Manhood Without Patriarchy

Why Just Being Better Men Isn't Enough

If you are new here, welcome to Manhood Reimagined. I’m glad something caught your eye. If you want to make sense of this project as a whole, I’d suggest you start here. This page is continually updating and gives an overview of the project as a whole and how individual posts fit into a much bigger picture. If you want a bit more about me and why I write here, check this out.

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I launched Manhood Reimagined with the hope that it would spark conversations about this thing called manhood.

To this end, I asked both men and women to chime in with their thoughts so there could be as many perspectives as possible along the way. So to the readers who have participated in this already, thank you!

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, you’re the reason I have those six verbs that I’ve been unpacking the last couple of weeks (with many more posts to come).

This week of posts comes courtesy of a female reader I know in real life, who started asking me questions about a book I mentioned here, “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover” (affiliate). To put it mildly, she is not a fan and I can understand why. The book has a boyhood vs. manhood framework, which is better than manhood vs. womanhood, but still not sufficient, and that insufficiency is harmful to women.

This week, I’ll dig into why and some related topics.

Why Better Isn’t Enough

Many of you know that I used to be a pastor but, while faith remains central to my life, for many reasons, I don’t fit well in modern American Christianity. Much of my divergence from mainstream faith revolves around how I read the Bible and the way I approach life because of how I read it. At times, I’ve written quite a bit about this. One of these posts argues that Leviticus is more dignified than America.

The post focuses on many of the Hebrew Bible’s laws concerning the treatment of women, especially those taken captive after victory in battle. In the post I point to the way the world worked some 4,000 years ago and then to what the Bible says, which, for the times, was a huge step forward. However, if you ask anyone in 21st Century America to read what the Bible says it appears archaic and inhumane.

To make this a bit more visual:

the ancient world → what the Bible presents to an ancient world → what is good

For many in the modern world, because the Bible is treated as a prescription for the way things should be, this reality understandably prompts them to dismiss the Bible outright.

The Good In Better

So how do we find the good in better?

In the Bible, Yahweh (the Hebrew God) knew the people were not going to jump from a world that subjugated and oppressed women to one of equality and liberation overnight. At the same time, God wanted to move things in that direction and provide some protection for the women in the process.¹ It’s an idea that ties in well with Dr. King’s statement that “the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

So as someone who sees the Bible as describing the way things were when it was written, combined with a divine invitation to move towards what is good, I can find value in what appears to be a monstrous text, namely, that we should project out what is good through the rest of the Biblical narrative and keep hearing the invitation to move toward the good which will ultimately bring us to equality and liberation.

So What Does This Have to Do With Manhood?

There is a very similar dynamic going on with manhood.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines patriarchy as:

1. A social system in which the father is the head of the family.

2. A family, community, or society based on this system or governed by men.

3. Dominance of a society by men, or the values that uphold such dominance.

That said, a more popular understanding of patriarchy would focus on something like open disdain for women or thinking that men are inherently better than women. Let’s call this pop-patriarchy.

This divergence in definitions creates a space where a man, thinking of pop-patriarchy, can say, “I am not patriarchal.” but still embrace a family, communal, or societal structure that remains governed by men.

In this framework, the idea that women are admired and the needs of women and children are considered takes away the perceived harmful elements of patriarchy. We could call this a benevolent patriarchy or, as I have heard it described elsewhere, patricentric.²

It looks something like this:

pop-patriarchy → the benevolent patriarch → what is good for men, women, and children

Now, the benevolent patriarch is a step up from pop-patriarchy. After all, men are thinking about women and children. Moreover, their actions include care. Both of those things are good and need to continue, but to get to the truly good we need to keep stripping away the bad and moving towards the good.

What is the first bad we need to strip away? The fact that the men are thinking and caring in the name of provision and protection. Why is that a problem? I’ll unpack it in the next post.

1. This opens up a whole other can of worms about the nature of God. You can see my general take by reading this post followed by this post.

2. I should admit that even recently I have attempted to redeem this idea. My ultimate inability to do so is central to my position that manhood is not something we journey to but a journey from boyhood.