on the link), 100% of the females voted no, while the males were divided, suggesting that some males wanted to see a reversal of the feminist movement. On other places, it is not uncommon to find males expressing hostile attitudes toward feminist women or modern women in general. It is not difficult to think that the lower-status/lower-performing males feel extremely threatened of competent females. Competent, highly educated, successful females are competing for the same jobs and resources, so lower-performing males have a chance to get weeded out or get ranked lower than a female.
If the female is successfully weeded out of competition or systematically barred from competing, then I conjecture that the female will be forced to rely on the male for survival, even if it means getting paired up with an abusive male and getting exploited as a sex slave or baby-making machine. I don't know about you, but that sounds like dystopia to me, straight from a speculative-fiction novel like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.
Therefore, I believe that some guys on GirlsAskGuys should evoke sympathy, not disdain. They are struggling. They are hurt. And they project their own hurt onto other people, causing a chain of wickedness, a chain of sin. They need professional help to get them back on track, and only then they will feel less compelled to cause suffering to other people, regardless of gender.
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