There are few bigger epiphanies than realizing you’re the product of a patriarchal culture that has perpetuated abuse, dominator mindsets, sexism and the emotional crippling of men everywhere.

Not the best way to start your week.

This reckoning came as I finished The Will to Change by bell hooks. In it, hooks highlights how invasive patriarchal culture is - starting with social norms set in boyhood (“Boys don’t cry”) to the status games and power structures most adult men find themselves participating in.

The Will To Change is easily the most profound book I have read. It cleared the dense fog that had been clouding my visibility in my journey through life. And let me tell you…

It’s a patriarchy all the way down.

Dad’s lecturing us again

In the book, hooks describes the emotional hollowing-out of boys as they mature and enter institutions of our society; there is a striking transition from emotionally-liberated juveniles to emotionally-suppressed cogs assimilating to patriarchal culture. I couldn’t help but reflect on my own adolescence to understand how my experiences translated to what hooks was describing.

Was I one of these boys?

Yes, I was.

I never thought of my dad as someone that upheld patriarchal culture: he was a stay-at-home dad for many years and always expressed intimate and tender love with us (that he often reminded us he never received as a child).

However, when my two brothers and I would undoubtedly get into trouble for being idiots, my dad would sit us down and lecture us. I’m not talking about a five minute lecture - often times these lasted hours.

Hooks describes some of this “psychological terrorism” in her book,

Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed week, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and maintain dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence.

Looking back, it’s clear now that my father was displaying his form of dominance over my brothers and I. These lectures were one-way conversations, and often felt like therapy sessions for my dad more than anything. We had no space to share our feelings - we basically “shut up and listen”ed while my dad vented.

And I never thought of my mother as someone that upheld patriarchal culture - but she more or less let the hour-long lectures continue unbounded. Maybe she thought my father was “doing the right thing”. Or maybe she felt like this was his way to emotionally heal from his own traumas. Either way, her absence in these situations proves her own deep and unknowing allegiance to patriarchal culture.

Now let me be clear - the fact that this is the extent of the abuse I faced as an adolescent shows how privileged of a position I was in growing up. But it also shows that the patriarchy runs deep.

Looking back on these experiences years later, I can see how my indoctrination to patriarchal culture has affected my psyche and outlook. Emotions don’t run high for me often but I do tend to have sparse outbursts of deep anger. It’s clear that I tend to bottle up my emotions.

I suspect if you’re a male and reading this, you can relate to some of the above.

Web3 and The Patriarchy

I’m also taking some time to reflect on practices, patterns and norms that I see within the web3 world today, since so much of my energy and passion is being driven to this space right now.

The two clear examples of practices within web3 that perpetuate patriarchal culture are NFTs as status symbols and the financialization of everything, which will push consumer capitalism to heights we haven’t seen before.

Again, in The Will To Change, bell hooks understood the assignment and explains why we should be weary of the above:

To create loving men, we must love males. Loving maleness is different from praising and rewarding males for living up to sexist-defined notions of male identity. Caring about men because of what they do for us is not the same as simply loving males for simply being. When we love maleness, we extend our love whether males are performing or not. Performance is different than simply being.

I find it ironic that so much of the web3 narrative is around “empowering the sovereign individual” and “bringing ownership back to users”, but we’ve resorted to playing the same games our culture has played for centuries. Our collective and unconscious collusion with patriarchal culture will force this regression time and time again.

The truth is, none of us will ever realize actual sovereignty or ownership over ourselves if men cannot be emotionally vulnerable.

Only when men can be intimate with themselves can they connect with others without having the need to dominate or control. If decentralization of power structures is something you want, you must become an advocate for men’s rights to emotional awareness and expression.

There’s (some) hope

Maybe I started this journey to understand patriarchal culture because I’m a father to two girls. Or maybe it’s a spidey sense that’s been tingling as I’ve seen certain trends within web3 play out.

Either way, more than ever, we all need to acknowledge and actively combat patriarchal culture and tendencies. Between a market pullback and Supreme Court Justice Alito’s draft opinion overruling Roe v. Wade being leaked, it’s time for a first-principles reset.

It’s not all sad and gloom - I’m optimistic that web3 is the place where this progress will start. We are slowly doing the hard-work to make the change we want in this world. With organizations like The Ready and voices like madamcultleader, we are positioned to challenge the status quo. But it will take all of us.

There is a role for compassion and humanity in our culture, homes and workplaces. And our ability to change human coordination at scale will only occur when space for this emotional awareness, intimacy and connection is made.