It's going to be true so long as men set out to impress other men by villifying and denigrating women. When that's how you "prove" your manhood and the primary way in which men bond with other men then it will happen IRL too. And everyone will just go along. This is what happens in rape gangs; all it takes is a charismatic leader and the rest of you will follow along with whatever...just to belong.
Obviously, rape gangs are an extreme example and it doesn't normally go that far. How far it goes is bound by what the charismatic leader believes they can push it to without consequence. But, following the logic of the dynamic, you can see why actual rape gangs have become such a problem in places like INDIA, and why they tend to form in fraternities here in the US and in militaries.
It's roughly akin to the dynamics surrounding the "mean girl" phenomenon in women.
A while back, I was in Cane's (restaurant) and there were some young men there. They were 16ish to 20 years old. Anyway, most of them were sitting and plodding through their meal, eyes on their plates, not looking around, not talking. One of them was standing, trying to impress the others by going on and on about how he was going to beat up his girlfriend and how she better do this, that, and the third or he'd make her sorry. He was calling her every slur known to man, everything under the sun but a child of God, and quite loudly. He was also making sexually degrading comments. As I said, he was standing; he was also wildly gesticulating and drawing attention to himself in a crowded restaurant. A restaurant full of children, many of them young girls. Cane's is a chicken shack, so it's a popular place for a quick meal after pee wee sports, and it's not uncommon for whole teams to show up after a game.
Imagine being one of those little girls sitting there being forced to listen to that bullshit. This guy taught every one of them there what having a boyfriend is like in reality, vs what's shown on Disney. It wasn't a pretty or pleasant picture.
Do you think any one of them are excited to have a boyfriend a few years down the road now? Do you think they're going to be convinced that involving themselves with boys is a good idea? Do you think they'll feel safe to be a girlfriend?
And that same bullshit is all over the internet and has been since it's inception.
Men have lost the best thing they had going for them. They threw it away like it was nothing. TRUST. Trust that there will be no potential of harm, just for fun or status. It's not just the guys with the hate rhetoric trying to prove their manhood. It's all the others who sit heads down, looking at their plates, going along, staying silent, normalizing the hatred of women.
You will not be able to shame women into giving you that trust back. From here on out, the assumption will be that you're a threat until you prove yourself otherwise, rather than an automatic assumption of trustworthiness, inherent good will, and that you're probably a good person until you have proven yourself otherwise many times over.
Nobody is happy about this. It makes dating and socializing infinitely harder. But men need to stop blaming women for the situation they themselves created.
Men aren't being ignored because they're socially awkward. They're being ignored because by and large, broad strokes, men have proven they fucking hate us women.
