Media Storm - Angry Young Women: Did the media manufacture the femosphere?

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

Last month, an article in the New Statesman went viral. “Meet the Angry Young Women”, it was titled. “Across Britain a radical new feminism is rising”. What makes someone radically left-wing according to this article? Disliking billionaires, feeling anxious about social injustice, caring about Gaza, and of course – having pink hair and a nose ring. How very radical! The New Statesman article was then seized upon by The Times and The Telegraph in particular, who bemoaned that we should "Forget the Manosphere" and instead focus on "Angry leftie women" who are apparently "the vanguard of the Left’s toxic empathy". 6 in 10 women wouldn't date someone who doesn't have the same view as them on Israel-Palestine, they gripe. Yet the articles fail to mention that the data set also found that 5 in 10 men feel the same. Can angry young women who are exercising their democratic right to vote really be compared to the angry young men of the manosphere, who are perpetuators and some even proven perpetrators of sexual violence? What is the media's real aim behind these lazy comparisons? And is the femosphere even real, or did the media manufacture it? Joining us on Media Storm to actually discuss why women are so bloody angry, is therapist and activist Megan Cooper (who was misrepresented and misquoted in the original article) and founder of Cheer Up Luv, Eliza Hatch. This episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mathildamall⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) and Helena Wadia (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@helenawadia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠)  The music is by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @soundofsamfire⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us ⁠@mediastormpod Edited by Toka Qassem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oh, I need to turn my fan off. I was about to say, Helena, I can hear your fan buzzing in the background. I'm sorry, I'm so hot. To anybody who is listening from outside of the UK, we're having a unseasonable heat wave, 35 degrees, and my flat is so hot. Also, Brits can't handle heat to the extent that it crosses the threshold of like 25 and no one works. Everyone's just outside the pub, which was fine on Monday because it was a bank holiday. And I had to go to work on Monday because, you know, the news doesn't take bank holidays. And I was dreading the commute.

But then, you know, the tube was pretty much entirely empty. Tuesday, I approached the tube, terrified about the heat wave rush hour commute. Tube is empty. No one's going to work. Why are we the only people going to work? Anyway, before we get into our work, I just wanted to give a shout out to my friend. Caitlin Jones, who has been an avid media storm listener from the very beginning and who has listened to every single episode. However, for a time, she fell behind. I think, you know,

maybe she's how dare she listening to other podcasts or living her life. But at one point, I think she was about four months behind on Media Storm, maybe longer. And she is to this day up to date. So thank you, Caitlin. That is dedication. And for the marathon of listening to our ramblings, I do apologize. Thank you so much. We appreciate your support. On with the show. Last month, an article in the New Statesman went viral.

Meet the Angry Young Women, it was titled. Across Britain, a radical new feminism is rising. The article written by New Statesman, online editor Emily Lawford, is about the rise. or perhaps the visibility of left-wing young women. To quote the article, the content of a growing number of left-wing female influencers is in some ways a mirror image of the content made by male influences. While the toxic, often hard-right politics of the Manosphere

has been exhaustively documented, the new generation of female influencers are simile radical. They're just on the other side of the political spectrum. So am I understanding this correctly? The so-called radical left is being described as a mirror image of the far right manosphere. Yes. And what exactly, according to this article, makes someone radical left? Well, apart from hair colour and number of piercings, which seem to be incredibly important to this writer,

and we'll get on to that later. It's honestly wild how many times she mentions appearance. the aspects seem to be disliking billionaires and not feeling like the economy works in their favour, feeling anxious about social injustice and caring about Gaza. How radical. I know, right? It definitely sounds as equally bad as the Manosphere. I know we're being sarcastic.

Hyper sarcastic. But if there was anything that made me really angry, it was this really sloppy comparison between the angry, the angry young men of the Manusphere who are perpetrators and sometimes proven perpetrators of sexual violence and the angry young women of the left who, as this article gripes, are exercising their democratic right to vote. Also, the quote you read out from the New Statement article that the hardline politics of the Manosphere has been exhaustively documented. I would disagree with this. We have covered many times on this podcast. how people and women especially have had to fight for media attention to highlight everyday gender-based violence.

So yes, while it's true that clickbait media has been very drawn lately to Manosphere mega influences, when it comes to the root issue here, misogyny, we haven't even scratched the surface of reporting. Agree. This is the kind of headline, an article that I've come to expect from the Telegraph, even the Times, but not really the New Statesman, which is generally ranked left wing as an outlet itself. Oh, don't you worry, Matilda. Once this article came out in The New Statesman, it was jumped on by the Times where a column by Sebastian Payne read, Never Mind the Manosphere, Meet the Angry Young Women.

It was also jumped on by The Telegraph, who have so far written five pieces about angry young women, but there's probably more I've missed. We've had, Forget the Manusphere. It's angry lefty women we need to worry about. There was also angry young women are the vanguard of the left's toxic empathy. We were blessed with angry young women don't know how lucky they are. And my personal favourite from The Telegraph, angry young women are driving men into the arms of cougars.

Oh no. Wait, sorry, did you say toxic empathy? Yes. Do I really need to sit here and argue with people who you need to sit here and argue with people who literally characterise themselves as being against caring about other people. Can I ask though, what is the basis for these articles given? Are they just op-ed rants? Or do they include real-life situational data to justify their fear-mongering about angry young women?

Oh, the data. So there is data which the writer Emily Lawford used for her New Statesman article. it was from a poll that was done for the new statesman by a polling company called Merlin Strategy. The data points that Emily pulls out of the polling to demonstrate that these angry young women are extreme in their views. Actually doesn't hold up when you put it against the rest of the data in the poll. So, for example, Lawford points out in her article that six out of ten women wouldn't date someone who doesn't have the same view as them on, as it is described in the poll, the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Worth bearing a mind, though, that it's not asking what your view is, i.e. it's not saying, would you date someone who is pro-Palestinian? It's saying, would you date someone who didn't have the same view as you? Now, in this data, this is 58% of women. So, yes, nearly six out of ten women say they wouldn't date someone who doesn't have the same view as them on Israel-Palestine. But what the article fails to mention is that it's also 49% of men. So nearly five out of ten men.

So we've got the article rage baiting that six out of ten women wouldn't date someone who has the same view as them, but conveniently forgetting to mention that according to the same poll, it's also five out of ten men. Come on. I want to shout out to Dr. Phoebe O'Brien here, who was one of the young activists interviewed for the new statesman piece, who I felt was represented in a very patronising way in the article. But Phoebe actually took time to go through the dataset from Merlin Strategy and first alerted me to the omissions of data in this article. Some other missing male data points that Phoebe found were 74% of women said social justice was important to them, but so did 63% of men.

Asked if you would date someone who had a different view on Donald Trump to you. 58% of women said they wouldn't. But so did 51% of men. And sometimes men even lead women on liberal views. For example, when asked if they have a positive or negative view of socialism, 57% of men have a positive view compared to 49% of women. So the assertion that young women are skewing much further left than young men according to this data doesn't really seem to hold up when you actually read it.

This is appalling data practice. And it validates me because we are going to be doing an episode later about appalling data practice by the media, bad research. But this is just, you know, this is useless. And the issue becomes that as you say, okay, the Times and the Telegraph picked up on this story and started doing reruns. So bad data becomes even worse data as it's repurposed for secondary and tertiary opinion articles. Exactly. And I'm going to make you angrier.

It's not just the data that is inaccurate. The piece also broke a crucial rule of journalism. It misrepresented somebody's work. someone who is going to be joining us on this podcast very shortly. And that is Megan Cooper, a therapist, activist and podcast host. Here's how the new statesman wrote about Megan in their article. Many of the left-wing accounts were withering about men. Megan Cooper, a British trauma-informed holistic therapist,

has a podcast called Higher Love, in which she discusses violence against women, hyper-masculinity, and the ecosystem of manufactured male victim. But here's the thing. At this point in time, Megan had released 110 episodes of her podcast. Two of those 110 focused on the topic of women and girls, and both were recorded with male guests who specialize in educating teenagers in schools on the topics of relationships and masculinity.

Megan has never said the words, manufactured male victimhood. That is actually a quote by a male victimhood. guest of hers called Andrew Bernie Bernard, an educator, where he referenced what he calls manufactured male victimhood to describe how a whole industry has erupted by planting seeds of male insecurity on top of the existing angst of boys in order to get them to buy products. Let's listen to the clip. I call it manufactured male victimhood. This is not me saying men and boys themselves are going, oh, this is terrible, I'm getting victimized.

what it is is strategic. I think it's also worth noting that on the corresponding New Statesman podcast titled Gen Z Man Haters, Why Do Young Women Hate Men? The author of this article, Emily Lawford, is interviewed and even implies that she spoke directly to Megan for the article. So there are so many layers of journalistic incompetence here. She didn't even speak to Megan. No.

Here's the thing. There is something valuable to be discussed about if and why young women are becoming more left wing. It's just not helpful to do that via inaccurate, lazy and frankly embarrassing hit pieces. So here at Media Storm, we're going to attempt to do it in a much more helpful way. Let's do it. She's a trouble maker. She is an anger management problem. I think she should see a doctor.

Why are liberal women so unhappy? I spoke to an influencer who posts very, very left wing conversation. about toxic masculinity, about manufacturing male victimhood. It's the Guardian reading. A young person, she's so angry. She's so crazy. Welcome to Media Storm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Helena Wadia. And I'm Matilda Malinson.

This week's Media Storm, angry young women. Who's afraid of the Femisphere? Welcome to the Media Storm Studio. Our first guest is a trauma-informed facilitator providing therapeutic and coaching. to change makers, humanitarian organizations and community focus spaces for women. She's the host of the Higher Love with Megan podcast, which centers around redefining what it means to be well in the times through which we are living and improving inclusion and access in the wellness space. Welcome to the studio, Megan Cooper. Thank you so much. I'm so grateful to be here with you on this very warm morning.

Very warm. Our second guest is a photographer and activist, most widely known as the founder of Cheer Up Love, a platform dedicated to retelling survivors' stories and empowering and advocating for the rights of women and marginalized genders. The platform raises awareness of the prevalence of misogyny and sexual harassment and facilitates educational conversations while crushing harmful taboos. She also runs workshops, exhibitions, lectures and consultancy, where she advises on inclusively communicating these topics. We're very lucky that she's here once again on Media Storm to communicate these topics to us. Welcome, Eliza Hatch. Hi, thanks so much for having me. It's great to be back. Right, let's begin. Megan, how did you feel when you read the new statesman piece, we've talked

about it in our intro, that you were mentioned in, despite not having spoken to the journalist in question? Oh my goodness. I'm going to attempt to keep this concise, because I feel like I can literally take up the entire hour, just talking about the emotional wave that I went on. So I got sent the article by Dr. Phoebe O'Brien, who was also misrepresented in the article. She sent it to me, but nine o'clock at night, and I'd been away from my husband for two weeks. I'd been in Barcelona, supporting the collective care team for the Global Samud Flitilla. Matilda, I met you briefly there. We did. You met in a port. Yeah, and we'd been apart for two weeks, and we were attempting to have some quality time together, away from our phone.

away from, you know, interacting with other things. So I was trying to like skim-read this article to just gauge the vibe on this. And then as I was skimming it, I was like, oh no, this is a hit piece. So I went to bed. When I woke up in the morning, I then saw that there had been a corresponding podcast to it.

I saw that there were articles in other newspapers as well. And I was just really confused how this had come about because I had absolutely no warning for it coming out. And I kind of entered into this state of like panic and fear because I was like, what are the very real implications that this could have on my career? The fact that I'm a spaceholder, the fact that I work in a therapeutic capacity. You know, are people going to Google my name and it's going to come up with Themisphere? I mean, that's like not good PR in the therapeutic world, you know?

And I think that there is something about being misunderstood. You know, someone said to me about a couple of years ago, it's one thing, you know, this fear of being rejected, it's another thing, this fear of being misunderstood. So I was like, how has somebody misunderstood the work that I do? Has that person even listened to my podcast? And I was trying to rack my brain for kind of where these snippets had come from. You mentioned obviously the manufactured male victimhood. And I was like, that came from a male guest on one of the two episodes that I have done about gender-based violence out of the 110 episodes that I have done.

So that was a total misrepresentation. But then, of course, you know, I kind of went on the up with that where, you know, friends sent me voice notes of them reading the article with their comments, you know, in it. And it was entered into this kind of hilarity. I felt deeply supported by my community and by men in my life as well. But don't you, don't you hate them? Well, apparently. You have men in your community, you traitor.

I mean is this like anti-ante men, Gen Z woman who would never marry a man. I'm like, babe, like, I'm married. I'm married to an amazing man. Like, have you ever done any research on me? Eliza, you know, let's bring you in here, somebody who dedicates their life to trying to close the gender divide and calling out media misogyny.

What were your first impressions of the piece or the articles that followed? Well, when I first saw the piece, It was that like familiar kind of feeling of bristling at this trending narrative that women's anger is somehow like a threat to society and specifically like a threat to men. And it's not like a unique article or a unique take sadly because it's amongst like an incredibly wide pool of articles which have come out recently about fem cells, about young angry women. I mean, so far this year alone, the telegraph has published one article. a month with a headline about angry young women. So it kind of follows this like widening trend of painting kind of all women who are, you know, have anything kind of at all negative to say about men or about gender inequality or about

violence against women or about literally anything as, you know, kind of grouping them together to be this group of just like hysterical, angry women. Yeah, absolutely. And let's talk about that word. angry. So what I was really struck by was that the initial article in the news statesman was written by a woman. A lot of, but not all of the follow-up pieces in the Telegraph were predictably written by your pale, male, stale journalist. But this topic of angry young women was thrown into the viral arena recently by a woman. And I would have thought that perhaps other women may be aware that the word angry has long been away to demon women who express any sort of emotion or opinion. Megan, why do you think this article, essentially a hit piece on left-wing white women, happen now? To be honest, I don't think that a man could have got away with writing this in the new statesmen. I feel like it had to come from a woman. The thing that I landed on with this is, you know, we are witnessing as a result of the

interconnected struggles that we have witnessed in 4K, Palestine, Gaza, Congo, Sudan, what we are able to see in real time on our phones. I think that there are more white women activated at this time than we have perhaps seen over previous years. And what a threat to the establishment that is. Because once you have white women who are involved with these movements, that is a whole bigger faction of society who are engaged in political activism. I find it interesting because the new statesman, the sort of centre left, I think it reflects this need for the centre left to make themselves seem more legitimise by being the ones, being the first to demonise the more radical left.

And I think what that does is present them as the reasonable left, right? The reasonable progressives by contrast. I also thought that it was interesting that all of the women that they were speaking about in the article were white women. I think it shows that these white women who are writing the article are attacking the white women who are breaking the mold, the mold of white women typically upholding patriarchy because they have privilege and they have the privilege of parking their activism at the door because they are not as a. as women of color. So I thought that was an interesting distinction. Yeah.

Yeah, there's nothing scarier for privilege than when privileged people start to criticize their own. This word angry, surely this is an inheritor of the word hysterical that used to be used to dismiss everything women were stealing as pathologically irrational. Eliza, you co-create a yearly exhibition and event series every women's history month.

and that exhibition is called hysterical. So I wonder, do you have a thing or two to say about this framing? Yeah, well, I mean, as you said, it's just like the modern day hysterical. And actually, it would go one step further and say it's like the modern, you know, day kind of witch term, basically calling any person, any woman who is upset or who is sticking the head above the parapet or who is, you know, calling out some kind of injustice, just like labelling them, yeah, a witch, hysterical. angry, like whatever label you want to put on it. And I think it's just kind of lazy and reductive. Yeah. Something that was also impossible to avoid in the New Statesman article was the focus on

women's appearances. Here are no fewer than six examples of this in the New Statesman article. O'Brien has bright green eyes, three silver nose rings and cropped blonde hair. O'Brien has also shared posts from Frank Riot. a female artist with long bleached blonde hair. Young women in puffer jackets and Doc Martins were standing together. A girl with red lipstick had written the words, Blood on your hands in red ink on her palms. She had red hair and lots of silver jewelry.

The lead student with the pink hair. There were more than 100,000 marchers who could roughly be categorized into three groups, Muslim men, pensioners selling copies of the socialist, and what looked like lots of bright-haired girls, So several told me politely that they were non-binary. Side note, like, let's just add in a little sprinkling of, like, transphobia in here. I mean, honestly.

Right. Oh, my God. Like, just a blanket. Let's just offend everyone. Yeah. Oh, my God. Megan, why do you think these young women's appearances were talked about so much? Like, what is really behind the mentions of blue and pink and bleach blonde hair?

Yeah. Firstly, just to point out, you know, what, red lipstick? puffer jackets, Doc Martins, like, how threatening? Like, oh my God, me in a puffer jacket? Like wild. Like Eliza was saying, it felt like this really lazy anti-feminist trope coming from a woman who claims to have been in the feminist society. It's like, I think you need to go back to a few more meetings.

But again, it's the right kind of feminist, you know? Yeah, exactly, right? But when I read it, it was really, it felt like a word. to make the women seem more radical, more extreme, more stupid than they actually were. When I spoke to my mother about it and the first thing she said was it just makes you all sound really stupid, you know, or pink hair, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, Phoebe has a PhD. Phoebe knows what she's talking about.

The women that are being spoken about in this article are politically informed. they take the time with critical thinking. And if you notice, like in that last phrase, she says, okay, there's three groups, Muslim men, pensioners selling copies of the socialist and then bright-haired girls, girls also. Notice that, you know, the other groups are not defined by their appearance, but it's the girls, it's the women who are disparaged

on the basis of their appearance. Eliza, why do you think these young women's appearances were talked about so much? Well, it's obvious, it's like an obvious dog whistle to the right as well. It's also like one step away from, you know, Sala Bravaments, like guardian reading, tofu eating, wokorati, like description of what everyone on the left looks like and does. It's like that's a very conscious decision to use those words and to use words like, you know, bleach and things like that. It's all very calculating. Yeah, it's exactly,

that's the right word for it calculating. Side note, I had totally forgotten about the toffee eating woke karate comment. That's probably my favorite comment like of all time. I immediately got a T-shirt with it printed on gave it to my sister. It's honestly like accidentally iconic. Yeah, exactly.

Go off Suella Braverman. Anyway, something we try to do at Media Storm is read beyond the headlines and often beyond the articles themselves to try and add nuance into often very black and white thinking. On this topic,

What many articles are doing is labelling young women as radical left because they are progressive or pro-Palestinian or don't want children and failing to highlight really what is making young women so angry. Most writers seem to present angry young women as born that way, coming out of the womb with pink hair and a nose ring screaming about hating men. Megan, are you angry? And if so, why? I think if you are not angry at this time, you are not paying attention.

Because there is so much in our world which is steeped in injustice. You know, we are seeing the emboldening of racism. We are seeing anti-Muslim hate and division in our streets. We are witnessing a genocide in Gaza. We are witnessing multiple genocides around the world. What is happening in Sudan? What is happening in Congo? leaders acting in any way, shape or form that they wish with total impunity,

violence against women, a national state of emergency, which is not being taken seriously or being addressed. And so I think if you are not angry at this time, then you are not paying attention. I think that there are ways for us to be angry. You know, there are destructive ways that anger permeates in our cultures, leading to, you know, to violence and all sorts of harm within, within our society. But I think that there is this real need for sacred rage at this time,

you know, for anger at the injustice. Anger should be there at injustice and being able to allow that to move us. So yes, I am angry, but in a constructive way that I feel is supportive for the times through which we're living. And a lot of my work when I'm working one-on-one with women is also to enable women to gain a sense of like befriending their anger, working with their anger, allowing their anger in a society which has told us to be the good girl and demonised our anger. So yes, I am angry and I am proud of being an angry woman at this time. What I thought was so telling as well is that in a lot of these articles,

the journalists were saying more about how they felt rather than about what was actually happening. So Eliza, this is your opportunity. Are you angry and what are you angry about? I'm angry that, you know, this emotion of anger is, is only something which is an acceptable emotion for like men apparently. It's kind of wild to me that we have to have this conversation where we could be like, women are allowed to have emotions too. It's just, yeah, I just, I find it wild that we're still up here. I work at like the violence against women's sector and you know every single day we are bombarded with stories of male violence against women and you know it would be quite strange for someone like me or like anyone who sees

these stories every day to like not be perturbed by that to not be angered by that and to not feel like you want to do something to to fix the system the very broken system I mean just last week it was a new story about three teenage boys who were left. off with like a slap on the wrist basically for the rape and digital abuse and like filming of two teenage girls with the judge saying you know none of you have to go to prison today and it's like of course like why wouldn't that make you angry so yes i think there is a justifiable rage do you know what if i'm to sort of really try and sympathize with the authors behind these articles i can see why people think we have a problem with anger in our society there is a lot of anger as you say if you're not

angry you're not paying attention i think you know, there's an aspect of mass exposure, over exposure with today's society compared to the past with social media, that we actually do see everything that is going wrong. And that creates a lot of anger. I recently came across this term hyper-politicization. Everyone feels hyper-political about issues. And often that anger, it doesn't result in more change. And the reason for that is that democracy is still very slow. And the result is we have a public forum with a lot of expressions of anger, but a relative lack of constructive action and change. And I think that leaves people feeling powerless, not just women. A lot of people feel very powerless. That makes us

more angry. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't be angry. If anything, I would say, like my analysis would be it exposes the failings of our democracy that it renders ordinary people so, so powerless. The thing is, terms like angry young women, they are so deflective. They make individuals, responsible for not being listened to rather than the system that refuses to listen. Basically, it's an immensely unintelligent analysis from the new statesman, from the telegraph, from the times. All it does is propagate the problem that it's complaining about. As we laid out in our introduction, the femisphere is now repeatedly presented as equally dangerous to the manosphere. Megan, before we go into the implications of this,

Do you think that the femisphere exists and how would you define it? I don't, well, it exists now, doesn't it? Because the new statesman created it. I don't see how we can hold the two things up together of, you know, the Andrew Tates of this world who are calling for the subjugation of women for the permissioning and normalization of abuse and violence towards women. women, how we can hold that up alongside women who are calling for safety, dignity and equal rights. So I don't think it does exist in the same kind of way.

I mean, there's definitely like people who, like individuals who would identify as fem cells. There are even people who would say, I'm in the femispphere. But I don't think the femisphere exists in the same way that the manosphere does. And I completely agree with what you were saying, Megan, as well. there's, you just cannot even like hold them up against each other. They're not even in the same room. Like, I don't think they should even have the same wording like femisphere, manosphere, like they're just not in any way comparable because anything that, uh, kind of women, I suppose, who like claim this title, uh, or who consider themselves to be fem cells or at any way,

like aligned to this like idea of being a femes in the femisphere. It doesn't preach the same ideals of violence that ultimately the manisphere does and that in cells do you know there isn't a radicalization there which results in an entire population of men feeling like they can't walk down the street safely or that they cannot be like left alone with a woman or you know it doesn't breed the same culture of violence so they just are not in any way comparable in the same way that like misogyny and misandry are not comparable. Yeah, I think the framing of expressions of outrage by women as the female equivalent of the manosphere

comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of male violence. And I found it particularly interesting that under the social media posts of the New Statesman podcast about this article, there were dozens of men leaving very misogynistic comments agreeing with the content of the podcast. This implication the podcast gives off that a woman saying she wouldn't date someone without the same basic views as them is somehow as dangerous as men teaching other young men how to like hit or brutalize women.

That has emboldened the viewpoint that young women's anger is somehow causing mass violence towards men. Eliza, what are the wider implications of labelling angry young left-wing women as dangerous as the manosphere, is this just deepening the gender divide? Definitely. I think that's the one take we I had when I was reading the article was like, this is not doing any favours

for the polarisation of like young women and girls. And I really think that all this does is like stoke that fire. And men reading this article will be like emboldened by it and think, oh, well, I was right all along. All women do hate me. So I'm going to go further into my corner of like the manosphere or further, you know, away, like position my views kind of further away

from women my age. and then women will read it and go, well, yeah, that has made me angry. I'm even angrier now. That's like, consume some more content, which is going to rile me up even more, because that's the thing if you do engage with this content online, your phone will be like, okay, ping, ping, ping. Here are like seven more articles to make you even angrier and even more radicalized. So, yeah, it can only do more damage, I think,

and it can only polarise us even than we already are. For me, I want the main takeaway to be, like, like, I don't hate men. I hate the normalization of gender-based violence. That's what I hate. And there was so much opportunity to talk about the normalization of gender-based violence and point people towards solutions. But instead, they're just like reducing this to something as simple as man-hating.

And as you said, Eliza, it does not help anybody. And it's interesting that in the new statesman's own data, when poll on the statement, I think most of the opposite gender share my values and political views, 59% of women agreed with this and 63% of men did. And somehow this has been twisted into Gen Z man hating. It's just so lazy, but I also feel like it is designed this way, if I'm being cynical, but I also feel like it is designed this way to deepen polarization. Yeah, I think I think that's why I found the article so confusing in the beginning, because I was like, this was also such a missed opportunity through my perspective of celebrating. And I know that that's

not really what a lot of mainstream publications do, but celebrating the activation of so many young women at this time. That could have been a really interesting article. Why are more young women becoming politically informed and active? I think that would have been a really interesting article. And it was like almost there and then just took a very wrong turn. And I think that there was so much nuance missed from this article. And I would say also, you know, I agree. I see this with a cynical lens, Helena. You know, even around, you know, young women are choosing not to have children.

Well, why is that? Because what they suggested was because women hate men. But actually, you haven't mentioned the cost of living crisis. Socio-economic disparity. the world in which we're living and all of the context that is very real for women. So to name that as just, well, it's because women hate men,

just seem so lazy and very intentional. I mean, it distracts. It allows you to not mention the cost of living crisis. Well, exactly, exactly. And, you know, within the statistics as well, within the raw polling data, I mean, there's a section in the podcast where they are, the three women are kind of,

scoffing at this idea of women wanting to be in a relationship with a man that matches their political views on things like Trump, on things like Palestine, as if that's a really radical thing. I would have thought that the way that you see the world, the moral, ethical code by which you navigate the world, is really essential for a constructive long-term partnership. Yes. You know, the first thing that I said when I read it, I said to my husband, and like, babe, would you have married me if I'd been like pro-maga and really into the mass slaughter of children? And he was like, are you freaking joking? Like, no, of course not. I sort of feel like if young men are tending to go more towards the right wing and if young women are tending to go more

towards the left wing, is that not because the world is set up for men and is increasingly difficult for women? Yeah, well, I mean, the trend obviously reflects, the trend of, like, women voting for more progressive parties and more left wing parties reflects the fact that those parties tend to, like, value and want to preserve, but not just preserve, but also progress their rights and progress human rights, whereas there is, like, a trend that, you know, Parties on the right are going to want to preserve the culture of like patriarchy and white supremacy and all of the things which traditionally men and white men have benefited from. So that is a very kind of loose summary, I would say, of those like voting patterns.

Thank you both so much for joining us today for this rant about angry young women. Before we lose you, we'd love to know where. everyone can follow you and if you have anything to plug. Megan, can you share that with our listeners? Of course. Just want to say thank you so much to both of you and also to Eliza. Thank you so much. It's been a great meeting of the Femisphere this morning. And, you know, I'm really pleased that you are covering this really important story because it's not just the individual women that were included in the article. This is an article against collective women, all of us together. So I'm really pleased that you're covering this. So thank you. And anyone can find me online, Instagram,

social media platforms at Higher Love underscore with Megan. My podcast has the same name, Higher Love with Megan, and my website is higher hyphen love.com. And Eliza. Yeah, similarly, I just want to say thanks for covering this. Like I've never said yes quicker to like a podcast request. It's a topic that I'm obviously, you know, incredibly passionate about or, you know, filled with rage about, you could even say. But yeah, so you can find me at Cheer Up Love, Spell L-U-V on Instagram, TikTok. And if you want to kind of read any more of my angry rant, you can follow my substack as well.

Thank you. Amazing. Well, I'm off to get a nose piercing. Thank you for listening. Next week we'll be bringing you our first Newswatch of season nine to get back up to date with the news cycle. If you want to support MediaStorm, you can do so on Patreon for less than a cup of coffee.

for your month. The link is in the show notes and a special shout out to everyone in our patron community already. We appreciate you so much. If you enjoyed this episode, please send it to someone. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow a podcast, so please do tell your friends. And of course, leave us a five-star rating and a review. You can follow us on social media, at Matilda Mal, at Helena Wadia, and follow the show via at MediaStorm Pod. MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helena Wadia and Matilda Mallinson. It was edited by Toka Kasim, the music, is by Samfire.