Do Women Seem to Dislike Men Lately?

I read an article on a book about a new emerging class of males called Pre-Adults that fit together with an article I read yesterday about how women seem to be remarrying at slower rates than men. My citation of these articles does NOT signify my absolute agreement with them, I have issues with each. However, I have no interest in discussing their specific points in that way, but instead to merely use them as illustrative points of what I consider a broader social trend (in the USA at least); the general disatisfaction that women seem to have with men.

I wish I could pin down some kind of hard numbers of this, but I am just going on my experience in the cultural milieu. And there seems to be a feeling that men are lazy, dumb, good-for-nothings who take advantage of women's hard work and sacrifice. If anyone seriously contests that this viewpoint seems prevalent in our culture, I would really like to hear about your experience.

I don't mean to discount any particular person's experience, because I am sure that there really are quite a few lazy, dumb, good-for-nothing men out there. But I have a hard time believing that half of the human species is inherently that way. It just strikes me on it's face as being impossible, so I struggle to make sense of how this perception might exist.

I am going to riff a little below on what appears to be occuring based on my point of view. I'm not claiming a monopoly of truth on this, not by a long shot, and I am very interested in hearing the opinions of others on this issue. I know that my blog is viewed by a fairly male heavy audience, but also an international audience, and I am interested in how things play out in other people's lives.

My 2 cents:

In the past, men looked down upon women with a great deal of disdain. They thought they were stupid, incapable of learning, incapable of making rational decisions, etc. I believe a lot of this contempt came purely by virtue of superior social status. Just look at the Sanford Prison Experiment to see how people respond to dominance roles. I think that now we are starting to switch roles. Men are having a harder time in education, in the job market, etc. And as that dominance erodes and women become more assertive, they are getting closer and closer to equality. It is that closeness that appears to be breeding it's own kind of contempt. Every element of the patriarchy that remains becomes a nucleus around which the contempt grows.

I think the speed of this transformation is due to technology and thus appears to be quite sudden. People in their 20s and 30s have radically different gender balance in their relationships than people in their 50s and 60s. Times are changing rapidly and that makes it easier for people to compare time periods. Men feel like they are suddenly under attack. And their reaction has not been to fight for equality, but to disengage. To retreat into a world of video games and the internet where they can feel comfortable expressing their disdain for the shift that is occuring. All these video games with big breasted characters are the last gasp of that old school male psyche; much like the hatred of Obama among older white Americans is the last gasp of the Jim Crow age or the discomfort/anger that older people feel towards homosexuals is the last gasp of that kind of discrimination. My daughter will treat race and sexuality completely differently from my father's generation.

I think we may very well be moving towards a female-dominated world as these men in the upper eschelon slowly die out. What that portends for the future of "maleness", I don't quite know.

What do you think?