Again, what does this even mean? Gender was a "thing" long before the emergence of patriarchy a mere 6-8k years ago. Patriarchy simply weaponized it. I've said this already — we’ve talked about cultures with 3 or 5 genders, or how even those with 2 didn’t enforce gender roles (pre-patriarchy or if still non-p). And, as I've also already said 3 or 4 times, the objective is not to do away with gender, but to do away with gender as a small binary box the way it is envisioned in patriarchal culture — as polar opposites of each other.
Patriarchy didn't arise- it was violently shoved down the throat of egalitarian cultures, often by murdering all the men and children in a village and taking the women as "war brides."
With the appearance of these invaders (who brought patriarchy) on the prehistoric horizon — and not, as is sometimes said, with men’s gradual discovery that they too played a part in procreation — the Goddess, and women, were reduced to male consorts or concubines. Gradually male dominance, warfare, and the enslavement of women and of gentler, more “effeminate” men became the norm.
Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade (p. 90). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
This is what patriarchy means - not just a gender power discrepancy, but an entire system of social stratification enforced and maintained by violence and Might Makes Right — much more violent and authoritarian than anything that had come before. As bell hooks has noted, it dovetails with capitalism and white supremacy - since all are systems of domination.
There is absolutely no way, in the context of patriarchal culture, to have strict gender binaries that don't include those violent and disempowering aspects. And, more importantly, there is no reason to pursue them because they are demonstrably harmful to human happiness and self-expression. Dismantling the problematic gender aspects of patriarchy involves dismantling all the other aspects as well.
The last time I tried to touch on your self-diagnosed insecurity, you said I was being "toxic" so I'm going to leave that part alone - but the upshot is, I believe you should be turning your attention to understanding who you authentically are as a human being and not worry so much about who you are as a man (because it’s fine for being a man to be a central aspect of your identity, but there’s not a great way to explore that in the context of what you’ve been messaged your entire life about masculinity). Until one is secure in who they are as a person, I don’t think one can ever be secure in their authentic expression of their gender.
It's well documented that masculinity in a patriarchy is a performance - a constant attempt to outperform other men on metrics of acceptable masculinity (a large part of why it drives so much insecurity in men). Isn't it self-evident that basing one's life on a performance of things that other people want and expect of one is not authentic, nor healthy, not likely to bring much happiness? Isn't it self-evidence that deprogramming from that dynamic is the only sane thing to do? Maybe you have deprogrammed from all that — but the work (as I see it) is then to help other men to deprogram and find themselves in the process.
We tell boys to “Man up.” We tell boys, “Don’t be a sissy.” But what we’re really communicating is “Don’t be female, because female is less.” Wrongly gendering the universal capacity for human connection as feminine and then shaming boys to see feminine as less is how we block our sons from the trial and error process of growing their powerful relational capacities, leading to a lifetime of loneliness. Loneliness which in turn leads to dramatically higher rates of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's Disease, obesity, and more for men.
At a time when boys should be expressing and constructing their identities in more diverse, grounded, and authentic ways, they are brutally conditioned to suppress authentic expression and instead cleave closely to the expression of male privilege as identity. Locker room talk and the denigration of women become central to proving they are “real men” in their social circles.
When we teach our sons “You are better then girls,” instead of teaching them, “Don’t put others down to make yourself feel better,” we prime their vulnerability to all forms of bigotry.
You are better than gays,
You are better than Blacks,
You are better than Jews,
You are better than immigrants,
You are better than the poor, and so on.
