That in Spain there are men uncomfortable with the government's feminist discourse is nothing new. Not that many are between 40 and 50 years old. But how little the president must have spoken in the last four years with his friends if he just found out about this. Or how worried you must be about the latest electoral polls so that suddenly it starts to matter so much to you that you point it out to Carlos Alsina in his interview on Onda Cero.

What, to be exact, Alsina asked the President of the Government was because of the statements that Vice President Nadia Calviño had made days before in More than One, explaining that she prefers equality policies that are made from conciliation and not from the conflict, to mark distances with the Minister of Equality. “Does that mean that in this legislature the equality policies directed by Irene Montero have been raised more from the conflict than from the understanding?” Alsina asked Sánchez. And the president did not answer this question directly, as he did not answer almost any other.. He slipped away claiming that some of those speeches have been “uncomfortable” for men. And he thinks “that's a mistake”.

It would have seemed to Pedro Sánchez a few months ago that his friends were making the mistake, when they became uncomfortable with policies that are designed to make a fairer society, now he sees the error in the speech of his own Government. And that they are policies that he himself has defended and approved in the councils of Ministers. Now the one who seems uncomfortable with his own policies is him..

It is easy to imagine the Pedro Sánchez of before, the one who defended that his government was the most feminist in history, explaining to his friends the goodness of his policies and getting them out of their mistake.. But that was another Sánchez. The one now seems more concerned with how uncomfortable his friends have felt with the speech of his Minister of Equality than with explaining his progress..

This change is revealing.. The president has come to recognize that his government has not been able to explain well that his feminist policies are good for everyone. But instead of taking advantage of the electoral campaign to explain them better to the country, she tells us how much feminism makes her friends uncomfortable, like the day she explained to us how much she liked the ribeye to the point.

But when did the President of the Government begin to realize that his policies made his forty-year-old friends uncomfortable? Did you start to care enough to disown your own minister before or after seeing the electoral polls? And when have you realized that a communication of feminist politics based on conflict instead of conciliation can be counterproductive?

Of all the changes in the president's criteria in the last legislature, and as he himself admitted to Alsina there have been many, this is one of the most risky. Loudly questioning progress on equality for what seems like an opportunistic play-off of the angry man's vote is unlikely to entice the angry man and easily disappoint the rest. Of course they bother. Anti-feminism has existed since feminism began.

This is not to say that Sánchez does not do well to worry about men uncomfortable with feminism or angry men, as Michael Kimmel calls them.. It took a long time to find out. More than a decade ago, in his book Angry white men, this sociologist portrayed that Trumpist voter before Trump, whom the crisis of traditional masculinity makes him feel angry at the loss of privileges and suspicious of feminism..

There are sociological studies, such as those of the political scientist Eva Anduiza, which warn that with each wave of feminist advances there is a rebound effect that also increases anti-feminism. In fact, this rise in anti-feminism or resistance to advances in equality is more relevant for predicting support for the ultra-right than other issues such as the territorial conflict or immigration.. The higher the levels of sexism, the more support for Vox.

There is another interesting finding on anti-feminism that may interest President Sánchez. If instead of learning about this phenomenon from your friends, you want to take a look at the study Sexism and the Far-Right Vote: The Individual Dynamics of Gender Backlash, you'll see that sexism is sensitive to both conflict and political context: just as you can decrease, it can also increase. That is why it is so important how you communicate. Hence, promoting a polarized discourse, based on the existence of good and bad, instead of a greater pedagogy, is not the most helpful to curb the risk of anti-feminism advancing.

So this phenomenon of angry men is not new. That is why it is so strange to see Sánchez suddenly more concerned with how uncomfortable his friends are than with better explaining his feminist politics to them. If it is not electoral opportunism, it is clumsiness. Or both things.