It was wonderful to meet and talk with you, Monique! Thank you so much for the discussion. Your words at the beginning are very kind 🙏 I hope our paths cross again!
The Modern Negotiation of Power: A Letter in Response
The trouble with these kinds of dialogues about patriarchy is that they are, more often than not, essays in partiality and one-sided blame. Critiques of a system without even attempting a reckoning with its roots.
It has become fashionable, it seems to me, to treat "the patriarchy" as a singular, male-authored imposition, a brutalist edifice constructed exclusively by men to serve men, and women have no culpability, and generally present as unwilling victims. And yet, even a peripheral understanding of psychology, anthropology, or human evolutionary biology knows that the story is not so neat, nor the characters so starkly drawn. Human societies are co-creations. Gender roles, however stifling, outdated, or tragic in their modern forms, have been negotiated, reinforced, and repeated by both sexes through generations, globally. What appears in the collective is never the product of one alone. It’s the unseen handshake beneath the table.
Patriarchy is not (and has never been) simply something men did to women. It’s something we built together. Systems are co-authored, and as writer bell hooks has noted, patriarchy hurts everyone, men included, by imprisoning both genders in outdated roles.
Patriarchy is something performed, co-signed, taught, and rewarded across gender lines, and built upon a granite base of generations of performance. It is less a single villain and more a communal improvisation.
There’s a simple starting point for equality. Embracing it. Desire doesn’t live in ideology; it lives in context. And sometimes, the context is this: a woman insists she wants equality, but watches silently, then thankfully, as the man pays for dinner because she’s been trained, by culture, by peers, by her own mother’s arched eyebrow, to equate generosity with affection, and power with protection. And asking, or demanding, “the patriarchy” to change while accepting this gateway behavior, immediately disqualifies all the hard work of everyone seeking equality.
Let’s talk about that role training. Much is said about “toxic masculinity,” but too little is said about the fact that men respond to the behaviors and signals of the women around them. Culture is not just built by fathers raising sons; it’s built every time women reward or punish behavior in their choices, relationships, and expectations. I’m not blaming women’s behavior for "the patriarchy," but women are most certainly complicit. Men are confused because the social scripts are changing, but the rewards often haven’t. I encounter this every single time I go out on a date, with a female friend, or in a mixed group with women. In 10 years of dating, not a single woman has ever reached for the check, even if they originated the date. Not one.
We cannot blame men for the rules, and also punish them for not knowing how to break them gracefully.
Writer bell hooks has said that patriarchy harms everyone, men included, not simply because it elevates male dominance, but because it strangles possibility. It limits who men and women are allowed to be. And yet, when men struggle toward change, many are met not with partnership, approbation, or support, but suspicion. What do you actually want from men, atonement or alignment, or a Harry Potter magic wand to somehow fix it while you watch and wait for some instant behavioral alchemy?
Equality and beating back “the patriarchy” starts with the act of behaving as an equal, when it’s comfortable, yes, but especially when it’s not.
This baseline example plays out for all women wanting the patriarchy to change. The dinner check lands. Will he offer? Will I decline? Do I ask to split? Will we both pretend we’re fine with the outcome if he always pays? In that moment, centuries of scripts write themselves through our hands, minds, and actions. And the action seals the deal. If you want to be equal, to begin to unravel the patriarchy, you have to be willing to reach out, first, and without permission. If you don’t. You’re simply not ready to have a meaningful conversation on change.
Many psychologists and feminist and controversial writers and thinkers have repeated, responsibility is where meaning lives. I am a strong believer in personal responsibility. I’ve always been taught, from the Navy through life, that courage is the willingness to be uncomfortable in the service of something larger. What if the next step in dismantling patriarchy is not public confession, or demanding men somehow break their chains, but private correction and silent and unwavering behavioral leadership?
This is especially important for young men because the roadmap has been set on fire and no one has replaced it with anything solid, but instead a moving target. They are told to do better, act better, have more empathy, think about how it feels to be in a woman’s shoes, and treat everyone as an equal, but are not shown how, or given supportive social feedback when they do. Even more so, they are asked to give up traditional roles, but are often not met with women prepared to inhabit those equal spaces with agency.
Social critics and feminists have echoed that women have always wielded immense cultural power. Though desire, through choice, through refusal, just not always the courage to use it without apology. If women are going to lead, they must act like leaders. Pick up the check. Make the first move. Assert and initiate. Not because men won’t, but because equality is not a request. It’s an action. A behavior. A stance.
This should not be about who’s to blame, which most conversations about “the patriarchy” tend to be. This is about who’s willing to act. It’s not about grand overtures of change (as noted in this piece), it’s about small moments of change that add up to larger change…over time, probably a lot more time than we all want to wait, or admit…or commit to. Not only from men, but also from women. These pieces tend to approach change as wholesale, urgent, and needed immediately, which is patently impossible without addressing the core behaviors one by one and finding an accepted and comfortable social consensus.
We don’t dismantle "the patriarchy" by demanding, endlessly, that the other person fix it first. We dismantle it by behaving differently in the places that matter most: not the conference halls, or substacks, but the dinners, the bedrooms, the social moments, the family tables.
This is not a war between men and women. It is a renegotiation, one where both parties must arrive ready to question and challenge their own comfort. To behave differently, proactively, not more aggressively.
Want to dismantle patriarchy? Then don’t wait for a man to “get it.” Or for a man to figure it out. Or other men in the periphery to be influenced by the single man making a personal change. Men don’t work like that, generally. We behave, act, and do because we respond based on the social ecosystem. Be the one who moves first.
Thanks for this thorough response. It’s a fair point—patriarchy hurts everyone living in it, and, as you pointed out, it’s a system that’s been shaped and upheld by both men and women. For women that’s sometimes a matter of survival, and often they do so without realizing it, but the fact remains. Having said that, it’s also a system in which men have the lion’s share of the power. Women may have reinforced societal norms, but that’s not the same as having equal responsibility for the structure itself. Not when the rules were largely written by men for the benefit of men. That imbalance means something. Recognizing women’s role in patriarchy is fair, but it shouldn’t obfuscate the simple fact that men hold a disproportionate level of control, including over women. Look at the number of laws governing women's’ bodies versus the number of laws governing mens’. One gender is clearly wielding power over the other.
Your point about who pays for dinner—even if I think it’s far more complicated than you allow here and really not always about gender roles (it took me a year of therapy to be able to let a man buy me dinner and that didn’t change because I became less of a feminist, but that’s different discussion)—indeed illustrates the way in which old scripts can play out in everyday life. But it's a false equivalent. Women picking up the check won’t suddenly fix wage gaps or give women equal representation in boardrooms and in the political arena. It doesn’t cancel out the ways in which male dominance is still embedded in law, policy, and leadership. Asking women to behave differently in intimate spaces without also (and, I would argue, first, given who controls the levers of power) interrogating men's responsibility in those same spaces feels like it misses the point. The question that has to be at the heart of any discussion is, who benefits? When it comes to current societal structures, whatever label you want to put on them, it sure as hell isn’t women. Even if, as you say, they may get a free meal from time to time. While I have paid for or split many a dinner tab, I’d happily pick up every single check for the rest of my life if it meant equal pay, equal representation, and the freedom to do what I want with my body.
I have no interest in blame, and that’s not what this is about. It’s about needing to be able to name something before we can change it. About being honest with ourselves about the ways in which we’ve all internalized patriarchal norms and the work it takes to unlearn them. Sure, individual choices matter. It’s why my Siri and my Google assistant are both male voices. But structural change matters more. I changed those voices years ago. And in that time, my reproductive rights in the US have been rolled back dramatically. That scale is not equally balanced.
The ultimate goal is to build a society where roles, power, responsibility, and care are shared. Yes, women can and should take action—and they do, quite powerfully. But so should men, and without expecting applause for basic decency or fairness. Those things should be the baseline. Where are they? How many men’s organizations are out there agitating for gender parity? I can think of hundreds of women's groups that are, but I draw a blank when it comes to men’s groups. Yes, patriarchy hurts everyone. We can all agree on that. But, given that, why aren’t men doing more to tear it down? I think we all know the answer.
There’s so much in your message that’s deeply valid…and shared. I just think a subtle shift in approach will make it easier to enable patriarchal change and have that change embraced. The historical imbalance, the structural inequities: they’re real, and they are not abstract. I hear your frustration, and I see the exhausting tension of trying to move forward in a system that continues to devalue women’s agency, autonomy, and contribution, both economically and socially.
You're absolutely right that patriarchy has overwhelmingly benefitted men and that laws and power structures were, and are, largely designed to favor male authority. But that’s also where your powerful question of “who benefits?” opens a necessary path to something deeper.
Because the answer is nuanced: yes, men benefit systemically. But individually, psychologically, emotionally, relationally, men are often disconnected from that power. Not because it doesn’t exist, but because they don't feel it or engage with it consciously. Unlike the hundreds of women’s groups you mention, men don’t think like that. Men (in general) take social cues as it relates to women. It’s not the slightest bit surprising that there aren’t many self-actualized men’s groups spearheading patriarchal change and gender parity by the hundreds looking to even the playing field because of the obvious: they have not been shown how it benefits them, in the same way that buying dinner benefits them (to keep it simple). And by shown, I’m speaking, yes, to women.
The 1,500 No Kings marches, shouts of defiance and resistance will not sway Trump voters who mock what they see as solutionless, paid-for displays of blind resistence. Opposition breeds opposition. In the same way, a thousand women’s marches against the patriarchy, or a thousand smart, insightful, passionate essays against the patriarchy and demanding men spearhead the change; or even interviewing a man who is already aligned with the cause…none of that will made a difference as long as a majority of woman defer power, and equality. Studies in behavioral psychology and gender socialization have overwhelmingly shown that boys are conditioned from a young age to avoid vulnerability, emotional expression, and introspection, key tools needed to recognize privilege and participate in unlearning the patriarchy. Women, socialized toward relational awareness, tend to notice those inequities sooner, and more acutely. As you so rightly do. Women, in today’s world are also more educated, more empathetic leaders, more emotionally aware, and more lots of other things….
This is part of why expecting men to spontaneously lead the charge for change, without deeply personal triggers, is extremely unlikely. They are not conditioned to interrogate systems of control because they are not often forced to face their own complicity or loss within them.
That’s where that first step who picks up the check, becomes more than symbolic. I agree it’s not a fix-all. It’s not the single gesture that will magically leap the chasm to close wage gaps or pass legislation about the sanctity of a woman’s body. But gestures, like that, when done in numbers, aren’t meaningless. They become behavioral cues. They become the start of change. And there are still many gestures and actions that need to follow to compound the change as NORMAL for men. And neuroscience backs this up, mirror neurons, pattern recognition, and social proof all demonstrate that people (especially men, as found in studies on group influence) adjust behavior in response to what others around them normalize. Demanding the patriarchy take charge of its own needed changes, versus taking everyday action for relational and societal change, is a sure way to beat your head against the wall.
You want to interview a man with some meaningful insight; interview a man in opposition to your views, he will readily point out exactly where you should focus your behavioral modifications. The guy you just interviewed will have zero impact on his male cohorts if they’re getting different social cues of approval.
That’s why I reiterate this isn’t about just a woman picking up a check. My point was never that. It’s about her owning the thousand steps that follow that moment. Because if one million women picked up the check, and reframed the dynamic not as obligation, but as ownership, men would notice. It would recalibrate the script. In that recalibration, men are more likely to question what else is changing. Or be more amenable to the next change, and the next, and the next…like the lobster in the pot that slowly comes to a boil. Bit by bit, action by action is what will allow men to think what else they may have assumed. What else might be shifting under their feet. And how they fit in the new, more enlightened and self-actualized world. Or, better yet, that the groundswell is their idea.
Right now, however, the dominant cues in culture are split. On one side, we have essays and interview like yours, thoughtful, proactive, constructive, assertive, intelligent. I for one admire so many things about you – how you declare and own your own power, agency and needs (and your crazy, wonderful intelligence.). I’m on your team here. But on the other side, there’s a louder, often viral, chorus, especially on social media where women still declare that a man must spend a certain amount on her to be taken seriously. Must protect and provide to be thought of as a man. Must take on the gallant acts. And, that voice is a thousand times more loud and impactful to men. That is part of the patriarchy, too. It’s a demand for privilege cloaked in empowerment, and it clouds the broader message for you, and women needing and deserving equal footing and the changes that accompany it. It allows reactionary men to dismiss the entire movement as transactional hypocrisy. It’s sad, and shallow, and perhaps even puerile, but men respond to the embedded clues of manhood. I’m not saying men aren’t responsible for change, they ultimately are, but women have an even greater power to start this change by giving men a different set of social markers that define a man to a woman. That’s the distinction here.
I can guarantee you if you promote the Q&A, or the admirable man willing to make his own personal patriarchal change, to the general man it will have little or no impact. But if 1M women, or 10M, or 100M all pick up the check as a right and as the first step … and show that change is afoot, and it’s just the beginning, men will notice. You are absolutely right, it’s far more complicated, but so is the patriarchy, and it won’t collapse with one gesture, but it will enable that entire social and structural (that same structural change you desire) renegotiation that will (hopefully) lead to greater acceptance, as normal, not just in our little circles, but globally….
And as for the symbolic protests, I understand the need for defiance. But the lesson of social change is clear: opposition galvanizes opposition. Demand without strategy (the same problem the Democrats have, which is a different discussion) can entrench the very resistance it's trying to undo. It’s why Civil Rights leaders like MLK were careful in the optics of protest for social change, not to appease, but to invite the morally neutral observer toward empathy and action, rather than alienation.
You said it best: "The ultimate goal is to build a society where roles, power, responsibility, and care are shared.” That requires more than critique. It requires mass remodeling. Shared behaviors. Collective renegotiation; not just of laws, but of daily habits and assumptions.
So no, a woman paying for dinner isn’t a revolution. But it could be the first domino. If she does it, and owns what comes next. In this case, women have the ultimate power to start, shape and define the change. It's a subtle shift and different approach, yes, but from a man that still opens doors, wants to provide, wants to also feel equal and is willing to embrace change and learn and grow, I believe women taking the lead will begin to rewrite the script.
It was wonderful to meet and talk with you, Monique! Thank you so much for the discussion. Your words at the beginning are very kind 🙏 I hope our paths cross again!
Likewise! Thank you again for your time and your thoughtful insights.
The Modern Negotiation of Power: A Letter in Response
The trouble with these kinds of dialogues about patriarchy is that they are, more often than not, essays in partiality and one-sided blame. Critiques of a system without even attempting a reckoning with its roots.
It has become fashionable, it seems to me, to treat "the patriarchy" as a singular, male-authored imposition, a brutalist edifice constructed exclusively by men to serve men, and women have no culpability, and generally present as unwilling victims. And yet, even a peripheral understanding of psychology, anthropology, or human evolutionary biology knows that the story is not so neat, nor the characters so starkly drawn. Human societies are co-creations. Gender roles, however stifling, outdated, or tragic in their modern forms, have been negotiated, reinforced, and repeated by both sexes through generations, globally. What appears in the collective is never the product of one alone. It’s the unseen handshake beneath the table.
Patriarchy is not (and has never been) simply something men did to women. It’s something we built together. Systems are co-authored, and as writer bell hooks has noted, patriarchy hurts everyone, men included, by imprisoning both genders in outdated roles.
Patriarchy is something performed, co-signed, taught, and rewarded across gender lines, and built upon a granite base of generations of performance. It is less a single villain and more a communal improvisation.
There’s a simple starting point for equality. Embracing it. Desire doesn’t live in ideology; it lives in context. And sometimes, the context is this: a woman insists she wants equality, but watches silently, then thankfully, as the man pays for dinner because she’s been trained, by culture, by peers, by her own mother’s arched eyebrow, to equate generosity with affection, and power with protection. And asking, or demanding, “the patriarchy” to change while accepting this gateway behavior, immediately disqualifies all the hard work of everyone seeking equality.
Let’s talk about that role training. Much is said about “toxic masculinity,” but too little is said about the fact that men respond to the behaviors and signals of the women around them. Culture is not just built by fathers raising sons; it’s built every time women reward or punish behavior in their choices, relationships, and expectations. I’m not blaming women’s behavior for "the patriarchy," but women are most certainly complicit. Men are confused because the social scripts are changing, but the rewards often haven’t. I encounter this every single time I go out on a date, with a female friend, or in a mixed group with women. In 10 years of dating, not a single woman has ever reached for the check, even if they originated the date. Not one.
We cannot blame men for the rules, and also punish them for not knowing how to break them gracefully.
Writer bell hooks has said that patriarchy harms everyone, men included, not simply because it elevates male dominance, but because it strangles possibility. It limits who men and women are allowed to be. And yet, when men struggle toward change, many are met not with partnership, approbation, or support, but suspicion. What do you actually want from men, atonement or alignment, or a Harry Potter magic wand to somehow fix it while you watch and wait for some instant behavioral alchemy?
Equality and beating back “the patriarchy” starts with the act of behaving as an equal, when it’s comfortable, yes, but especially when it’s not.
This baseline example plays out for all women wanting the patriarchy to change. The dinner check lands. Will he offer? Will I decline? Do I ask to split? Will we both pretend we’re fine with the outcome if he always pays? In that moment, centuries of scripts write themselves through our hands, minds, and actions. And the action seals the deal. If you want to be equal, to begin to unravel the patriarchy, you have to be willing to reach out, first, and without permission. If you don’t. You’re simply not ready to have a meaningful conversation on change.
Many psychologists and feminist and controversial writers and thinkers have repeated, responsibility is where meaning lives. I am a strong believer in personal responsibility. I’ve always been taught, from the Navy through life, that courage is the willingness to be uncomfortable in the service of something larger. What if the next step in dismantling patriarchy is not public confession, or demanding men somehow break their chains, but private correction and silent and unwavering behavioral leadership?
This is especially important for young men because the roadmap has been set on fire and no one has replaced it with anything solid, but instead a moving target. They are told to do better, act better, have more empathy, think about how it feels to be in a woman’s shoes, and treat everyone as an equal, but are not shown how, or given supportive social feedback when they do. Even more so, they are asked to give up traditional roles, but are often not met with women prepared to inhabit those equal spaces with agency.
Social critics and feminists have echoed that women have always wielded immense cultural power. Though desire, through choice, through refusal, just not always the courage to use it without apology. If women are going to lead, they must act like leaders. Pick up the check. Make the first move. Assert and initiate. Not because men won’t, but because equality is not a request. It’s an action. A behavior. A stance.
This should not be about who’s to blame, which most conversations about “the patriarchy” tend to be. This is about who’s willing to act. It’s not about grand overtures of change (as noted in this piece), it’s about small moments of change that add up to larger change…over time, probably a lot more time than we all want to wait, or admit…or commit to. Not only from men, but also from women. These pieces tend to approach change as wholesale, urgent, and needed immediately, which is patently impossible without addressing the core behaviors one by one and finding an accepted and comfortable social consensus.
We don’t dismantle "the patriarchy" by demanding, endlessly, that the other person fix it first. We dismantle it by behaving differently in the places that matter most: not the conference halls, or substacks, but the dinners, the bedrooms, the social moments, the family tables.
This is not a war between men and women. It is a renegotiation, one where both parties must arrive ready to question and challenge their own comfort. To behave differently, proactively, not more aggressively.
Want to dismantle patriarchy? Then don’t wait for a man to “get it.” Or for a man to figure it out. Or other men in the periphery to be influenced by the single man making a personal change. Men don’t work like that, generally. We behave, act, and do because we respond based on the social ecosystem. Be the one who moves first.
Pick up the check. And keep going.
Hi Ty.
Thanks for this thorough response. It’s a fair point—patriarchy hurts everyone living in it, and, as you pointed out, it’s a system that’s been shaped and upheld by both men and women. For women that’s sometimes a matter of survival, and often they do so without realizing it, but the fact remains. Having said that, it’s also a system in which men have the lion’s share of the power. Women may have reinforced societal norms, but that’s not the same as having equal responsibility for the structure itself. Not when the rules were largely written by men for the benefit of men. That imbalance means something. Recognizing women’s role in patriarchy is fair, but it shouldn’t obfuscate the simple fact that men hold a disproportionate level of control, including over women. Look at the number of laws governing women's’ bodies versus the number of laws governing mens’. One gender is clearly wielding power over the other.
Your point about who pays for dinner—even if I think it’s far more complicated than you allow here and really not always about gender roles (it took me a year of therapy to be able to let a man buy me dinner and that didn’t change because I became less of a feminist, but that’s different discussion)—indeed illustrates the way in which old scripts can play out in everyday life. But it's a false equivalent. Women picking up the check won’t suddenly fix wage gaps or give women equal representation in boardrooms and in the political arena. It doesn’t cancel out the ways in which male dominance is still embedded in law, policy, and leadership. Asking women to behave differently in intimate spaces without also (and, I would argue, first, given who controls the levers of power) interrogating men's responsibility in those same spaces feels like it misses the point. The question that has to be at the heart of any discussion is, who benefits? When it comes to current societal structures, whatever label you want to put on them, it sure as hell isn’t women. Even if, as you say, they may get a free meal from time to time. While I have paid for or split many a dinner tab, I’d happily pick up every single check for the rest of my life if it meant equal pay, equal representation, and the freedom to do what I want with my body.
I have no interest in blame, and that’s not what this is about. It’s about needing to be able to name something before we can change it. About being honest with ourselves about the ways in which we’ve all internalized patriarchal norms and the work it takes to unlearn them. Sure, individual choices matter. It’s why my Siri and my Google assistant are both male voices. But structural change matters more. I changed those voices years ago. And in that time, my reproductive rights in the US have been rolled back dramatically. That scale is not equally balanced.
The ultimate goal is to build a society where roles, power, responsibility, and care are shared. Yes, women can and should take action—and they do, quite powerfully. But so should men, and without expecting applause for basic decency or fairness. Those things should be the baseline. Where are they? How many men’s organizations are out there agitating for gender parity? I can think of hundreds of women's groups that are, but I draw a blank when it comes to men’s groups. Yes, patriarchy hurts everyone. We can all agree on that. But, given that, why aren’t men doing more to tear it down? I think we all know the answer.
Such a complicated issue...some more thoughts --
There’s so much in your message that’s deeply valid…and shared. I just think a subtle shift in approach will make it easier to enable patriarchal change and have that change embraced. The historical imbalance, the structural inequities: they’re real, and they are not abstract. I hear your frustration, and I see the exhausting tension of trying to move forward in a system that continues to devalue women’s agency, autonomy, and contribution, both economically and socially.
You're absolutely right that patriarchy has overwhelmingly benefitted men and that laws and power structures were, and are, largely designed to favor male authority. But that’s also where your powerful question of “who benefits?” opens a necessary path to something deeper.
Because the answer is nuanced: yes, men benefit systemically. But individually, psychologically, emotionally, relationally, men are often disconnected from that power. Not because it doesn’t exist, but because they don't feel it or engage with it consciously. Unlike the hundreds of women’s groups you mention, men don’t think like that. Men (in general) take social cues as it relates to women. It’s not the slightest bit surprising that there aren’t many self-actualized men’s groups spearheading patriarchal change and gender parity by the hundreds looking to even the playing field because of the obvious: they have not been shown how it benefits them, in the same way that buying dinner benefits them (to keep it simple). And by shown, I’m speaking, yes, to women.
The 1,500 No Kings marches, shouts of defiance and resistance will not sway Trump voters who mock what they see as solutionless, paid-for displays of blind resistence. Opposition breeds opposition. In the same way, a thousand women’s marches against the patriarchy, or a thousand smart, insightful, passionate essays against the patriarchy and demanding men spearhead the change; or even interviewing a man who is already aligned with the cause…none of that will made a difference as long as a majority of woman defer power, and equality. Studies in behavioral psychology and gender socialization have overwhelmingly shown that boys are conditioned from a young age to avoid vulnerability, emotional expression, and introspection, key tools needed to recognize privilege and participate in unlearning the patriarchy. Women, socialized toward relational awareness, tend to notice those inequities sooner, and more acutely. As you so rightly do. Women, in today’s world are also more educated, more empathetic leaders, more emotionally aware, and more lots of other things….
This is part of why expecting men to spontaneously lead the charge for change, without deeply personal triggers, is extremely unlikely. They are not conditioned to interrogate systems of control because they are not often forced to face their own complicity or loss within them.
That’s where that first step who picks up the check, becomes more than symbolic. I agree it’s not a fix-all. It’s not the single gesture that will magically leap the chasm to close wage gaps or pass legislation about the sanctity of a woman’s body. But gestures, like that, when done in numbers, aren’t meaningless. They become behavioral cues. They become the start of change. And there are still many gestures and actions that need to follow to compound the change as NORMAL for men. And neuroscience backs this up, mirror neurons, pattern recognition, and social proof all demonstrate that people (especially men, as found in studies on group influence) adjust behavior in response to what others around them normalize. Demanding the patriarchy take charge of its own needed changes, versus taking everyday action for relational and societal change, is a sure way to beat your head against the wall.
You want to interview a man with some meaningful insight; interview a man in opposition to your views, he will readily point out exactly where you should focus your behavioral modifications. The guy you just interviewed will have zero impact on his male cohorts if they’re getting different social cues of approval.
That’s why I reiterate this isn’t about just a woman picking up a check. My point was never that. It’s about her owning the thousand steps that follow that moment. Because if one million women picked up the check, and reframed the dynamic not as obligation, but as ownership, men would notice. It would recalibrate the script. In that recalibration, men are more likely to question what else is changing. Or be more amenable to the next change, and the next, and the next…like the lobster in the pot that slowly comes to a boil. Bit by bit, action by action is what will allow men to think what else they may have assumed. What else might be shifting under their feet. And how they fit in the new, more enlightened and self-actualized world. Or, better yet, that the groundswell is their idea.
Right now, however, the dominant cues in culture are split. On one side, we have essays and interview like yours, thoughtful, proactive, constructive, assertive, intelligent. I for one admire so many things about you – how you declare and own your own power, agency and needs (and your crazy, wonderful intelligence.). I’m on your team here. But on the other side, there’s a louder, often viral, chorus, especially on social media where women still declare that a man must spend a certain amount on her to be taken seriously. Must protect and provide to be thought of as a man. Must take on the gallant acts. And, that voice is a thousand times more loud and impactful to men. That is part of the patriarchy, too. It’s a demand for privilege cloaked in empowerment, and it clouds the broader message for you, and women needing and deserving equal footing and the changes that accompany it. It allows reactionary men to dismiss the entire movement as transactional hypocrisy. It’s sad, and shallow, and perhaps even puerile, but men respond to the embedded clues of manhood. I’m not saying men aren’t responsible for change, they ultimately are, but women have an even greater power to start this change by giving men a different set of social markers that define a man to a woman. That’s the distinction here.
I can guarantee you if you promote the Q&A, or the admirable man willing to make his own personal patriarchal change, to the general man it will have little or no impact. But if 1M women, or 10M, or 100M all pick up the check as a right and as the first step … and show that change is afoot, and it’s just the beginning, men will notice. You are absolutely right, it’s far more complicated, but so is the patriarchy, and it won’t collapse with one gesture, but it will enable that entire social and structural (that same structural change you desire) renegotiation that will (hopefully) lead to greater acceptance, as normal, not just in our little circles, but globally….
And as for the symbolic protests, I understand the need for defiance. But the lesson of social change is clear: opposition galvanizes opposition. Demand without strategy (the same problem the Democrats have, which is a different discussion) can entrench the very resistance it's trying to undo. It’s why Civil Rights leaders like MLK were careful in the optics of protest for social change, not to appease, but to invite the morally neutral observer toward empathy and action, rather than alienation.
You said it best: "The ultimate goal is to build a society where roles, power, responsibility, and care are shared.” That requires more than critique. It requires mass remodeling. Shared behaviors. Collective renegotiation; not just of laws, but of daily habits and assumptions.
So no, a woman paying for dinner isn’t a revolution. But it could be the first domino. If she does it, and owns what comes next. In this case, women have the ultimate power to start, shape and define the change. It's a subtle shift and different approach, yes, but from a man that still opens doors, wants to provide, wants to also feel equal and is willing to embrace change and learn and grow, I believe women taking the lead will begin to rewrite the script.