By Anonymous Writer
5 million views, 1.4 million likes and 7,924 comments riddled with references like: womb envy, the coveted time of a father: cutting the umbilical cord, embarrassing boyfriends, being “anti-man,” world wars. I recently raised the idea, in video format, of men being so out of touch with what it means to create life that that’s why they’re comfortable taking it, (both literally and figuratively). After glancing at my analytics, I was given pause when I saw 89% of the video’s engagement were women.
It’s quite easy to state that men suck. See, I just did it, but I have a strong distaste for introducing bold subject matter without follow up. It seems as counterproductive as screaming “FIRE!”, but not telling anyone where the exit is.
The video and its response replayed in my mind for weeks. I was conflicted because I didn’t know if I voiced a half-baked reflection into a more concrete dish, unintentionally, that the masses have already been growing an insatiable appetite for. However, despite my reluctance, I believed there was merit to the comments and additional dialogue. I recognized the freedom of thoughts not being barricaded around universal truth but a social conduit surrounding it. My curiosity was piqued, so I kept asking.
Is patriarchy (and all its contorted branches) a contradiction to the natural order of male and female relationships that has eaten up women’s sensitivity? Can alerting the male majority that women are up to their dastardly deeds (and putting the dunce in the corner) actually be sufficient? Has modern day feminism bordered the line of bio-essentialism? If so, has feminism become the leopard that’s changed its spots? Or is there an undiscovered third option that just hasn’t been manufactured into a wearable buzzword yet?
We all, for the most part, were taught that you treat others the way you want to be treated, yet our fellow male peers were being slipped subliminal messaging in between addition and subtraction. Shocker to no one: it’s systematic, but depending on your belief system, you could go as deep to say that it is one of the antithesis of God’s original design. This isn’t a game of “State My Belief” and carry on into the 21st century mayhem. It’s a point to be raised because distortion doesn’t need to erase default. The conscious effort falls upon the individual to contradict the communal calamity. That’s not to say that we need to be out here “raising anyone’s sons,” but possibly prioritizing more of an independent reclamation than a collective redefinition.
Being misaligned with the harmony of individual energy results in violence and men walking hand and hand, being seen as interchangeable—with historical evidence to back up the sentiment. Such evidence leads to the shifting of women’s ability to operate within safety when navigating a world where every field is male dominated. Due to the fact that men associate the domination of each other as another marker for masculinity. It leaves no room for feminine energy and presence to exist without being seen as a threat, needing to be diminished, diluted, or even eradicated in cases.
“Males are taught that pleasuring other men is a sign of weakness and depravity, but also should be performing for their approval because it’s the only one with any validity.”
Being faced with such societal contradictions can only breed ones within oneself and community. (Such as, being a woman and thinking every man is a burden to be reckoned with, but feeling such tenderness toward the man you binge reality TV alongside or media depicting male rage to be brutalizing another in the honour of thy lady, but also being the abuser to brutalize thy lady when her autonomy threatens thy honour.) It’s not just the mental gymnastics of it all, but, as a woman, feeling like you’re dismissing every alarm in your nervous system before you even step foot into the office. Are we fully within the belief that we are supposed to be this terrified of men?
Unfortunately, when you’re trying to outrun the bear you’re not very concerned as to why it’s chasing you, but how you are going to survive the attack. This harsh reality is not news to women as a whole, but it’s a balancing act to be mindful to not point progress into the direction of laying the emotional load further onto the backs of women. We are already actively toting around the call to action and the knowledge of how to precisely carry it out, but, somehow, it still feels like we’re just swimming circles around the age-old debate of who is truly the top of the pyramid—like some cheer team social order. Maybe the issue is lacking the understanding of individual harmony with our own unique energy and design to the point that we begin to mirror the other’s subconsciously. Undefined identity windows that lack clarity allow toxic malleability to take form by being vulnerable to outside influence. Harmony was meant to be co-created without hierarchy or exclusion woven into the equation.
“When men are taught that the only way to be a man is to not to be a woman and women are taught the only way to be safe in their womanhood is to stop acting so much like women and more like men, chaos is bound to ensue and tensions remain at an all time high.”
Throughout media, and even personal conversations, we see or hear common depictions of freedom being associated with separations from the opposite sex. (Man letting it all hang out after the “Misses” goes out. Woman needing a night out with the girls to get away from her husband.) It hasn’t left much space for exercising the art of chewing gum and walking simultaneously. In regard to women, it’s applied: knowing thy oppressor while also not attempting to mirror their ways. Understanding that then raises more questions within me: Why does it seem that our ability to step into our own individuality feels like friction in relation to each other? Are we beginning to regurgitate the same rhetoric that called for women to be burned at the stake? Have we grown from an age of the standalone Girl Power of the 2000s to Girl Power out of spite–emphasizing a certain type of “Mis(s)?” Aka Misandry: The paralysis of progress.
Female rage and the suppression of it isn’t a contemporary phenomenon, but the narrative surrounding the present-day conversation appears to have shifted over the years to sound a bit more…white-washed. Walk with me. “Hating all men” seems about as blatant as you can get, and you’ll probably find women who, honestly, would disagree with the phrase and the philosophy behind it, but we can’t deny a rising trend when we see one. Hating men and offensive-based politics are two sides of the same regressive coin, and it’s, also, not what feminism is by definition or even nature. Centering men disguised as feminism still operates for the male gaze and orienting your life around sticking it to the patriarchy still leaves men within an area of ours they have historically never been able to reach without instruction: the climax. Could the reason the shame-based approach (and its other variants) find itself at the forefront of such movements is because they’re being co-opted by the ideologies rooted in the man-made construct that is whiteness?
Across history, the silencing of one specific group packaged as a solution has never been an agent of progress, only chaos. It’s been utilized by oppressors that subscribe to the construct of race in order to force upon submission to those that threaten said construct by, simply, living within their own individual or communal energy. We can look to the Black community, Indigenous community, the Latinx community, the queer community and all those involved in the overlap of intersectionality. Misandry is just white feminism repackaged with a pastel cursive font and a cunt pop audio attached. Recognizing the atrocities and statistics regarding the patriarchy’s interaction with women does not then have to result in misandry, and those alike. At the root, women would still be the ones bearing the brunt of being the sole facilitators of movement and change, anyways.
Excluding either one out of the conversation swings the pendulum to a side of extremism. It throws off the balance. It’s not, simply, about women desiring to be “in the room where it happens.” It’s about restoring the balance by recognizing both are a necessity for it to exist. Even our own physical system is reflective of what can happen when masculine and feminine energy are no longer walking in alignment with each other.
PCOS is one of the most commonly known hormone imbalance conditions. It’s one of the physical manifestations of what a lack of harmony between the two energies, in this case—hormones, can reveal itself to be. It may seem a bit drastic to equate PCOS to world wars and other acts of global and communal imperialism, colonialism and violence, but the similarities are actually quite evident when you observe the foundations of both. The excessive presence of one specific component removes balance and harmony from being accessible.
It’s not enough to just “support men’s right to shut the f*ck up” or to stop referring to women as “females” or “b*tches.” It’s about remembering that there are two heads of the table for a reason. The solution was never adopting this idea of object permanence when it comes to the virtuous qualities of the opposite sex, but more reconfiguring a balanced symmetry between two energies that weren’t designed to just co-exist and co-create, but coincide and harmonize. That is achieved by reclamation of one’s individual essence, energy, identity outside of its relation to the one that has suppressed it.
Women are not solely women based on if they can generate life within them, so maybe men and their disconnection from life, as a whole, is not a predisposed trait that has manifested as a sickness absent of a cure, but the disconnection and unknowing of what it means to stand in true masculine energy. So much so that it has left an opening for oppression to be adopted as a required character trait. It feels as though safety and women being socially separated due to this patriarchal practice has left us in, somewhat, of a similar loophole.
If men are no longer needed to occupy the sole role of a “provider” and women are awarded the same access points (because capitalism is “gender neutral” and requires bodies in order to thrive), what does it mean to be a man in the first place? If there was no patriarchy to “hate” or fear, how much of my connection to my womanhood would still be my own? And if those questions go unanswered are feminine and masculine energies forever meant to run parallel in this modern age?
Riadh Magazine 
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