Comment by rexpop | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rexpop | Hacker News Reader

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The solution to the struggles of boys and men, masked by patriarchal pseudo-solutions, is fundamentally tied to a revolution of values, the elimination of patriarchy as an organizing principle, and the reclamation of male emotional integrity and humanity.

Men and women must work together to dismantle systems of domination, embrace feminist thought, and foster genuine selfhood rooted in love and connection.

This means transforming the cultural architecture that defines gender roles and power, because the crisis facing men is the crisis of patriarchal masculinity, and the only resolution is the ending of patriarchy. "Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit," and men cannot be truly free as long as its underlying principles are in place. To end patriarchy, we must challenge both its psychological and concrete manifestations in daily life.

Everywhere we must replace the dominator model with a partnership model that humbly recognizes interbeing and interdependency as the organic relationship of all living beings.

Given theses requirements, Feminist thinking and practice are the only way to truly address the crisis of masculinity. A feminist vision embraces a masculinity rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. Feminism teaches men how to love justice and freedom in ways that affirm life, so we can choose loyalty to justice over manhood.

The deepest wound of patriarchy is psychic, so the solution involves internal recovery and the rejection of the "false self".

To heal, men must learn to feel again. We must break the silence and speak the pain that patriarchal culture has forced us to suppress. If men cannot feel, we cannot connect or be intimate. If we cannot connect, we cannot operate in a society.

Feminist masculinity defines strength not as "power over" others, but as one's capacity to be responsible for self and others. Its core constituents include integrity, self-love, emotional awareness, assertiveness, and relational skill, including the capacity to be empathic, autonomous, and connected.

Men must be valued for simply being, rather than having our value determined by what we do or perform (which is the patriarchal standard). We must reclaim masculinity and not allow it to be synonymous with domination or the will to do violence.

> Men must be valued for simply being, rather than having our value determined by what we do or perform (which is the patriarchal standard).

I have no idea that "patriarchal standards" are, but we absolutely should value people based on what they perform and do. That's not to say that people don't have an inherent value, or that we shouldn't care for people who need help. We value people who help those around them to the best of their abilities, and we denigrate those who use their abilities to hurt others. Regardless of gender.

> We must reclaim masculinity and not allow it to be synonymous with domination or the will to do violence.

There is an extremist element that roughly hews to this notion of masculinity, and this is something that Galloway warns against. I don't think that definition of masculinity that was ever mainstream. It's always been on the fringe, and rightly so.

No, it's mainstream, almost universal belief that masculinity is synonymous with domination or the will to do violence.

Masculinity has been traditionally constructed in many societies as a set of norms that emphasize strength, dominance, emotional stoicism, and aggressive behavior. These traits are often framed as essential markers of being "a real man," which creates societal pressure for men to conform to this ideal. This cultural scripting associates masculinity closely with control, competition, and the capacity for violence as a means of asserting power and status. The phrase "boys will be boys" is often used to normalize aggressive or violent male behavior, reinforcing the idea that violence is natural and expected in masculine identity.

From a young age, boys are socialized to suppress vulnerability and express strength and aggression as a pathway to social acceptance and identity affirmation. This pressure creates a continuum of behavior where even subtle forms of dominance (e.g., mansplaining or macho banter) are normalized as expressions of masculinity, potentially escalating to more severe violence like domestic abuse or mass shootings.

Aggressive male heroes, competitive sports culture, macho music themes, dominant male advertising, militarized masculinity, violent video game characters, combat-focused boys’ toys, "man up" language, male peer dominance, domestic violence perpetration, strongman political rhetoric, warrior archetypes, stoic male socialization, patriarchal religious teachings, protector family roles, aggressive workplace culture, male legal authority, heroic folklore violence, hypermasculine social media, objectifying female sexualization... the list goes on, and the phenomenon is further evidenced by elements of rape culture, which normalizes and excuses sexual aggression and violence against women as linked to masculine identity and power:

Victim-blaming attitudes, trivializing sexual assault, sexually explicit jokes, tolerance of sexual harassment, inflating false rape report statistics, public scrutiny of victims’ dress and history, media normalization of male sexual entitlement, degrading jokes and language, underreporting of sexual violence, peer pressure for sexual conquests, institutional failure to protect survivors, sexist stereotypes of male aggression, hyper-sexualized media portrayals, normalization of violent sexual behavior, systemic misogyny.

You must've thought I was talking about something else, because the evidence for domination masculinity narratives is overwhelmingly ubiquitous.

Poe’s law strikes again.

Read a book.

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