How to Smash the Patriarchy: A Guide For Men

Because the patriarchy hurts you, too

Photo via Canva.

Let’s take a moment to look around. Humankind isn’t in great shape these days. Most people are sick, exhausted, anxious, lonely, depressed, or any combination thereof. When we look to the future, we see a world cast in doubt and shadow.

Millennials can’t afford homes, let alone white picket fences. We’re not sure what climate disasters await our 2.5 children, whether or not they are still a notion or have already arrived. Work never stops, but we can never get ahead. Our government is mired in dysfunction, and our sprawling, unwieldy, fragmented systems are failing us — hospitals, schools, courtrooms, supply chains.

Meanwhile, the one percent are cavorting in an alternate reality — sometimes even on an alternate planet — basking in the spotlight while stoking division and sucking us dry.

I think we can safely say that the patriarchy represents a failed social experiment of epic proportions.

To be clear: when I criticize the patriarchy, I’m not criticizing men. I’m criticizing a social system in which men have disproportionate access to political power, social influence, and financial gain. It’s a system that incentivizes greed, aggression, and competition, rewarding the “elite” few who are willing to sacrifice moral decency and slay others to get to the top.

Dismantling this power structure is partially about balancing gender ratios, but it’s about so much more. It’s about re-examining our values, reevaluating our metrics of success, and redefining what it means to be a man.

Because if you’re a man who’s down here with the rest of us 99 percenters, as most of you are, you’re more than likely hurting, too.

Here’s what you can do:

1. Accept and embrace discomfort

Privilege — whether white privilege, male privilege, economic privilege, or any combination thereof — is essentially a belief that one has a right to comfort at others’ expense. Men have long navigated the world with ease, while women have spent the better part of the last century scratching and clawing our way into spaces that we haven’t historically occupied.