The Story of Men, or at Least the One We Built

I need to tell you something a little embarrassing. I started listening to the Scene on Radio podcast series called Men back in the summer. It's now winter. Twelve episodes about masculinity, patriarchy, and how we got here. I'm a man on an adventure about love and fear. You'd think this would have been the first thing I listened to and the first thing I wrote about. It was not.

The series covers a lot of ground. How male supremacy started roughly 10,000 years ago as humans began settling down and accumulating property. The cultural machinery that kept it going through science, religion, law, and war. How masculinity isn't one thing but varies by race, class, sexuality, and body. And the cost it carries for men themselves. Veterans dying by suicide. Deaths of despair rising. The warrior archetype teaching men to suppress empathy and see their own pain as weakness.

One of the deeper insights comes from therapist Terry Real, who describes the shift that needs to happen as a move from dominant hierarchical thinking to relational thinking. From linear to ecological. When you make that shift, you're no longer above the system. You're a humble part of it.

So why did it take me six months? I think something happened over the course of this year. I started focused on freeing men from fear. But somewhere along the way, my focus expanded. I became less interested in just men and more interested in the systems that trap all of us. The patriarchy isn't just a system of male power. It's a system that keeps everyone small. I started from freeing men from fear. I'm landing somewhere closer to freeing all of us from the systems that were built by fear.

Read the full piece on Substack.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org