Whenever there's a valid criticism of a trend in one of the sexes, there are millions of the other sex who are ready to pour their bitterness, fear, pain, and even malice into that criticism and find all kinds of other ways to distort it.

I wish more people would recognize that these Discussions about men and women are happening on top of, and partially because of, a highly destructive, millennia-long war between the sexes, and that it's impossible to speak justly as a participant in that war.

If your focus is "but men" or "but women" I think you're doing it wrong.

"Patriarchy" isn't the cause of the war; it's one of the results, although it does feed back into it.

Read some misogynistic tract from any of the centuries that English has been spoken; the more vituperative the speech, the more it's a type of incel-speech, written by men who are hurting and lonely and afraid.

Or, if they're not afraid of women directly, they're afraid of their own capacity to desire them, to be swept away into immorality, unmanly weakness, lack of achievements and awards, whatever.

Misogyny isn't just a meme that we need to "educate" men to reject. It springs eternal from certain possibilities in the male condition.

If men don't understand their fear, such as it is, and have victory over or within or in spite of it, they'll learn only to complicate the misogyny, as we see today

(e.g. nice guys,

sincere liberals who are also "shitty men,"

faithful "family men" who manage somehow to ignore their daughters).

That men have had the upper hand in several fronts of the war since prehistory shouldn't blind us to the war's consequences for them.

The more imperious and frigid men have been, the more they've damaged themselves and their sons.

And usually there have been severe limits to the imperiousness, so it's not like women haven't had scope to get their own digs in, should they choose to.

The more that men have damaged women, the more reason women have had to damage men in turn.

Most of our worst experiences with gender are deeply psychological and happen with people who are close to us and would like to be close to us, especially with our parents and spouses.

In other words, they happen in places where the power conferred on one person or another by society is limited and negotiable.

Your economic prospects will limit your future; your mother and father will limit your very soul, if they can.

Patriarchy can't keep your mom from screwing you up if you're a guy. Actually it will encourage her to. If she doesn't find peace for herself, then you may be an image of terror to her, there in your diapers, or of what she hates about her father or husband or brother.

Maybe she's dismissive of you, accusatory, manipulative, before you ever have the chance to use your privileges against her.

You might learn from her that it's impossible for you to really care about her, to ever be safe for her once you're big and strong, to ever be an equal to her.

Or, maybe she thinks you're one of the good ones -- she raises you to be a man apart from other men, her man, her savior. She teaches you to view other men with suspicion, to laugh at their foibles, to identify with her above all others.

Then, when you have a daughter, will you be prepared to treat her fully in the way she deserves? Not without some preliminary work.

You've already been taught that you're a monster and she's your judge. In whatever that touches, your natural tendency will be to condemn, manipulate, or avoid her. She in turn is dragged into this hole and is likely to drag others in as well.

Most of the current discourse about men and women exacerbates these fears and false identities, and flows from them, rather than pointing to a way of resolving them.

Don't take the "but men" or "but women" discourse seriously. Men and women alike are creatures of God and of each other. Both are possessed of wisdom and a will.

I mean, feel free to vent, in the appropriate places. But say to yourself, "I am a man or a woman of peace -- what is this war to me, except an opportunity for peace and healing?" Then, seek the good.

Corollary to this : That there are certain things you can say about men that you can't say about women shouldn't blind us to what the bad forms of feminism are doing TO WOMEN, and where those forms spring from. https://twitter.com/ThePerilousDeer/status/1328004336098693120?s=20

It's all connected.

One can "fight" for various goods, even aggressively, without engaging in this psychological warfare.

to be clear, my point here isn't that this war has been the totality of the relationships between the sexes, or that every person in every generation has played a major part in it. https://twitter.com/ThePerilousDeer/status/1328004316557406209

Just that it's always been there, and probably all of us have some work to do in extricating ourselves from it.

Another thought:

Playing the war against your own sex is the same as playing the war against the other sex. Don't do it!

another thought:

guilt and shame are ways of keeping you in the war. if you think you or your gender has done something bad, accept the freedom and grace that are yours, repent inasmuch as you are able, and continue living in freedom and grace.

otherwise you'll export the conditions for the war to the people around you! what we need is more freedom, grace, and confidence, more solid identities that aren't contingent on five hundred accidents of history or of the future.

lack of confidence (lack of faith) is where fear enters in, and fear is a path to the dark side, to judgement and control and a thousand other sins.