I’ve been talking to my girlfriend, and I wonder if we’ve been going about this the wrong way.

I read a feminist article which claimed that mothers should teach their sons how to be men. My initial response was that this is preposterous, and promotes replacing a patriarchy with a matriarchy.

However, my girlfriend agreed, and commented that this is how we produce better men, just as fathers should teach their daughters how to be good women. She made me think a lot about what we preach and how we do things.

Rather than fighting one another, the highest value we should be promoting is harmony. We have devolved into a world of partisan groups fighting for our own interests, instead of trying to treat one another with kindness. We are a social animal: cooperation is how we thrive. Fighting with our neighbors is how we lose.

Feminists fight for women in a partisan way. Unfortunately, we too are guilty of the same us vs them mentality more than we’d like to admit. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. We can start by raising our sons to be better men and our daughters to be better women. We can teach them to value cooperation over partisanship. I realize that there are problems, but we aren’t going to change them the way we are going.

There are twice as many subscribers here as r/feminism. We have the power to change this toxic culture if enough of us choose to lead by example.

Let me know what you think.