Patriarchy is a Purpose Killer

Patriarchy is killing men. Literally. Emotionally. Spiritually.

Not in the way it kills women—with harassment, silencing, and violence—but in a slower, more corrosive way. It poisons men from the inside. It whispers lies about purpose and identity until we’re so disconnected from our own souls that we don’t even realize we’re bleeding out.

And then we buy the lie that bleeding out is being a "strong" man.

I know because I lived it.

Patriarchy shaped every system that shaped me. High-control religion, with its male gods and rigid hierarchies, told me to dominate my urges and control my household. Business culture told me to hustle harder, to measure my worth by output, dominance, and dollars. My trauma—ignored and unspoken—told me I had to be exceptional or disappear. And my undiagnosed ADHD became another failure to "man up," another reason I believed I was broken.

All of it was patriarchy. Not just the loud, angry version, but the quiet kind that wraps itself in discipline, order, and success. I thought if I could just win at the game—make money, build a name, control my emotions—I’d finally feel whole. But all I did was perform a masculinity that never felt like mine.

But you don’t win a rigged game. You just get really good at losing slowly. And quietly. I did much of this reckoning alone—not because I had to, but because I was afraid of what it would mean to admit that everything I had built was based on a lie. I isolated myself, trying to hold it all together while it crumbled underneath me. That’s the trap: patriarchy teaches you to suffer in silence and call it strength. 

As Thoreau wrote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." That line hits even harder now—because we are experiencing the painful cost of this desperation in real time with daily headlines reminding of us that the patriarchy only produces broken men and broken men do not become healed when given more power.

A System, Not a Man

Patriarchy isn’t a person. It is not your authoritarian dad. It’s not your mean boss. It’s not the alpha bro with a podcast. It's not the predator at the pulpit or the rapist in the White House.

These are all the result of what it actually is: a system. It is an operating system we didn’t ask for but inherited anyway. And like any toxic system, it survives by convincing the people who sustain it that they will lose something if it goes away.

This isn’t about blaming men. This is about liberating men from a system that they often don't even realize they are part of. 

Oppressive systems don’t just appear—they're sustained by mythology, social conditioning, and built-in benefits. Patriarchy tells us that our worth is tied to how much we control—our job, our family, our emotions. It reinforces this through stories, expectations, and rewards. It sells us a narrow myth: that real men are cold, dominant, and self-sufficient. That our value lies in conquest, not connection. That control equals strength. This is reinforced by men like Musk who shit on empathy and by the venerating of people like Andrew Tate.

But those myths are expensive. And men are paying the price with their sanity, their relationships, and their lives.

The Data Is Clear (and Devastating)

Look at the numbers:

• Men are four times more likely to die by suicide than women.

• One in four men has no close friends.

• Seventy percent of men say they feel disconnected from meaning in their lives.

• Men are less likely to seek therapy or spiritual support.

• Men are responsible for 98% of mass shootings in the U.S.

Who has caused this? The system did.

This isn’t just a mental health crisis—it’s a spiritual crisis. And patriarchy is the architect.

Because when you cut a man off from his emotional life, his intuition, his vulnerability—you don’t make him stronger. You make him hollow. And hollow men will believe anything that fills the void.

The Patriarchal Vacuum

And that’s exactly where misogyny, exploitation, and violence creep in.

When a man doesn’t know who he is, the world is more than happy to give him a false identity. Watch any incel video. Tune in to the rage-addicted corners of the internet. Scroll through the fragile machismo of influencer culture. It’s all the same poison in different bottles.

They offer men the illusion of control. A cheap sense of purpose. A false enemy to blame.

“It’s the women.”

“It’s the feminists.”

“It’s the woke mob.”

“It’s the beta soy men”

“It’s cancel culture ”

And for a man in pain, that message goes down easy. It makes you feel seen without making you face yourself. It turns your grief into rage, your fear into blame, and your emptiness into entitlement.

This isn’t masculinity. This is manipulation—systemic, targeted, and deeply effective. It’s a culture of false empowerment built to hijack men’s pain and convert it into power fantasies. Patriarchy doesn’t just allow this distortion—it feeds on it. When men are emotionally starved, spiritually isolated, and desperate for belonging, they become easy marks for anyone selling supremacy, certainty, or control. These aren’t accidental side effects. They’re engineered outcomes. Designed by a system that has always depended on broken men to keep itself alive.

Rage Isn’t Purpose

As Tyler Durden says in Fight Club, "We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

That’s the heart of it. Rage isn’t purpose. It’s what happens when purpose is denied, delayed, or stolen. When men are taught to find worth in control and dominance, then realize those things don’t lead to love, peace, or meaning.

What’s under the rage is grief.

Grief for the boy who was taught to toughen up instead of feel.

Grief for the friendships that never went deep.

Grief for the years lost performing a version of manhood that never really fit.

Grief for the tenderness, the softness, the soul that got buried under bravado.

But no one teaches men how to grieve. We’re taught to power through. Or worse, to lash out.

The Work

There’s a way through this. But it’s not sexy. It doesn’t sell. It doesn’t come with six-pack abs or a podcast sponsorship.

It’s the slow, ugly, holy work of dismantling the bullshit you were handed. It is not a formula. It doesn’t happen in one session or one retreat. It’s hiring a coach. It’s long therapy. Shadow work. Prayer. Meditation. Sitting in silence long enough to hear your real voice beneath all the noise.

It’s crying for the first time in decades and realizing that isn't weakness—it is a fucking baptism. It’s reaching out to another man and saying, “I don’t know what I’m doing, but I want more than this.”

It’s recognizing that healing doesn’t mean going back to some idealized version of yourself. It means growing into someone your younger self never thought was possible.

Start Here.

If you don’t know what your purpose is, that is ok. It might be because you’re still ensnared in the mythology of patriarchy. A system that convinces you that control is purpose, and that performance is identity. So maybe the first step isn’t to "find your purpose" — maybe it’s to start dismantling the system that stole it from you.

Here are five places to begin:

• Call out patriarchy in yourself before you cosplay as a woke dude online. Start with your own bullshit, not someone else's.
  

• Feel your damn feelings. Emotional literacy isn’t soft—it’s survival. Name it or be ruled by it.
  

• Actually listen to women. Not to argue, not to fix, not to prove you’re a good guy. Just shut up and listen.
  

• Call out locker room talk.  If you wouldn’t condone it or laugh it in front of the women in your life, don’t let it slide just because it’s all men in the room.
  

• Embrace feminism—not the strawman bullshit version. It’s not about hating men. It’s about ending a rigged system that screws us all. 

Dismantling patriarchy is not about shame. It’s about recovering what was stolen—your full humanity, your emotional range, your spiritual integrity. And that’s the birthplace of real purpose.

The Yes/No Moment

We are at a fork in the road. A yes/no moment for men.

Will we partner—actively or passively—with the abusers, the manipulators who keep this system alive? 

Will we keep calling it "purpose" while chasing money, productivity hacks, and social clout—built on a foundation of control, emotional silence, and spiritual deadness?

Will we keep trying to extract purpose from apathy, from disconnection, from money and status and hollow wins?

Or ... 

Will we choose to partner with women—not as saviors, not as leaders, but as equals—and help burn this fucker down and build something new together? 

Only one of those carries with it the "yes" of true purpose.