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.
Instead millions of men remain silent as white and male supremacists drive the narrative about what is acceptable in American masculinity. Sexist/racist violence and hate gets normalized into “economic anxiety” and “boys will be boys,” because millions of us won’t take a stand.
If you are a man who has yet to take an ongoing public stand against the sexual assault of women and non-binary people, ask yourself these three questions:
1. Why are you staying silent?
2. If you remain silent, who else will be harmed?
3. When you remain silent, how do you feel about yourself?
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.
If you like what you just read, this article is a single chapter from Mark Greene’s new book Remaking Manhood in the Age of Trump: Collected writings in the battle against dominance-based masculinity 2017–2021. Pick up your copy today. Available at Amazon.
