Why Do We Coddle Gen Z Boys But Think Gen Z Girls Are Annoying?

thought digest, 12.3.2024

Gen Z Men vs. Gen Z Women. A young woman who reads this blog (and often subtweets me, so I can’t help but leave these little Easter eggs for her) shared an observation recently that stuck with me, as her comments often do. She feels nobody cares about her demographic—and while I don’t think that’s entirely true—I can see her point.

I can’t speak to the physical world, but I can take a stab at the media.

Independent (“non-left”), right-wing, and alt-media have fallen into a predictable pattern when it comes to Gen Z. While young men get cast as victims of cultural shifts, Zoomer women are boxed into tired stereotypes: they’re either radical activists, coddled hysterics, lonely femcels, inscrutable whores, the targets of older men’s objectification, or some radioactive combination of all of the above. I would be remiss if I didn’t also say that this is part of a larger media ecosystem where mainstream outlets have, for years, routinely deployed similar tactics when talking about Gen Z men, creating a kind of funhouse mirror effect where each side’s distortions justify the other’s.

But to her point: Who speaks for Gen Z women right now? Who’s on their side?

Right now, the alt-media space is producing an endless churn of “wise beyond her years” Zoomer thought leaders critiquing their own generation. Maybe she’s evangelizing about raw milk and carnivore diets, or warning you about the “dangers” of birth control, or lecturing you about your screen time—but the script is more or less the same.

She’s worried about her generation and has a knack for diagnosing what’s wrong with them. Old people love it.

I don’t think it’s entirely a grift or that these women are bad people. Their comments sections and replies tell their own story: they overflow with praise from parents, grandparents, and—notably—men, while their female peers remain skeptical or hostile. These women, whether consciously or not, are performing; for older people who want their anxieties about the younger generations validated, and for men who long for a woman who “gets it.”

It’s not just the “tradwives,” either; it’s a whole cottage industry of anti-feminist or feminist-skeptical culture commentators. Myself included, once!

While thoughtful mainstream coverage about young men—from loneliness to economic precarity—occasionally makes an appearance, it’s been buried under years of inflammatory discourse. The media ecosystem found it more profitable, or more politically expedient, to demonize men.

But now, as media spaces grow more crowded and the dream of becoming a capital-p Personality becomes more untenable, liberal content creators have discovered a new niche: exonerating the men their contemporaries vilified. They’re essentially repackaging (what should have never been) right-wing talking points from the past eight years for a progressive audience, positioning themselves as the only adults in the room. While they’re responding to very real biases in mainstream coverage—no argument from me—I still suspect there’s something calculated there, again, consciously or not. It’s a differentiating factor to be a young liberal woman saying, “Maybe we should listen to men, guys.”

When any of these creators, whether they’re right or left-wing, turn their attention to young women’s issues, though, it often follows a predictable pattern.

Take any recent viral video where a young woman talks about modern dating. Suddenly, you’ve got a week’s worth of think pieces criticizing women. We enter the scene with faux sympathy then pivot to painting these women as hysterics whose standards are too high, who are too afraid of risk, who have impossibly high body counts (despite statistics that suggest otherwise), who are “addicted to abortion,” who would have been happier if they married at 22 and had four kids by 28.

Any legitimate criticisms these women might have about dating—or legitimate criticisms that the viewer might lodge against these women—are crushed under the weight of the viral Substack post. They’re sacrificed at the altar of “Let’s get this blogger a book deal.” This is not an ecosystem that’s built for debate or truth-seeking, even though we pretend it is. We’re entertainers; not public intellectuals, and so few people are rigorously challenged on their beliefs. We’re ultimately jockeying for influence, trapping ourselves in an endless game of reactionary ping-pong, a metaphor I deploy far too often. There are people having thoughtful discussions, including thousands of them here on Substack, but that’s not the name of the game.

Writing this, I know that my own writing has favored Zoomer men while all but ignoring young women. I’ve been reflecting on why, beyond the audience capture I describe here, which impact me as much as it has anyone else. But as is the case with the women I describe above, it’s not as simple as “I think they’re more interesting,” or that I don’t like women—the most tiresome act of all.

I think, for reasons that still elude me, I feel unwelcome in many women’s spaces. I never saw myself in women’s media, really. And so, I’ve always looked for myself in men instead. But I think this just bolsters the inspiration for this post’s point. In a healthier society, maybe I wouldn’t have felt that way. Either the media would have been different, or my response to it would have been.

I suspect, also, that the situation shifts in liberal and leftist spaces more broadly, though I’m less familiar with the character of this commentary. From what I’ve seen, these platforms do better at elevating Gen Z women who then go on to build real followings. The conversations feel more grounded in a way, with young women speaking directly to their peers instead of performing for older, male audiences. But I’m not sure how diverse the perspectives are, ultimately.

Are you “allowed” to criticize the sex industry, for example? Or does that push you into the nether-world of right-coded content?

Another potential issue emerges with Zoomer women on the left, though. While they aren't necessarily playing to older generations, they instead become transformed into aspirational it-girls. Writing for its own sake becomes a cultural currency that might unlock a profile in Interview magazine. I'm not the first to make this observation, but this creates a cycle. Young women become constrained by the endless production of essays about girlhood, being commodified, the meta-analysis about the whole process—flattening the landscape in its own way.

But maybe that’s not so bad. If mimesis is inevitable, it may as well be about girlhood essays.

The Black Manosphere. A lot of Gender War content sounds remarkably similar to conversations that were happening in the Black community decades ago. The example I like to give is the very controversial Shahrazad Ali. When she speaks, you may hear shades of Pearl Davis.

It’s not that I think Davis is knowingly taking cues from Ali, it’s that I think they’re responding to the same type of media and social environments.

I’ve posted this clip many times before but check it out if you haven’t already:

The social pressures (real, imagined, and thrust upon them)—fatherlessness, fears about the feminization of men, evolving family structures, economic instability—that influenced a certain genre of Black cultural commentary now feature prominently in mainstream conversations. As default.blog contributor Taylor Stuckey points out, much of the language we use to discuss these issues (e.g. simp, cuck, thot) originated in Black communities before being adopted more widely, too.

The situations aren’t identical, but I think there’s a useful media comparison to be made. It’s something I’d like to explore here, but I’m out of my depth. If this is a topic that you know a lot about and you’d be open to an interview or a written contribution, please reach out.

Finally, stay tuned for a new development…