I want to talk about harmful gender norms

Women often talk about such norms and the ways that men engage in them. There is “mansplaining” which describes a man talking down to a woman about a topic he assumes she is not knowledgeable. There are the sexually aggressive courtship practices where men seemingly treat women like objects without inner lives. There is the brash arrogance of a man who believes the world is owed to him because he is a man. All of these are commonly discussed as harmful norms of male behavior and are things that men need to fix in themselves.

But what is rarely discussed is the role many women have in propagating or reinforcing the behaviors they apparently believe are harmful.

Here is the question: Why do these harmful gender norms exist generation after generation even though they are apparently so loathsome to many women? Shouldn’t they have been bred out generations ago?

I think that the answer is that many women are very comfortable with gender norms that make them (i.e., women) feel safe and protected even if these gender norms are inherently harmful to men, and rather than selecting men who evince no masculine gender norms at all, these women try to select men who already embody the norms they like and then try to carve away the concomitant norms they do not like. It is these latter norms that women typically consider harmful and which they focus on eliminating. But this intentional shaping of men is ultimately harmful to men and actually reinforces the harmful gender norms women disparage, and thus represents a female-propagated form of harmful gender norms.

Three examples of gender norms that women are often OK with, but which are harmful to men

All these desires are inherently harmful to men, even if women rarely call out such desires as harmful, and men who recognize the gap between women calling out as dangerous male gender norms that harm women and benefit men, while simultaneously remaining silent (or in denial) about the male gender norms that harm men and benefit women come to the realization that, contrary to popular belief, women will not always be more empathetic to them than other men and that there is no guarantee that they will ever feel emotionally safe being vulnerable or fully human around many women.

The consequence is that men learn to evince characteristics desirable to these women, while hiding insecurities that may disabuse women of the illusion of masculinity they need to feel safe. Some men walk this divide their entire lives and die having done so. Other men recognize the trap, recognize that it is one that women often expect men to step into while refusing any entry into an analogous trap for themselves (thanks to the multiple waves of feminism which sought to free them from such traps), and consequently lose trust. This sometimes leads men to anger, misogyny, and abuse and returns the women on the receiving end of these emotions and actions to the desire to shape men such that these characteristics are absent, when it was often the inconsistent messaging around attempting to shape men at all that led to these characteristics.

Thus many women are put in a bind. They really do find some male gender norms harmful, and yet they are still attracted to other norms. Moreover, based on the ideas fundamental to gender equality, most gender-essentialism talk is dangerous, so men really should not be championed for any gender norms at all. So what do you do when you want to use a principle locally to remove certain things you dislike, and yet using that same principle globally also removes things that you like? For many women it seems that they have decided to outline the forms of male behavior that are not allowed (https://www.creativemoment.co/m-c-saatchi-launches-the-good-guys-guide-offering-men-seven-simple-rules-to-help-women-feel-safer-on-the-streets ), to castigate men for engaging in those behaviors, and to then remain silent about the things they like about masculinity (even if such things do not make men feel safe and protected), and to then hope that no one calls them out on the contradiction. And of course, if someone does call them out, they can just say that the person is not truly down with “the gender equality cause" which they themselves only subscribe to partially.

Also, pointing out the double-bind men find themselves in and the ways women often create and propagate the internal contradictions that lead to harmful gender norms will not change the double-bind itself.

I think this is because these desires that many women have are evolutionarily and culturally programmed. Women generally cannot choose to not like the strong, unemotional, and dominant men any more than a man can choose to not like women with particular hip-to-waist ratios, or people in general can choose to not like fatty or salty foods. However, we all can learn about the resulting consequences of liking things we are predisposed to liking and then choose our actions in response. People who choose to eat healthier foods do this every day. They might still like cheeseburgers and french fries, but they know what a diet solely consisting of these foods will do to them and so they choose differently.

Men might still like the overt feeling of control they have when they talk over people in a meeting, but knowing what effect this behavior has on the less aggressive women and men could lead them to change. And women might want men to express forms of masculinity that make women feel safe, regardless of how these forms make men feel, but if they know that filtering men according to these forms of masculinity simply perpetuates a cycle of self-abnegation, internal anger, internal abuse, and then external anger and abuse, they can choose differently.

What do you all think? I have this hypothesis that all of the supposedly harmful male gender norms could be bred out of the populace in one generation if women unilaterally chose different partners. But these harmful gender norms are in many ways attractive to many women (or at least to enough women) which is part of the reason men engage in them (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-attraction-doctor/201204/why-are-men-frustrated-dating ). And in the end both men and women are harmed by these behaviors. I don’t want to put this all on the women who seemingly want to have it both ways with regard to masculinity. Perhaps us men could make better choices. What do you think we can do?