How Patriarchy Hurts Men

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My NoS-X Encounter with Rahi Kayarkar by Albert Schiller

The Forbidden Emotion

We often operate under the assumption that patriarchy is a system that benefits men at the expense of women. The power dynamics favor men, but Rahi Kayarkar argues that the emotional cost is devastating. Men are trapped in a performance of hardness that alienates them from their own humanity. This conditioning begins with language and the strict policing of behavior in childhood. A boy learns early on that he must reject any trait associated with the feminine. If he cries, he is shamed. He is told not to cry like a girl.

Rahi highlights the violence inherent in this phrase. It simultaneously insults women and amputates the emotional range of the boy. He learns that to be a man is to be an island. He suppresses his inner world to conform to social expectations, fearing that any crack in his armor will lead to rejection. Teachers and peers reinforce this by questioning anything that deviates from the norm. They ask why his hair is long or why his nails are not cut. They ask if he is a girl. This constant surveillance forces the boy to kill parts of himself to survive socially. We are raising sons who are terrified of their own softness because they have been taught it is a defect that will get them exiled from their tribe.

"Don't cry like a girl... Is a girl an abuse?... Why does everything that is... feminine be looked at as an abuse?"

The Idol Trap

The suppression of emotion is not merely a peer-pressure tactic. It is a legacy passed down from father to son. Rahi explains that a boy looks up to his father as his first idol. He watches how this man moves through the world. If that father never expresses fear, sadness, or vulnerability, the son learns that these emotions are incompatible with manhood. He observes a model of existence where silence is strength and expression is weakness.

This creates a generational cycle of isolation. The son mimics the father and becomes a wall. He learns to hide his struggles even within the safety of his own home. He believes that expressing his feelings is a failure of his gender role. He denies himself the release of tears or the comfort of sharing his pain with his family. He becomes a stranger to his own emotional landscape because he has no map to navigate it. The tragedy is that the father often wants to connect but lacks the tools, and the son interprets this inability as a rule to be followed. The silence becomes the standard of love and the proof of resilience.

Violence as Loss of Control

When we strip a human being of their ability to express sadness or insecurity, we do not destroy those emotions. We simply force them into the only channel that is socially acceptable for men, which is anger. Rahi suggests that much of the violence we see in relationships is not born of strength but of uncontrollable panic. When a man feels he is losing his grip on his life or his partner, he has no vocabulary to say that he is scared. He has only the tool of dominance, expressed in rage.

Violence often erupts as a desperate attempt to regain control. The man resorts to physical or emotional abuse to prove to himself that he is still in charge. He uses patriarchal tools to silence the chaos within him. This does not excuse the abuse, but it explains its mechanics. We have created a pressure cooker where men are expected to be unshakeable providers without any outlet for their own distress. When they fail to provide or when they feel their authority slipping, they panic. The system explodes because there is no safety valve. The man destroys the very connection he is terrified of losing because he was never taught how to hold it gently.

Reclaiming the Noun

The current cultural conversation often focuses on Healthy Masculinity as the antidote to Toxic Masculinity. Rahi challenges this framing. She recounts a conversation with her partner, who pointed out a flaw in this terminology. By constantly qualifying masculinity with the word healthy we imply that the base state of masculinity is inherently diseased. We suggest that a normal man is toxic and a good man is an exception to the rule.

We need to stop creating sub-categories and start redefining the noun itself. We must reach a point at which masculinity naturally encompasses empathy, emotion, and vulnerability. A man should not feel diminished as a man when he cries or cares for a child. He should feel that he is fulfilling his potential. We need to normalize the idea that emotional expression is a factory setting for all humans and not a glitch for men. We must create spaces where men can take off the armor without fear of being stabbed. When we expand the definition of what a man can be, we save men from themselves, and we heal the fracture between the genders.

"Why can't we just say... this is what masculinity is... You don't have to put it all in, bottled up."

So what can we take from her approach?