Being Georgian and growing up between Caucasus culture and France genuinely messes with your head sometimes.
Back home, a lot of men are raised to think being a father means being feared, emotionally shut down, controlling, aggressive, never apologizing. Some of them treat women and kids horribly and everyone just calls it “being a strong man.” My father was like that.
Then you move to France and sometimes it feels like the complete opposite extreme. Parts of modern progressive culture act like masculinity itself is toxic, traditional family structures are oppressive, gender differences are fake, etc.
So you end up feeling alienated from both sides.
One culture can normalize abusive patriarchy and emotional brutality. The other can feel disconnected from reality, tradition, and basic human structure.
And when you grow up between those worlds, you start realizing you don’t fully belong to either anymore.
I still believe family matters. Fathers matter. Masculinity matters. But domination, violence, and emotional repression are not strength.
At the same time, I also can’t pretend humans are just blank slates with no biological or cultural foundations at all.
Honestly I think a lot of immigrants from the Caucasus/Balkans/Eastern Europe who moved to Western Europe feel this contradiction but never really talk about it openly.