Why Young Women Fear Dating

Over the past several years, the “red pill” movement—and the “manosphere” that preceded it—has moved into the conservative mainstream. It has become right-wing shibboleth to complain that feminism has ruined young women, that young men are becoming more conservative and young women are becoming more progressive, and that this has led to a collective crisis in which lonely young men cannot attain what many of them desperately desire: a traditional family, a wife and children.

In response to this narrative, predatory snake oil salesmen like Andrew Tate, Myron Gaines, and other figures have accrued massive male followings preaching the prosperity gospel of promiscuity, fitness regimes, and personal wealth replete with harems of disposable women. On the religious front, podpastors like Joel Webbon and commentators such as Andrew Wilson are preaching “patriarchy” as the solution, with their own lives and careers being one of the best arguments against their reactive junk theology.

It is true that modern feminism has brought tremendously destructive forces into our culture. I work in the pro-life movement and have personally encountered the horrifying human cost of this ideology. Millions of babies have been butchered in the womb in the name of feminism, and in my view, attempts to rescue or baptize a term stained with so much blood are unworkable. It is true that there are pro-life feminists; it is also true that the term itself will forever be intertwined with Gloria Steinem and other champions of the abortion industry.

But after over a decade of research and speaking to thousands of young people on pornography, I am also convinced that to pinpoint “feminism” or the progressive shift of young women as the primary problem driving the gender divide ignores one of the key culprits: ubiquitous pornography consumption. For every young man online complaining that feminism has robbed him of his marital options, I have spoken with half a dozen young women who despair of finding a partner who has not had his mind pumped full of depraved pornographic imagery of women being degraded and abused.

Erika Bachiochi touched on this recently in an insightful essay titled “More Young Women Will Pursue Family Life If Good Men Step Up.” Bachiochi affirms many of the complaints about both young men and young women, and notes: “What I believe we are experiencing in real time is the post-Christian degeneration of the sexes.” Bachiochi also notes something that I have observed and heard countless times in high schools, on campuses, and in churches:

I do not think enough of us appreciate just how frightening porn itself is to young women, or how frightening to women the men are who have been malformed by it. Or frankly, how frightening is the rhetoric of those extremely online right-wing male provocateurs who too often talk as though the proper relation between the sexes is one of domination and submission instead of reciprocity, collaboration, and care.

She is precisely right. Bachiochi notes the horrifying phenomenon of girls attempting to literally escape their femininity by identifying as “trans” or “non-binary” because for an entire generation, the question “What is a woman?” has been answered by Pornhub. I wrote about this trend for The European Conservative last year; I received so many personal stories in response I wrote a follow-up essay. Girls and women see pornography, too. They see the roles girls are expected to play in our porn-shaped culture. And many have decided that if their femininity makes them a target, they would rather hide or check out of the game entirely.

What do I mean by a “porn-shaped culture”? I mean a culture in which most adults watch pornography regularly and a majority of children are exposed to this digital cocaine before puberty. A culture in which 62% of self-identified American Christians say they can view porn regularly and still have a healthy sexual lifestyle, 75% of pastors say they are helping struggling porn addicts, and 67% of pastors admit to having a past struggle with porn use. A culture in which, as I detailed in First Things recently, almost a quarter of adult American women admit to having felt fear during intimacy due to porn-inspired behavior like strangulation, a practice that has become so common Gen-Zers simply expect it.

To claim that pornography is no big deal is to deliberately ignore what girls are actually saying about the porn-shaped culture they have been forced to grow up in. Boys and men are almost always stronger than girls and women. Why should girls and women put their physical and emotional safety in the hands of boys and men with brains filled with violent and degrading pornography? How can they trust males who have wired their libidos to images of women being abused? Pornography has made many males unsafe. Pornography has deprived men, often when they were still boys, of their ability to keep their end of the (often unspoken) relationship bargain.

In that context, consider how girls and women feel when they hear that in the porn-shaped culture we share, they are the primary problem. That if only they “submitted” more; displayed more of a willingness to subordinate their safety to men; were more willing to be “silent”; were more attentive to the desires of men; that would solve the “gender divide.” Blaming women for our problems is one of the very first male sins recorded in Scripture, of course. But in today’s porn-shaped culture, after hearing hundreds of stories from girls and women firsthand, I find myself feeling contempt for this version of it.

I want to emphasize that boys and men, too, have been victims of the porn industry. Most boys see pornography before they have the capacity to understand what they are looking at; many are enslaved by it before they have the terms to describe what they are watching. (A 2016 study by Defend Young Minds, surveying adults recalling their childhood exposure, found the average age was approximately 9.66 years for girls and 9.95 years for boys; only 7% of girls and 10% of boys actually sought it out.) Young men in high school have come to me in tears, despairing that they will ever be free from the demonic digital webs spun for them when they were still children. The porn industry is the enemy of innocence, of intimacy, and of culture itself.

I am increasingly convinced that only by targeting that industry can we begin to heal the gender divide, because as long as porn consumption is normative, relationships will be risky and genuine trust and intimacy impossible.

A 2023 Statista survey indicated that 60% of American adults confess to having a habit of watching pornography. Other data sets indicate higher usage. Yet despite that, the infamous Project 2025 proposal for a total ban on pornography polls at 44% to 44%--among women, support is at 48% in favor, with only 33% opposed. In short, millions of people who watch pornography want it to be illegal. Why? Because they know what living in a porn-shaped world means. Many men hate their slavery and all that it denies them. Many women hate what pornography has done to them, and to men. There is common ground here. We need each other, but we must hate pornography to love each other. We should start there.

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On the latest episode of The Bridgehead Briefing, I take a look at some high-profile mainstream media defences of exposing children to “kink” at Pride events—and why this attack on innocence must be rejected:

As always, follow the podcast wherever you get your content: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Rumble, or YouTube. You can get a copy of my new book How We Got Here: A Guide to Our Anti-Christian Culture at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, or at The Bridgehead.