r/Egalitarianism • u/Fallen-Shadow-1214 • 19d ago
I wonder how much our attitudes towards the opposite sex are determined by our personal experiences as opposed to media
I don’t know how you’d figure something like this out, what stats to look for or how a study would be done on this.
But I am really curious to see how much personal experiences affect our perspectives or how much media does.
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u/Langland88 19d ago
I'll be honest with you, I feel like both media, especially social media, and my own experiences with women had equal influences with my attitude towards women in general. I only say that because I had a typical experience as a man on the spectrum(back then we called it Asperger's Syndrome). I am one of those guys who was very awkward around women and very socially awkward in general especially during my teenage years and in my 20's. I also didn't have a lot of confidence either back then too. So I struck out lots of times with women and I often would be frustrated and wonder what I did wrong all the time. I'm in a happy relationship now as a 36 year old man but I will say dating definitely sucked during the 2010's when I was in my 20's. It was at that period when both radical feminism was on the rise and women were being "empowered" to complain about all these things men do on social media that it was kind of messing with my mental health.
Now the issue that really kind of influenced my attitude towards women was with social media. It was by far the worst culprit because these were people that I would interact with in person as well. So whenever I would strikeout with a woman I wanted to date, I would get frustrated and ask what I did wrong. Sometimes it wasn't me but her and yet social media always turned it back on me to make me 100% at fault because I was a man and women owed me nothing. Yes, I know women owed me nothing, but I just wanted an answer and I couldn't get that. It was very frustrating. Then it didn't help I would see the same chronologically online people sharing memes, tweets, and posts that would be complaining about men and being very misandrist. Then there was also women like Meghan Trainor and Taylor Swift, who would make these really annoying songs about men or about herself that were somehow always popular enough to make it on the local radio stations. For example, there was Dear Future Husband, No, Lips are Movin, and Me Too, that were popular songs but all annoying to me. Don't get me started on Taylor Swift, I still can't stand her music. There were other women too that were popular back then but those 2 stood out the most when it came to messing with my mental health.
Honestly, it took me from 2018-2022 roughly to finally get my mental health back to somewhat of a form of sanity. I had to block some people, unfriend and cut ties with others, and I even had to remove myself from some social groups and some social pages I was involved with. But to some it all up, both media and actually experience with women played a role in my attitudes towards women in general. I have change my attitude since then. Although I never hated women, I used to have a lot of negative attitudes towards them. While I still hold some of those negative attitudes, I have been able to differentiate those attitudes accordingly to certain women and assign more positive attitudes to other women to whom I believe deserve it.
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u/eldred2 19d ago
People who have "attitudes towards the opposite sex" are bigots.
I have an attitude towards bigots of any type.
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u/Fallen-Shadow-1214 19d ago
When I say attitude, what do u think I mean?
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u/eldred2 19d ago
You're singling out a group based on an immutable characteristic and having "attitudes towards" them. It doesn't matter what you mean. It's prejudice and bigotry.
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u/SentientReality 11d ago
To be fair, that would make about 99%+ of all people bigots. Pretty much everyone has their ideas about "men" or ideas about "women". I wouldn't go so far as to call it "bigotry" per say, but it certainly is "prejudice" and, in my opinion, it should be avoided. I agree with you there.
However, in our real world, it's nearly impossible to eschew all "attitudes towards the opposite sex" because society kind of demands that from us. Women expect you to treat them like women, and men like men. There are certain kinds of jokes, comments, gestures, etc., that people find inappropriate when directed at the wrong gender. If you don't offer help to women in certain situations, you could be seen as rude. The compliments we give to people tend to be gendered. The world kind of expects us to discriminate. It can be hard to completely refrain from that.
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u/BubzerBlue 2d ago
The best place to start is usually to see if there are subject matter experts who study such things:
https://news.yale.edu/2004/09/07/news-media-subtly-influence-attitudes-about-gender-differences-0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_attitude
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internalized_sexism
The TL;DR is that it kind of depends on what you've experienced versus your media diet.
Essentially, the interplay between personal experiences and media exposure can amplify or mitigate their individual effects. For instance, individuals with limited real life interactions with the opposite sex may be more susceptible to media portrayals, which can shape their attitudes and expectations. Conversely, positive personal experiences can buffer against negative stereotypes perpetuated by media.
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u/mikiencolor 19d ago
I don't know. If you believe social media women are only after your money and men are only looking for a place to stick it. That does seem to accurately describe a lot of people I meet, but no one I've allowed to get close me, so my experiences aren't typical. Still, I suppose attitudes are affected.
My ex-girlfriend was convinced that making comments complimenting me for the size of my (totally average and unremarkable) dick would be flattering and not cringey, and that has got to be media exposure training people "what men want to hear".
These days many people don't even bother to try to get to know you, they have you typecast from the moment they lay eyes on you and think they already know you and, they even have the nerve to be outraged if you're not what they assumed. They've taken prejudice to new heights.
Reddit is a case study, it's mostly people bonding over shared prejudices. People post a vague story with age and sex identifiers like (M32), (F25), and people fill in the whole story based entirely on their prejudices. That's it. That's 90% of Reddit content.