The antidote to patriarchy and patriarchal masculinity
This is Part 4 of our patriarchal masculinity series. A huge omission from this week's World Happiness Report.
The World Happiness Report came out with their annual report this week.
Each year since 2005, Gallup World Poll has asked more than 100,000 people in 140 countries to rank the quality of their lives and how happy they are.
This graph reminded me of another one I came across recently from the World Economic Forum:
With Denmark and Sweden also ranking in the top 5 most gender equal countries, the happiest countries also happen to be the most gender equal.
And conversely, the countries that rank lowest for gender equality also report low levels of happiness.
Guess which country came in dead last on the happiness report this year by a significant margin?
Afghanistan.
Afghanistan isn’t listed on the gender equality graph, but with women not being able to leave the house or show their eyes, we can guess where it would fall.
And did you notice that massive jump in Mexico’s happiness levels since 2024? What happened in Mexico last year? I’m not sure, but I do know they elected their first female president last year.
But despite all of these correlations, gender equality is not mentioned once anywhere in any of the chapters of the World Happiness Report. They mention all sorts of correlations, but never gender inequality or patriarchy.
Meanwhile over in America…
America seems to have taken a dip in happiness since 2023.
Also in 2023, the gender wage gap widened in America for the first time in two decades, and women’s reproductive rights were set back 40 years with the overturning of Roe V. Wade in 2022.
Meanwhile the men running our country would like to see an increase in masculinity please.
“Trump won. Trudeau resigned… Masculinity is making a comeback.” “2025 is looking promising.” - Elon Musk
“We need more masculine energy.” - Mark Zuckerberg
Theresa Vescio, a psychology professor at Penn State who studies Donald Trump says, “Everything he says and does is about masculinity.”
Her research found that after political affiliation, how strongly someone embraces hegemonic masculinity was THE strongest predictor for supporting Trump, even stronger than someone’s gender, race or level of education.
The men who rule our world are themselves ruled by the pressure to perform patriarchal masculinity, which is defined as the shunning of all things considered feminine (different from maleness and masculinity which are not problematic).
Because care is considered feminine, the aversion of the feminine has devastating effects on a societal level.
In the United States, care is criminally undervalued and underpaid. Jobs caring for other humans are the lowest paid- day cares, nursing homes, teachers. While jobs in business, tech and sales- regardless of their environmental, social and societal impact are the most rewarded.
Our current government is cutting spending. But the area they are choosing to cut is not from billionaires who have plenty to spare or from our abundant military and defense spending, rather they are cutting the areas involved with care- care of the environment, care of equity, care of women and queer folks and care of the economically disadvantaged both in our country and abroad (USAID).
Although The World Happiness Report never uses the words “masculine” or “feminine,” it does say that countries that rank highest in care of others are the happiest.
These are the things they found most correlated to happiness which they have listed as their chapter titles in their report:
Caring and Sharing.
Sharing meals with others.
Living with others.
Connecting with others.
Supporting others.
Trusting others.
Giving to others.
Notice a theme?
Meanwhile over in Iceland…
The three countries that consistently rank highest for life satisfaction are Finland, Denmark and Iceland. Just look at their flat lines at the top of that graph.
Let’s take a peek at their leadership.
The Prime Minister of Finland and all five party leaders are women.
The Prime Minister of Denmark is also a woman.
In Iceland the President is a woman. The Prime Minister is a woman. The Foreign Minister is a woman. The mayor of the country’s capitol is a woman. The Bishop is a woman. The police commissioner is a woman. All the heads of the three political parties are women. Iceland is also the country with the narrowest gender wage gap.
And it’s not just the women of Iceland, Finland and Denmark who report being the happiest in the world- it’s also their men. Men in these countries also report having more satisfying sex lives than men in less gender equal countries.
Equality benefits everyone.
Dóra Guðmundsdóttir is a professor studying happiness at the population level. Of her home country Iceland she says this:
“According to studies around the world, it seems that the most important contributor to happiness is one’s social relationships…
Another important factor related to happiness is health, and the health status in Iceland is quite good compared to other countries. We have the lowest infant mortality rate in the world and one of the highest life expectancies; the majority of citizens have access to good-quality health care.
Iceland is also a very peaceful nation—for example, we have never had an army. There is a high level of trust in the society, too. Children can go places freely and play outside without supervision. Icelanders also have quite a bit of control over their lives. They have access to quality education, whatever the educational background of their parents.”
Feminine-coded values like strong relational skills, community and a lack of violence leads to thriving for all. Whereas the denigration of the feminine leads to suffering for all.
Go hard on systems, not people
Aversion of the feminine is the invisible plague at the heart of our inequality, unhappiness, warfare and isolation.
Aversion of the feminine is also the invisible plague at the heart of why men are suffering so much.
In order to safely navigate the world, from the time boys are toddlers, rule #1 for acceptance, validation and belonging is “don’t act like a girl.”
Don’t act like a girl, you’ll get made fun of. Don’t cry like a girl, it makes everyone uncomfortable. Don’t like the things girls like, you won’t have any friends. Don’t be feminine, boys will punch you and girls won’t date you.
An 85 year study on life satisfaction has found the that #1 most important indicator in predicting someone’s life long health and happiness? More important than a healthy diet, exercise, air quality, wealth or career success… is the strength of their relationships.
And unfortunately for those who are socialized to shun the feminine, strong relationships require lots of feminine-coded attributes like compassion, empathy, deep listening, vulnerability, helping and care taking.
“Learning to wear a mask (that word already embedded in the term “masculinity”) is the first lesson in patriarchal masculinity that a boy learns.”
“When males are required to wear the mask of a false self, their capacity to live fully and freely is severely diminished. They cannot experience joy and they can never truly love.” - bell hooks, The Will to Change
Men’s severance from all things feminine is killing them. Literally. Suicide is four times higher for men than for women.
This is not a men vs women thing- this is an all of us vs. an oppressive system thing
In conversations about unhealthy masculinity, we tend to get lost in the finger pointing.
Women blame men for acting toxic. Men blame women for being attracted to masculine men. Round and round we go.
This discussion has been stuck on the blame merry-go-round for decades. When all of our energy is vortexed into assigning fault, nothing actually moves forward.
Instead of blaming people, let’s place the blame where it belongs- on the system we are all stuck in that values masculinity above femininity. Because of this hierarchy, men are punished for acting feminine while women are rewarded for acting masculine and denigrating femininity themselves.
A few weeks ago I attended one of
’s zoom discussions on masculinity. A woman on the call referenced talking to her husband about how men are cut off from half their humanity- the feminine half. Her husband replied rather defensively, “So… what- I’m only half a human? And you’re a whole human? Good for you?”Someone else on the call offered this helpful metaphor in response- let’s say we are all crayon boxes. It’s not that men are born with half the crayons in the box and women are born with all of them. We are all born with all of them- the capacity to be both confident and humble, independent and communal, tough and soft. But boys and men have had half the box duct-taped off with “danger” signs written across the tape, their wrists slapped when they try to color with the pink and purple crayons.
Our society is in desperate need of removing the duct tape from the feminine half of the crayon box for men.
While it’s not men’s fault that they are socialized into shunning everything considered feminine, it is all of our responsibility to mend this rupture.
Okay. But…. how?
This is the million dollar question.
This is article #4 in our patriarchal masculinity series. So far we’ve defined what patriarchal masculinity is (not to be confused with maleness or masculinity), we’ve examined just how far it has infiltrated into our world and daily lives and we’ve disproven the “men can’t change because of their biology” myth.
In this article I’ll be talking solutions on the societal level. Next week I’ll get into the nitty gritty at the individual level.
But I’ll go ahead and spoil the ending right now - the antidote to patriarchy and patriarchal masculinity on both an individual and a societal level is gender equality.
The antidote to patriarchal masculinity
Patriarchy and patriarchal masculinity are inextricably linked. They rise and fall together. The countries with the most destructive forms of masculinity with high rates of rape and violence, are those with the most patriarchal social structures. Conversely, countries with the lowest levels of rape and violence are those with the most gender equality.
This is a graph from The Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology showing the level of gender equality (absence of patriarchy) on the x-axis and the “precariousness of manhood beliefs” (patriarchal masculinity) on the y-axis. Their article states that “precarious manhood beliefs portray manhood, relative to womanhood, as a social status that is hard to earn, easy to lose, and proven via public action.”
Notice that the country that ranks lowest in precarious manhood beliefs is the same country routinely ranked as the happiest in the world- Finland.
The antidote to both patriarchy and patriarchal masculinity is gender equality.
Adam Conover of Adam Ruins Everything recently published a 20 minute video called “Elon and Zuck are INSECURE men” about how the fragile masculinity of Trump, Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos is ruining our world.
The solution he offers at the end? Gender equality.
“…We need to change our construct of masculinity so that it’s not so f*cking fragile. And you know what? That IS possible. Because while fragile masculinity is seen in societies around the world, different societies buy into it more or less. And you know what makes them buy into it less? [drumroll please]
Gender equality!
That's right countries with higher levels of gender equality have lower levels of fragile masculinity, have more secure masculinity in their male populace. It turns out that oppressing women and queer people doesn't strengthen your manhood, it only makes you more f*cking insecure.
Kind of makes sense right? I mean guys who are secure in their masculinity are generally less likely to bully a gay teen in the cafeteria. And that means that we are not stuck. We can escape the trap of fragile masculinity by treating everyone in society with fairness and empathy.”
Equality requires a leveling of the hierarchy
Efforts to change masculinity are met with backlash because they are perceived as making men weaker, but this is rooted in the idea that the feminine IS weak. It’s also rooted in the idea that power only counts if you are ruling OVER someone.
De-linking masculinity from power OVER to power WITH is what we need. We need to stop thinking of caring for other people, compassion and femininity as weak. We need to stop thinking of domination and inequality as strong. We need to start seeing oppression as weak and community care as strong.
In sum, we need equality- both actual wide-scale equality with rights and legislation and an equality of values- an equal valuing of both what we consider masculine and what we consider feminine.
What needs to happen is a leveling of the gender hierarchy pyramids shown above so that instead of “masculine traits” situated above “feminine traits” we just have human traits.
Ideally confidence wouldn’t be a male-coded trait, just a human trait. Empathy wouldn’t be a female-coded trait, just a human trait.
Ideally boys could cry in public and we’d all comfort them the same way we would girls. Ideally boys could take a dance class past the age of 8 without anyone batting an eye. Ideally men could consider becoming a care worker or stay at home parent without fear of social consequence.
Ideally men could just be themselves without ever having to feel the need to prove their manhood.
There is a lot of talk that “positive masculinity” programs and movements are the antidote to “toxic masculinity.” But while movements encouraging positive masculine behaviors are a step in the right direction, they do nothing to dismantle the idea that masculine is the MOST IMPORTANT THING a boy can be.
Positive masculinity improves masculinity, but it does not question the gender hierarchy or the position of masculinity at the top of it.
Unfortunately a lot of feminist efforts also unconsciously reinforce the gender hierarchy- they try to move women UP the gender ladder but do nothing to dismantle it. The goal of feminism shouldn’t be for some women to win at patriarchy (leaving the underprivileged at the bottom), it should be to level the hierarchy for everyone.
The queer community is absolutely leading the pack in leveling the gender binary hierarchy and we should all be taking notes. LGBTQIA+ movements are the answer both feminist movements and positive masculinity movements have been looking for.
This does not mean that there can’t be masculine men anymore and there can’t be feminine women anymore, this just means we are in desperate need of breaking ourselves out of our gender performance prisons. The gender non-conforming folks are showing us how.
Every time an Alok Vaid-Menon video comes across my feed I sit up and pay attention. I feel like breaking into applause after everything they say. Listen to these gold nuggets of wisdom:
“We want a world where boys can feel, girls can lead and the rest of us can not only exist but thrive. This is not about erasing men and women, but acknowledging that man and woman are two of many stars in the sky. They don’t actually require diminishing each other’s shine. Masculine doesn’t have to mean not feminine. It’s about asking you ‘who are you?’”
“A world beyond the gender binary says no one else gets to tell you who you are, you get to figure that out for yourself. A world beyond the gender binary says there’s no standard definition on what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman, what it means to be non-binary, what it means to be trans. There is YOUR definition. Show me.”
“People have been taught to fear the very thing that will set them free.”
“It is easier to demonize me than it is to reckon with your own heartbreak, and so what I read the rising tidal wave of transphobia in this country is as a grief, an unprocessed grief that people are all suffering from gender norms.”
“What I tell men is this is not about accepting trans and non-gender conforming people. I don’t need your acceptance. This is about accepting yourself. I need you to accept all the parts of yourself.” - Alok Vaid-Menon
Alok says that patriarchy offers men power over women, but at the cost of literally everything else.
Our culture instills such a relentless daily pressure on boys and men to never act feminine- don’t order a drink like a girl, wear clothes like a girl, run like a girl, laugh like a girl, cry like a girl, talk like a girl- that they often don’t even realize the stifling chokehold they’ve been living in until it’s released.
Queer folks who lived through that relentless daily pressure, often experience such blissful freedom upon releasing themselves from it that they can’t help but skip along painting rainbows where ever they go.
A man doesn’t have to want to have sex with other men or come out as trans or non-binary to experience this freedom. But he does have to give up the will to dominate and honestly reckon with whichever qualities, activities, values, identities and behaviors he has cut himself off from in order to perform patriarchal masculinity.
We need to band together.
Last week I talked about our two closest genetic cousins- chimpanzees, who live in a patriarchy and bonobos, who live in a matriarchy.
in the comments brought up how bonobos deal with male violence.
The bonobos enjoy incredibly peaceful communities, but when one ape acts out, the females band together to keep the aggressor in line.
Females banding together reminds me again of Iceland.
On October 24, 1975 90% of the women in Iceland went on strike. 90%!
Working women did not show up to their jobs. Homemakers did no cooking, cleaning or child care. The entire country came to a standstill. Banks, factories, shops and schools were forced to close for the day. With nurseries closed and women at the protest, men had to take their children to work or watch them at home.
You could even hear children in the background in the newscasts since the men in the newsroom had to bring their kids in to the station.
Vigdis Finnbogadottir was a divorced, single mother who became the first female president in all of Europe. She won the presidency in Iceland in 1980 and said it would never have been possible without the “Woman’s Day Off.”
"What happened that day was the first step for women's emancipation in Iceland. It completely paralysed the country and opened the eyes of many men." - Vigdis Finnbogadottir
The women of Iceland did not try to convince men to value them, they showed them how valuable they were. They banded together to prove their collective value.
Iceland, Finland and Denmark did not always have the levels of gender equality they have now. There were more rigid gender roles and predictable pushback against change. Their past of gender inequality looked similar to America’s present.
But things can change.
Things change when we come together to work towards equality both in our homes and in our country.
Things change when the feminine is equally as valued as the masculine.
Happiness levels, safety, relationships, countries, men, women and everyone benefit when we stop shunning the feminine half of humanity- both within individuals and in societies.
Ok, I know I offered a birds-eye view of solutions this week, but next week we will get much more granule. Promise.
Do you enjoy thinking about and discussing all things patriarchy and feminism?? Cool me too. Come discuss with me and the Matriarchal Blessing community by becoming a paying subscriber. Our next gathering will be in April when we will be discussing Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall.
Alternatively, you could also just pay me for my work just cause, that is also very cool and very appreciated! Thank you!
Working closely with 12 women in a team designed to get things done is incredibly rewarding. I have met now some of the spouses and I can see how these men are egalitarian men that are not threatened by powerful women. Some of these men have followed their spouses across oceans to support their careers. We see great things when power is shared and equality is promoted.
The fragility of these men who are trying to rule the US is so obvious. They destroy to feel powerful.