There is a story I have hesitated to tell for a long time, mostly because it does not make me look particularly evolved.
Early in my marriage, I told Nate that when he cried, it made me uncomfortable. Although true, this was real shitty.
Even typing that now, I can feel the embarassment of it. It's not super shocking, but it is so ordinarily unkind. So many of us have absorbed the unspoken rule about men and emotion. I had done the same, without ever consciously agreeing to it.
At the time, I would not have described myself as someone upholding patriarchy. I would have told you I believed in equality, in partnership, in emotional health. And yet, in one of the most intimate spaces of my life, I was reinforcing the very system I thought I stood against.
To his credit, of course Nate named it. He told me how frustrating it was to feel like he had to suppress sadness around me, especially when accessing that sadness was already difficult. He was trying, in real time, to live outside of the narrow confines of masculinity. And I, unintentionally, was asking him to step back inside. Sigh.
That moment has stayed with me, because it revealed something I had not yet fully understood. Patriarchy does not only live in institutions or in overt power structures. It lives in our nervous systems, reflexes and micro-responses we have to each other. It shows up in the subtle ways we reward or punish vulnerability.
bell hooks writes in The Will to Change about visionary feminism (I love this term) as a collective project; one that includes men. Men and women are essential participants in the dismantling of patriarchal culture, the root of feminism. She is clear that patriarchy harms men deeply, particularly in its demand that they sever themselves from a full emotional life. And because men are unconsciously seen as more emotionally "sturdy" to women, we hold up this structure like it's our job.
If we take that seriously, then our work as women is not only external. It is not only about calling out inequity or advocating for change in visible systems, but it's also about turning inward and asking harder questions about the ways we have internalized those same beliefs.
I had to confront the fact that I was more comfortable with a version of masculinity that kept things tidy for me. Less emotional mess, less unpredictability, less depth that required me to stretch and tolerate. That realization was humbling. It asked more of me than simply identifying as someone who supports equality. It asked me to participate in it.
There is a particular kind of courage in allowing the people we love to be fully human, especially when their humanity disrupts our expectations. Supporting men in expanding their emotional lives requires us to expand alongside them. It requires patience, curiosity, and a willingness to sit with discomfort without shutting it down.
Dismantling patriarchy is shared work. It happens in conversations like the one Nate and I had, in living rooms and kitchens and quiet moments that never make it into public discourse. It happens when we notice our instinct to pull away from vulnerability and choose, instead, to stay present.
The longer I do this work, the more my compassion for men has grown. Not in a way that excuses harm, but in a way that recognizes how thoroughly they have been shaped by a system that limits them. I see more clearly how often they are navigating conflicting expectations with very little support from women or even language to do so.
bell hooks offers a vision of feminism that is rooted in love, accountability, and shared liberation. A vision that invites us to stand alongside men, not as adversaries, but as partners in undoing what has harmed all of us.
I think about that early moment in my marriage often. It reminds me that this work is ongoing. That none of us arrive fully formed or fully free from the systems we are trying to dismantle.
Cheers to the unending work and the people committed to doing it. I love you and I'm rooting for you.
