I'm honestly just riffing at reiterating a tiny portion of what Talia Bhatt argues much more persuasively and compellingly in the article, which I highly encourage you to check out. It's a great read.

Heterosexual men rightly understand that there are social, legal, and financial carrots and sticks pushing women into relationships with them in which there is a power differential, and women gaining even 1% more agency to opt out of heterosexual norms is viewed as an assault, a kind of oppression.

Men choose patriarchy (in varying degrees, from abusers to completely socially acceptable 'feminist' identifying men) because it materially benefits them. A world in which women are free is a world in which men have less control over women and they don't want that.

It would be so great if men just didn't understand that patriarchy hurts them too because no one told them, or if feminists arguing our points differently would suddenly get through to them, or if class solidarity just made gendered oppression go away. We need to reckon with the reality, though.

The balance of gendered power within western heterosexual society in the last 30 years shifted approximately 2 centimeters towards women's autonomy, self-respect, and labour. Women are 1% less oppressed. The result was that men lost their fucking minds.

Another popular MAGA snuff video . . .
Thanks @badiucao.bsky.social.

Having spent a not-insignificant chunk of my life in post-dictatorship countries, the naiveté of American exceptionalism in thinking it can't happen here is just staggering. Like, we've been setting the stage for it to happen for literal decades.

This is my current favorite meme, sorry to whomever I stole it from