Manosphere BS & Gen Z

[Katy]

I’ve been lurking on Reddit a fair amount lately and almost every time I look there’s an AITAH post involving a young woman considering ending a multi-year relationship. Sometimes they’re engaged. Sometimes they’ve been married for a few months. Sometimes they’ve been happily married for a few years but the wife is pregnant with the first baby but he is insisting she quit her job and stay home despite her making 3x his salary. Usually the man started out very supportive and normal. But then started delving into manosphere crap online, becoming raging misogynists before the woman had any clue. I feel like porn addiction was a big problem for so many relationships when I was in my 20’s. But it seems sexism is a large problem for relationships for young people now. And not just incels who’ve never been in a relationship. For people who have had previously happy, long term relationships. My kids are too young for this to impact them yet. Have you seen it in young people you know? 

[Kassia]

I haven't seen this at all.  I have three adult sons and they are all very respectful and supportive of women and so are their friends.  Two of my sons have made major life decisions based on their partners' careers and have done other things to support professional women in general.  

[Lecka]

No, I haven’t.  
 

My niece did just break up with her boyfriend because they had different ideas about the future, but it wasn’t like this.  
 

My nieces are the only young-20s people I know well.  As far as mid-30s couples I know, I don’t see anything like this, either.  
 

As far as the adult children of people I know, they seem to be either totally single, or totally married or in a long-term relationship.  
 

My sister in her early 50s had a relationship with a man who turned out to be this way.  She would have been in her late 40s.  I will be honest, she has poor taste in men and there were warning signs.  This man was horribly rude to my step-father and she didn’t see it as a red flag.  

Edited April 21 by Lecka

[Corraleno]

I think 90% or more of the posts on AITAH (and all the similar subs), are completely fictional, and they are purposely written to get as many responses as possible. Apparently some people literally just start new accounts, pump up the points so it seems like a reputable account, then sell the account to spammers and/or those looking to spread misinformation while giving the appearance of a legit account. The best way to rack up a ton of points quickly is to post rage bait in one of the biggest subs, and there is a definite pattern where you will see a thread get a huge response, and then there will be very very similar stories on AITAH and all the similar subs, just with minor changes to the details — genders or income reversed, ages or jobs changed, etc.

I don't doubt there are some guys like that, but I think they are over-represented on Reddit, and none of my kids' friends are like that at all. 

ETA: keep in mind that the more you click on certain types of stories, the more the algorithm will feed you those types of stories, so what may really just be a few, largely fictional stories, can end up feeling like some widespread cultural movement.

 

Edited April 21 by Corraleno

[SKL]

I haven't seen it, and I'd be skeptical of believing it without seeing it with my own eyes IRL.

I'm sure some of these types exist, as they did when I was growing up, but they are outliers.

[Farrar]

I haven't seen it so much in my circles, but I know what you're talking about on AITAH. And I believe it, at least as a trend (everything on Reddit is suspect information, of course). Men who are in online circles are constantly being given these really toxic messages about how relationships "should" be. And there's this additional trend where some women are supportive of that image and want men to take over and be "the provider." I think it's difficult for men to figure out how to act in the midst of all this messaging (not that that's an excuse for controlling behavior, but it is an explanation).

There was a good piece in WaPo about the whole tradwife thing that explored it from the women's end. There's this whole uptick in the whole Lana Del Rey aesthetic - women who want this "feminine leisure" lifestyle. I liked that the article took it seriously as a trend and explored why and the limits of why it's not going to solve anything.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/power/2024/04/10/tradwives-stay-at-home-girlfriends-modern-couples/

[Lecka]

I have seen this tradwife thing also as an online trend, but I have only seen it as an online trend.  There are a lot of New York Times and Washington Post articles that I have never seen “in the wild.”  
 

I have also never seen several things that are apparently being put on Fox News, that I have never seen, that people will comment to me about as far as my age of kids and it being a problem, and it’s not present.

 

You know what I do see that I also read about as a problem?

 

Vaping!!!!!!!!  There is so much vaping!!!!!!  
 

 

[Lecka]

I didn’t read it, but within the past week there’s been an article in the New York Times with a headline about “it’s a polyamorous group of 20 people!”  The Washington Post has had a headline about a “throuple” of 3 people having/raising a baby together.
 

I know zero of anything like this in real life.  
 

I’m sure it’s true!  
 

It seems so sensational.  
 

I don’t really have a reason, personally, to take the tradwife article more seriously than the throuple article.

 

It could be out there a lot more than I realize, or not!

[Farrar]

Lol. I definitely know plenty of poly people. And I do know of some tradwife folks, though more friends of friends kind of a thing.

[Rosie_0801]

1 minute ago, Lecka said:

I didn’t read it, but within the past week there’s been an article in the New York Times with a headline about “it’s a polyamorous group of 20 people!”  The Washington Post has had a headline about a “throuple” of 3 people having/raising a baby together.
 

I know zero of anything like this in real life.  

I knew of one.

An established couple wanted a baby, man joined, made the baby, abused the mother's partner, the mother sided with the man because he was her baby's father, and that destroyed the original relationship. 

[Lecka]

17 minutes ago, Rosie_0801 said:

An established couple wanted a baby, man joined, made the baby, abused the mother's partner, the mother sided with the man because he was her baby's father, and that destroyed the original relationship. 

I can kind-if see how that would happen.  It gives me a new perspective on anonymous sperm donation…. I just hadn’t thought of it quite that way before.  

[Rosie_0801]

10 minutes ago, Lecka said:

I can kind-if see how that would happen.  It gives me a new perspective on anonymous sperm donation…. I just hadn’t thought of it quite that way before.  

Anonymous would have been a far better choice in the scenario I outlined.

I don't know why she chose him. Maybe she thought he was enough of a slob to keep to his own lane.

Or maybe her hormones were entirely running the show and believed everyone who said he'd be "such a good daddy!"

Anyway, now I need to go and scrub that memory out of my brain...

 

Anyway, this crap certainly isn't limited to any one generation.

[prairiewindmomma]

Dd says there are older teens she knows who are down this rabbit hole—follow Andrew Tate and say horrible stuff like he says. She’s had to deal with a few of them in class. 

[Eos]

31 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:

Dd says there are older teens she knows who are down this rabbit hole—follow Andrew Tate and say horrible stuff like he says. She’s had to deal with a few of them in class. 

A friend who works in our local, pretty liberal high school says boys there are very much into Andrew Tate. How will this end?

[Katy]

6 minutes ago, Eos said:

A friend who works in our local, pretty liberal high school says boys there are very much into Andrew Tate. How will this end?

This is what I'm wondering.

[prairiewindmomma]

I think it’s part of a greater societal sickness re: lack of empathy, lack of respect for women, transactional relationships, etc. I also think the other stresses on Gen Z (affordable housing, access to healthcare, media trolls, etc.) factor into this.

I think an analogue may be South Korea. Women choose to be alone or in a Golden Girls setup than marry into terrible. 
 

I know women who divorced husbands who became radicalized by politics and other things (red pill, manosphere, Faux news) and all of them have said they will never marry again—shack up, maybe, or get a FWB situation, but they will never give up having their own home and separate finances after the crap their exhusbands put them through.

[Lecka]

It makes it hard for me to get a sense from “online with no context,” I can think of reasons I don’t happen to know people in various circumstances, or it could be my location.  
 

I do know a man in his 40s who is divorced and has become very bitter towards women.  It’s really sad.  

[Katy]

8 minutes ago, Lecka said:

It makes it hard for me to get a sense from “online with no context,” I can think of reasons I don’t happen to know people in various circumstances, or it could be my location.  
 

I do know a man in his 40s who is divorced and has become very bitter towards women.  It’s really sad.  

Yeah, the one man I know (a college friend) that was heavily influenced by the manosphere is 45, and when we were maybe 25 he found his fairly new wife was cheating on him. He was one of the few people I know who was into the ideas that I now think of as prosperity gospel & courtship before the I Kissed Dating Goodbye book came out. He had a very weird & sincere conversation with me about it in 1996. When she cheated, instead of blaming her, he threw everything he knew away, including religion. And came up with very red-pill BS about hypergamy. Anyway, he started several businesses and started body building. Last I knew he had a new girlfriend who was pregnant who he refused to marry. It all seemed somewhat toxic, but before anyone in our friend group called him on it he left all the social media we chat through. That was maybe 15 years ago. I think I’ve only heard from him twice since. But I don’t think Andrew Tate was a thing back then. 

[prairiewindmomma]

IMO, misogyny goes way, way back but the rise of hate radio (Rush Limbaugh), the ending of political cooperation between parties (mid 1990s also), the start of Faux News (1996), and the push by the Koch brothers to fund professors who acted as lobbyists and other think tank drivers—-all of that unholy swirl of junk in the 1990s changed us as a society and began driving wedges. 

The current toxic swirl of people like Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson fuel algorithmic changes to what you see and listen to that take you to darker places.

People feel isolated and insecure—and there are social media personas who prey upon that.

Edited April 22 by prairiewindmomma

[Teaching3bears]

What is AITAH?

[Katy]

12 minutes ago, Teaching3bears said:

What is AITAH?

Am I the A hole 

[Teaching3bears]

2 minutes ago, Katy said:

Am I the A hole 

What does that mean exactly?  Why are people asking this?

[Pawz4me]

3 minutes ago, Teaching3bears said:

What does that mean exactly?  Why are people asking this?

I'm not on Reddit, but as I understand it someone posts about a scenario/situation they've been in and then asks AITAH. The implied question is "AITAH or is the other person(s) involved in this the AH?"

We get similar posts here. We're just a smaller, more intimate (and probably a lot more civil) group.

[JustEm]

2 hours ago, Teaching3bears said:

What does that mean exactly?  Why are people asking this?

They're asking it to get people's opinions on whether they are in the wrong in a situation or if their reaction was appropriate and the other person was the one in the wrong.

[regentrude]

19 hours ago, Lecka said:

I didn’t read it, but within the past week there’s been an article in the New York Times with a headline about “it’s a polyamorous group of 20 people!”  The Washington Post has had a headline about a “throuple” of 3 people having/raising a baby together.

I know zero of anything like this in real life.  

I’m sure it’s true!  

It seems so sensational.  

I don’t really have a reason, personally, to take the tradwife article more seriously than the throuple article.

It could be out there a lot more than I realize, or not!

I know a woman who had embraced the tradwife life already a decade ago when we were in homeschool group together. And I know several polyamorous persons. For some, it seems to be working great; for others, it didn't and they ended divorcing from the husband who ended up preferring the mutual girlfriend.

Small rural town here. 

 

[goldberry]

My daughter's ex-husband came from a rather traditional family, but not crazy.  The mom did stay home and homeschool, but mom was a much stronger personality than dad and there wasn't any idea she was subservient or anything like that.  We were all part of a homeschool science team, so even though there were some traditional conservative types, it was never a "girls stay at home" type of thing.  Before they got married they talked about some things like vaccines, birth control, roles in the family, etc. and exSIL came out a bit conservative but again not crazy.  He started working and my daughter was still in college, and he knew when they married she planned on finishing.  Also, we agreed to assist with school money until she was finished so that she didn't need to get a job during that time. DD is high-stress and has some mental health challenges, she just was not in a place to handle working and going to school, we knew she would drop out. 

A little before Covid hit, he was already starting to hang out at work with some uber-men at his job.  When Covid hit he went down the rabbit hole.  Anti-vax, etc.  He also started making fun of/demeaning daughter for being in school.  Said she needed to quit and just get a job. School was "stupid" and "all her college friends were just uppity snobby losers".  When she was off school in the summer, she did do a majority of the house upkeep because she was home (although still working part time).  During school she expected his help and got nothing.  He did not view her full time school the same as him working.  He viewed it as useless.  She should be able to also take care of the house, food, etc.  He said he knew he said differently when they were dating, but he really did expect traditional gender roles and for her to be the wife and take care of the house. He also did the "sex is her duty" thing and threatened her with affairs if she didn't "give him what he needed".  It all went downhill from there and he became abusive.

Sharing because he did start out as a fairly "normal" young man, then went down a rabbit hole and became deeply misogynistic and wanting a "tradwife".  It was sad and scary.  DD divorced him after he became abusive and refused any counselling.  

[saraha]

So I don’t want to google but there are words here I can sort of infer definitions for but not sure. What is manosphere? What is an incel? (Sounds like a terrorist) who is Andrew Tate?

Thanks

[Katy]

1 hour ago, goldberry said:

DD divorced him after he became abusive and refused any counselling.  

I'm so glad she was able and willing to get out.

[Katy]

1 hour ago, saraha said:

So I don’t want to google but there are words here I can sort of infer definitions for but not sure. What is manosphere? What is an incel? (Sounds like a terrorist) who is Andrew Tate?

Thanks

The manosphere is a section of the internet devoted to the ideas of misogyny. It starts out seeming reasonable, and comforts men who aren't satisfied with their relationships, and goes off the deep end of crazy from there.

An incel is an involuntary celibate. They're usually men with zero social skills who, rather than changing, think they are entitled to model-level beautiful women to come up to them and pursue them. They are sick. Several mass murderers have been incels.

Andrew Tate is a social media influencer who is part of the manosphere. He's extremely problematic and is facing criminal charges, I think related to human trafficking, rape, and other organized crime in multiple countries. Whatever sort of toxic masculinity, "alpha male," rape culture persona you can imagine, he's probably worse.  And he makes a lot of money being horrible. He does have a wikipedia page, if you want to know a little more.

[forty-two]

1 hour ago, saraha said:

So I don’t want to google but there are words here I can sort of infer definitions for but not sure. What is manosphere? What is an incel? (Sounds like a terrorist) who is Andrew Tate?

Thanks

"Manosphere" is like blogosphere, but the men's rights subset; probably includes more than men's rights now, like the pick-up artists and other red pill types (red pill being a Matrix reference to "waking up" to how Western society lies about the nature of men and women).  IDK that it's misogyny *all* the way down - my introduction to it was actually on a female psychologist's blog - but there's probably at least a good 85-90% intersection with misogyny. (And that's actual disrespect toward women, not just anti-feminist views on men/women/relationships - pretty much all of them are consciously looking for alternatives to feminism.) 

Last year I took an open-minded look at the red pill guys - no matter what role a writer saw for women, I was willing to read them so long as they genuinely valued women's work in fulfilling that role - that they believed the role they saw for women was necessary for human flourishing, and they respected the work women did in fulfilling it (not just appreciated, but respected as a vital contribution to life together).  Not gonna lie, that eliminated almost everyone - there was a woman and a few long-term married men who managed to pass that "respect women enough to be worth engaging with" test, but open disrespect (usually treating women like perpetual children and/or treating women as inherently making the world worse and/or reducing women to sex objects) was astoundingly common.

Incel is involuntary celibate - men who can't get dates/girlfriends/wives and are bitter about it, blaming women and general Western culture. 

The main thing I know about Andrew Tate is that he converted to Islam because he saw it as a properly masculine religion (unlike Christianity), despite the fact that Tate is unapologetic about porn and alcohol and many other things frowned on in Islam.

[TechWife]

Managers of their Homes, Vision Forum, Douglas Wilson, Bill Gothard, Doug Philips, the Maxwells, the Duggers,  IBLP, Patrick Henry College, The Gospel Coalition are all misogynistic programs & people that that have influenced many, many homeschoolers & evangelical Christians. There are so many more. Patriarchy and misogyny are very close relatives, IME. There is also a close relationship between neo-Calvinists and misogyny. Misogyny is a strong feature of the “manosphere.” 

Edited April 23 by TechWife

[TechWife]

11 hours ago, forty-two said:

…

The main thing I know about Andrew Tate is that he converted to Islam because he saw it as a properly masculine religion (unlike Christianity), despite the fact that Tate is unapologetic about porn and alcohol and many other things frowned on in Islam.

Andrew Tate, along with his brother, has also been indicted for international sex trafficking in Romania & Great Britain. 
 

[Heartstrings]

The “new” Andrew Tate is a guy called Alpha Dom.  He’s part pick up artist, part manosphere type.  He made the rounds on TikTok recently for his take that “you don’t have to accept a woman’s rejection”. In that video he was trying to convince young guys that pushing back and arguing with a woman who rejects you will lead to her running to your bed, and that he has gotten “many threesomes” that way.  🙄.  It’s ridiculous until you realize that young guys are actually listening to him.  
 

The scariest thing about the incels is the belief many of them hold that women should just be assigned to a man, just given to them as property.  They don’t just hate women, they actively believe we should be enslaved for their enjoyment.   It goes a lot further than just thinking it’s not fair that no one wants to date them, their solution is enslavement.
 

its Especially concerning when this is all tied into the “quiet part outloud” types who are feeling empowered recently to talk about taking away a woman’s right to vote and trying to end no fault divorce.  

Edited April 23 by Heartstrings

[SanDiegoMom]

Makes Jordan Peterson look much more appealing, lol.

I think there is a big void right now in terms of modeling upright, valuable male behavior - especially in liberal circles.  I have very much had to counteract some of the accepted ideas that my kids were picking up at school.  My son is an extremely sensitive young man, afraid of hurting anyone, and for a little while between age 14-16 he was receiving some messages about being a white male that were pretty negative.  It's far too easy to make jokes and call it "punching up", but when you are a young, sensitive boy who internalizes most things, that can be pretty destructive.  Luckily I noticed and spent some time building him back up.  He is now much more secure in himself.  

When it comes to teenagers, some of the ones flocking to Andrew Tate are the ones who are lacking any other role model right now, and are being told by society that they are the root of all problems. And the ones getting radicalized are the same as ones getting radicalized into anything else -- hurt, depressed and lonely people with giant holes in their lives who are trying to distract themselves, get sucked into a new set of beliefs and over time adopt and mimic them.  

[SKL]

Well I don't follow any of these people, and I'm not on Reddit.  But just a thought ....

I think some of this may be a reaction to how far the sex role pendulum swung ... and not just by men.

As a woman, I hate that the women's movement killed women's right to even consider traditional roles as an option.  I'm probably not alone.

I think the pendulum has swung back a lot, and in some communities, temporarily too far.

Abuse is a different topic IMO.  There is and always has been domestic abuse in every culture, subculture, and counter-culture.  You can't fix abuse by defining or restricting choices for women.

As educated adult women, I think we need to resist the naming trends.  They are unhelpful and often harmful IMO.

Edited April 23 by SKL

[SKL]

As for the future of our society with extreme male chauvinists?  Well, it seems to me that the pool of women willing to marry / stay with such men would be small, so it would be self-limiting.

On the other hand, the girls I know are not interested in marrying guys who won't work hard and contribute at least as much to the household (financially) as the wife.  Seems logical, if one is thinking of raising children, which means giving up some things in the business world.  If someone is offended by this logic, someone might need to give it some more thought, or let it percolate as more maturity is gained.

[Eos]

8 minutes ago, SKL said:

As a woman, I hate that the women's movement killed women's right to even consider traditional roles as an option.  I'm probably not alone.

I don't see that our right to even consider traditional roles has been abrogated. I'm a pretty rabid feminist who made the choice of a traditional role, homeschooling, etc.. The difference made by the women's movement is that I had the choice versus not having the choice. If it hadn't worked out I have an escape hatch, courtesy of the women's movement, to get a job, run a business, have a credit card, etc. 

[Heartstrings]

1 hour ago, SKL said:

As for the future of our society with extreme male chauvinists?  Well, it seems to me that the pool of women willing to marry / stay with such men would be small, so it would be self-limiting.

On the other hand, the girls I know are not interested in marrying guys who won't work hard and contribute at least as much to the household (financially) as the wife.  Seems logical, if one is thinking of raising children, which means giving up some things in the business world.  If someone is offended by this logic, someone might need to give it some more thought, or let it percolate as more maturity is gained.

I think this actually going to contribute to radicalizing more men.   As women’s standard have risen or changed and more women are ok with just being single, not enough men are changing with them.  Those that don’t will find themselves involuntarily uncoupled and some of them will get really mad about it.  Frustrated, lonely men cause a lot of problems for society in general and for women in particular. It’s going to become an issue.  
 

Im not saying women shouldn’t have high standards, because of course they should!  I’m just seeing the potential unintended consequences of that.  Not all men are going to rise to the challenge and the ones that don’t are likely to be a problem for all of us.  

[Heartstrings]

1 hour ago, Eos said:

I don't see that our right to even consider traditional roles has been abrogated. I'm a pretty rabid feminist who made the choice of a traditional role, homeschooling, etc.. The difference made by the women's movement is that I had the choice versus not having the choice. If it hadn't worked out I have an escape hatch, courtesy of the women's movement, to get a job, run a business, have a credit card, etc. 

I agree.  I’m also a feminist and have loved being home and homeschooling, even the cooking and the cleaning.  Things look pretty 1950s at my house, except I expect my husband to be a full partner, involved father, and participate in the minimal amount of housework that I don’t do while he’s at work.

[SanDiegoMom]

I think there are communities out there everywhere ranging from unhealthy to harmless to healthy.  How much attention we pay to them doesn’t mean that they have that much more influence or are that much of a problem for our society.  I mean, my older daughter spends more time than she should on Reddit but she sought out positive communities. She’s been lurking in a men’s boot community for some reason and told me how heat warming it was to listen to them talk so earnestly about boot quality. They even expressed frustration when comparing the quality of their boots to the same brand made for women and how it was unfair. But that type of forum won’t get much engagement because it doesn’t have the potential for emotional clickbait. 

[TechWife]

1 hour ago, Heartstrings said:

I think this actually going to contribute to radicalizing more men.   As women’s standard have risen or changed and more women are ok with just being single, not enough men are changing with them.  Those that don’t will find themselves involuntarily uncoupled and some of them will get really mad about it.  Frustrated, lonely men cause a lot of problems for society in general and for women in particular. It’s going to become an issue.  
 

Im not saying women shouldn’t have high standards, because of course they should!  I’m just seeing the potential unintended consequences of that.  Not all men are going to rise to the challenge and the ones that don’t are likely to be a problem for all of us.  

I agree. It’s smart to be aware of this.

Edited April 23 by TechWife

[Sneezyone]

There’s a recent article in the economist which speaks to the growing disconnect between men and women, partly attributable too to increasing academic disparities between young men and women.

[TechWife]

3 hours ago, SanDiegoMom said:

…I think there is a big void right now in terms of modeling upright, valuable male behavior - especially in liberal circles. …

The problem is defining “upright, valuable male behavior.”  Patriarchy & misogyny are features, not bugs, in conservative Christianity. Dangerous messages about what it means to be a man are rampant among conservative Christians. I don’t want them to be the arbiters of what “upright, valuable behavior is” because it diminishes the value of women. This will continue until we break the stained glass ceiling and can influence organizations. That will be hard to do as the men in power put rules in place and have wide influence on the culture & they won’t make any rules that will diminish their power in favor of women. They truly believe they are better suited to make decisions than we are. 

Edited April 23 by TechWife

[TechWife]

21 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

There’s a recent article in the economist which speaks to the growing disconnect between men and women, partly attributable too to increasing academic disparities between young men and women.

I think that’s separate from misogyny. I also think it’s a question for the chicken & egg. Our Ed system needs to be reformed, but we’ve been taking about that for decades now, so I think it’s obvious than men don’t actually want to do that, because they hold the power that can make that happen. Now they’re the ones having problems with the system they created & sustained. It’s unfortunate that they have squandered the opportunity, but here we are.

Edited April 23 by TechWife

[TechWife]

Unless we can diminish the impact of people who hold these views, misogyny will remain a problem for women and for our wider culture. This is why it’s so important to speak up, to leverage our competencies for the benefit of all people and to become masters of unselfish networking. 

[Heartstrings]

32 minutes ago, TechWife said:

I think that’s separate from misogyny. I also think it’s a question for the chicken & egg. Our Ed system needs to be reformed, but we’ve been taking about that for decades now, so I think it’s obvious than men don’t actually want to do that, because they hold the power that can make that happen. Now they’re the ones having problems with the system they created & sustained. It’s unfortunate that they have squandered the opportunity, but here we are.

I do think this is hard when it’s the old men in charge of the system but the young men paying the price. 

Edited April 23 by Heartstrings

[Heartstrings]

48 minutes ago, Sneezyone said:

There’s a recent article in the economist which speaks to the growing disconnect between men and women, partly attributable too to increasing academic disparities between young men and women.

Which contributes heavily to women being able to choose the singke life over being in a couple.  Women have more economic opportunity.  I’ve heard it phrased as that a men was necessary for survival in days past but now they actually have to be likable.  

[goldberry]

Another feminist in a traditional relationship who stayed home to homeschool!  And definitely what I see in social media from women is actually asking for MORE respect for traditional roles, not less. 

[SKL]

If women could actually be supportive of other women, that would actually make a difference.

It may sound irrelevant to the current topic, but it really isn't.

[Heartstrings]

4 minutes ago, SKL said:

If women could actually be supportive of other women, that would actually make a difference.

It may sound irrelevant to the current topic, but it really isn't.

Can you elaborate on this? 

I agree of course, women are often the loudest critics of other women.  I think that’s because we are kept so insecure about our choices, everything turns into a competition.  Single or married, have kids or no, stay home or work, breastfeed or bottles, cloth or disposable, organic or plain, every single choice a woman makes is scrutinized to the nth degree.
I am interested in the connection to the current topic though.