Gender discrimination and sexism have been a large social issue since the beginning of humans. Even before our species homo sapiens existed, among the other species of the homo genus, while they made tools mostly only out of stone and could only communicate through gestures and signs, women were treated as inferior and useless except for nursing and domestic roles. By the birth of our Homo sapiens species 300000 years ago, sexism had continued and women could not escape the imaginary boundaries set for them by men.
More recently, in the US, while men had centuries of legally being able to input their opinions to elect politicians into office, women were not allowed to vote until 1920. In the 1960s, the Equal Pay Act was finally signed into law, outlawing sex-based wage bigotry. Although society seems to be progressing further and further in terms of giving women more rights, the less obvious and uncontrollable anti-feminism has risen in social media.
There’s a new slang term in Gen Z, the so-called generation of technology grouping people born between 1997 and 2012, “red pill.” The term “red pill” originated from a scene in the 1999 movie The Matrix in which the protagonist is forced to choose between a blue pill and a red pill which would lead him to ignore the reality outside the Matrix’s illusion and continue living in blissfully or would lead him to return to the catastrophic and unsettling truth outside of the illusion, respectively.
In its original state, the term “red pill” had little or nothing related to politics, however, it all changed with Curtis Yarvin, the American monarchist and anti-democracy blogger. In 2007, under the pseudonym Mencius Moldberg, Yarvin asserted that democracy is just another simulation or illusion, similar to the movie Matrix, that Americans ignorantly accept as reality. While Yarvin rejected and criticized democracy, many of his beliefs, aside from the structure and system of government, aligned with those of the far-right Republicans. This allowed “red pill” to maneuver into the general, extreme, and conservative far-rights, gaining a new meaning after Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election victory: right-wing extremism and their beliefs.
Now, with social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, videos of podcasts, discussions, and speeches made about their hate for how modern women behave and how men are victims of never being understood. These “red pill” content creators declare that women are only sexually attracted to dominant and successful men, dominant in a way resembling the power dynamics of traditional and stereotypical gender roles. In accounts from their perspective, women are frequently objectified and are described to be valuable only with physical appearance and sexual aura.
The red pill content creators complain that feminism and fighting for women’s rights is unfair and unnecessary because, according to them, women are far more dominant than feminists realize. In addition, they assert that men are victims of feminism since, according to them, society views men’s views as inferior. Andrew Tate, a social media personality, is a well-known anti-feminist making “red pill content” on social media.
Some of the outrageous and misogynistic claims include claiming that women are “used goods” and secondhand” if they have lost their virginity and that they should take responsibility if they put themselves “in a position to be raped.” In addition, he has claimed that if a man has responsibility over his female partner, although the responsibility should go both ways and be mutual, that man has some degree of authority over the woman. His specific contentions make it apparent that the “red pill” ideology is entirely meant to demean and be condescending toward women.
The popularization of this type of “red pill” content has occurred through different methods. The first method is through the use of slang terms. “Alpha males” or “Chads” are slang terms commonly used to describe men who follow these red-pilled beliefs and men described as ones who often fit a certain standard of looks in which they are very muscular. Although there are many people in the younger population implementing these words in a satirical and ironic manner, it is undeniable that its use as a label for these “red-pilled” people with misogyny is still widespread on social media.
Since slang terms and particular words, in general, can be trendy and unified within a generation, the “red pill content” and its whole concept are popularized and easily pushed through to the younger audience. The second method of popularization or “red-pill” content is simply through the sheer number of social media platform users. Another method by which these particular social media personalities aim to push their beliefs as mainstream is by rage-baiting. Rage-baiting is defined quite literally the way it seems: baiting with rage.
Content creators will intentionally say or do something to provoke their audiences and evoke frustration or rage, allowing the content creators to maintain their audience’s attention and gain more views and comments, which encourages the social media platform’s algorithm to recommend the videos to more users.
The top social media platforms for the youth, especially teenagers, are YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. YouTube has 2.5 billion users worldwide, and somewhere around 10% to 20% of the YouTube user community is composed of people under 18; similarly, TikTok has 1 billion people active globally, with most studies agreeing that over 25% of TikTok users are made up of people between ages 10 to 19; Snapchat has 800 million active users internationally, with nearly 20% of them being teenagers; Instagram has 2.4 billion users and close to 10% of those users are under the age of 18.
These numbers continue to rise as we as a whole become more and more reliant on technology. These statistics are incredibly important, considering that it is much more likely for adults to have established beliefs and views on certain topics while children are still developing theirs from various resources, one of them being social media. The unrealistic ideals portrayed on social media have unfortunately begun to influence the reality of many such as through overconsumption and certain behaviors common in influencers. Hundreds of millions of children and adolescents, many of whom have yet to build their belief systems, are using social media as a resource for information.
The exposure of younger audiences to this content is very harmful as it motivates them, particularly men and boys, to hold a victim mentality and to view and treat women as inferior and mere objects in the real world. And even though young minds are more easily manipulated, it is not to say that adults aren’t influenced by social media, meaning that they could still develop new opinions or further assert their views on anti-feminism. Because the future is in the hands of the youth, if “red pill” content continues to grow on social media and influence the youth, society will regress in the future and return to its previous condition in which the common beliefs were misogynistic and stereotypical.
No matter a person’s political views, women deserve basic respect to be seen as equal. It is neither that only certain political and social beliefs are valid nor that chastising the identity of conservative people is correct, however, the widespread promotion of such harmful perspectives on important social issues like feminism, using major social media platforms, to encourage discrimination, disrespect, and misogyny against women is detrimental to our progressing society.
By: May Hachiya
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