WATCH: Josh Hawley Says Feminism Is Forcing Young Men Into Porn, Video Games

Feminism isn’t new. Women have fought for the same rights as men in patriarchal societies for perhaps as long as there have been patriarchal societies. However, the last few decades have been colored by movements to recognize how institutionalized sexism hurts both men and women, to address the effects of rape culture, and to promote understanding that gender isn’t some overriding biological imperative that should define one’s role in society.

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) does not seem to be happy about this.

In fact, in the clip below, he can be seen ranting about the effects of what he describes as telling boys “that their manhood is the problem,” and declaring that it has forced young men to turn their attentions to porn and video gaming.

Josh Hawley says more men today are watching porn and playing video games because their masculinity has been criticized. pic.twitter.com/R0eXdRSYNT

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) November 1, 2021

“Can we be surprised that after years of being told that they are the problem, that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing into the enclave of idleness, and pornography, and video games?”

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While Hawley doesn’t cite anything to support his claim that porn viewership and a shift in patriarchal norms are connected, he might be gratified to know that Psychology Today says men aren’t actually devoting that much time to porn.

Their stats show that most internet porn viewers spend less than 5 minutes per visit, and only a tiny percentage are giving over hours of time to viewing. Moreover, stats seem to suggest that the quest for porn has decreased since 1999, when 40% of internet searches involved porn, to the current time, where it’s a much tinier proportion of what the internet has to offer.

It doesn’t sound much like the world Hawley is describing, where desperate young men turn in hordes to porn to escape attacks on their masculinity, and the real world as shown in numbers, are the same place.