Why Sexism is a Gateway Drug to Racism
One predicts the other. Bank on it.
In man box culture, we teach boys the rules of being a man. The first thing we teach boys is “women are less.”
We do this by policing boys’ and men’s masculinity via the denigration of the feminine. This begins shortly after infancy and goes on continually thereafter. (What are you, a girl? What are you, a sissy?) Eventually, boys under constant bullying and pressure to live up to man box culture’s expectations, engage in public harassment and denigration of women as a shortcut to masculine confirmation.
Once you train boys to think their gender makes them better than girls, it’s not much of a reach to convince them they’re better than others based on race, religion, immigration status, and so on. It’s why masculinity extremists and white supremacists are the same population.
Show me the degree to which a man thinks women are less and you will have shown me the degree to which he is racist. One predicts the other. Bank on it.
Our dominance-based man box culture of masculinity teaches boys that girls and women are less while bullying and shaming boys out of authentic connection and community. Our sons end up emotionally isolated, disaffected, angry, and ripe for recruitment into white nationalism.
All of our society’s problems are born out of our generations old dominance-based culture of masculinity. Until we replace it with a culture of masculine connection, we will continue to create broken men who do themselves and others harm.
Let’s take back our capacity for rich human connection. In just 75 pages, The Little #MeToo Book for Men shows how to break out of man box culture. At Amazon http://amzn.to/39v0U31
