This post was originally published as a thread on Twitter. You can find the original thread here. It has been edited to correct grammar errors and to be more coherent.
Men are rightfully angry at patriarchy and the violence of the gender binary. But instead of freeing themselves they blame women, and anyone who doesn’t perform whatever idea of maleness they both worship and resent.
Men hate the role that patriarchy has coerced them into. They are told that the only way they can be respected is by selling their labor for more than the next person. Yet, they have been systematically impoverished.
Men have been told that they must win the attention of women. And in order to do so, they must sell their labor for more than the next man. Should they actually get the attention of women, they can't like it too much.
It’s impossible to please men. It’s impossible. Nothing men do will ever be good enough. They will keep moving the goal post.
Men, what is your sense of self, your pride and dignity rooted in?
You have the key to your own prison.
You will be free the moment you give up the desire to please other men. See yourself through your own eyes. You must define manhood for yourself.
Men are suffering from deep self hatred and a lack of self respect. You look to other men for approval, they never ever give it to you. Nothing you do is good enough. Ever.
How are you gonna get yourself out of this?
I'm seeing tweet after tweet of men whose entire self is rooted in telling other people how to live their lives, what to do with their bodies, how they should look and speak.
Other men have convinced you that the only way for you to be a man is by telling other people who they should be. You have been convinced that the role of a man is to control the identity, body, and expressions of other people. Preferably with verbal and physical violence.
And you believed them because that same threat of violence and humiliation has been hanging over you since you were a little boy. You saw it happening to other boys, so you figured out how to be the perpetrator rather than the target of the violence…
… so you podcast and tweet and beat and assault, cause you're a real man!
You make sure all the other men can hear and see you loud & clear. "I am a heterosexual man who enjoys sex with women's anatomy. And I'll prove it with violence against anyone that threatens that fact."
From childhood until now, your entire identity has been to prove to other men that you are not gay, poor, sexless, effeminate, or weak.
Rejection, humiliation, alienation, invisibility, & a myriad of threats of and actual violence have been very effective at getting you to comply.
Look at you now.
You’ve been so worried with avoiding violence from other men that you haven’t ever figured out if you actually like yourself.
Do you like yourself independent of the opinion of other men? Who would you be if you didn’t need other men to approve of you?
Men, what is the source of your suffering?
Is it gay people? Trans folks? Children? People who want abortions?
❌❌❌
None of the above.
It's other men.
Men: Who threatens you with humiliation and physical violence? Who judges you harshly and places impossible expectations on you?
It's not trans people. It's not gay people. It's not children or people who want abortions.
It's other men.
Men: If a trans person existing moves you to violence, or to try to make them be another gender… It looks like you have no power or control over yourself. Cause why do you need to define someone else’s identity? What’s in it for you?
Men: If a woman existing in her own body as she sees fit makes you want to judge her, insult her, or be violent towards her… Sounds like you have no power or control over your own body and impulses.
Men: Can another person do with their own body as they please without you interfering or trying to control them?
Why not? What's it to you?
And if your answer is that men are innately the strongest, and that they they have a right to power over everyone else …
Just because you are imprisoned by the identity associated with your genitals doesn’t mean that everyone else is.
Many of us are getting free. You can, too.
Watch any of the documentaries on cults that are out right now. Every single one of them is led by a man who resents the expectations that patriarchy violently enforces on them.
Heaven's Gate: Led by a man who hated his gayness so much that he castrated himself. Watch the doc yourself.
NXIVM: Led by a man who out of his own mouth said that he resents the way that society forces boys to cut themselves off from their own feelings. His solution? Forcing everyone in his cult to cut themselves off from their feelings. Watch "The Vow" for yourself.
MANHOOD IS A CULT!
They created instruments to look inside the body of the person who conceived and gestated you in order to see your genitals before you were born. Based on your genitals they chose your name. When you finally exited the womb, they picked your clothes and the colors you were allowed to wear based on the genitals you have.
Before you could even focus your gaze they withheld attention and affection from you so that you would not be “spoiled” into “effeminacy”…
As you got older, they ignored your cries and told you to man up, even though you were only a 3 year old child. They rough housed with you and ignored you when you said stop so that you wouldn't grow up to be "weak."
You watched them coddle the the children assigned as girls. Ever boo-boo was kissed. Every tear was met with cuddles and hugs while you were told that boys don't cry.
By the time you went to school, you learned to perpetuate the same humiliation, emotional neglect, and demands to "man up" that you had been subject to. You learned to point out the ways other boys didn't conform to maleness. You ridiculed them, making sure you didn't slip up.
Once you hit puberty, you had already learned that your ability to get attention from girls would give you favor with and power over other boys. And if you were not interested in girls, because you were attracted to boys or just weren’t interested at all in dating, you tried your best to not garner attention from other boys. The violence would hurt you.
During puberty, as your body changed, you became self conscious about your body. You knew other boys were looking at you. You knew that your chest size, height, genitals, and body hair were all symbols of how convincingly you conformed to the cult of manhood.
Even to this day you hate your body.
You need to have the body patriarchy says you should have or the money patriarchy says you should have. And if you have neither… you aren’t a real man.
How do you feel about that?
Originally tweeted by The People's Oracle (@PeoplesOracle) on May 6, 2022.