I’ve been trying to figure this phenomenon out for years. I subscribe to Linehan and Shrier, contribute to WOLF, and keep my male ramblings to myself (mostly) as I lurk here and at Ovarit. And yet, the most vociferous push-back I get, on that rare occasion I stick my head out in public, is from young women who are appalled at the dinosaur I am. (to think that sex is binary, and that I’m sticking with the 70s feminists I was raised on) But as I’ve been looking into the anti-suffrage groups at the turn of the century, or Phyllis Schlaffley’s anti-ERA activists, I’ve learned they were both primarily women’s movements. The most active and vociferous of these groups were made up of women. (There are actually scholarly papers comparing the two events and how the women talked about their anti-feminist positions.) I think something similar is happening now. There’s a really hackneyed trope that has been used incessantly in fictional plots... the sensitive weakling male, preyed upon by brutish man/men, protected by the heroic woman who can see the sensitive weakling’s superiority, until the sensitive weakling recognizes his untapped strength and ultimately rises to conquer. (That storyline is endlessly repeated as a Hollywood standard.) That’s what I hear in the various protestations of young women screaming “TWAW” in my ear when I’m foolish enough to speak my mind. And it’s not simply twaw, it’s always (!!!) how weak and vulnerable the tw who are w are, and how they need to be protected, from violent men. (and how dare any feeling woman object to them as women!) When talking about the Connecticut track athletes who were suing about boys being allowed into competition, one of my young female colleagues declared, “I don’t care about those girls!”. Obviously, protecting vulnerable young men was more important. I know this is a long ramble, and I recognize some anti-ERA women didn’t view themselves as anti-feminist, (that’s a fascinating history), but I’m sticking with the Hollywood “protecting the poor weakling hero” trope as a motivating factor among these young women. It’s a plot line that’s thousands of years old. Why shouldn’t it have new practitioners? s/