The patriarchy. There, it’s on the proverbial table. But where does the imagination wander when one mutters a word as loaded as patriarchy? Does a woman with her panties in a twist come to mind? Maybe a middle aged broad bitching about all the societal benefits men receive over women? I hope not. For as much as modern systems permeated by conventional male roles and male dominance can hinder the progress and felicity of women, the patriarchy plagues men too.
Take for example some typical matters men face on a regular basis. Say a man working with a saw severs a finger completely to the bone. He better not fucking cry. Watery eyes are pretty much the max physical response he is allowed to have in a macho society. Now, imagine a guy five feet, four inches meets a girl five feet, nine inches in which he has become very interested. The patriarchy says: he better pick a different girl or brace himself for endless short jokes and quips about his manhood. Pretend a teenage boy prefers video games over sports. He’s reasonably in shape, but lacks bulky muscle mass. Well, at family gatherings he must prepare to answer why he doesn’t play football or try out for the soccer team and at school, guys may mess with him because they may think he is too scrawny to win a fight. Worse yet, say a young man is molested by an uncle when he is thirteen years old. He must keep his emotional trauma guarded like the words to an ancient curse or prepare for the possibility that others will think him weak or label him as homosexual if he decides to come forward.
If the first five examples aren’t enough to convince you the patriarchy is no picnic for men, keep reading. Envision a man whose employer is bought out by another company just as his wife announces her pregnancy and he is laid off. He will likely face unnerving stress and criticism for not providing for his family. Am I Right? Here’s a realistic one: two boys are sitting at adjacent desks at school while working on an assignment and accidentally touch sneakers. Both boys will need to move their feet before someone jokes that they are playing footsy. And if you are the second boy to move, better be prepared to be blamed for the contact in the first place. Let’s take for instance two adult men that haven’t seen each other for years but were best friends from birth until the end of college. Now, they may hug if they move in quick, don’t press into each other too much, and punch-pat each other in the back. Otherwise it’s weird. Say a male college student is really crushing on his female partner in physics lab and is really shy. The patriarchy demands: he better “grow a pair,” “man up” or “stop being a pussy” and ask her out. Otherwise, he may never get the girl. Asking the girl out is his job. Despite the Sadie Hawkins dance dynamics of modern dating, men are still usually expected to initiate romance.
In short, men are expected to be a jack of all trades while never expressing any type of vulnerability ever. Easy, right? A man who writes famous novels, is superlatively intelligent, and earns enough money to pay the bills (but cannot repair a broken faucet) is still considered unmanly. It seems to me men can’t relax. It is a constant battle between proving you are man enough and furthermore (nowadays) proving you aren’t a chauvinist pig either! What a tiny little tightrope our 21st century gentlemen are expected to dance on (with no lessons because please, how gay!). I’ve seen young men who support gay rights pretend to hate homosexuals for fear of being made targets themselves, men pretend not to like certain music, and men deny ordering certain drinks (piña coladas!) for fear of patriarchal judgment. I even dated a guy once who said “No homo” regularly when hugging me or telling me something emotional. Like “No homo, you mean a lot to me.” What?
Image via Global Center for Health Security
So I currently teach English to ninth graders. The boys in my classes generally range from fourteen to sixteen years old (yes, some are repeaters). Aside from the abominable reading levels I am suffered to witness, the number of times per day I hear “That’s gay,” or “I’m not a faggot” is often wildly perturbing. Since I have the distinct privilege of watching young men ride the testosterone train (homoerotic pun very much intended) into adulthood from a professional position, I am privy to much observation. One, puberty is just as difficult for boys as it is for girls, and two, it is very difficult to establish oneself as a man in our current culture. For women, it’s like we partake in the very passive action of bleeding for the first time and maybe grow breasts and suddenly we’re considered women whether we like it or not. Forever. We don’t need to keep proving it. For men, though, it is a constant and continual process. Who’s the strongest? Who’s the bravest? Who’s the smartest? Who’s had the most sex? Who has the biggest penis? Who makes the most money? There’s no point on the timeline when these questions cease. They follow men from boyhood to retirement and old age.
Once this year, in the middle of class, one boy bent down real low on his quads, lurched around the room, and finally jumped on top of a desk banging on his chest like a gorilla to get at another boy who continually challenged him. I had to write him up, but it was actually pretty funny and an apt metaphor. The behavior of teenage boys is much like that of gorillas; everyone is competing for silverback status. Men are looking for ways to be powerful. It’s what the paradigm demands.
However, the irony of the whole feminist movement is that if it focuses too much on empowering women and not enough on empowering men, it can only fail. It requires the cooperation of both genders and everyone’s acknowledgement that the roles of men and women are changing to create an even playing field. We cannot continue to ignore the suffering of men in a patriarchal society, one that restricts, binds, and even torments men who don’t, or even worse, do fit the stereotypical archetype of masculinity. I often hear women complain about men in their lives who lack confidence, feel inferior, or who are constantly trying to prove themselves. Admittedly, I myself have been wont to do the same from time to time. But how can we as women expect men to feel and act anything more than insecure if society continues to teach and remind them that they are, in fact, not good enough, not masculine enough, not man enough at every turn?
It is time to drive the wheels of change and absolve men of these pressures to “be a man.” Or, we can at least modify what being a man means. Now, let me clarify, I mean in no way to start encouraging men to behave like sissies. Men certainly don’t need to be feeble or cowardly, as the definition offers. They don’t need to cry or whine too much, stop playing sports, and write in diaries about their feelings every day necessarily. I just think we ought to encourage men to be human, to express emotions other than anger openly, to acknowledge occasional vulnerability, to have a range of reasonable body expectations, and to have a range of personality traits, hobbies, and jobs. Maybe once men feel less threatened as men and stop needing to prove and reprove that that’s what they are, both genders can support one another equally and we can all stop suffering.
One interesting thing I noticed seeking these resources was that when I searched “patriarchy hurts men” I did not yield many results. I actually found much more anti-feminist propaganda and unrelated media than I would have postulated. However, once I refined my search (by using other key words like macho, masculinity, etc.) I started getting a lot more insightful material. Check out "Be a Man" by Joe Erhmann, "The Mask of Masculinity" by Connor Beaton of Man Talks, and "A Lesson in Masculinity" by Tro'juan Henderson, a poet looking to give men positive outlets to express themselves.