Absolutely! Patriarchy is a dominance based hierarchy, so there's always someone trying to make themselves look better by making you look worse - whether that's your boss, or a guy who is supposedly your friend, or whomever. You've got to constantly fight for a place in the pecking order, which is very isolating.
"However, this also comes with a hefty price to pay. According to the Promundo research team:
Young men’s mental health is in a worrisome state. Their bravado masks deep insecurities, depression, and frequent thoughts of suicide.
Men in the Man Box (the rules of masculinity) in the US and UK are statistically significantly more likely to meet a screening standard for depression than men outside the Man Box. Furthermore, all young men’s rates of suicidal ideation are troubling, with particularly high rates among men in the Man Box.
Young men are more likely to report providing emotional support to others than they are to report being emotionally vulnerable or seeking help themselves. In line with the Man Box rule that young men be self-sufficient, study participants tend to grapple with emotions with little or no support from others. When they do seek support, it is from women in their lives — almost never from their fathers. We also see that fear of appearing vulnerable or gay still has a powerful influence over young men’s behaviors, particularly for men in the Man Box."
But rather than call out the system, a lot of guys blame things like feminism for the ways that they struggle. Younger men do a bit better job but there are still a lot of them who are angry (rightfully so) but turning that anger in the wrong directions. They turn to Jordan Peterson, or Trump, or someone like that who doesn’t want the power dynamics of the culture to change — because men were by law and overt custom, the top of the dominance hierarchy until 60 years ago. Men might have been somewhat unhappy, but at least they were king of the hill. Now, not so much anymore, and a lot of them don’t know what to do except point fingers and complain.
