Do yall wear pants? Genuine question. The fact that yall are on here and saying your opinion...kinda makes you a feminist. Maybe it's just me but doesn't seem too anti feminist.(nah bro why did I phrase this in such a passive aggressive way? To my defense, English isn't my first language yall)
A shrew isn’t just an “annoying woman.” That’s the lazy definition, and it misses the point entirely. The term has weight behind it. It comes from an old word tied to a small, aggressive animal... fast, reactive, and capable of causing damage out of proportion to its size. Over time, that image became attached to a specific kind of woman, not because of volume or attitude alone, but because of a pattern of behavior that shows up across history, literature, and real life.
A shrew is a woman who weaponizes her position in the relational web.
She doesn’t operate through direct force. She doesn’t build, lead, or create in a generative sense. What she does instead is correct, constrain, and control. Everything becomes something to regulate. Tone, behavior, desire, ambition, masculinity itself... nothing is left alone. It all gets filtered through her sense of what is acceptable, and that standard is enforced constantly, or all hell breaks loose.
The key thing is that she doesn’t experience herself as destructive. No villain truly thinks she is a villain. She instead experiences herself as necessary. In her mind, she is fixing problems, improving people, raising standards, making things “better.” That internal framing is what makes the Shrew dangerous, because it allows her to apply pressure without ever recognizing the cost.
What she actually does is reshape the environment around her. She turns relationships into systems of approval and disapproval; with her as judge, jury, and executioner. Instead of mutual exchange (like a healthy relationship), you get constant evaluation. Instead of cooperation, you get compliance. Instead of trust, you get second-guessing. Over time, people around her stop acting freely and start acting defensively.
That’s where the real harm comes in.
A shrew doesn’t destroy things openly. She doesn’t come in like a wrecking ball. She constricts. She erodes, like her venomous rodent namesake. She narrows what’s allowed, tightens expectations, and applies social pressure until anything bold, rough, or instinctive gets worn down. Masculine traits (drive, risk-taking, aggression, sexuality) get treated as problems to manage rather than forces to channel.
The result is predictable: men become hesitant, cautious, dulled down. The system loses its edge.
This is why the Shrew has always been tied to social disruption. Historically, the “scold” or shrew wasn’t just disliked... she was seen as someone who destabilized the household and the community. Not because she was loud, but because she turned relational authority into constant friction.
Call out Shrews. Hold them accountable. Don't let them slowly geld you or destroy who you are.
You can see the same pattern in modern ideological spaces if you’re paying attention. Any framework that treats natural dynamics (especially sexuality and male-female polarity) as inherently suspect or corrupt tends to drift in this direction. When desire is framed as dangerous, when masculinity is framed as something that must be softened, corrected, or contained, when supportive or domestic feminine roles are treated as inferior or oppressive, you’re looking at the same underlying mechanism. It’s the instinct to regulate and restrain, warped into a worldview.
That doesn’t mean every critique of culture or behavior is shrew-like. There’s a difference between setting standards and suffocating everything under them.
There’s a difference between strength and control. A strong woman can challenge, push back, even dominate in certain contexts without falling into this pattern. The line is crossed when everything becomes about limitation, when correction becomes the primary mode of interaction, and when nothing is allowed to exist without being filtered through her approval.
The easiest way to understand it is through contrast. Constructive femininity supports and shapes without crushing. It reinforces what works, stabilizes what’s chaotic, and builds alongside masculine force rather than trying to neuter it.
The shrew does the opposite.
She doesn’t channel energy...
She suppresses it.
She doesn’t stabilize...
She constrains.
She doesn’t build...
She audits.
And she almost never realizes she’s doing it.
That’s why calling it out matters. Not in a loud, reactive way, but in a clear, grounded way. Once you recognize the pattern, it becomes obvious. You start to see how certain dynamics repeat, how certain personalities operate, and how certain ideologies produce the same outcome over and over again.
The word “shrew” exists for a reason. It names a pattern that people have been dealing with for centuries. Ignore it, and you’ll keep walking into the same dynamic without understanding why things feel off. Recognize it, and you can start making cleaner decisions about who and what you let shape your life.
Women naturally have the ability to influence others through social networks, emotional cues, and reputation. What we call relational control. It’s powerful, subtle, and historically recognized across cultures, from Nirse sagas to Confucian texts. This isn’t about judging all women, it’s about being accountable for the harm indirect influence can cause.
Just like men are taught not to use physical force to hurt others, women need to learn not to use emotional leverage, gossip, or social pressure to get their way. Left unchecked, relational control creates stress, damages relationships, and destabilizes communities.
Feminism today, in many dominant forms, sometimes encourages this behavior by framing indirect manipulation as empowerment, which removes accountability instead of teaching responsibility. Going so far as to "support women's rights and wrongs" despite those wrongs causing real harm.
We must call out harm when we see it. Regardless of gender.
Recognize when you’re using social pressure or exclusion, replace indirect strategies with clear communication, avoid using friends or networks as enforcement tools, confront your own biases that justify manipulation, and hold yourself accountable. Liberation doesn’t come from excusing harmful behaviors, it comes from responsibility, honesty, and care in your relationships.
Women have power. Learning to use it responsibly is how we protect ourselves, others, and our communities.
Teach women that it's not okay to control.
Firstly, the obligatory #notallwomen to shut down the mouth breathes who will inevitably come in the comments...
Across human history, across cultures and continents, and across the research of modern science, a recurring and striking pattern emerges: women, on average, exert influence and control through relational mechanisms. This is not a moral judgment, not a broad-brush condemnation, and certainly not a claim that all women behave this way. It is, instead, a synthesis of psychological research, behavioral data, evolutionary theory, anthropological observations, and historical record that consistently documents women’s capacity to regulate social outcomes through networks, perception, and relational power. Understanding this pattern is essential because it has significant psychological, social, and intergenerational consequences, and because it has remained systematically under-recognized due to biases in what humans historically and scientifically define as “power.”
Traditional models of power focus overwhelmingly on what is visible: force, hierarchy, institutional authority, and direct coercion. These models, while important, miss an entire domain of influence that operates through relationships, perception, and social consequence. Across disciplines and historical contexts, women appear to have a consistent advantage in this domain. They exert control through reputation manipulation, social inclusion and exclusion, emotional leverage, third-party influence, and narrative framing. This is relational control: a form of influence that does not require force, that operates through social consequence, and that is subtle, indirect, but often profoundly effective.
There is a biological substrate to this behavior. Across mammalian species, males tend toward direct competition, displays of dominance, and physical confrontation, while females tend toward selective control and environmental regulation. In humans, this manifests through relational rather than physical control because of sexual dimorphism and reproductive asymmetry. Women invest more in offspring—through pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing—which increases the evolutionary premium on reducing risk and maintaining a controlled social environment. Physical enforcement is simply less available to women on average, so the strategy shifts to influence, social monitoring, alliance management, reputation shaping, and partner regulation. This is not ideology; it is the intersection of biology and strategy expressed in human social systems.
Psychological research provides further evidence for this pattern. Crick and Grotpeter (1995) identified that girls exhibit higher relational aggression, which manifests as gossip, social exclusion, and emotional manipulation. Bjorkqvist (2001, 2008) replicated these findings across cultures, and Archer’s 2004 meta-analysis confirmed that women favor indirect aggression while men favor direct aggression. These behaviors are not incidental; they function to regulate group membership, social standing, and behavioral conformity. Cognitive mechanisms stabilize relational control. Actor–Observer Bias (Jones & Nisbett, 1972) allows individuals to perceive their own controlling behavior as situationally necessary while externalizing similar behavior in others. Cognitive Dissonance (Festinger, 1957) permits rationalization and moral justification, enabling women to engage in relational control while avoiding self-perceived wrongdoing.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) data further illuminates the prevalence of these behaviors. Straus (2011) shows that women perpetrate IPV at rates comparable to, or exceeding, men in many datasets, even if men cause more severe physical injury. Archer (2004) found that women engage more frequently in psychological aggression. Importantly, studies of same-sex relationships, including Walters et al. (2013) and Messinger (2011), demonstrate that female-female relationships exhibit high rates of relational aggression, often mutual. This indicates that these behaviors are not merely reactive to male partners—they are persistent patterns of relational regulation and control.
Compounding these effects is the Women-Are-Wonderful effect (Eagly & Mladinic, 1994), which shows that women are generally perceived as more moral, trustworthy, and socially credible. This perception amplifies the power of relational control because social networks are more likely to accept female narratives and enforce reputational consequences. Relational control, therefore, is network-amplified: it distributes power through perception and consensus rather than through coercion. Anthropological and structural evidence reinforces this. Across cultures such as the Iroquois, Minangkabau, and Akan, women occupy roles regulating kinship networks, social legitimacy, mate selection, and reputation systems. These are not anomalies; they formalize relational influence as a structural feature of society.
Historical texts provide a remarkable cross-cultural convergence. In ancient Greece, Hesiod’s Works and Days warns against women deceiving through appearance and persuasion. Greek tragedies repeatedly portray women as socially strategic and disruptive. In Rome, Juvenal’s Satire VI describes women as manipulative, jealous, and socially controlling, destabilizing households. In India, the Manusmriti cautions that women are capable of seducing men and leading them astray, demonstrating awareness of female influence over male rationality. Buddhist monastic texts emphasize women as sources of distraction, attachment, and manipulation through desire, warning monks about the power of emotional and sexual influence. In Confucian China, Ban Zhao’s Lessons for Women instructs restraint in speech and behavior, paired with the Three Obediences and Four Virtues, showing that female influence was socially powerful enough to require regulation. Islamic texts, such as Al-Ghazali’s Revival of Religious Sciences, similarly warn about women’s domestic relational power. Medieval Europe offers the Canterbury Tales’ Wife of Bath, using sexuality and narrative to control men, and the Malleus Maleficarum links women to deception and social disruption. Even Christine de Pizan, a defender of women, acknowledges intra-female harm. Viking Age Scandinavian sagas and the Poetic Edda describe women inciting conflict and provoking vengeance cycles through speech, demonstrating relational power as instigation. Early modern to Victorian Europe, including Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, Mary Astell, Jane Austen, and Florence Nightingale, repeatedly depicts or critiques women exercising control over social outcomes, marriage markets, and domestic life. Edo period Japanese conduct manuals such as Onna Daigaku emphasize discipline and restraint because female behavior was seen as capable of disrupting household order. Across all these examples, independent cultures repeatedly observed women influencing others indirectly, shaping outcomes socially, and requiring regulation.
The convergence across history is significant. These are not scientific studies, yet the repeated acknowledgment across time, geography, culture, and both male and female authors indicates a clear pattern: relational influence by women is real, socially consequential, and historically recognized. Societies regulated it because it destabilizes decision-making, disrupts hierarchical structures, generates social conflict through gossip and exclusion, triggers indirect male responses through shame and pressure, and is inherently difficult to detect because it is not physical. The fact that conduct manuals, literature, legal codes, and advice literature across civilizations emphasized these behaviors shows that regulation was not arbitrary; it was a response to a recurring behavioral reality.
The consequences of relational control are measurable. Men subject to these dynamics can experience depression, social marginalization, chronic stress, and increased suicide risk, particularly because reputational harm and social exclusion are less visible forms of abuse. Women often escalate conflict through relational aggression, increasing psychological stress and risk of mutual aggression cycles. Children exposed to these behaviors may develop emotional instability, behavioral issues, and a replication of aggressive patterns (Evans et al., 2013). Relational control can also indirectly lead to physical harm through mental health degradation, chronic stress, and escalation into conflict.
In modern terms, relational control forms a dual-channel power system. Direct power—force, hierarchy, and coercion—is more commonly male-dominated. Relational power—networks, narrative influence, and reputation shaping—is more commonly female-dominated. This power determines social legitimacy, shapes outcomes, and influences behavior without the use of direct force. Despite its significance, relational control remains systematically under-recognized because measurement systems prioritize physical harm, concepts of power are biased toward force, the behavior is diffuse and indirect, and social reinforcement normalizes it.
When one integrates biology, psychology, behavioral data, anthropology, history, and social dynamics, a clear synthesis emerges: what people often describe as “women being controlling” is the observable expression of a broader, biologically-influenced tendency toward relational and environmental regulation. This tendency is amplified by social networks, cultural norms, historical precedent, and psychological reinforcement. Across civilizations—from Greece and Rome to India, China, Scandinavia, the Islamic world, Medieval and Early Modern Europe, and Edo Japan—women’s relational influence repeatedly manifests in ways that require social recognition and regulation. This is not ideology; it is pattern recognition reinforced across millennia.
In short, women do not need to rely on force to exert control. Their power manifests through shaping perception, controlling social alignment, and influencing acceptance or isolation within a network. This strategy is rooted in evolution, supported by psychological mechanisms, expressed in measurable social behavior, and repeatedly recognized by human societies. It is relational, indirect, powerful, and historically persistent. Understanding this dimension is crucial for any complete model of human relationships, social systems, and psychological outcomes
Beyoncé was right, girls do run the world....
What we’ve been taught to call “patriarchy” is supposed to explain everything. Men hold power, women are oppressed, and any deviation from that script is just patriarchy expressing itself in a different form. That’s the core claim. The problem is that it explains way too much. And when something explains everything, it actually explains nothing.
Because once you look at how the theory behaves, it becomes unfalsifiable.
If men dominate, that’s patriarchy. If women influence outcomes, that’s them adapting to patriarchy. If women gain power, that’s patriarchy allowing it. If women abuse power, must've been patriarchy.... (red herring *cough *cough)
There is no possible outcome that disproves it. That’s not a theory. That’s a closed fucking loop.
Just like Christians see Satan everywhere, Feminists see patriarchy in all the things forever...
So instead of arguing inside that cyclical loop, we need to step outside of it.
Look at what people actually do. Not the ivory tower hashtags and pandering. How people actually materially show up in the world.
Men compete. They build hierarchies. They fight for status, resources, recognition. That part is obvious and visible, which is why people fixate on it.
But here’s the part that gets ignored...
Men don’t compete in a vacuum. They compete to be chosen, respected, validated, and selected.
That selection pressure doesn’t come from nowhere.
It comes from women.
And it doesn’t just show up in dating. It shows up everywhere. Reputation, desirability, legitimacy, social standing. Women don’t just “participate” in society, they filter it.
Who gets attention. Who gets social validation. Who gets labeled desirable or undesirable. Who gets elevated or quietly buried. What is and isn't acceptable. What color the drapes are allowed to be.
That’s quiet hard power. That’s arbitration.
And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
This isn’t a conspiracy. It’s a feedback system.
Men act, women evaluate, men adjust.
That loop repeats across generations, across cultures, across systems.
Now layer in something psychology has already documented, peer reviewed, and validated: people consistently rate women as more moral, more nurturing, more trustworthy. This isn’t a fringe idea, it’s been replicated for decades. Both men and women do it.
This is called the women-are-wonderful-effect
That bias matters, because it amplifies female evaluation. And it means Feminist narratives get listened to and become hegemony.
When women judge, people tend to listen more, sympathize more, and validate more.
That means female arbitration doesn’t just stay interpersonal. It scales.
It spreads through social networks, media, institutions, and policy.
Reputation isn’t magic. It travels through people talking, sharing, signaling approval or disapproval. Women are heavily embedded in those networks, and their evaluations carry weight because of that built-in bias.
Now take that and plug it into institutions.
Media encodes desirability. Law encodes legitimacy. Education encodes norms.
Once those signals get institutionalized, they don’t just reflect society, they start shaping it.
And this is where modern feminism comes in.
Feminism claims it’s about equality. Ending sexism. Liberation. All the right words.
But look at how it actually operates.
It treats women as a permanent victim class, even in contexts where women have clear influence or advantage. It frames male behavior as structurally oppressive, even when the data shows symmetry or complexity. It builds policies that are explicitly sex-asymmetric, while still claiming neutrality.
That’s not equality. That’s selective framing.
Take violence, for example.
The public narrative is simple: men are perpetrators, women are victims.
But when you look at large-scale survey data on intimate partner violence, the picture gets messy. You see symmetry in certain forms of aggression. But you see women initiating violence at non-trivial rates. You see psychological aggression slightly higher on the female side. Lesbian relationships have higher abuse rates that heterosexual, and accounting for all forms of abuse (not just physical) perpetrators are more often female.
But those data points get filtered out of the dominant narrative, because the framework is already set.
Severity gets emphasized. Behavior gets minimized.
Why? Because the narrative needs to hold, or Feminism becomes invalid.
Same pattern shows up everywhere.
Feminism says gender is a spectrum, then builds policies that rigidly enforce gender categories. It says it values autonomy, then pushes outcome-based interventions like quotas. It says it’s about dismantling power, then builds new systems of power that are just framed differently.
That’s not accidental. That’s structural.
And it ties directly into class.
Second-wave feminism, especially the kind shaped by figures like Friedan, shifted the focus away from material conditions and toward identity and personal fulfillment. Instead of restructuring labor, domestic roles, or economic systems, it encouraged women to enter the workforce as individuals.
That aligned perfectly with capitalism.
More workers. More consumers. Same underlying structure. Abusive power structures stay, because now we're angry at men instead of the ownership class who makes the rules.
Class dynamics didn’t disappear. They got buried under gender narratives.
So now you’ve got a system where:
Men are told they are structurally dominant, while constantly adapting their behavior to female validation signals.
Women are framed as structurally oppressed, while exercising massive influence over social legitimacy, desirability, and reputation.
And institutions amplify that imbalance by encoding one side of the story.
That’s the contradiction.
It’s why guys feel like they’re expected to perform constantly while being told they already have all the power.
Dance monkey dance.
It’s why women can influence outcomes heavily while still being framed as lacking agency.
It’s why the conversation feels like it never lands anywhere real.
Because the model people are using is broken.
The better model is simpler, and harder to argue with:
Men construct and enforce hierarchies. Women filter, legitimize, and assign value within them. Those evaluations get amplified through social bias and networks. Institutions encode those signals and feed them back into behavior.
That’s the system.
Sometimes it’s balanced. Sometimes it’s not.
When it destabilizes, you get exactly what we’re seeing now:
Conflicting signals. Status confusion. Gender hostility. Breakdown in long-term relationships.
Not because one side “took over,” but because the feedback loop stopped aligning.
This isn’t about blaming women. It’s not about excusing men.
It’s about actually describing reality without hiding behind a theory that explains everything and proves nothing.
Patriarchy, as it’s commonly used, doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. It stretches, shifts, and absorbs contradiction until it becomes meaningless.
What actually exists is a dual system of power.
And if you ignore half of it, you don’t understand any of it.
Sandra Bem isn’t a household name outside of academia, but she is one of the central figures responsible for how modern psychology... and, by extension, culture ...frames masculinity and femininity. She wasn’t just a researcher. She was an activist, a network-builder, and an architect of a psychological ideology that pathologized male traits while celebrating femininity as socially pure and desirable. Her work codified second-wave feminist assumptions into supposedly scientific frameworks, and it did so deliberately, methodically, and with institutional backing.
Bem studied at Carnegie Mellon, earned her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, and later directed Women’s Studies at Cornell. She was deeply embedded in activist circles, working alongside media, policy makers, and academics to transform the cultural narrative around gender. She pushed Gender Schema Theory and created the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, tools that defined gender in ideological rather than empirical terms. Assertiveness, decisiveness, competitiveness, risk-taking (traits historically tied to masculinity) were presented as socially imposed, often undesirable, even morally suspect. Femininity, in contrast, was valorized, framed as adaptive, relationally superior, and morally virtuous. Bem’s work gave social science a veneer of neutrality while carrying the agenda of second-wave feminism directly into psychological assessment and cultural education.
Her activism cannot be separated from her science. She curated curricula, advised academic institutions, and pushed publications that reinforced a narrative of male deficiency and female virtue. The alignment of her psychological models with activist goals meant that ideology became the filter through which data was interpreted. Historical and cross-cultural evidence showing functional and complementary masculine and feminine roles was largely ignored. Men’s natural tendencies toward risk-taking, protection, and leadership were treated as socially problematic rather than evolutionarily functional. Women’s social arbitration and relational influence were amplified as inherently desirable. Bem’s framework didn’t just misrepresent the evidence; it redefined the questions themselves, turning neutral observation into moral prescription.
Bem’s philosophy was a direct descendant of Simone de Beauvoir’s existentialist feminism. De Beauvoir framed gender as socially constructed, positioned men as systemic oppressors, and elevated femininity as inherently virtuous. Bem translated that lens into psychology, converting existentialist moral assumptions into measurement scales, research questions, and training programs. What de Beauvoir theorized as liberation became Bem’s scientifically framed caution against masculine expression. By codifying ideology into the guise of empiricism, Bem weaponized social science to erode healthy masculinity.
The cultural consequences have been profound. Through Bem’s influence, education, media, and social policy increasingly depict masculinity as socially suspect, emotionally stunted, or relationally destructive. Boys are taught to moderate aggression, assertiveness, and competitiveness because these traits are now understood as socially undesirable, even psychologically maladaptive. Men’s roles as protectors, risk-bearers, and leaders are undermined, while women’s roles as arbiters, relational managers, and social gatekeepers are glorified. The second-wave feminist assumption that masculine traits are inherently problematic has become normalized in psychological research, classrooms, and popular understanding. Masculinity, once a functional, adaptive set of behaviors, is now stigmatized as potentially toxic.
Understanding Bem also requires seeing her in context. She was part of a broader activist network of second-wave feminists who strategically leveraged funding from foundations like Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie to embed their ideology in institutions. Her influence wasn’t accidental; it was a coordinated effort to align academia, psychology, and culture with a worldview that prioritized feminist moral assumptions over historical, biological, or functional evidence. The result is systemic: masculinity is culturally delegitimized, while feminine traits are structurally reinforced as ideal.
Sandra Bem’s legacy is thus double-edged. On one hand, she expanded study and discussion of gender in psychology, opening academic doors for research on women and socialization. On the other hand, she weaponized her authority and credibility to create an enduring framework that stigmatizes male identity, valorizes female arbiters of social value, and reshapes social norms according to ideological ends. She didn’t just research gender; she redefined it for an entire generation, leaving a system in which masculinity itself is measured, managed, and morally evaluated through the lens of feminist ideology.
In short, Bem was not merely a scientist or theorist; she was a godmother of feminism whose ideas continue to corrode healthy masculinity, reshaping cultural perceptions and social structures in ways that remain deeply consequential to this day. Understanding her work is essential to tracing the lineage of second-wave feminism from existentialist philosophy to psychological orthodoxy, and recognizing how ideology can masquerade as science to enforce moral and social hierarchies.
I want to share something that doesn’t get talked about much in mainstream discussions of feminism. Most people have been fed a polished, sanitized story about gender equality and progress, but the real history, especially when it comes to psychology, is a lot more complicate and frankly a lot more ideologically driven.
It all starts with Simone de Beauvoir. She’s famous for The Second Sex.), where she argued that
>one isn’t born a woman but becomes one
framing gender as entirely socially constructed and men as inherently oppressive. While her work is often praised, if you actually look at it critically, it’s built on a fundamentally flawed premise. De Beauvoir prioritizes radical individualism over relational realities. She ignores the fact that human societies rely on complementary masculine and feminine roles for survival, cohesion, and function. She also cherry-picks evidence and actively ignores patterns that exist across cultures and centuries. Even egalitarian societies throughout history still exhibit masculine and feminine patterns. Her framework moralizes gender, framing masculinity as inherently negative and femininity as virtuous, without acknowledging cognitive biases like the Women-are-Wonderful Effect. This existentialist lens laid the foundation for second-wave feminism, giving activists a philosophical excuse to prioritize their ideology over empirical evidence.
Fast forward to the 1960s and 1970s, and you have second-wave feminists like Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Miriam Chamberlain entering universities, media, and organizational networks strategically. They weren’t just advocating for equality; they were building influence. Foundations like Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie funded projects that aligned with feminist theory without questioning their own positions of power, effectively creating a pipeline where ideologically aligned academics and researchers could dominate disciplines like psychology. Taking the focus off of previous activism centered around working-class issues. Masculinity became framed as socially problematic, feminine traits were valorized, and these biases were left largely unacknowledged.
This is the context in which Sandra Bem emerged. She studied at Carnegie Mellon and got her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, eventually directing Women’s Studies at Cornell. Bem actively worked with activist networks, challenged media practices, and pursued institutional change to advance feminist frameworks in academia. Her psychological research, including the Bem Sex-Role Inventory and Gender Schema Theory, presented gender as a social construct and argued that traits like assertiveness, risk-taking, and decisiveness (core masculine traits) were socially imposed and often problematic. But if you look closely at her work, it’s clear that she cherry-picked data, ignored historical and cross-cultural evidence, and started with conclusions to fit an ideological narrative rather than letting empirical data guide her. She was not a neutral scientist. She was an ideologue who codified second-wave feminist assumptions into psychology.
Real scientific inquiry doesn't start with the conclusion.
The historical and cross-cultural record tells a very different story than what Bem and her contemporaries portrayed. Masculine and feminine roles consistently appear across time and culture, even in societies that are considered egalitarian. Evidence from evolutionary psychology shows men tend toward risk-taking, leadership, and protection, while women often handle relational and social arbitration roles. These patterns are functional and relational, not oppressive. But Bem and others systematically ignored this evidence, privileging ideology over science, and by doing so, helped normalize a narrative that pathologizes masculinity while valorizing femininity.
The result is that modern psychology, education, and public discourse have been shaped by frameworks that problematize healthy masculine traits. Through activist networks, aligned funding agencies, academic influence, and cultural dissemination, the second-wave feminist agenda became deeply embedded. Men are taught that being assertive, decisive, or protective is inherently socially harmful. These are traits that are functional, natural, and relationally necessary, yet they are culturally stigmatized. Feminist ideology, particularly as advanced by Sandra Bem, didn’t just change the conversation about gender, it changed how masculinity is understood, measured, and perceived, creating a systemic erosion of masculine identity.
If you step back and look at it all together, you see a clear line from de Beauvoir’s existentialist philosophy to second-wave feminist activism, to Sandra Bem codifying these ideas into psychology, and finally to the cultural perception of masculinity today. It’s an ideological chain that ignored thousands of years of human history, overlooked biological evidence, and exploited cognitive biases, all while presenting itself as neutral science. Understanding this lineage is essential for anyone trying to critically engage with gender theory, teach it responsibly, or simply reclaim a functional understanding of masculinity in society.
Do you feel any of these concepts have a basis in reality? Misandrists often like to cite them as examples of women's hardships and arguing men by comparison don't matter or aren't worth caring about.
I don't doubt in many third-world and underdeveloped nations some of these may well exist and are a serious problem and threat (not that men have it easy there as well). But in Western nations there's very little to no evidence to suggest it and it comes off as more misandrist victimhood and a means of deflecting from issues men face and marginalize them. More of their "women most affected and thus men don't matter" way of thinking. And also to deflect from the fact just like bad men exist, there's bad women too.
Not my intent to spread hate with this. I don't deny or doubt what women go through, and they have their hardships, struggles and uphill battles just like men do. Both are victims of terrible crimes committed by offenders of both genders. But every time misandrists evoke these it comes off as more of their victimhood and trying to invalidate male issues.
First, the obligatory paragraph telling the internet to shut the fuck up. I don’t care about your special interest group or your darling talking points. This isn’t about that. Make your own post bitching about whatever matters to you. This probably has nothing to do with that. So shut the fuck up and listen.
Masculinity is real. It’s only a social construct in the same sense that these words are socially constructed. They have meanings and purposes beyond some amorphous existential nonsense. Masculinity is not a fad. It’s not a myth. It is rooted in biology, relational roles, and human cooperation. Men have instincts, drives, and capacities for protection, responsibility, initiative, and competence that are observable everywhere humans live and work. These traits are not constructed from ideology. They emerge naturally from human nature interacting with real relationships and shared practices. Across history and culture, the patterns are consistent.
What has happened over the past century is that feminism as a dominant cultural philosophy hijacked women’s understanding of roles, cooperation, and identity. Feminist theory challenged traditional hierarchies and authority, which had value in certain contexts, but in doing so, it destroyed the relational understanding of human roles that allowed families, communities, and societies to function for millennia. Sociologists like Anthony Giddens document how shifts in intimacy and social expectations transformed gender roles without replacing the structures they displaced. (Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy) Cecilia Ridgeway demonstrates how evolving cultural notions of gender leave men and women uncertain about how roles fit into cooperation rather than competition. (Ridgeway, Framed by Gender)
Modern academia has amplified the damage. Departments of social theory, cultural studies, and gender studies treat identity and roles as abstract, ideological constructs, divorced from biology, psychology, and the relational realities of human life. Thinkers like Judith Butler framed identity as something to endlessly question and deconstruct rather than practice or inhabit. (Butler, Gender Trouble) Critics like Susan Haack warn that when ideology overtakes empirical grounding, scholarship loses touch with reality. (Haack, Defending Science Within Reason) In this environment, shrewd actors, particularly those aligned with feminist hegemony, control curricula, research, and publication power, amplifying narratives that diminish masculine authority and relational clarity.
This is not about blaming women. Feminism does not equal women. Many women sincerely embrace autonomy and equality without undermining cooperation or mutual roles. But the net cultural effect is undeniable. Relational frameworks that once made masculine roles respected, understood, and meaningful have been eroded. Anthropologists Marshall Sahlins and Ruth Benedict document that pre-industrial societies depended on complementary male and female responsibilities to structure life and maintain social cohesion. (Sahlins, Stone Age Economics; Benedict, Patterns of Culture)
When these roles collapse, everyone suffers. Men question their identity. Women navigate contradictory pressures. Communities hollow out. Robert Putnam and Jean Twenge document rising loneliness, anxiety, and dissatisfaction linked directly to the breakdown of stable social structures. (Putnam, Bowling Alone; Twenge, The Age of Anxiety)
This is why men feel lost and women restless. Philosophers like Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre framed masculinity and femininity as abstract identifiers thrust upon you like broken, gelded oxen. In reality, it is the erasure of masculinity that truly neuters men. Women cannot rest in their natural softness because ideological policing by feminist shrews condemns it. Society, culture, and philosophy combined have misaligned humans from their relational identities, leaving everyone adrift, anxious, and unfulfilled.
Masculinity is alive, but it is under assault. Understanding this is the first step toward reclaiming it for men, for women, for human society.
Modern Paganism likes to present itself as a space of freedom and reconstruction. In theory that means rebuilding spiritual traditions from fragments... myth, archaeology, folklore, shit like that ...and adapting them for modern life. That openness is one of Paganism’s strengths. But it has also created a strange blind spot: in many contemporary Pagan spaces, masculinity itself has quietly become something suspect.
To be clear about terms, masculinity here does not mean aggression, ego, or domination. Masculinity in its most basic social function is the role of the vanguard. The people who stand at the edge of the community and take on risk. Historically this has meant dangerous labor, exploration, warfare, protection, and the willingness to confront uncertainty so that the inner life of a community can exist in relative stability. In simple language: someone has to hold the gate. Cultures across the world have usually expected men to fill that role.
Inside every community there is also another layer: the social and relational center. This is where belonging is negotiated, where people decide who is trusted, who is valued, and who is welcome. These networks have historically been shaped strongly by women, because women tend to operate as the primary arbiters of social reputation and relational legitimacy. Neither layer works well without the other. Communities need both the people who hold the gate and the people who maintain the social center.
Problems start when the feminine social center begins to misunderstand the function of the vanguard. When masculinity is interpreted primarily through ideological lenses (as something inherently dangerous or oppressive) the relational role itself begins to be punished rather than recognized. Instead of evaluating men based on what they contribute to the community, the community starts evaluating masculinity as a moral flaw.
Some strands of modern Paganism absorbed these assumptions during the rise of second-wave feminism in the 1960s and 70s. Thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir reframed traditional gender roles as systems of oppression rather than functional arrangements that evolved over time. Around the same period, movements such as Zsuzsanna Budapest’s Dianic Witchcraft emerged within Paganism and explicitly excluded men from ritual life. In those contexts masculinity wasn’t simply questioned, it was structurally removed from the spiritual framework.
The Wiccans over corrected. The so-called "patriarchy" inherent in monotheism wasn't toxic because of masculinity. It was toxic because it consolidated hegemonic authority. Pre-Christian relational roles were balanced, not oppressive.
Of course, not every Pagan tradition follows this path, but the influence has been significant. Academic works such as Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon and Jone Salomonsen’s Enchanted Feminism describe how feminist spirituality shaped large parts of the modern Pagan revival. Debates in Pagan media like The Wild Hunt, along with conflicts at events such as PantheaCon, show that questions about male participation and masculine identity remain unresolved.
At the ground level, many male practitioners describe a similar pattern: masculinity is treated as something that must be softened, apologized for, or constantly justified before a man can fully belong. The expectation isn’t simply ethical behavior, but rather the rejection of masculine identity itself.
This ideological framework also creates strange contradictions around transgender practitioners. When masculinity itself is treated as suspicious, trans men can find their identity dismissed as illegitimate or artificial. At the same time, trans women may be scrutinized for any perceived connection to masculinity. The underlying issue in both cases is the same: an ideology that treats masculine identity as a problem rather than a functional role within community life. We've seen Dianic Wiccans embrace TERF exclusivity on Rowling levels.
Communities that erase masculinity don’t become more balanced; they become unstable. If no one is recognized or encouraged to take on risk, responsibility, and external pressure, those burdens do not disappear, they simply go unmanaged. The spiritual life of the community becomes increasingly inward-focused and ideological, disconnected from the practical realities that traditions historically evolved to address.
Paganism doesn’t need to abandon reconstruction or inclusivity to solve this. What it needs is a clearer understanding of what masculinity actually is. Masculinity is not the enemy of community. It is the part of the ecosystem that accepts risk, absorbs pressure, and protects the conditions that allow spiritual and social life to flourish.
Ignoring that role doesn’t create equality. It creates imbalance.
TL;DR: Many modern Pagan spaces have absorbed ideological frameworks that treat masculinity as inherently suspect. Masculinity, in its functional sense, is the role of the vanguard. The people who take on risk and protect the community’s stability. When that role is dismissed or punished, communities lose balance. The result is not greater equality but the gradual erasure of masculine participation in Pagan spiritual life.