The Fawcett research also revealed that about nine out of ten men want equality of opportunity for women. This implies that eight out of ten men do not believe that feminism is a movement focused on equality of opportunity for women, (or at least are embarrassed about identifying with feminism)

This prompted me to speculate about why support for feminism is falling. I considered two related ideas. The first is that feminism has a natural half-life. Teenage girls want to save the world, they read about smashing patriarchy and bingo! 100% bona fide feminist. Fast forward five tears years, and some girls have moved on, for whatever reason.

Of course, some feminists become more hardened. Study, college experiences, peer networks all combine to create feminists like the proselytising harridan that we all saw in this video. But some of these women must stop identifying as feminist for some reason.

It isn’t because they don’t understand “real” feminism. They were feminists! Is it greater realisation of how the world really is? Is it parenthood and the cradling a son in their arms and recognising that the infant is vulnerable and innocent, and doesn’t deserve hatred and vilification?

Let’s propose that 15 years is the time taken for half of feminists to abandon their previous belief system. That explains a life cycle of feminists, but doesn’t explain why the numbers of feminists in absolute and relative terms is falling. Could it be that the cri de coeur of their Mothers no longer exists? Could it be that as a system, feminism has a negative feedback loop? The more attention feminists get, like this woman, the more people are exposed to their nonsense, and the fewer women (girls?) want to become feminist?

Whatever the reasons, when we become despondent at the tide of nonsense from political leaders, commentators and main stream media, it serves us well to recall that there are lots of really ignorant people in the world.

I wonder how many feminists believe that the sun revolves around them ;-)