MenAreGood
Why Won't Men Fight Back?
Gynocentrism Series #4
October 23, 2024


This series started off with a surprisingly accurate definition of gynocentrism by chatgpt.  The next  post showed that most of us have at least a little gynocentrism within us.  We have also seen in the next post how gynocentrism is a very powerful force that runs silent and deep in our culture.  People are simply unaware of its presence.  We have seen how gynocentrism offers women protection and access to resources.  We have also looked at how women have traditionally used gynocentrism as leverage in relationships and how feminism turned everything upside down by weaponizing gynocentrism.  Now we are going to have a look at the reasons men don't fight back. Men, as a group, have been attacked for over 50 years, and yet there is very little response from them.  We will look first at the traditional leveraging of gynocentrism by women and how that discouraged men in fighting back.   Let's get started.

From my experience I've learned that men tend to weigh the pros and cons of giving feedback, especially when it could lead to conflict. This is a key reason men often choose not to confront feminism or even challenge their wives. If a man doesn’t see a positive outcome that outweighs the potential negative consequences, he's more likely to remain silent. This is just one factor behind men's reluctance to push back.

Another factor is the use of false accusations by feminists to undermine and neutralize men. False accusations are particularly damaging because they are impossible to disprove. When men deny such accusations, it can make them appear more guilty than if they had said nothing. Men are aware of this dilemma, and many will avoid responding to false claims to sidestep the implication of guilt. Feminists have long employed this tactic, beginning with labeling men as "male chauvinist pigs," followed by accusations of patriarchy, oppression of women, being deadbeat dads, wife beaters, and eventually branding men as "toxic." We will delve deeper into these strategies later in this series on why men don't fight back, but it’s important to highlight this issue now to understand the full scope of the problem.

Men’s reluctance to engage in conflict that lacks a clear benefit is closely tied to another dynamic: their position in a status-driven hierarchy. Men compete for status, which enhances their standing within the male hierarchy and improves their chances of attracting high-status females. A man's ability to provide for and protect women is central to his social standing, and the greater his ability to do so, the higher his status will be, and the more attractive he becomes to potential partners. Thus, men are biologically and socially conditioned to demonstrate their capacity to provide and protect. This helps explain why men are hesitant to fight back. Challenging women whom they are wired to provide and protect would threaten their status and contradict their instincts. Men are rewarded for supporting women, not for criticizing or opposing them.

This issue is further complicated by the way boys and men are socially trained. From a young age, boys are taught not to retaliate when a girl strikes them. If they do hit back, they are seen as the problem. If they don’t, they might be spared punishment but are still often blamed for upsetting the girl, while she faces no consequences. I’ve witnessed this dynamic repeatedly in schools, where girls hit boys, and if the boy retaliates, he's punished, but if he doesn’t and reports it, he's ignored, shamed, or ridiculed. It doesn’t take long for boys, and later men, to recognize this double standard and learn to avoid the trap. Striking back at a girl, literally or figuratively, dramatically lowers a boy’s or a man's status.

In summary, one of the primary reasons men don’t fight back is their focus on maintaining their status within the hierarchy and adhering to the taboo of confronting women. Attacking a woman, even in self-defense, can have multiple negative repercussions, and men instinctively avoid this.

Happy Wife, Happy Life: Traditional Reasons Men Don’t Fight Back

"Happy wife, happy life" is a phrase often met with chuckles, but is there truth behind it? Does the male partner bear responsibility for keeping his female spouse happy? Let’s explore this.

From a young age, women are taught what to expect from men and how they should be treated in relationships. Both mothers and fathers often play a role in instilling these expectations in their daughters. Girls learn the basics of how they should be treated. But what about boys? Do they learn what to expect from girls and how they should be treated? No. Instead, they receive constant messages about how they should treat her.

This creates a pattern: from the start, the focus is on how a woman should be treated and what she should expect from a man. Her needs are prioritized, but his needs are often left out of the equation. Boys are trained to care for her well-being, but they aren’t taught to expect the same in return.

The Impact of Unmet Expectations

So, what happens when a woman doesn’t get what she expects or wants in a relationship? Often, things turn dark and negative. When a woman is unhappy, it casts a shadow over the entire household, affecting both the man and their children. The tension is palpable, and men know this well. To avoid this, many men adopt the "happy wife, happy life" strategy—they work to keep her content.

Another critical outcome of a woman's dissatisfaction is the withholding of sex. Since women are the "gatekeepers" of sex, a man may try to keep her happy to maintain sexual satisfaction. If she’s unhappy, she may cut him off sexually, which can be devastating for him. Marriage promises sexual exclusivity, and many men enter it expecting frequent and spontaneous intimacy. But when that doesn’t happen, they wonder—happy wife, happy life?

Withholding Positivity and Praise

When a woman is unhappy, she is also less likely to offer praise or positive feedback. Respect and admiration may disappear. Worse, she may complain to friends or family about his shortcomings. Men, aware of these potential outcomes, often stay quiet to avoid conflict, even if it means not standing up for themselves. Their strategy is to placate. (We will be discussing positive strategies for men in an upcoming and final post in this series.)

The Weapon of Shaming

Shaming is another tactic some women use, and it can be cruel and dishonest. Shaming is a form of relational aggression and can be easily denied with statements like, "I didn’t mean it like that" or "I was just joking." It’s much harder to fight than guilt. Guilt is when you've done something wrong that can be fixed; shaming, however, implies there is something fundamentally wrong with you. As John Bradshaw said, “Guilt says I’ve done something wrong; shame says there is something wrong with me. Guilt says I've made a mistake; shame says I am a mistake. Guilt says what I did was not good; shame says I am no good.” This type of attack is difficult for men to handle, and they often choose silence to avoid confrontation.  Shaming takes a toll and sometimes isn’t even noticed consciously but the damage is done and this leaves men intuitively wanting to avoid anything that might bring that back. Common targets of women’s shaming include a man’s status, income, or sexual performance—any of which can be lethal to both the man and the relationship. It can be very subtle or very obvious and to a man it is unwanted.

Divorce: The Final Straw

What happens when a man fails to keep his wife happy and she remains in a long-term dark mood? She may file for divorce. Women initiate 70% of divorces, and those aren't happy women making those decisions. Men are well aware of this risk and work to avoid it, reinforcing the "happy wife, happy life" mentality.  Men are aware that the woman has the police and family courts as allies and this further encourages his not fighting back.  The potential loss is simply too large.

Traditional Male Responses

In the past, men often countered these dynamics with patience, logic, facts, and problem-solving. If the wife wanted something they couldn’t afford, he would calmly explain the financial reality. His logic and problem-solving abilities were his strengths, and both parties would likely compromise. But today, men have more reasons than ever to avoid rocking the boat. His strengths have been pathologized. Many men have internalized the idea that their needs are secondary, and they work hard to meet hers, often neglecting their own in the process.

Men’s Reluctance to Fight Back on a Larger Scale

This reluctance to fight back in personal relationships extends to the larger social context, particularly regarding feminist attacks on men. Men stay silent for many of the same reasons: fear of backlash, a desire to maintain peace, and a belief that challenging the status quo isn’t worth the risk. Hierarchically minded, men avoid situations that could cause them to lose status.

Many men don’t even view themselves as the target of feminist critiques. They see themselves as the "good guys" and believe the attacks are aimed at other men, who are his competitors.  He may see the attacks of feminists on these “other” men as not an attack on him but as proof that he is one of the good ones. 

When feminism first started gaining traction in the 1970’s, most of my friends and I saw it as comical and ignored it.  We had no idea of the long-term impact it could have on our lives.

Summing Up

Men have traditionally avoided conflict in relationships to maintain peace, keep their partner happy, protect their reputation, avoid shame, preserve sexual access, and maintain stability. A key reason for this is the lack of social support or training that encourages men to prioritize their own needs. As a result, men often place their partner’s desires above their own. This pattern, shaped by both personal and societal expectations, leaves men less likely to push back—whether in their marriage or in response to broader social issues.

The next post on why men don’t fight back will be the research on men and masculinity that helps us understand this tendency,

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Context Matters: Why This Article's Tone Is Especially Misplaced

It’s important to note that this article (Men in feminism: A self-determination perspective and goals for the future.) was published in a special issue of Psychology of Men & Masculinities, themed “Uncharted Territory” and intended to explore the possible future of research on men and boys. That context makes the tone and framing of this particular piece all the more jarring. The article isn’t a research study but an opinion-based essay focused on promoting strategies to increase male support for feminism. What? While such a topic might make sense in a feminist journal, its placement in a journal dedicated to understanding men and boys—and especially one tasked with envisioning their future—seems oddly out of place.

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The piece positions feminism not as a framework for mutual transformation, but as a moral litmus test — one that men must pass by internalizing guilt, accepting blame, and proving themselves worthy through re-education. Instead of exploring what it means to be a man in today’s world or considering the genuine challenges boys and men face, the article doubles down on one-sided concern. Feminism, it declares, is a “nuanced and multifaceted movement that aims to improve the lives of women.” Really?

If this is what the future of men’s studies is supposed to look like — a repackaging of guilt and exclusion — then it offers little to the men it claims to engage.

Coercion in Disguise: The SDT Contradictions

What’s especially troubling is how the article invokes Self-Determination Theory (SDT) as a framework — while blatantly disregarding its foundational principles. SDT emphasizes intrinsic motivation, rooted in three key psychological needs: autonomy (freedom of choice), competence (a sense of effectiveness), and relatedness (a feeling of connection and belonging).

Yet the article undercuts autonomy from the start by quoting ​Bell ​Hooks approvingly:

“Sexism and sexist oppression... can only be successfully eradicated if men are compelled to assume responsibility.”

Compelled? That directly contradicts the heart of SDT. Autonomy means choosing to engage out of personal conviction — not guilt, coercion, or external pressure. Framing men’s involvement in feminism as something they must do or be blamed for failing to do strips the motivation of all autonomy.

Worse still, the article insists repeatedly that even when men do participate, they should not expect empathy or appreciation. Instead, they are reminded:

“Satisfying men’s psychological needs does not mean absolving them from responsibility for ways they contribute to gender inequality and sexist oppression.”

Even when men try to help, they are portrayed as morally compromised — always in debt, never fully trustworthy. That guilt-laden framing suffocates genuine engagement.

The article also centers on women's needs exclusively, showing no reciprocal curiosity or concern about men’s experiences, values, or pain. It also relieves feminist women from any responsibility to be patient, non-judgmental or even make the men feel welcome. The goal is not dialogue — it’s correction. This is captured clearly in lines such as:

“It is not feminist women’s responsibility to make men feel welcome or to agree with men, adding emotional labor on top of gendered oppression.”

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“We do not mean to imply, however, that it is women’s responsibility to provide patient and non-judgmental spaces for men as this places an additional burden on women.”

So if feminist women are not responsible who is? The article recommends that rather than feminist women helping men understand feminism they should farm out that task to male feminists. This outsourcing of the task to feminist men — rather than encouraging feminist women to engage directly — creates a dynamic where emotional safety is offered only if men are already ideologically compliant:

“Women have good reasons for not trusting men immediately.”

There is no vision of mutual growth or shared humanity. Men are to be “retrained” by others — not included as equals. This fails to model dialogue or mutuality and instead sets up a hierarchy: feminist women as gatekeepers of virtue, men as potential liabilities who must prove themselves.

The result is a message that frames men as morally obligated to support women because of their supposed complicity in oppression, offers no space for their own stories or struggles, and then bars them from expecting even the basic empathy that would allow for meaningful exchange.

This isn’t just intellectually inconsistent — it’s emotionally cold and strategically self-defeating. It asks men to invest in a movement that clearly does not care whether they feel welcomed, understood, or respected. In doing so, the article violates not only the principles of SDT, but any realistic pathway toward lasting engagement or authentic partnership.**


A Better Way Forward: Respect, Not Re-education

For more than 50 years, our public institutions, media, and educational systems have focused intensely on the needs and struggles of women and girls. Perhaps it’s time we reverse the lens — to spend the next 50 years focusing just as deeply on boys and men.

Imagine this: billions of dollars dedicated to researching male development, crafting education and healthcare systems tailored to boys’ needs, launching public campaigns about male well-being, creating commissions and councils that advocate solely for men’s voices. And while all this unfolds, women and girls are politely asked to wait on the sidelines — to watch without participating, without complaint, as the cultural spotlight shifts away from them.

Would that feel fair?

For many women, such a proposal would feel outrageous — as if their lives, their needs, their experiences were being brushed aside. And that reaction is exactly the point.

Because for the past half-century, that is precisely how many men have felt: ignored, blamed, and left out of the conversation. While women were told “you matter,” men were told to man up. While girls’ self-esteem, safety, and education were prioritized, boys quietly fell behind — in school, in mental health, in family life. And yet, few women stopped to ask: What about the boys?

If the idea of sidelining women now feels wrong, then perhaps it’s time to acknowledge how wrong it was to sideline men for so long. The belief that men were powerful oppressors who deserved no empathy was a cultural myth — one that too many accepted without question. And the damage of that myth is now all around us.

We don’t need to swap one form of exclusion for another. What we need is balance. We need to understand that men have struggles, too — and they deserve just as much care, compassion, and attention. Real progress doesn’t come from focusing on just one sex. It comes from listening to both.

Let’s stop pretending that empathy is a limited resource. There’s enough to go around. But first, we have to be willing to offer some to the half of the population who has gone without it for far too long.

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