Heterosexual men have been taught and learned to depend on women to help them express their emotions. Many of us are unable to feel emotionally alive except through relationships with women. Perfect breeding for codependency & one of the reasons patriarchy loves women submitting.
We use women to validate our masculinity and that contributes to the soaring statistics of gender based violence.
Toni Morrison said “If you can only be tall because someone else is on their knees, then you have a serious problem” in reference to white supremacy, patriarchy’s big cousin.
Traditional relationships with women have provided men a safe space they can recuperate from the stresses they have absorbed in their daily struggle with other men, in which they can express their needs without fearing those needs will be used against them.
So men are conditioned to compete for resources. The kind of unhealthy competition that breeds fear, causing anxiety, and by extension lack of trust.
Men can’t even play with each other’s bodies nonsexually. It’s not all about homophobia. It’s the belief that they shouldn’t be that close to another man. Their bodies repel subconsciously, yet that wasn’t their reality in childhood. They’d play and dance and be naughty even.
If women compete with men and have power in their own right, men are threatened by the loss of the emotional refuge they expect from women. Because they don’t have it with other men. This is why healthy intimate male connections are key to helping men heal.
Patriarchy is a dual system. While feminism may lessen men’s oppression against women, the side of patriarchy where men oppress other men remains untouched. Yet feminism fights for oppressed men too. This is why men need to show up for each other emotionally as well.
In the larger political economy, when a man is financially disadvantaged, he leans on sexism to exert power over women. To feel important. Because power over men and women is his source of worth. We can’t rightfully quantify the extent of damage this belief has caused.
Onyango Otieno writes from Kenya.