Saying “Girl Power” is not enough
Misogyny begins in our homes, during childhood.
Everyone knows the story: March 8th comes, stores put up ads with pastel colors, and significant others buy flowers and write letters to the women in their lives. The world is female! Girl power! Do it like a girl!
Suddenly cliché female-empowerment phrases are all over the internet. But what good is that if women and their power are ignored 364 days of the year? When international Women’s Day rolls by, women are given 24-hours of relevance. For 24-hours, society sets aside their affairs to pat women and girls on their backs, claiming they are “so strong”—the very same societies that overlook women’s issues, spew misogyny at every turn, and brush off women’s experiences in society as an overreaction.
A study made by UN Women revealed that in 2024 50,000 women and girls were killed by intimate partners and family members. That is 60% of the 83,000 women murdered that same year. Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a problem present everywhere. In Canada, more than 4 out of 10 women have experienced some form of IPV. In 2018, 44% of women reported experiencing psychological, physical, or sexual violence in their lifetimes.
So what is happening? Why is there so much hatred towards women?
Men are not innately violent. Unlike what many contents of the “Manosphere” argue, aggressiveness is not something intrinsic to the male gender. Thinking otherwise is what normalizes the issue. According to Movember Foundation, a men’s health organization and a partner of UN Women, two-thirds of young men consume toxic masculinity content. This not only downplays violence but it radicalizes these men and connects them to extremist ideologies. While many turn to these influencers searching for a purpose, for a way to cope with an unspoken mental struggle, the toxic masculinity environment only causes more harm for its consumers.
The hatred towards women, however, does not begin with a Google search of “how to understand the female body language.” It starts during childhood. One of the hardest truths one faces when trying to understand this problem is that we teach our boys to hate everything related to femininity since youth.
An experiment made by Jubilee in 2021 proved this. In the experiment, five boys and five girls were seperated—the boys sent to a playroom with “girl toys” and the girls to the playroom with the “boy toys.” When observed, the girls immediately played with the superhero figurines and Hot Wheels cars; the boys, however, avoided the dolls and were upset throughout the scene. One even claimed that their mom likes them to “play with boys’ stuff, not girls’.” Another asked the staff to replace his chair because he was uncomfortable sitting on a “girl’s” chair. When all children were reconveined into a third playroom, with both toys available, the same occurred: the girls played with all toys and the boys stuck with toys designed for their gender.
When we raise our boys, from an early age, to understand femininity as something to be uncomfortable with, we teach them to isolate themselves. Talking about feelings and struggles, the display of emotions, or any sort of emotional connection and regulation are taught as feminine traits, something that boys shouldn’t concern themselves with. The result is one we see now: men struggling with mental health, and instead of seeking professional help, they consume discourse that reinforces toxic masculinity-based beliefs. Men need to be stoic! Be an alpha! Siphon your male energy!
The Western societal norm and the “American Dream” of a wife, two kids, and a house has been shattered for the younger generation. Gen Zers no longer believe that owning a house or retiring are feasible future outcomes. When the idea of what was posed as the promised life breaks, people turn towards conservative narratives because they are reassuring. Men are turning towards hypermasculinity content for the very same reasons. And the system reinforces the beliefs that women should be subordinate to men.
In an international survey, which included Great Britain, Brazil, the US, Australia, and India, data showed that Gen Z men were twice as likely to harness traditional ideas on decision-making in marriages, than Baby Boomers. 31% of Gen Z believe that their wives should always obey their husbands, in contrast to 13% of Baby Boomers.
The hatred towards women is a world issue. In Brazil, for example, there has been an epidemic of femicides and gender based violence. A 20 year-old woman was stabbed and left on life support after rejecting a dating proposal. In South Korea, a woman was stabbed to death by her co-worker who had become obsessed with her. Despite a police investigation and a request for him to be detained, the authorities considered him as a “low-risk” individual in society.
Not all men go into such extreme acts, but the violence starts when we normalise sexism. It starts off with jokes and inability to hold men accountable. The only way to break the pattern of normalized misogyny and the violence against women is by speaking up and calling out this behaviour.
Recognizing the women in your life, gifting them flowers, writing them letters, and saying “Girl Power” on March 8th is not enough, not when they have to worry about their lives for the rest of the year.
Yes, we should celebrate women, but more importantly, we have to act and fight against a system of misogyny engraved in our society. Only by debating and questioning what we once considered “normal” or “harmless” will we begin to solve the roots of what actively kills our women while destroying men’s mental health.
