One reader gave a thoughtful account of how they feel conflicted about the way people in their community are “decentralizing men.”
Damn, this is a good, complex topic. I definitely don’t have the answer. But here are a few reflections.
Let’s start with a definition.
What does “decentralizing men” mean?
“Decentralizing men” is a personal growth/activism practice where a person actively removes men as the central power source in their personal life and psyche.
For example, if a woman wanted to decentralize men, she may do the following:
- In partnerships, stop looking for a man to save and protect her
- At work, when she has a question, to seek female authorities instead of turning to a man for the answers
- When receiving compliments, she may actively seek to rest her self-esteem on approval from other femmes (or from herself) instead of from men
In itself, I think this is a powerful practice to help people untangle some of the patriarchal conditioning they’ve inherited.
But the point of decentralizing men isn’t to diminish men, it’s to increase your own power.
And unfortunately, I think there’s a slippery slope where decentralizing men turns into hating on men. When in actuality, they are very different things.
Distinguishing venting from hating
In the process of decentralizing men, rage, resentment, and fire will probably burst forth. And that’s a good thing. It means healing is happening.
So find a safe space to vent, and spew your venom and vitriol to your heart’s content.
Ideally all people socialized as women would have safe spaces to vent with other fems. And even a space to vent to males.
But here’s the key point: venting requires a container.
If you spit hate and rage about men in a container, that’s healthy venting.
If you spit hate and rage about men all the time, that’s toxic.
And it actually won’t solve any problems.
Because if there were an “enemy,” it’s not men.
Or women.
It’s the patriarchal system itself.
Men aren’t the enemy. The patriarchy is
Patriarchy is a thousands-year-old system that imposes narrow blueprints for how men and women “should” behave.
There’s a man “box” and a woman “box.” And there are unwritten rules about how those boxes should relate to each other.
So when someone is decentralizing men, they are undoing how their “box” is supposed to relate to the man box.
But it’s not any one man’s fault that the man box has some serious flaws. It’s not even the fault of all men.
It’s the fault of this greater web of power balances we’re born into.
So for those decentralizing men—do vent about shitty men all you want.
But recognize that:
- Venting requires a container
- Working through these feelings is a chapter of the journey, not the endpoint
- The “enemy” is the patriarchy. How can you better the system for everyone?
If you want to dig into this topic further, I wrote an ebook called Beyond Sacred Masculine and Feminine. It explores how to bridge the worlds of sacred intimacy, personal growth, and queerness to heal our cultural gender wounds and transcend the patriarchy.