Stefanie O'Connell

This isn't just some guys behaving badly.

This is a well-documented pattern in which this is not uncommon where men are lashing out or withdrawing from women or

who outpace them on these traditional markers of success, like income or wealth or home ownership.

And so what the researchers call is male backlash.

And that is where men lash out like this because it's a way of reasserting dominance.

when you think about this through a framework of power and very patriarchal ideas that men should have greater access to power and resources and women should submit if women outpace men on those metrics that men really associate with their own masculinity and their own sense of identity

then asserting their power physically or even verbally through kind of lashing out becomes a way of kind of reasserting that hierarchy of dominance through another way.

And we see this all the time.

Even things like harassment and abuse, those are motivated by power.

sexual assault is motivated by power people think you know it's about trying to to act out some kind of fantasy but always the research shows us that it's really about establishing dominance and when people feel like their men feel rather that they are kind of like not in that dominant position anymore

they'll find ways to assert it through other means.

And so that is really clear, I think, in the dating market now.

And I think in broader trends that we're seeing with the rise of kind of manosphere content and a real doubling down on ideals of masculinity that are about physical strength, economic status, and kind of asserting yourself through these other markers of dominance.

You know, one of the most interesting things about this to me is when you look at the data, women's income in and of itself, as it goes up, really benefits women and their relationships.

It improves their own wellbeing.

And it improves their relationship satisfaction.

And that's just because, you know, income makes it easier to live your life.

You know, when you have greater access to financial resources, it can reduce stress that benefits not only women, it benefits their partners, it benefits their dependents, it benefits the whole household.

Where the negative reactions from men are coming up in ways that put stress on the relationship, hurt women's relationship satisfaction, and cause these real negative outcomes, like you said, higher rates of infidelity, higher rates of emotional abuse that women are being targeted with, higher rates of even physical violence against these women.

is when women's income outpaces their male partners.