Why Do Some Men Self-identify So Much With Patriarchal Masculinity?
Gender norms aren’t maleness; they are taught and learned
People who get all hot under the collar about misandry or being anti-men fail to grasp the single most important thing about such an assertion: masculine gender norms aren’t maleness. They aren’t inherent ways of thinking and acting that guys are just born into; they are learned, and therefore calling out where these norms cause harm isn’t criticizing being male, it’s critiquing the culture that teaches men to value things that hurt them, as well as harming others.
Gender norms are essentially propaganda that kids get indoctrinated into a birth and then spend the rest of their lives either adhering to or challenging as the culture continues to reinforce them. This applies to both boys and girls, but males face more censure for not adhering, sometimes from mothers or other women, but primarily from other men.
Men are neither intrinsically better nor worse human beings than women are, but at the same time, what men are taught is expected of them in this culture in order to be “a real man” often drives violence and it drives many negative outcomes for the guys who adhere to them.
The more a man clings to “traditional”(aka patriarchal) masculinity, the more likely he is to be violent, but also depressed, and even suicidal. Encouraging men to embrace “traditional” masculinity is putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound. It gives a sense of purpose and of brotherhood even, but meanwhile, it’s driving negative physical and psychological outcomes for men — and dysfunction in the culture.
The NIH says, “Traditional masculinity often harms men by enforcing rigid expectations like emotional stoicism, self-reliance, and dominance. These norms create a “double jeopardy” where men experience severe psychological distress while being pressured to avoid asking for help, leading to higher risks of suicide, substance abuse, and untreated health conditions.”
The American Psychological Association released new guidelines for working with men and boys a few years ago. “Thirteen years in the making, they draw on more than 40 years of research showing that traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful and that socializing boys to suppress their emotions causes damage that echoes both inwardly and outwardly.
The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity — marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression — is, on the whole, harmful. Men socialized in this way are less likely to engage in healthy behaviors.”
Brown School of Public Health says this: “Enter Samantha Rosenthal MPH ’10, Ph.D. ’14, the primary author of the 2024 Rhode Island Young Adult Survey. She locates the source of young men’s distress in “restrictive masculinity norms,” which are deep-rooted cultural expectations that push young men to be tough, dominant, self-reliant and willing to take risks, while discouraging any show of sadness, fear or vulnerability. In trying to live up to these standards, many young men avoid seeking help or medical care, and instead turn to drugs and alcohol to cope.
The consequences can be stark, she said. Men face elevated risks of heart disease and stroke. They have shorter lifespans than women. They are less likely to seek care for physical and mental health issues and more likely to skip routine checkups, waiting until problems become urgent or life-threatening.
Meanwhile, men who feel supported by restrictive masculinity norms are more likely to engage in reckless driving and unsafe sex, and are more likely to become addicted to gambling and pornography.”
Qualities that might make for a good soldier on the battlefield or a good factory or farm worker from a higher ups standpoint don’t necessarily make for happy or healthy citizens in other contexts. And the traits that the state or the oligarchs want to slot men into often comes at a big cost to men themselves.
Over the years, I’ve come across a lot of men who don’t want to acknowledge this, to the point of getting angry and defensive about it. But why? What are they actually defending? Aside from the potential embarrassment of learning that what you’ve been fed as identity is really just a kind of dodgy multi-level marketing scheme serving the needs of those above you in the social dominance hierarchy, why wouldn’t you want to know that isn’t actually you?
There are many reasons that a lot of men overly self-identify with patriarchal norms of masculinity, some of which overlap or interconnect with each other.
Men are both actively and passively taught that this is their identity as males, in part, so that they will be less likely to challenge these norms and continue to fulfill their roles. As systems scientist and cultural anthropologist, Dr. Riane Eisler has noted, we are all fed beliefs and stories in this society that justify, idealize, and normalize violence, particularly for men because this is the core of dominator culture (what patriarchy actually is and means).
Dominator culture teaches all of us that the core of our identity is defined by the will to dominate and control others. We are taught that this will to dominate is more biologically hardwired in males than in females. In actuality, dominator culture teaches us that we are all natural-born killers but that males are more able to realize the predator role. In the dominator model the pursuit of external power, the ability to manipulate and control others, is what matters most. When culture is based on a dominator model, not only will it be violent but it will frame all relationships as power struggles.
— The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks
In nearly every action/adventure movie, the hero (or heroine) saves the day by being better at violence than the bad guy — and that’s only one of many ways those beliefs are reinforced. These things are modeled and augmented in all sorts of ways throughout the culture, including religion, peers, and parents — not just via the media, but that is a primary method of propaganda.
Patriarchal culture continues to control the hearts of men precisely because it socializes males to believe that without their role as patriarchs they will have no reason for being.
— The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks
Some men honestly don’t know who they are or what they would represent without this “traditional” framework. The whole “men provide and protect” thing is an outcropping of this. It’s a narrative that seems central to this kind of traditional identity, even though if one scratches the surface, it’s clear that overwhelmingly this isn’t the function men actually serve in their families or in society, not just today, but really ever.
Men are most likely to save themselves in a naval disaster, despite the narrative that they make way for women and children first. The Titanic was an exception and one that has been held up as a typical example ever since, but it wasn’t typical, not in the slightest.
Every single time I talk to men about speaking up when a woman is being harassed or marginalized, I hear nothing but reasons why they couldn’t possibly do that. In other words, they want to cosplay traits they’ve identified as masculine without having to actually embody them. In addition, women are statistically more likely to need protection from a man in their family than a stranger. Where does that fit in this equation?
Of course, sometimes men do actually protect women, but it is certainly not typical, and it’s a lot more likely that another woman would come to the aid of a girl or woman being harmed by a man. Male hierarchies message that since domination (particularly of women) is a core aspect of traditional masculinity, any man who disrupts that is not a real man. He is a pussy or gay, or otherwise potentially going to lose status in the group. That’s the reality.
The irony is, standing against another guy or the group and being your own man, doing what he knows is right, is very masculine by a lot of traditional metrics. Following the rules that other people have laid out for you, hundreds or even thousands of years ago, and continuing to dance to the tune they have set for you, really is not. The system deflects and distracts from that at every possible turn.
In America today, women earn as much as their male partners in 30% of relationships, and more than their male partners 20% of the time. About 73% of mothers with children under 18 are in the workforce. Even if a man does earn more, money alone does not provide a home; it does not keep a family on track, or signify warmth and stability. The person who manages and maintains all of that is the actual provider. A person who only brings money to the table is a kind of sponsor.
To be honest, the more I hear that phrase and how empty it actually is, the more I see “provide and protect” as a thinly veiled code for “I pay for things, so I am the boss here. No other men get to tell you what to do — just me.” It’s also a kind of costume to wear in order to adhere to traditional norms and roles, but it’s a flimsy costume given the realities of rampant violence against women. If men actually protected women, we wouldn’t have that to the exhorbitent extent that we do.
Greater economic and social power, however, has lead to increased independence for women. It’s no longer the case that a bad marriage or relationship is better than no marriage or relationship at all and many women today are choosing solitude rather than a connection with a man who doesn’t contribute to their peace and the life they are building for themselves.
It’s important to note that contrary to the reactionary narrative about this, high powered, well-educated women actually marry more often than any other demographic. Poorer and less educated women are the least likely to marry, which accounts for much of the drop in overall marriage numbers.
The gap between the richest Americans and everybody else has been steadily increasing for the past 20–30 years. Few families can now afford to live on only one income. This is not actually a zero-sum loss for men that more women are in the workforce — at least not unless you overly self-identify with the propaganda you’ve been fed about separate spheres and the role of men in society.
Also, why aren’t you blaming the companies that shipped your jobs overseas, and all the other moguls who have actually made a one-earner family almost an impossibility, rather than the women who either have to or want to be in the labor force? Oh, right — because you think loyalty to the MLM will eventually win you the trip to Hawaii, and you’re too self-identified with the power structure to notice how unlikely that is — and this is by intention. Don’t grasp that you’re in a cage, and you’ll never try to escape it.
Self-identification with patriarchal masculinity isn’t just a matter of identity that men have been trained to embrace, it’s also provides a sense of (unearned) worth and power.
One of the underlying mechanisms explaining men’s ambivalence can be related to the fact that as the higher-status group in society, men might be seen as having more to lose than to gain from gender equality. Men universally tend to have more agency and power than women: making more money and holding higher power positions in most countries (Global Gender Gap Report, 2022).
When analyzing gender equality progress, it is crucial to understand that collective action by less privileged groups (such as women) is likely to highlight the unfair privilege of high-status ones (here men). This, in turn can trigger the need in men to legitimize their higher status (Sidanius and Pratto, 1999; Leach et al., 2002; Iyer and Leach, 2009). ~NIH
Many men may experience that they have very little power and privilege compared to others, some women included. I’ve often heard guys claiming that a rich woman has more privilege than he does, because they aren’t factoring in that money doesn’t erase misogyny or racism. Also, one of the key aspects of privilege is being blind to what you don’t have to grapple with on a regular basis. You don’t know what you don’t know.
This is the essence of what privilege means — not just economic security or even institutional power — but what you never have to think about or face that some other demographic routinely does?
But, I digress. Here’s more about that if you want to delve into it further.
Because it’s a dominance hierarchy system, built to support and defend the needs of those at the very top of the pyramid, and not a flat two tiered system where men always win and women always lose, only a small number of people — traditionally, rich, straight, white, Christian, men — were at the apex. That’s loosened up a little bit in the past 50 years or so, but as a class of people, men are still widely believed to be more mentally tough, intelligent, and capable of leadership.
Of course, this isn’t remotely true. Companies with more female employees and more women in leadership function better and have better bottom lines. The reality of that doesn’t keep the stereotype entirely at bay, however, but the case is quite strong for evidence rather than narrative.
Several studies have demonstrated a strong correlation between gender diversity in leadership and improved financial performance. Companies with more women in executive positions tend to outperform their peers in terms of profitability, market share, and overall shareholder returns. Of the S&P 500 companies, there are currently 468 male CEOs (94%) and 32 female CEOs. Those 32 female-led companies have significantly outperformed the rest. Over the past 10 years, the difference in returns is 384% from female-led companies vs. 261% from male-led companies. ~NGCP
This is just one more way that patriarchal norms and beliefs work against men’s (and society’s) best interests. If you care more about unearned status and being told you are inherently superior (a sign of weakness and insecurity) than you do about your bottom line, and your job satisfaction, it’s essentially cutting off your nose to spite your face. But even that plays a calculated role in how the entire social system functions.
The relative privilege that men get from sexism, and more importantly the false consciousness of privilege men get from sexism, play a critical role in reconciling men to their subordination in the larger political economy. ~NOMAS
It’s the way men get duped into being a cog in someone else’s wheel, by being willing to be paid in masculinity and nominal power over some women, as well as status over less dominant men. This also requires keeping women as a cultural buffer for the ways that men must constantly compete with each other and this is another key reason that some men overly self-identify with patriarchal masculinity. They want women to be a safe landing and not to be a source of what they perceive to be further competition.
Although men have greater structural power than women in most cultures, the nature of manhood (relative to womanhood) in most societies today is precarious, it is “hard won and can be easily lost” (Vandello et al., 2008; Bosson et al., 2022). In order to prove their higher status, men need to consistently demonstrate agency and dominance, and avoid femininity to garner respect. ~NIH
The performance of being “a real man” for the approval and evaluation of other men is a constant source of stress and friction, and yet, many guys don’t really know how to opt out of that dynamic or to even consciously grasp this is what they are doing. Rather than take on learning about that, many of them rail against women instead for no longer providing the emotional labor and the subordinate status that make that performance of masculinity more palatable to men.
Almost none of this is intentional and most of it isn’t even conscious. It’s simply the way the system has been designed and how men, in particular, been taught to navigate it. But identifying with the very structure that harms you and keeps you caged, in exchange for what are increasingly nominal advantages, doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Men often identify with patriarchy because it offers distinct social and institutional advantages, including systemic privilege, default authority, and economic prioritization. Additionally, many internalize these traditional norms through cultural conditioning, trading emotional vulnerability for the security of belonging to the dominant group. ~NOMAS
There are a ton of social mechanisms in place that make it hard for many men to break free of their gender indoctrination. A man who adheres to these norms may receive a fair amount of social acceptance, not just from other men, but from some women as well — even as it often comes with many other negative impacts.
In other words, the comfort and sense of accomplishment that some men get from adhering to these parameters about what it means to be a real man are offset by the ways that it harms both them and society at large. Parents and friends may offer affirmation and the men themselves may feel that they have succeeded in doing what is expected of them, but it tends to lead to emotional isolation, loneliness, and often to violence — something that has been widely studied and documented.
When men are not allowed to be who they truly are, full human beings capable of the same range of emotions and social connection needs as women and all people, it is harmful to them and our culture is selling them short in doing so. I get that this isn’t easy work to break free of lifelong conditioning, and I also get that for many men, it doesn’t quite compute — particularly when the information is coming from a woman.
left a salient comment about this on another recent story of mine. His insights reinforce all that I’ve said about over self-identification with patriarchal masculinity, and of how much men need to support each other in moving toward healthier norms. It summarizes this entire essay in three impactful paragraphs, straight from the horse’s mouth.
A key feature of The Man Box, critical to its effectiveness, is from the inside it’s invisible. I speak from decades of personal experience. This is why so many men simply, literally, are unable to imagine for themselves anything other than the role they’ve been assigned and trained for since birth. Because they don’t see the walls, they don’t feel that they’re in any way constrained or diminished. Just the opposite in fact. Nothing they see inside themselves stands between them and achieving greatness. What does stand in the way are all those feminists, and Blacks, and immigrants, and Jews, and libtards, and you name it… Not to mention all the other men running the same damn zero-sum rat race.
I’ve done a lot of work over the years to climb out of that box — as have many men I call friends. It’s hard, bitter, deeply painful — and profoundly liberating. Looking back on those decades, it’s possible to see in myself the constant low-level (and sometimes high-level) fear, anxiety, depression, anger, mistrust that are engendered by the Man Box, but as a fish doesn’t know it’s wet, so men on the inside don’t know that they exist in a poisonous, often lethal, stew of unexamined emotion.
Unfortunately, pain is the only thing that makes a man begin to ask if there might be something different. It doesn’t matter how many external messages a man receives from women saying that they want to be treated like human beings, or that he’d be happier in himself outside the Box (which is not to say that articles like yours aren’t important; they absolutely are). The message must come from the inside. And then those of us eager to see these men change must be there to greet them, welcome them as brothers, and show them a brighter path towards a masculinity that embraces and lives by integrity, empathy, compassion, humility, and generosity. Like wrathful Achilles and wily Odysseus, we must learn to lead and weep with each other.
I hope that even if some men won’t listen to me on this, that they will listen to Noctislux. I agree with him, that all I can do is perhaps plant some seeds. Men often cling to patriarchal masculinity because they don’t know there is anything else, and they don’t see any downsides to it — just upsides or potential upsides. If a substantive group of men is going to finally see the properties of the ocean they are swimming in (and start swimming somewhere cleaner and healthier), it’s going to take other men leading the way and providing support.
Millions of men are already doing this work, but I honestly don’t know if we can reach a critical mass big enough to tip the scales on this culture. In the meantime, a lot of women are building their own lives and futures without waiting for men to get their act together and realize that being someone else’s dancing bear doesn’t actually make you look tough, independent, or manly. I think only time will tell.
© Copyright Elle Beau 2026
Written by Elle Beau ❇︎
Social scientist dispelling erroneous cultural narratives with research driven stories.
19 mins ago
You said, "The more a man clings to “traditional”(aka patriarchal) masculinity, the more likely he is to be violent, but also depressed, and even suicidal."
I think of what we are talking about here not so much as "traditional" masculinity, but as…
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