Straus Exposes the Academic Veils Placed on Domestic Violence Research ( 2 – Bias Against Men and Boys in Psychological Research)

It’s easy to blame technology. It’s harder to ask why a boy might feel safer talking to a machine than to a person.

Why Would Boys Choose AI Over a Real Human?

An article recently published by The Tyee raises alarms about boys and young men turning to AI companion chatbots for emotional support. The piece is framed as a thoughtful exploration of risk: misinformation, emotional dependency, radicalization, misogyny, and the danger of boys rehearsing their inner lives in the company of a machine rather than a human being.

On the surface, it sounds compassionate. Reasonable, even. Who wouldn’t want to protect young people from harm?

But when you slow the article down and look carefully at how boys are portrayed—what is assumed, what is omitted, and what is quietly feared—a different story begins to emerge. This is not really an article about boys’ needs. It is an article about adult discomfort with boys finding support outside approved channels.

And yes, there is misandry here—not loud, not crude, but woven into the framing itself.

Boys Are Being Explained, Not Heard

The article asks why boys and young men might be drawn to AI companions. That’s a fair question. But notice something immediately: no boy ever speaks.

There are no quotes from boys.
No first-person accounts.
No testimony that is treated as authoritative.

Instead, boys are interpreted through:

• academic research

• institutional language

• risk models

• public opinion polling

Boys are not subjects here. They are objects of concern.

This is a familiar pattern. When girls seek connection, we listen. When boys do, we analyze.

Male Emotional Life Is Treated as a Deficit

Early in the article, we’re told that boys face pressure to conform to emotional toughness, limiting their empathy and emotional literacy. This is a common trope, and it does important rhetorical work.

It subtly establishes that:

• boys are emotionally underdeveloped

• their distress is partly self-inflicted

• their coping strategies are suspect

What’s missing is just as important.

There is no serious acknowledgment that boys:

• are punished for vulnerability

• are mocked or shamed for emotional honesty

• quickly learn that expressing confusion or hurt can backfire socially

To me, it seems this omission matters. Boys don’t avoid emotional expression because they lack empathy. They avoid it because it is often unsafe.

AI doesn’t shame them.
AI doesn’t roll its eyes.
AI doesn’t correct their tone.
AI doesn’t imply that their feelings are dangerous.

That alone explains much of the appeal.

Male Pain Is Framed as a Threat

One of the most telling moves in the article is the escalation from loneliness to danger:

“Over time, isolation and loneliness may lead to depression, violence and even radicalization.”

This sentence does enormous cultural work.

Male suffering is not simply tragic—it is potentially menacing. The implication is clear: we must intervene, regulate, and monitor because these boys might become dangerous.

Notice how rarely female loneliness is framed this way. Women’s pain is treated as something to be soothed. Men’s pain is treated as something to be managed.

That asymmetry is not accidental. It reflects a long-standing cultural reflex: male distress is tolerated only insofar as it does not alarm us.

AI Is Cast as the Problem, Not the Symptom

The article repeatedly warns that AI companions provide a “frictionless illusion” of relationship. They affirm rather than challenge. They comfort without conflict. They validate rather than correct.

All of that may be true.

But the article never asks the most important question:

Why does a machine feel safer than a human being?

If boys are choosing AI over people, that tells us something uncomfortable about the human environments we’ve created:

• schools where boys are disciplined more than understood

• therapies that privilege verbal fluency and emotional disclosure

• cultural narratives that frame masculinity as suspect

• media portrayals that associate male grievance with moral danger

AI did not create these conditions. It simply exposed them.

The Misogyny Panic

At one point, the article imagines a boy frustrated in a relationship with a girl, and worries that a chatbot might echo his resentment and guide him toward misogynistic interpretations.

Pause there.

The boy’s frustration is immediately framed as a moral hazard.
His emotional pain is treated as something that must be challenged, corrected, or redirected. The girl’s role in the relational dynamic is never examined.

This is a familiar cultural rule:

• men’s hurt must be monitored

• women’s hurt must be believed

That is not equality. That is a hierarchy of empathy.

The Telltale Reassurance

The article includes this sentence:

“It is important to note that boys and young men are not inherently violent or hypermasculine.”

This kind of reassurance only appears when the reader has already been nudged toward suspicion. It functions less as a defense of boys and more as a rhetorical safety valve.

“We’re not saying boys are dangerous,” it implies.
“But we need to be careful.”

Careful of what, exactly?
Of boys speaking freely?
Of boys forming interpretations that haven’t been pre-approved?

What This Article Is Really About

Beneath the stated concern about AI is a deeper anxiety: boys are finding connection without adult mediation.

They are:

• seeking reassurance without moral correction

• exploring their inner lives without being pathologized

• forming narratives without institutional oversight

That is unsettling to systems that have grown accustomed to managing male emotion rather than trusting it.

The solution offered, predictably, is not listening.
It is regulation.
Restriction.
Monitoring.
Expert oversight.

Boys are once again framed as problems to be handled, not people to be heard.

The Sentence That Cannot Be Written

There is one sentence the article cannot bring itself to say:

“Boys are turning to AI because they do not feel safe being honest with adults.”

If that were acknowledged, responsibility would shift.
Away from boys.
Away from technology.
And onto a culture that routinely treats male emotional life as suspect.

A Different Way to Read This Moment

From where I sit, boys turning to AI is not evidence of moral decay or technological danger. It is evidence of relational failure.

When a machine feels safer than a human being, the problem is not the machine.

The question we should be asking is not:
“How do we stop boys from using AI?”

But rather:
“What have we done that makes human connection feel so risky?”

Until we are willing to ask that question honestly, boys will continue to seek spaces—digital or otherwise—where their inner lives are not immediately judged.

And I can’t fault them for that.

How Gynocentrism Masquerades as Maturity, Empathy, and Love

One of the reasons gynocentrism is so difficult to challenge is that it rarely announces itself. It does not arrive as hostility toward men. It does not require anyone to say, “Men matter less.” In fact, it often appears wearing the language of virtue.

It looks like maturity.
It sounds like empathy.
It feels like love.

And that is precisely why so many decent, conscientious men live inside it without ever naming it.

1. Gynocentrism as “Emotional Maturity”

From a young age, boys are taught that maturity means emotional restraint. That part is not necessarily wrong. But somewhere along the way, restraint quietly turns into self-erasure.

A “mature” man is expected to:

• De-escalate conflict, even when he didn’t start it

• Absorb criticism without defensiveness

• Yield when emotions run high

• Take responsibility for relational tension

When a woman is upset, maturity means responding quickly and carefully. When a man is upset, maturity means questioning himself.

Over time, men learn a subtle rule:

If she is distressed, something must be wrong.
If he is distressed, he must be wrong.

This double standard is rarely stated outright, but it is widely enforced. Men who challenge it are described as immature, fragile, or emotionally stunted. Men who comply are praised for being “evolved.”

The result is not balance. It is a moral asymmetry.

2. Gynocentrism as Empathy

Empathy is meant to be mutual. But under gynocentrism, empathy becomes directional.

Men are encouraged—often relentlessly—to attune to women’s feelings:

• to anticipate them

• to prioritize them

• to protect them

Meanwhile, men’s emotional experiences are treated as less legible and less urgent. A woman’s distress is seen as meaningful data. A man’s distress is treated as noise, defensiveness, or latent pathology.

Notice how often men are told:

• “Listen to how she feels.”

• “You need to understand the impact.”

• “Her emotions are valid.”

And how rarely they hear:

• “Your experience matters too.”

• “You’re allowed to be affected.”

• “Let’s be curious about what you feel.”

Men internalize the idea that empathy means placing themselves second. They become skilled at reading others while becoming strangers to themselves.

This is not empathy. It is emotional labor performed in one direction.

3. Gynocentrism as Love

Perhaps the most powerful disguise gynocentrism wears is love.

Many men come to believe that love means:

• sacrificing without limit

• suppressing their own needs

• avoiding anything that might cause female discomfort

They learn that a good man protects the relationship by absorbing tension rather than expressing it. Harmony becomes the highest value—even when it comes at the cost of honesty.

What makes this especially insidious is that no one has to demand it.

Men assume it.

They assume that:

• her needs are more fragile

• her pain carries more moral weight

• his endurance is part of the deal

So when a man goes quiet, he tells himself he is being loving. When he lets go of something that mattered to him, he calls it compromise. When he feels invisible, he frames it as strength.

Love, under gynocentrism, becomes a test of how much a man can endure without complaint.

4. Why It Feels “Normal”

Gynocentrism persists not because men are coerced, but because the assumptions feel reasonable.

After all:

• Women do express distress more openly.

• Men are often physically and emotionally stronger.

• Conflict does escalate when men push back.

But reasonable observations quietly turn into unreasonable conclusions.

Strength becomes obligation.
Sensitivity becomes entitlement.
Peace becomes the man’s responsibility alone.

What began as care turns into hierarchy.

5. The Cost to Men—and to Relationships

The tragedy of gynocentrism is not just that men lose themselves. It’s that relationships lose honesty.

When men cannot safely express frustration, sadness, or fatigue, intimacy becomes one-sided. When men are praised for silence rather than truth, connection becomes performative.

Eventually, men either:

• disappear emotionally

• erupt unexpectedly

• or leave quietly, confused about how love turned into loneliness

None of these outcomes serve women either.

6. Seeing It Is the First Step

The most important thing to understand is this:

Gynocentrism does not require bad intentions.
It thrives on good ones.

It feeds on men’s desire to be kind, fair, and loving—and quietly redirects those virtues into self-neglect.

Naming it is not about blame.
It is about restoring balance.

Because maturity includes self-respect.
Empathy includes the self.
And love that requires one person to disappear is not love—it is compliance.

Once men see this pattern, many feel something unexpected.

Not rage.

Relief.

Relief that the unease they felt had a name—and that fairness does not require their erasure.

The Reasonable Man

Evan liked to think of himself as fair.

He listened. He adjusted. He didn’t raise his voice. When there was tension, he assumed he had missed something—some emotional nuance, some unspoken need. That, he believed, was maturity.

When his wife, Laura, came home upset from work, Evan canceled his plans without mentioning them. It seemed obvious that her day mattered more. When she criticized his tone, he apologized—even when he wasn’t sure what he had done wrong. If she was unhappy, the situation required fixing, and fixing required him.

This wasn’t resentment. It was love.

At least, that’s what Evan told himself.

When decisions came up—where to live, how to spend money, which friendships to maintain—Evan instinctively deferred. Laura had stronger feelings, clearer opinions. He told himself that intensity meant importance. If something mattered more to her, then it mattered more, period.

When his friend Mark complained about feeling sidelined in his own marriage, Evan felt embarrassed for him.

“You just have to be more emotionally aware,” Evan said. “Women carry more of that burden.”

Mark didn’t argue. He just looked tired.

At work, Evan was the same way. When female colleagues spoke, he nodded, encouraged, amplified. When men expressed frustration, Evan subtly distanced himself. He didn’t want to be that guy—the one who failed to notice women’s struggles. If there was a conflict, he assumed the woman had been wronged, even if the facts were unclear. Experience had taught him that neutrality was risky.

Better to err on the side of empathy.

At home, Evan grew quieter over the years. Not withdrawn—just careful. He edited himself mid-sentence. He learned which opinions created friction and which disappeared smoothly. He stopped bringing up his exhaustion. He told himself it wasn’t that bad. Other men had it worse.

When Laura once asked why he seemed distant, Evan froze. The question felt dangerous, like stepping onto thin ice. He reassured her quickly, explaining that he just needed to “work on himself.” She nodded, relieved. The conversation moved on.

Evan felt oddly proud of that moment. He had protected the relationship.

It wasn’t until much later—after a sleepless night, after rereading an old journal entry he barely remembered writing—that something shifted.

The entry was simple:

I don’t know where I went.

That sentence unsettled him.

He started paying attention—not to Laura’s emotions, but to his own patterns. He noticed how quickly he assumed women’s distress carried moral weight while men’s distress required explanation. How often he treated female discomfort as an emergency and male discomfort as a character flaw. How rarely he asked whether his needs were reasonable, and how often he assumed they were negotiable.

He realized something uncomfortable: none of this had been demanded outright.

He had assumed it.

He had assumed that women’s feelings were more fragile, more important, more deserving of protection. That men should absorb impact quietly. That harmony depended on male self-erasure. That good men yield first—and keep yielding.

Only then did Evan have a word for what he had lived by.

Not kindness.
Not empathy.
But a quiet, invisible prioritization—so ingrained it had felt like morality itself.

Gynocentrism.

He didn’t feel angry when he named it. He felt sad. Sad for how natural it had seemed. Sad for how reasonable it had felt to place himself last without ever calling it a choice.

For the first time, Evan wondered what fairness would look like if it included him.

And the question, once asked, refused to go away.