Decentering men can't just be for straight women

From Dax Shepard to lesbian relationships to male friendship, deconstructing the male center of gravity is for all of us.

“I have this very weird mix of not thinking I’m good looking, general low self-esteem, chip on my shoulder that I’m dumb because I was dyslexic, all these things, yet, unbridled arrogance in relationships. I’ve always been this way.”

This is a quote from an interview with Dax Shepard talking about his marriage to actress Kristin Bell.

“I don’t know how to explain it- I’ve just always been very confident in relationships.”

Dax may not know how to explain it, but I do.

It’s called the gender hierarchy.

The gender hierarchy perfectly explains Dax’s predicament where he considers himself among the worst of humans, but still above women.¹

He’s not a confident person, but he is very confident that women would and should want him.

He doesn’t consider himself a prize among men, but he does consider himself a prize for women.

Here’s another Dax quote from when he went on Theo Von’s podcast last year:

“I wanted to be loved at all times by a woman. I still do. My needs are unrealistic… Like if I’m dead honest and I’m in therapy, my therapist would be like ‘you know it’s not Kristin’s job, like she’s not your mom. She’s not going to dote on you and be infatuated with your existence.’

And I’m like, ‘Wait… but I’m giving up so much. I’m not banging anyone, shouldn’t I be doted on and celebrated every time I walk through the door?

Shouldn’t I be a parade? Shouldn’t my daughters like everyday I have not left, shouldn’t they be like, God dammit Dad, we got one of the good ones.” - Dax Shepard

Thank you Dax² for describing patriarchy so well.

source

He may not know how to explain it, but patriarchy perfectly explains why men who don’t think much of themselves still think they deserve to be chosen, celebrated and centered by women. That they are deserving of infatuation just for walking through the door and not leaving.

They inherently deserve to be centered by virtue of being a man.

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We are talking about decentering men this month.

Not because all men are douchy asshats who deserve misery and isolation, but simply because we live in a patriarchy where the norm is to have men as the center of gravity around which we all orbit.

Decentering literally means “displacement from the central position, primary place or central role.”

So in our Dax Shepard Kristen Bell example, decentering men isn’t annexing Dax to a black hole of isolation, it’s simply moving the relationship dynamic from this:

To this:

Decentering men isn’t anti-men, it’s pro-equality.

It’s moving from a hierarchy of value to equal footing.

Typically when we hear the phrase “decenter men,” nine times out of ten, it is aimed at straight women.

It’s aimed at heterosexual married women telling them to stop prioritizing their husband’s preferences, mood, hobbies, opinions and comfort above their own.

Or even more commonly, it is aimed at straight women who are dating. Their friends begging to have just one conversation that isn’t about the last text exchange with a crush or dissecting the latest drama with a boyfriend.

So when I came across this video of a lesbian saying “Being a lesbian doesn’t mean you have learned to de-center men… Lesbians need to do the work as well.”

My interest was piqued.

What does she mean? How do gay women center men?

Thankfully, the creator of the video, Eden Strader let me call her up and ask her.

It got me thinking about other interesting angles not-oft discussed when discussing decentering men.

Right on time, I came across a video of a straight man talking about his experience with male-centric male friendships.

What does he mean by that? Aren’t all male friendships male-centric?

Thankfully, the creator of the video John Gill let me call him up and ask him.

Last week we talked about decentering men in heterosexual relationships. Today we are going to be talking about decentering men and patriarchy 1. from a lesbian’s perspective and 2. from a straight man talking about straight male friendship.

These conversations highlight that decentering the male center of gravity around which we all orbit is an issue applicable to each and every one of us.

Decentering men from a lesbian perspective

Here are some highlights with my conversation with Eden Strader:

Me: Can you explain what you meant by ‘lesbians need to decenter men too?’

Eden: Regardless of sexuality or gender identity—if you were raised and conditioned as a woman, you have been conditioned, even subconsciously, to “respect” men.

And when we say respect, there is an element of fear involved.

Like, I’m so much more comfortable telling a woman that I don’t agree with her than I am a man. Especially if I am alone with them in a room—then it is a safety issue.

Men don’t experience that with women in reverse.

So if you were born, raised and conditioned as a woman, you have spent usually decades developing a FEARFUL REVERENCE of men.

Regardless of your sexual identity, there is an unconscious prioritization of men. If you’ve been conditioned to think and act in a certain way for like 20 years, that will take intentional work to undo.

For instance, if you stop moving out of the way for men on sidewalks - the amount of times you will run into men is absurd.

Like we center men’s physical presence, but then a larger scale, we prioritize men’s feelings. How can we keep the men in the room happy? How can we impress the men? How do the men think of us?

So whether you are a lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, nonbinary—it is still super common to show more reverence for men and men’s opinions and feelings:

• To want to be one of the boys, not in terms of gender, but in terms of impressing the boys

• To want the men’s stamp of approval

• To want men to like you

• To want men to applaud you

• To want men to approve of you because that’s how you’ve been conditioned to get status or worth.

We’ve been trained to see men carrying the stamp of approval regardless of if you date women or not.³

It took me a long time to realize even after I came out as a lesbian, oh I actually don’t need to care what men think of me. I don’t need to care if they find me attractive. I don’t need to care if they approve of what I’m doing, if they find me impressive. I don’t need to do anything more than show them basic respect and dignity. I don’t need to center their opinion.

You can be a bisexual and date men and not center them or you can be a lesbian and still center men. I don’t care what your sexuality is, but to date you I need to know that you have deconstructed men and gender roles.

I like to apply the Bechtel test in my conversations—can we be in conversation and not bring up men at all?⁴

When I’ve dated women where it’s their first girlfriend and they’ve only dated men before, I have had to go on a journey with them as they deconstruct gender roles. When they’ve only dated men, they will expect their first girlfriend to step into that traditional boyfriend role because that’s all they’ve known from dating. There is a learning curve they have to go through of ‘Oh, I’m also the boyfriend now—provider, chivalry, paying for dates, buying flowers, whatever—there is no more script for who does what.’ You have to deconstruct those expectations.

There are so many day-to-day things that you don’t realize you unconsciously assign to the construct of man.

I will never date someone again who doesn’t have experience dating women, and that’s just because I have experience, so it brings in a power imbalance.⁵

And there are some lesbians who do want that power imbalance (that’s another thing you learn when you start to date women- surprise! women can be toxic too)—lesbians who want to have the upper hand, who want to date women who have no experience dating women because then they will be treated like a man, they will be centered. We call those ‘hey mama’ lesbians. They are basically the frat boys of the lesbian community.

Me: I love that phrase you used— “fearful reverence.” That perfectly explains a lot of wive’s dynamic towards their husbands—a fearful reverence for his bad moods, a fearful reverence of his differing opinion, a fearful reverence of his anger. A major way men are centered is their mood is centered and women must keep the peace to keep him from getting upset.

Eden: Oh yeah. Even when I have to deal with heterosexual cis men like in a work environment, there is still an element of ‘I’m just going to let you do what you need because I can’t deal with the complications of telling you you’re wrong. It’s not worth it.’

As much as I think everyone should deconstruct the patriarchy, I get why people don’t. As someone who used to have a fearful dynamic with my ex-husband, I get not wanting to deal with him getting upset, his defensiveness….

There’s an element of blissful ignorance when it comes to patriarchy because IT IS DIFFICULT to look in the face of how you have been deprioritized and degraded because of something that shouldn’t exist. It is so infused into our culture. It’s bleak to truly open your eyes to how you have been treated as a woman because of patriarchal society, and those are glasses that sometimes people don’t want to break.

Because as soon as you see it, you cannot stop seeing it and then you will see it everywhere.

It takes courage to say I’m ready to see this for what it really is.

When I talk to my straight friends, I am sad for women in heterosexual relationships who have to hope that their partner is open to swallow that pill and be humble enough to be like, yeah I do have the upper hand here, let’s fix it.

Because when you’ve had the upper hand for so long, equality is going to feel like oppression. And that is how a lot of men feel when you start to bring up patriarchy.

And I can have sympathy for men. Like you were really raised this way. Culturally we have built you like this and it really is going to take a huge wave of men willing to give up that upper hand in order to start changing the way that men operate in society. And that’s honestly a heavy lift.

Me: And a tough sell. Like, I’m going to need you not to be dominant anymore even though you’ve been conditioned since day one to have dominance at the core of your identity and self-esteem.

Eden: Yeah like I’m going to need you to take some of your power and give it to me. That’s a tough sell.

Me: Just to get into specifics a little more, you said it’s difficult for you to be around women who center men, can you give us some specifics of what you mean?

Eden: Yes. Women who center men are impressed by the most average, basic behavior when a man does it.

The more exposure you have to good lesbian relationships (and we are not immune to toxic behavior), but good lesbian relationships—you are both worshiping each other.

Like you want to celebrate the fact that your boyfriend remembered to buy you flowers once a year? Babe, I used to have a weekly subscription of flowers delivered to my girlfriend’s door every single Monday. And that’s the least I could do.

When my girlfriend told me no one had ever thrown her a birthday party before, I threw her a quarter birthday party for her 29 and 1/4 birthday party and that felt little to me. No big deal. The least I could do.⁶

Healthy, loving lesbian relationships highlight how low the bar is for men. How low the expectations are. Unfortunately heterosexual women have to celebrate the little they get.

Your boyfriend picking you up for a date or calling you an Uber home? That’s bare minimum. It’s not impressive. And yet it is celebrated.

It’s so important to have conversations like this because there is an element when you’ve been male-centered of not realizing it can be different. It needs to be talked about. Women need to know that bare minimum isn’t the only option.

And queer people are not perfect by any means, but queer people more often exist outside of gender roles than heterosexual people, so when it comes to decentering men—make queer friends, have conversations with queer people who grew up with gender roles instilled in them, who have had to deconstruct that. We will forever be deconstructing it as long as we’re in a patriarchal society, But for heterosexual people to have exposure to the fact that relationships and dynamics and community exist without gender roles is important.

And trans and non-binary people have even better perspectives on it. My friends who are trans women are like that is such a powerful shift—to go their whole lives perceived as a man and then to be put into a less powerful role. And vice versa. My trans men friends are like it’s horrific how much better my life got when I started passing as a man and how much more people respect me and give me opportunities now that I present as a man.

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Deconstructing Male Friendship Norms

So women who don’t date men can still center men, but what about men? Sounds funny to say decenter men from male friendship, but what we are talking about is decconstructing the norms our society has assigned to male friendship.

Like the norm to not go deep with each other.

This video has gone viral this month, sparking lots of conversation about male friendship:

@andrewlaffertyyfull video in biography

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In the video, a group of male best friends quiz each other on basic facts of their lives like what their job is and what their girlfriend’s name is. And these men who hang out all the time know essentially nothing about the most central elements of each other’s lives.

John Gill added to the conversation with his experience in male vs female friendships.

John said⁷ that he has noticed that there are different rules in his friendships with females verses his friendships with males. In his female friendships, vulnerability is rewarded. It’s like a currency—you reveal something about yourself, expose something and then the women feel closer to you. Then they reveal things about themselves. It’s how friendship grows and deepens—exposing more and more parts of yourself to each other.

But with his male friendships, it’s just the opposite. Vulnerability isn’t rewarded, it’s punished. It makes men uncomfortable to expose themselves or be around other men who talk about their feelings. But not going deep ensures that the friendship never goes past a surface level friendship.⁸

I called him up to ask him more. Here are some highlights from our conversation:

Me: Tell us about your male friendships and how patriarchal scripts show up there?

John: Whenever it comes to patriarchy, I’ve had to walk away from a lot of male friendships and then focus on a select few who are not expending all this mental energy to hold up this wall to the world.

A lot of male friendships that I had were focused on having fun and ignoring problems. They were focused on having shallow enjoyment from moment to moment. I think of them like “parallel play-focused.” Which is nice and to a certain degree can be helpful for mental health. It’s nice to have a reprieve from your problems, and just playing is often just what I need, but if your entire life is spent running from your problems, that’s a problem. It causes the people around you to have to ignore your problems as well.

And that comes down to the vulnerability thing—if they refuse to be vulnerable or refuse to acknowledge any wrongdoing or emotional shortcomings—they are hard to be friends with.

Me: What has happened in your male friendships when you are vulnerable?

John: If I’m vulnerable with a male friend—like oh I’m struggling or feeling insecure lately—if they use that to jab or poke fun when I’m being sensitive, it’s something I don’t tolerate. I can’t. You shouldn’t have to tolerate it. You should be able to put your guard down with your friends, and they should respect that. If they can’t, I’ve walked away from those friendships.

There have been others where I fought for them and I was like, “dude, that wasn’t cool, I need you to handle that better.” They’re not good at handling vulnerability because it hasn’t been practiced. Not ever. So it’s like holding their hand.

Then there are others who have gotten it from the beginning.

Then there are those where I was actually the one who needed to learn emotional intelligence and I didn’t realize.

I remember a time when I was 19 and made a stupid joke and a friend of mine, a roommate of mine who told me he feels more in tune with like a maternal nurturing gender role characteristic and I had never seen that before because I come from Oklahoma and there’s not a whole lot of fluid gender dynamics out there, so I said like oh that’s funny, that’s weird. I’ve never heard of that before.

And apparently that was a huge blow to him and I didn’t realize but he was exposing a very sensitive side to himself. It lost some trust between the two of us. He was still my friend after that, but it took some time to rebuild that trust.

Me: Why do you think vulnerability and maleness are so often at odds?

John: It’s a social thing. It’s something that we’re taught from a very young age passed on from older generations. Taught not to cry as boys, taught not to talk about our feelings. I think it comes from a society-wide neglect.

When a boy is growing up there are some very key moments where he’s sad or something bad happened to him and he goes to his father or older brother or other male role model and that person’s instinct is to immediately sand down that boy’s emotional sensitivity. That’s where boys learn not to talk about their feelings. It’s gay. It’s feminine. It’s sissy. I can’t be feminine—that’s worse than anything else.

Me: You’ve mentioned in your TikToks how often men operate thinking they are trying to attract and impress women, but really they are trying to impress other men. Because whether you are a man or a woman—women’s approval isn’t the prize—men’s approval is the prize and women are often used just an object for men to get other men’s approval.

John: Yes men like this don’t want women because they like women. They want women because they want to have sex with women. That’s a very important distinction. And then they want to show their ability to get women off to other men.

When women do like a guy, other guys often get jealous of him and see him as a threat. And so they start to sabotage that guy.

So if there’s a guy that women actually like because he’s able to communicate well and isn’t so guarded all the time or he’s able to be giggly and silly and easy to hang out with—then the women will want to hang out with him, but the other dudes will make fun of him because they feel entitled to female attention and they are insecure.

Me: How aware do you think those men are that emotional intelligence is what women want?

John: That’s a great question. I think they don’t even know. Because a woman’s mindset is usually so different from men’s mindsets. Not because of biological, innate differences, not because of testosterone, but because of socialization. There are aspects of biology that impact the way that we think, but it is not in being less emotionally intelligent. That is learned.

It is a collective form of trauma and these men band together around a collective PTSD. And what PTSD does is cause you to live your life so you ignore or avoid your triggers and men have the same triggers around emotional vulnerability and exposing themselves, so they get together and collectively reinforce each other’s biases.

And because they don’t listen to women, they get further and further down these male-centric echo chambers. And they spend years in this. Entire cultures have been built around this to the point where their entire reality is fundamentally staked in female avoidance, or what’s considered female mentality avoidance. When in actuality female mentality is just empathy and compassion.

But we are social beings. Human beings are social beings that require empathy and compassion, so when a huge percentage of men sever themselves from that—it’s insanity. It’s insanity on a global level.

They are so disconnected from women and understanding women that they don’t understand what a woman’s perspective even is.

Vulnerability is one of the very first things we need to internalize because that’s where we start to expose ourselves to the experiences that make us emotionally intelligent and develop our empathy and compassion.

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Thank you Eden and John! Such great conversations and interesting insights you’ve given us to chew on.

Back to Kristin Bell and Dax Shepard. We heard how Dax thinks about his relationship, what about Kristin?

Here’s what Kristin said about how to make a relationship last just this week:

“When you meet someone you are attracted to… you get to decide how much of the ‘me’ you are willing to let go of in order to get the ‘we.’… How much you are willing to compromise while not feeling like it’s a threat to your identity? That can be as big as converting to a new religion or as small as where you keep your toothbrush.”

Compromise. Sacrifice. Very different assumptions than the ones we heard from Dax whose metric for entering the relationship was essentially asking himself- how much am I going to be able to center myself and my preferences in this relationship?

Here’s the rest of his quote from the interview this article started with:

“So I never, ever was like, ‘Oh, I hope I can keep Kristen.’ I was going, ‘Do I want to be with a Christian, who has eight people living in her house for free? Who has to get out of a car when there’s a dog that doesn’t have a leash and ruin her whole day to rescue this dog? That’s great and she’s good, but that’s not what I wanna do, I’m not that good, I don’t want to spend my day finding the owner of a dog.’” - Dax Shepard

Clearly, they are both operating from very different programming.

But the thing they both have in common is the expectation to center men.

You don’t have to be a Hollywood actor or actress to have the tendency to center men coursing through your veins.

You could be a lesbian, straight man, non-binary person. Anyone. Everyone. If you are a human on this planet, you’ve likely fallen into the gravitational pull of centering men, maleness, men’s feelings, priorities and preferences.

Decentering men isn’t anti-male. Decentering men is how we move towards equality.

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If you like discussing all things patriarchy and feminism- come join our matriarchal blessing community by becoming a paid subscriber! We will be discussing the book I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression by Terrence Real together in January.

1. Who typically aren’t quiiiiiite considered human.

2. Mind you, this isn’t someone who is on the public’s naughty list. This isn’t a man who was called out during “MeToo” or is known for cheating, this is a man whose marriage is held up as #relationshipgoals, was called “one of Hollywood’s most beloved and enduring couples” whom Yahoo said have “the sweetest romance.” This is a man repeatedly held up as a good and healthy example of men.

3. While writing this article, the perfect articulation of being validated by men’s approval even if you date women came up on my Substack algorithm from

Paris Mwendwa

. It’s an article about Mwendwa having a crush on a girl in her class, but then when a boy notices her, that conditioned desire-to-be-desired-by-a-boy took her over against her will. Listen to this description:

“If I felt anything confidently about him it’s that he’s lazy and rude…. But when I sat with him and I noticed him noticing my shirt, I couldn’t help but hope there was something about me worthy of being liked…

Behind him I saw my crush… I asked myself, if I had to choose between her liking me and him liking me, which would it be? The answer left me nauseated.

With her I felt pure desire….

I found nothing I liked about him, nothing other than the fact that he’s a boy, who had the power to flatter me by finding me attractive….

How could I, after chanting all my burn the patriarchy mantras, still desire being validated?…

The choice to decenter men is a constant one, one that takes incessant tending to.”

Poetic.

4. Important note here: hating men IS STILL CENTERING MEN.

5. This was so interesting to hear Eden say that she feels uncomfortable with a power imbalance in a relationship because so many men only feel comfortable when there is a power imbalance. It’s why so many men seek out younger partners— to highlight the power imbalance— why men don’t like to date women who make more money than them or are physically taller than them. Men are conditioned to relax in an imbalanced relationship. So interesting to hear Eden say that it makes her uncomfortable.

6. Can you imagine the applause a boyfriend would receive for doing this?

7. John’s TikTok account with 130k followers unfortunately recently got banned over criticism of our current government and its leaders. So the video in reference is not available for viewing.

8. John says this, but I’ll reiterate that there’s nothing wrong with surface level friendships. Nor are we saying that women and female friendships are this golden utopia of perfection and lack any toxicity. This SNL sketch called “straight male friend” covers this topic well. Bowen—a gay man wants a break from the high bar of expectations and commitment of his female friendships so he goes to hang out with his straight male friend. “Does he know my last name? No.” But there’s low commitment and low drama. What we need is more of a balance.