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Women’s Historical Gift of Love: the Evolution of Empathy
October 06, 2025
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Introduction to Women’s Historical Gift of Love: the Evolution of Empathy

Many of us here know the pain of being hurt by women — through betrayal, false accusation, alienation, or cruelty. For those who have lived that, it can be hard to read praise of the feminine without flinching. That’s natural.

Yet healing often begins when we can hold two truths at once: some women have done harm, and women as a whole have also given civilization gifts. In this essay David Shackleton looks at women’s impact on empathy. Shackleton explores how, across generations, mothers quietly expanded humanity’s moral depth while men advanced knowledge and invention. Both streams were essential to our progress, and both were not mutually exclusive.


Feminists have long tried to obscure this moral achievement because it doesn’t fit their preferred path for women — getting a job. They celebrate women who break ceilings but ignore those who built the foundations of love and empathy that made civilization humane. The following is an excerpt from David Shackleton’s forthcoming book, Matrisensus: The Masculine Collapse and Feminine Shadow. See what you think. How have we ruined this balance and to what effect? Tom Golden


Women’s Historical Gift of Love: the Evolution of Empathy

 


Civilization has been built by two parallel and complementary streams of human achievement. On one side, while most men did not add to the collection of human knowledge, a few exceptional men pushed forward the frontiers of knowledge: explorers charting unknown lands, scientists discovering natural laws, philosophers clarifying moral principles. On the other side, while most women made no difference in their parenting from the way they had been treated in their own childhoods, a few exceptional women advanced the frontier of love – especially empathy – in the private realm of the family, transmitting new ways of caring for children that slowly reshaped society. Both gifts were indispensable.

The historian of childhood Lloyd deMause argued that the deepest motor of history is not politics or economics, but the way parents treat their children. Most parents, he observed, simply repeat what they themselves experienced. Yet in every generation, a few mothers break the cycle, heroically choosing to treat their children with greater tenderness and empathy than they had received. Since mothers in subsequent generations then repeat these new patterns, these quiet decisions accumulate across generations, slowly elevating culture.

To give shape to this process, deMause described six successive childrearing modes, each producing characteristic personality structures and cultural patterns:

Childrearing Mode – Description – Psychological Outcome

  • Infanticidal: Routine killing or abandonment of unwanted infants → Schizoid, fragmented personalities

  • Abandoning: Physical survival ensured, but emotional neglect and use of wet nurses or servants → Masochistic, dependent personalities

  • Ambivalent: Parents swing between affection and cruelty, discipline by fear → Borderline, unstable personalities

  • Intrusive: Parents invade the child’s inner life, controlling thoughts and feelings → Depressive, guilt-ridden personalities

  • Socializing: Parents train children to conform to external norms and roles → Neurotic, rule-bound personalities

  • Helping: Parents empathize with children’s needs and support growth toward autonomy → Individuated, creative personalities

 

(If you find yourself doubting the historical advance of empathy or that childrearing was so brutal in the past, consider that it is less than 500 years since we burned people alive at the stake in public executions. How much less empathy must people have had at that time in order to watch and approve of such horrific spectacles?)

deMause explained:
“Psychogenesis is not a very robust process in caretakers. Most of the time, parents simply re-inflict upon their children what had been done to them in their own childhood. The production of developmental variations can occur only in the silent, mostly unrecorded decisions by parents to go beyond the traumas they themselves endured. It happens each time a mother decides not to use her child as an erotic object, not to tie it up so long in swaddling bands, not to hit it when it cries. It happens each time a mother encourages her child’s explorations and independence, each time she overcomes her own despair and neediness and gives her child a bit more of the love and empathy she herself didn’t get. These private moments are rarely recorded for historians, and social scientists have completely overlooked their role in the production of cultural variation, yet they are nonetheless the ultimate sources of the evolution of the psyche and culture.”

And again, in conclusion:
“Because childrearing evolution determines the evolution of the psyche and society, the causal arrows of all other social theories are reversed by the psychogenic theory. Rather than personal and family life being seen as dragged along in the wake of social, cultural, technological and economic change, society is instead viewed as the outcome of evolutionary changes that first occur in the psyche. Because the structure of the psyche changes from generation to generation within the narrow funnel of childhood, childrearing practices are not just one item in a list of cultural traits—they are the very condition for the transmission and further development of all other cultural elements, placing limits on what can be achieved in all other social areas. … Childhood must therefore always first evolve before major social, cultural and economic innovation can occur.”

To summarize, deMause outlined a new, psychogenic theory of history: that cultural evolution is driven overwhelmingly by the nature of childraising, and that this is dominated by mothers, with those few mothers who courageously advance their own psychic maturity so that they are able to love their children better than they themselves were loved as a child being the engine of advancing social empathy and thus of general cultural progress. Far from being powerless and oppressed figures in history, this theory places women at the centre of cultural evolution, the prime cause. Women provided the substrate, the progressively advancing psychological and cultural backdrop, and men innovated the physical techniques and technologies that delivered greater health, longer lives, better living standards, and increased freedom. It was truly an equal partnership.

A few examples illustrate women’s contribution:

The Breastfeeding Revolution: In eighteenth-century England and France, mothers began to nurse their own children instead of sending them to wet nurses. This seemingly small change radically increased infant survival, deepened maternal bonds, and helped prepare a generation with greater capacity for empathy. Rousseau’s Émile (1762) gave voice to this cultural shift, insisting that “the mother’s milk is the milk of virtue.” Within a century, England and France were leading the world in science, democracy, and industrialization.

Abolitionism: While men like Wilberforce led parliamentary campaigns, the conscience of the abolition movement was profoundly maternal. Writers such as Elizabeth Heyrick, who called for immediate abolition in 1824, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) moved millions, exemplified how women’s empathy translated into moral revolution. Abraham Lincoln’s (perhaps apocryphal) remark on meeting Stowe — “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war” — captures this dynamic.

The Rise of Universal Human Rights: The very notion that all people possess inherent dignity and equal rights, regardless of class, race, or sex, emerged alongside the expansion of empathy across generations. While men codified these rights in declarations and constitutions, women’s work of nurturing developed the human capacity to imagine others as equally valuable. The family was the first school of equality: the mother who held her child in love transmitted, in seed form, the conviction that every human being deserved care and respect. As historian Lynn Hunt argues in Inventing Human Rights (2007), the eighteenth century saw the growth of “empathetic imagination” through novels, letters, and family life, and this undergirded the spread of rights discourse. Without this interior revolution of feeling, the abstract principle of rights would have rung hollow. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789) and later the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) were thus the public crystallization of a private moral revolution that mothers advanced in the nursery.

Child Labor Reforms: In nineteenth-century Britain and America, mothers and women’s societies were prominent advocates for laws restricting child labor, pressing legislators with the moral claim that children were not merely economic assets but human beings with rights and dignity.

Nursing and Care: Florence Nightingale’s transformation of nursing in the Crimean War and afterward reframed medicine as compassionate service, professionalizing an ethic of care. Her Notes on Nursing (1859) became foundational for modern healthcare.

Education and Literacy: Across the West, women were the primary transmitters of literacy and moral instruction in the home. In the nineteenth century, they became the backbone of the teaching profession, extending their empathic role into the public sphere.

Each of these steps paralleled breakthroughs in men’s domain: Newton’s Principia (1687) reshaping science, Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) transforming biology, explorers charting the globe, inventors powering industry, philosophers clarifying the principles of liberty and democracy. Men advanced the frontier of truth; women advanced the frontier of love.

The prevailing feminist narrative has been that women were excluded from history’s great achievements and silenced by male domination. But deMause’s research reveals a deeper truth: women were not absent from progress; they were its other half. Their contributions were less visible only because they took place in private rather than public realms.

That this polarized narrative of victim and oppressor was completely mistaken is now clear:

  • Men’s gift of truth expanded humanity’s knowledge and control over the world.

  • Women’s gift of love expanded humanity’s moral and emotional capacity.

This is perfect archetypal balance. Women’s gift was as important as men’s. Both were necessary, both indispensable. Civilization depends equally on both.

Seen in this light, the family hearth was as revolutionary as the laboratory. The quiet choices of mothers: to hold rather than strike, to nurse rather than abandon, to soothe rather than shame, carried forward across generations until they reshaped entire cultures. Just as Galileo pointed his telescope toward the heavens, so did mothers across centuries point their empathy into the hearts of their children, and the world changed.

History must honor both gifts: truth and love, discovery and empathy, masculine and feminine. To overlook either is to tell only half of the human story. We have been doing that for too long. It is time that we stopped.


References

  1. Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, Karnac Books, New York, 2002, p.110

  2. Lloyd deMause, The History of Childhood, Harper & Row, New York, 1974, p.12

  3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile, or On Education (1762), Book I. Modern edition: trans. Allan Bloom, Emile: or On Education, Basic Books, New York, 1979, p.44

  4. Attributed remark by Abraham Lincoln to Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1862, during her White House visit. Source uncertain; first recorded by Annie Fields in Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Houghton, Mifflin, Boston, 1897), p.133.

  5. Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History, W. W. Norton, New York, 2007

  6. Florence Nightingale, Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not, Harrison, London, 1859

  7. Isaac Newton, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, London, 1687

  8. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, John Murray, London, 1859

 
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Man Hating Stereotype Debunked? The Tale of Two Hate Studies

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June 08, 2026
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New Web Site - thewaymenheal.com
 

For many years, people have asked me essentially the same question:

“Where can I find a simple explanation of how men heal?”

The answer has never been easy.

Over the last three decades I have written books, articles, blog posts, newsletters, and given countless interviews and workshops. The ideas are scattered across many places.

Recently I decided it was time to gather them into one place.

Today I’m pleased to introduce a new website:

TheWayMenHeal.com

The site is not a blog and it is not a therapy website.

Instead, it is an attempt to clearly explain many of the core ideas that have emerged from my work with men, women, boys, girls, grief, trauma, and healing over the past 35 years.

You’ll find sections on:

  • Why men’s emotions are often difficult to see

  • Action-oriented emotional processing

  • Shame and dignity

  • Solitude

  • Grief

  • The masculine side of healing

  • Research related to men’s emotional lives

  • A glossary of important concepts

  • Frequently asked questions

One of the things I have learned over the years is that many people genuinely care about men but often misunderstand how men experience emotional pain.

Men’s healing frequently occurs in ways that are easy to overlook. We tend to notice tears, talking, and emotional disclosure. We are less likely to notice action, responsibility, service, problem solving, solitude, ritual, and purpose.

Yet these pathways are often central to men’s emotional lives.

My hope is that this site will serve as a practical and accessible resource for anyone who wants to better understand men, whether that person is a therapist, parent, spouse, partner, teacher, researcher, or simply someone trying to make sense of their own experience.

The site is still growing and will continue to expand over time.

I invite you to explore it and let me know what you think.

TheWayMenHeal.com

I hope it proves useful.

Here’s an excerpt from the boys and play sectionn
— Tom




Boys, Play, and Development

Research on play, movement, and rough-and-tumble interaction helps explain why boys often need active, physical, socially negotiated forms of learning and emotional regulation.


Many boys learn through their bodies before they learn through words. They move, chase, wrestle, compete, test limits, take small risks, laugh, fall, get back up, and negotiate rules in the middle of action.

To adults who are uncomfortable with active boyhood, this can look like disorder. But research on play suggests that physical play is not merely noise, chaos, or pre-aggression. It can be a crucial part of development.

Rough-and-tumble play, recess, movement, and active peer interaction help children practice self-control, read social signals, manage intensity, test boundaries, and learn how to stay connected while excited.

When normal boyhood energy is treated as a problem, boys may lose one of the natural pathways through which they learn regulation, relationship, and resilience.

Rough-and-Tumble Play Is Not the Same as Aggression

Researchers have long distinguished rough-and-tumble play from real aggression. Rough-and-tumble play may include chasing, wrestling, mock fighting, tumbling, laughing, fleeing, returning, and exaggerated physical movement. Aggression, by contrast, is marked by intent to harm, distress, coercion, or domination.

This distinction is essential.

When adults cannot tell the difference between play fighting and real fighting, boys’ normal play can be misread as dangerous or disruptive. That misreading may lead to unnecessary discipline, restricted movement, and the loss of important developmental experience.

Good supervision matters. Children need boundaries. But eliminating rough play entirely may remove opportunities for boys to learn how to manage strength, excitement, consent, restraint, and repair.

What Boys Learn Through Active Play

Active play teaches lessons that are hard to deliver through lectures.

Through physical play, boys often learn:

  • how hard is too hard,

  • when another child is no longer having fun,

  • how to stop,

  • how to re-enter play after conflict,

  • how to manage winning and losing,

  • how to read faces and body language,

  • how to negotiate rules,

  • how to take turns leading and following,

  • and how to keep excitement from becoming harm.

These are not trivial skills. They are social and emotional regulation skills.

In other words, active play may be one of the ways boys learn empathy, self-control, boundaries, and connection.

Movement as Regulation

Many boys regulate emotion and attention through movement. Sitting still for long periods may be especially difficult for boys who need active engagement in order to organize themselves.

Recess, outdoor play, physical education, and unstructured movement are not luxuries. They can be part of how children reset attention, discharge tension, build social competence, and return to learning.

This connects strongly to the broader theme of action-oriented emotional processing. For many males, from boyhood into adulthood, movement helps emotion and stress become manageable.

Play and the Social Brain

Jaak Panksepp emphasized the importance of play systems in mammalian development. His work suggested that rough-and-tumble play is rooted in ancient brain systems and helps young mammals develop social subtlety, self-regulation, and sensitivity to others.

This perspective is important because it frames play not as an optional extra, but as a biological and social need.

Boys who are drawn to rough physical play may not simply be acting out. They may be seeking developmental experiences their brains and bodies need.

When Schools Misread Boys

Schools often reward quiet, verbal, compliant, sedentary behavior. Those are useful capacities. But when they become the only accepted model of maturity, many boys are placed at a disadvantage.

Boys who need movement may be viewed as disruptive. Boys who learn through action may be viewed as inattentive. Boys who enjoy rough play may be viewed as aggressive. Boys who compete may be viewed as insensitive.

Some boys do need help learning restraint, empathy, and self-control. But those capacities may develop better through guided play than through constant suppression.

When normal active development is treated primarily as pathology, boys may begin to experience themselves as problems.

The Link to Male Emotional Development

Boys’ play is not separate from men’s emotional lives. It is one of the roots.

If boys learn to regulate emotion through movement, competition, risk, humor, physicality, and shared action, then we should not be surprised when adult men continue to process emotion through action, work, exercise, solitude, problem-solving, and side-by-side activity.

The adult masculine side of healing may have developmental roots in boyhood patterns of learning through the body.

This does not mean boys should be left unmanaged or that all rough behavior is healthy. It means boys need adults who can distinguish development from disruption and energy from aggression.

A Humane Interpretation

Boys need language. They need empathy. They need self-control. They need emotional awareness. But they may not always acquire these capacities through stillness and verbal instruction alone.

Many boys need movement, play, risk, contact, competition, laughter, boundaries, correction, and freedom.

A culture that misunderstands boys’ play may later misunderstand men’s emotional lives. The same boy who once needed to run, wrestle, build, and test limits may become the man who needs to walk, work, repair, exercise, drive, or create in order to process emotion.

When we understand boys more accurately, we begin building a more humane understanding of men.


References

  • Pellegrini, A. D. (1989). Elementary school children’s rough-and-tumble play. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 4(2), 245–260.

  • Scott, E., & Panksepp, J. (2003). Rough-and-tumble play in human children. Aggressive Behavior, 29(6), 539–551.

  • Flanders, J. L., Simard, M., Paquette, D., Parent, S., Vitaro, F., Pihl, R. O., & Séguin, J. R. (2009). Rough-and-tumble play and the regulation of aggression: An observational study of father-child play dyads. Aggressive Behavior, 35(4), 285–295.

  • Panksepp, J. (2008). Play, ADHD, and the construction of the social brain: Should the first class each day be recess? American Journal of Play, 1(1), 55–79.

  • Smith, P. K. (2023). Play fighting (rough-and-tumble play) in children. International Journal of Play, 12(1), 1–20.

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June 01, 2026
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How Feminists have used Relational Aggression

Physical aggression has rightly been recognized as harmful and unacceptable. We understand that threats, intimidation, and violence can be used to control others, and society has developed powerful norms to discourage such behavior. Relational aggression, by contrast, often remains largely invisible. Instead of fists, it uses shame, exclusion, reputation damage, moral condemnation, and social pressure to influence behavior. While less obvious than physical aggression, it can be equally effective as a tool of manipulation and intimidation. Before examining how some feminists employ these tactics, it is worth understanding the nature of relational aggression itself.

 



How Feminists have used Relational Aggression

One of the most useful ways to understand feminism is not simply as a political ideology, but as a cultural system that often uses relational aggression to gain compliance.

Relational aggression does not usually rely on physical force. It works through shame, exclusion, reputation damage, social pressure, emotional manipulation, and control of the story. It attacks a person’s standing, belonging, credibility, and right to speak.

At the personal level, we see this in relationships when one partner uses guilt, withdrawal, public shaming, triangulation, or accusations to silence the other. But the same mechanisms can operate at the cultural level. When they do, the target is no longer just one person. The target can become an entire group.

That is what has happened with men.

Radical feminist leaders often begin with a claim of female injury. Some of those injuries are real. Both men and women have suffered in many ways, and no honest person needs to deny that. But the problem begins when female injury becomes the only injury that matters. Once that happens, male suffering is minimized, mocked, or reframed as deserved.

This is where gynocentrism becomes useful. Our culture already has a deep tendency to see women as more vulnerable, more innocent, and more deserving of protection. Feminism did not create that tendency. It learned to use it.

At first, gynocentrism provided moral energy for reform. “Look at women’s suffering,” the movement said. “Look at the ways women have been ignored.” That argument had power because people are naturally moved by female distress.

But over time, that same protective instinct became a weapon. Female suffering became a shield against scrutiny. Male disagreement became evidence of male defect. Questioning the ideology became “misogyny.” Asking about male victims became “derailing.” Defending boys became “protecting patriarchy.”

This is relational aggression scaled up into culture.

The most obvious form is shaming. Men are routinely described with terms such as toxic, fragile, entitled, privileged, dangerous, emotionally stunted, oppressive, and predatory. These are not neutral descriptions. They are moral labels. Their purpose is not merely to describe men, but to lower men’s social standing.

Another form is reputation attack. Men who question feminist narratives are not usually answered directly. They are often labeled. They are called sexist, misogynist, incel, abuser, patriarchal, fragile, or hateful. The accusation becomes the argument. Once the label lands, the man is placed outside the circle of acceptable speech.

Then comes social exclusion. Men are told, directly or indirectly, that they do not get a voice in conversations about family, violence, education, sexuality, fatherhood, divorce, or even masculinity. If they speak, they are accused of centering themselves. If they remain silent, their silence is taken as consent. Either way, their position is controlled.

Feminism also uses narrative control. It defines the moral story in advance: women are harmed; men are harmful. Women are victims; men are agents. Women need protection; men need correction. Once this frame is accepted, every fact is filtered through it. Female aggression becomes trauma. Male distress becomes entitlement. Female fear becomes wisdom. Male fear becomes threat.

This is why male suffering is so often invisible. It does not fit the approved story.

There is also manipulative victimhood. This does not mean that women are not sometimes victims. Of course they are. It means that victimhood can become a source of social power when it is used to end discussion, demand obedience, or shield one group from criticism. In feminist hands, the claim “women are harmed” often becomes “therefore women must not be questioned.”

That is a dangerous move.

In a healthy culture, compassion does not eliminate accountability. But in an ideologically captured culture, compassion for one group can become permission to attack another.

Coalition building is another major tool. Feminist ideas have moved through universities, nonprofits, media, government agencies, HR departments, family courts, professional licensing boards, and therapeutic institutions. Once these institutions adopt the same basic narrative, dissent becomes risky. People learn what can and cannot be said.

The genius of relational aggression is that it rarely requires direct control. It operates through fear. Judges fear being portrayed as sexist. Politicians fear losing votes, donations, or public support. University administrators fear activist campaigns. Journalists fear professional ostracism. Therapists fear licensing complaints. The fear need not be constant; it merely needs to be credible. Once enough people understand the social penalties attached to dissent, most will censor themselves without being asked. Institutions then become amplifiers of the narrative, teaching the public what is acceptable to think and say. The population is not usually controlled through force but through reputational risk. People learn which opinions bring approval and which invite punishment. That is how a relatively small but highly motivated ideological movement can exert influence far beyond its actual numbers.

This is where relational aggression becomes institutionalized. It is no longer simply one activist shaming one man. It is an entire network of institutions, incentives, and reputational pressures signaling that certain questions are unsafe.

Can we talk about female violence?
Can we talk about male victims?
Can we talk about false accusations?
Can we talk about boys falling behind?
Can we talk about father loss?
Can we talk about women’s relational aggression?

Often the answer is no — not because the questions are invalid, but because the questions threaten the protected narrative.

Another powerful tool is emotional blackmail. The message is simple: if you care about women, you must accept the feminist frame. If you question the frame, you must not care about women. This traps good people. Many men and women remain silent not because they agree, but because they do not want to be seen as cruel.

That silence is one of feminism’s greatest victories.

Gaslighting also plays a central role. Men are told that the double standards they see are not real. They are told family courts are fair. They are told male victims have equal support. They are told boys are not being shamed. They are told “toxic masculinity” does not really mean men are toxic. They are told their objections are overreactions.

But many men know what they are seeing. They simply learn not to say it out loud.

The #MeToo movement provides a revealing example of how relational aggression can operate on a societal scale. Some women came forward with genuine experiences of harassment and abuse, and those stories deserved to be heard. But alongside those legitimate concerns emerged a cultural dynamic in which accusation itself often carried extraordinary power. In many cases, the mere allegation of misconduct could trigger immediate reputational damage, job loss, social ostracism, and public condemnation long before any formal investigation occurred. The fear was not simply legal punishment. It was social punishment.

The slogan “Believe Women” (often remembered by critics as “Believe All Women”) illustrates how relational aggression can operate through moral pressure. On the surface, the message appeared compassionate: take women’s reports seriously rather than dismissing them out of hand. But in practice, the slogan often carried a second message: questioning an accusation could itself become evidence of moral failure. Those who expressed skepticism, asked for evidence, or advocated due process risked being portrayed as insensitive, sexist, or complicit in abuse. The social pressure did not merely encourage belief; it raised the reputational cost of doubt. In that sense, the slogan functioned as a powerful relational tool. It shifted attention away from evaluating claims and toward evaluating the character of anyone who hesitated to accept them. The question was no longer simply, “Is this accusation true?” It increasingly became, “What kind of person are you if you do not believe it?” That is one of the hallmarks of relational aggression: using the threat of social condemnation to discourage disagreement and enforce conformity.

What made this dynamic especially powerful was that few institutions wanted to be seen as insufficiently supportive of women. Employers feared public backlash. Universities feared activist pressure. Politicians feared being portrayed as insensitive to victims. Journalists feared appearing unsympathetic. As a result, many organizations responded to accusations with rapid displays of compliance, often treating skepticism as moral failure. The social cost of questioning an allegation could become greater than the social cost of accepting it.

This does not mean all accusations were false. It means the movement demonstrated how powerful reputational threats can become when combined with moral urgency. The lesson is not that victims should be ignored. The lesson is that fear, shame, and public condemnation can become tools of social control when institutions conclude that appearing supportive is more important than careful examination. In that sense, #MeToo revealed how relational aggression can move beyond individual relationships and become a cultural force capable of influencing institutions, public discourse, and individual behavior.

Perhaps the most damaging form of relational aggression is the cultural accusation. A false personal accusation can destroy one man’s reputation, relationships, work, and sense of safety. But a cultural accusation works more broadly. It places a cloud of suspicion over men as a class.

Men are not accused one at a time. They are accused collectively.

Men are told they are privileged, dangerous, oppressive, emotionally defective, sexually suspect, and morally in need of correction. Boys grow up breathing this air. They may not have done anything wrong, but they inherit the accusation.

That has consequences.

A boy who is repeatedly told that masculinity is dangerous may begin to distrust himself. A man who hears constant contempt for men may withdraw. A father who is treated as optional may lose confidence. A husband who is afraid to speak honestly may disappear inside his own marriage.

This is the hidden power of relational aggression. It does not merely silence speech. It reshapes identity.

And yet, many of the people participating in this do not experience themselves as aggressive. They experience themselves as virtuous. They believe they are standing up for women, fighting oppression, protecting the vulnerable, or correcting injustice. That is what makes the pattern so difficult to confront.

Relational aggression often hides behind moral language.

The feminist leader may not say, “I want to silence men.” She says, “Men need to listen.”
She may not say, “I want to shame boys.” She says, “We need to challenge toxic masculinity.”
She may not say, “Male victims do not matter.” She says, “This is not the time to center men.”
She may not say, “Dissent must be punished.” She says, “We must hold people accountable.”

The phrase “toxic masculinity” also functions as a powerful tool of relational aggression. Supporters often argue that the term refers only to specific harmful behaviors, not to men themselves. Yet many men experience the phrase very differently. They hear a cultural message that links masculinity with danger, dysfunction, violence, emotional deficiency, and social harm. The power of the term lies not merely in its definition but in its social effect. Once masculinity is associated with toxicity, men are placed in a defensive position. They are expected to prove that they are not toxic. If they object to the label, their objection is often interpreted as further evidence of the problem. If they ask for clarification, they may be told they are fragile. If they defend traditionally masculine traits such as competitiveness, stoicism, risk-taking, or protectiveness, they risk being accused of supporting harmful norms. In this way, the phrase operates less as a description and more as a moral framing device. It lowers the social standing of the target group while making resistance appear suspect. Rather than encouraging understanding, it often pressures men to distance themselves from their own identity in order to gain social approval. That is a classic feature of relational aggression: using shame and reputational pressure to reshape behavior without the need for direct coercion.

The language sounds moral. The impact is often coercive.

This distinction matters. Many women who repeat these ideas are not consciously trying to hurt men. Many are following the emotional current of the group. In-group bias is powerful. If the women around you all nod at the same slogans, if institutions reward the same language, if dissent risks social punishment, it becomes much easier to go along.

That is not unique to feminism. It is human. Groups protect their stories. Movements defend their moral identities. People prefer belonging to isolation.

But this does not make the harm any less real.

The challenge is to name the pattern without demonizing every person caught inside it. Not all feminists use relational aggression. Not all women accept these ideas. Many women love men deeply and are confused by the cultural hostility they have been taught to absorb.

The real issue is the ideological leadership and the institutional incentives that reward one-sided narratives.

Feminism has been effective not simply because it made arguments, but because it learned to control the social cost of disagreement. It learned how to use shame, exclusion, moral labeling, victim status, and reputational threat to make dissent feel dangerous.

That is relational aggression.

And once we see it, we can begin to understand why so many men remain quiet.

They are not silent because they have nothing to say.
They are silent because they know what happens when they say it.

Men Are Good.

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May 25, 2026
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The Quiet Work That Changed How We See Male Victims
What Denise Hines and Emily Douglas’s research actually shows—and why it matters

Over the years, many important voices in the field of men’s issues have done careful, courageous, and often overlooked work. Too often, that work receives little public recognition despite the profound impact it has had on understanding the lives of men and boys.

I have been thinking that one small way to help address that is to occasionally highlight and honor some of the researchers, clinicians, writers, and advocates who have contributed meaningful insights to these conversations. Denise Hines and Emily Douglas immediately came to mind.

Their work has helped shine light on areas of male suffering that were too often ignored, minimized, or simply unseen. I hope to continue doing more pieces like this from time to time as a way of acknowledging those who have helped move these conversations forward. Let me know in the comments if you have suggestions for other contributors to highlight.

 

For many years, the public narrative around domestic abuse was presented with great certainty: women were the victims, and men were the perpetrators. That message became deeply embedded in the media, public policy, academic culture, and even parts of the research world itself. Questioning the narrative was often treated with suspicion or hostility.

What was needed was not outrage or counter-ideology, but careful research. What was needed were solid, research-based indicators showing that male victims were a real and measurable part of the human landscape of domestic abuse.

That is the path Denise Hines and Emily Douglas took. Their work did not rely on slogans or political framing. It relied on careful observation, rigorous methodology, and a willingness to look directly at experiences that much of the culture preferred not to see. Because of that, their work has become some of the most important research we have for understanding male victims—not as abstractions or talking points, but as human beings.

Starting Where Good Research Starts: Who Are These Men?
One of the most important decisions Hines and Douglas made early on was methodological. Instead of trying to infer male victimization from general population surveys—where men often underreport or minimize—they looked directly at men who were actively seeking help for abuse from female partners. That matters because it answers a question that is often left vague: What does male victimization look like when it is serious enough that a man actually reaches out? What they found was not trivial. These were not men complaining about minor conflicts or occasional arguments. These were men reporting patterns of coercive control, physical violence, psychological abuse, and, in many cases, fear. In other words, when men do come forward, they often look much more like what we already recognize as victims.

The Myth of “It Doesn’t Affect Men That Much”

One of the quiet assumptions in the culture has been that even if men are victims, the impact is somehow less. Hines’s and Douglas’s work challenges that directly. Across multiple studies, they found that male victims—especially those who seek help—show significant levels of psychological distress, including symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, and hypervigilance—the same kinds of responses we would expect in any person exposed to chronic interpersonal harm. This is one of those moments where good research does something very simple but very powerful. It removes the ambiguity. It tells us this is not harmless. It leaves a mark. Once that becomes clear, it becomes much harder to dismiss.

The Hidden Barrier: Trying to Get Help

If there is one area where Hines and Douglas’s work is especially illuminating, it is here. They did not just ask whether men are abused. They asked what happens when they try to get help. The answers are sobering. Men in their studies reported not being believed, being assumed to be the perpetrator, being laughed at or dismissed, being turned away from services, and being told, directly or indirectly, that those services were not for them.This is where the research begins to intersect with something many clinicians quietly observe. It is not just that men hesitate to seek help. It is that they often have good reason to expect that help will not be there. And when that expectation is confirmed even once, it becomes a powerful deterrent.

A System Built With a Different Default
They also looked at the structure of services themselves. What they found was not necessarily overt hostility, but something more subtle and, in many ways, more consequential. Domestic violence services were largely designed with a default image of the victim: a woman, often with children, needing protection from a male partner. That model has helped many people. But it also creates blind spots. When a man walks into that same system, he does not match the template. And when someone does not match the template, systems often do not know what to do with them. Their research shows that male victims can find themselves in a kind of institutional limbo—not fully recognized, not fully excluded, but not truly served.

Severity Matters: This Is Not Just “Mutual Conflict”
Another important contribution of their work is clarity around severity and risk. There has been a long-standing debate in the literature about whether partner violence is symmetrical or asymmetrical, minor or severe, mutual or one-sided. Hines and Douglas cut through much of that by focusing on men who are clearly on the receiving end of serious abuse. While their core studies focus on help-seeking men (rather than general prevalence), their findings align with a larger body of research showing that a meaningful minority of men experience serious partner violence—often bidirectional in milder cases, but with clear patterns of one-sided severe abuse in the cases that reach crisis levels. Their research identifies patterns of coercive control, incidents of severe physical violence, cases involving weapons or threats, and situations where men report fear for their safety. That matters because it shifts the conversation. It is no longer about abstract percentages or ideological positions. It becomes about real cases where the question is not whether something happened, but how serious it was.

The Overlooked Layers: Sexual Victimization, Children, and Legal/Administrative Aggression

Two areas where Hines and Douglas’s work has been especially important, but less widely discussed, are sexual victimization and children’s exposure to abuse in these households. Their research shows that some male victims also report sexual coercion or aggression, something that is rarely acknowledged in public discourse. And in households where men are victims, children are often present and affected. They have also highlighted how some perpetrators use legal and administrative tools—threats of false accusations, restraining orders, or manipulation of child custody—as instruments of control. These “hidden” tactics compound trauma for male victims and have direct consequences for their children. This broadens the frame. It reminds us that when male victimization is ignored, it is not only men who are overlooked.

Recent Milestones
Hines and Douglas’s influence continues to grow. In 2025 they co-edited (along with Louise Dixon) The Routledge Handbook of Men’s Victimization in Intimate Relationships, an international synthesis drawing on contributors from five continents. Hines and Douglas have also led important international comparisons of help-seeking experiences across English-speaking countries. More recently, Hines received a $1 million grant to study male victims from Black and Latino communities—groups that face additional layers of stigma and barriers.

Positive Developments
Encouragingly, their work—along with that of other researchers—has informed training for law enforcement (including FBI sessions) and helped expand awareness. Some regions have begun piloting male-inclusive services, though systemic change remains slow.

What Their Work Does Not Do
This may be just as important. Their research does not argue that men suffer more than women. It does not deny female victimization. It does not rely on inflated or speculative statistics to make its case. Instead, it does something much harder to dismiss. It asks us to look carefully, measure clearly, and report honestly. What emerges is not a counter-narrative so much as a more complete picture.

Why This Matters Now
There is a real temptation, especially in today’s climate, to respond to one-sided narratives with equal and opposite claims. But that path is fragile. When the evidence is stretched, it eventually snaps back. And when it does, the people we were trying to advocate for can be dismissed right along with it. That is why work like Denise Hines and Emily Douglas matters so much. It gives us something solid. It allows us to say that male victims exist in meaningful numbers, that some suffer severe and traumatic abuse, that many face real barriers to being recognized and helped, and that systems are not always equipped to respond to them—without exaggeration, distortion, or apology.

A Different Kind of Clarity
In the end, what their work offers is not outrage. It offers clarity. And clarity, if we are willing to sit with it, has a quiet power of its own. Because once you truly see something, it becomes very hard to go back to not seeing it. We owe Denise Hines and Emily Douglas a real debt of gratitude for having the courage and persistence to help us see more clearly.


Dixon, L., Hines, D. A., & Douglas, E. M. (Eds.). (2025). The Routledge handbook of men’s victimization in intimate relationships. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003144939

Hines, D. A., & Douglas, E. M. (2016). Sexual aggression experiences among male victims of physical partner violence: Prevalence, severity, and health correlates for male victims and their children. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 45(5), 1133–1151. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-014-0393-0

Douglas, E. M., & Hines, D. A. (2016). Children’s exposure to partner violence in homes where men seek help for partner violence victimization. Journal of Family Violence, 31, 473–485. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-015-9783-x

Hines, D. A., & Douglas, E. M. (2015). Health problems of partner violence victims: Comparing help-seeking men to a population-based sample. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 48(2), 136–144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2014.08.022

Hines, D. A., & Douglas, E. M. (2009). Women’s use of intimate partner violence against men: Prevalence, implications, and consequences.

Douglas, E. M., & Hines, D. A. (2011). The helpseeking experiences of men who sustain intimate partner violence: An overlooked population and implications for practice. Journal of Family Violence, 26, 473–485. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-011-9382-4

Hines, D. A., & Douglas, E. M. (2011). Symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder in men who sustain intimate partner violence: A study of helpseeking and community samples. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 12(2), 112–127. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022983

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