The return of 'obey'

My social media algorithm must be broken, because every now and then I enter a loop of videos praising female obedience and promising a rewarding experience when a wife treats her husband like a deity.

Algorithms don't exist in a vacuum and mine I have moulded by gaping at such videos for too long, thinking to myself: this cannot be true.

It's like when you pass by a car accident on the motorway and you can't take your eyes off it. Your consciousness is captivated by tragedy: it cannot be that any young person in today's day and age would buy such content, let alone live by it.

The propaganda that slithers into my video platforms is usually created by other women, whose assurance that femininity is exclusively linked to servitude is alien to me.

I, however, have only heard of the 'manosphere', never witnessed it with my own eyes: the pitch-black side of online content fed to young men. Dare I even mention it to my YouTube, out of curiosity, my own feed of recommendations might turn into a very unwelcoming territory and I don't want that.

It was a tragedy to me to read the KCL's 29-country study, just three days before 8 March. We were too close to International Women's Day to be devastated by what is probably the most heart-breaking conclusion of the study: the Gen Z men (born between 1997 and 2012) surveyed are twice as likely as Baby Boomers to believe that women should obey their husbands and that traditional values should lead marriages into the longed-for "till death do us part". When did we go from "Okay, Boomer" to "Okay, Zoomer" to reproach close-mindedness?

At the same time, there have been recent studies in the UK and the US with questionable findings regarding the rise of religiousness among young people. The historical trend paints a decline in church attendance, but there are also polls that claim Gen Zs are returning to the pews.

In and of itself, this would not be alarming. Christian values in the manosphere, however, go beyond "treat thy neighbour as thyself". They are not innocent guidance on kindness, but a progress reversal, a way back to deep division and expectations that benefit no gender.

With the US attacking Iran just a few days before this study was published, it is ironic that the Land of the Free is condemning authoritarian patriarchy abroad while ignoring the revival of patriarchal thinking at home, albeit a much milder and less repressive version of it.

The recent study is a testament not to perpetual family environment teachings - the comparison between the two generations challenges that notion.

Instead, it clearly shows how social media and the general instability and polarisation of the world have led young men to believe that gender equality is the apocalypse.