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Man Box culture says, “Caring About Someone Else is a Transaction. Now Pay Me With Sex.”
Transactional intimacy is baked into Man Box culture.
In Man Box culture, we raise boys in a bullying dominance hierarchy. The result is millions of men who hide our authentic selves, do not express our emotions, and view caring for others as a means to an end.
The personal and professional interpersonal challenges this creates for all of us are innumerable. Men in Man Box culture vacillate between dominance-based “power over” behaviors and expressions of our more loving connecting natures distorted by a transactional mindset.
The rules of Man Box culture: don’t show your emotions, be tough, never ask for help, have power over women/girls, have lots of sex, talk about cars or sports, but never anything deep, be heterosexual, not homosexual, be a breadwinner not a caregiver, all add up to disconnection.
Boys are trained out of wanting close friendships. (See Niobe Way’s Deep Secrets.) Once isolated, boys are slotted into our dominance-based masculine hierarchy. Caring for others is forbidden to us. Dominating others becomes the primary way to validate our masculinity.
The transactional distortion of our human, connecting side is a product of years of hiding all…
