What if the greatest feminists never expected to teach masculinity—and now we’re locked in a battle to reprogram it? That’s the paradox at the heart of raising boys in a world that still rewards submission with praise. We’ve spent decades dismantling the “strong silent type” myth, only to discover that our daughters are being taught something far more insidious: how to attract him by surrendering everything. And no, we’re not talking about a love song lyric. We’re talking about a generational shift—influenced, perhaps unintentionally, by the same feminism that once chastised men for “picking a winner” but never asked why so many still feel compelled to play the role.
The problem wasn’t that we raised boys to be domineering; it was that we didn’t teach them how to be partners. We’ve spent lifetimes arming our daughters with witty comebacks, the language of equality, and an unapologetic right to occupy space, only to watch as today’s young men respond by embracing the very roles their grandfathers might’ve called “weak.” The result? A cycle where sons reject autonomy to feel validated by what they perceive as their parents’ collective “fixing,” and daughters, unknowingly, are shaped into the archetypes of those they’re conditioned to “better.”
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The Pervasive Myth of the Feminine Feminist
Here’s a truth we dare not state aloud: much of “modern” feminism has been guilty of equating self-sufficiency with a form of superiority. Our daughters absorb the message—loud and clear—that love should be conditional. “Don’t need him” isn’t just a catchphrase; it’s become the golden rule. But here’s the unspoken conundrum: what happens when your son, raised on the idea that vulnerability isn’t weakness but a bug to be squashed, eventually learns that the only way to be truly wanted is by proving he won’t overstep, interfere, or even inconvenience?
The feminist movement itself, in its quest to dismantle toxic masculinity, may have inadvertently created a cultural vacuum. Our language around partnership often defaults to transaction: “I accept you if you’re willing to serve this definition of me.” Who suffers? Not the daughter who sets boundaries. The man who feels like his worth is measured by how little he occupies them.
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The Masculinity Backlash: Why Boys Reject Partnership Like a Curse
Enter the “submissive” trend, a phenomenon that’s both baffling and infuriatingly predictable. Teenage boys—raised on TikTok’s slow-motion submissiveness challenges, where the ultimate flex isn’t athletic prowess but emotional surrender—now treat love not as a dynamic exchange but as a competition in concession. For the first time in decades, we see young men adopting the very traits feminism once excoriated, only to do so on their own terms.
And let’s call it what it is: performance. Boys today are rewriting the script because the alternative—true partnership—terrifies them. It requires a masculinity they’ve been taught is “soft.” A father’s job isn’t just to provide; he’s to *authorize* her. A brother doesn’t stand at her side; he stands behind her. A lover must “understand” before he’s allowed to be understood. It’s a version of manhood that’s increasingly being normalized: one where men don’t just bow to the woman’s lead, but *relish* it.
This generation doesn’t fear rejection. They fear *not* being rejected—forces them to perform submission in ways that, frankly, make it hard to recognize a real partnership beneath the theatrics.
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The Daughters Shaping the Future (Without Realizing How)
Meanwhile, our daughters are busy crafting identities around the absence of entitlement. They’re taught to reject the “maddest bitch” clichés, but what they’re never taught is how to ask men to be more than a decorative accessory in their lives. We’ve spent a decade equipping them to spot toxic masculinity without a compass to guide them toward *healthy* versions. And when they seek it, they’re often forced to “upgrade” from partners to “projector screen,” where their autonomy is only an effect, not a condition of love.
The paradox? Daughters now view masculinity as a performative flaw while sons are conditioned to believe their only value lies in the art of accommodation. We’ve told them, “Men don’t change,” so they decide not to try at all—and instead, they *exaggerate* this perceived default, twisting it into something obscene: “I’ll love you if you love me by *erasing* me.”
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The Missing Manual: How to Rebuild Partnership
So where do we start? By acknowledging what’s been left out of the conversation: *What is a *healthy* masculinity* in an age where feminism has spent more time telling us what to reject than what to aspire to?
The Problem With “Fixing” Boys (Instead of Teaching Them)
We’ve spent too long treating their missteps as malintent. The “good” son is the one who “understands women” and the “broken” one gets a pass for his emotional illiteracy. Both narratives presuppose that boys can’t think critically about love, that their impulses are fixed rather than *shaped* by their circumstances. Meanwhile, we’re surprised when they treat intimacy as a chore.
Here’s the radical idea: what if we taught boys not to “respect women” but to *co-create* with them? Women, of course, demand respect—but we’ve never once asked them to *collaborate*. Partnership requires two halves of a narrative. We can’t just say, “Be better,” without giving them a script for what that even looks like.
The Feminism Gap: Where the Manifesto Ended and the Reality Began
Feminism as a movement began with the refusal to define a woman *by* her gender. Yet today, what often passes for progressive relationships is still rooted in this very premise: “You must *act* like you’re equal to be worthy of our love.” And again, young men respond by proving they *aren’t*. Instead of being partners, they become pawns—either overachieving chivalry or, worse, the perfect backdrop.
How many dating apps have “manterprises,” not “partners”? How we discuss relationships is no accident. When we frame compatibility as a checklist—”Can she handle his ambition?” instead of “Can they handle each other?”—we’re teaching sons that the goal of love is to *outdo* expectations they didn’t even set.
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The Silent Contract: Why We’ve Settled for “Meets My Demands”
The 21st-century romantic contract is a loophole. Girls are taught to be in charge, but not *too* demanding. They must lead without being tyrannical. And what happens when the person at the helm—whether their father or her future lover—isn’t actually being led, but merely *accommodating* her existence?
Here’s the rub: submission, at scale, becomes less of an individual choice and more of an industry. We normalize phrases like “men should know their place” without realizing it’s a euphemism for *your place*. It’s not that these young men lack ambition. It’s that they understand the *only* ambition acceptable to us is not their own.
This isn’t just a mismatch—it’s a mismatch engineered by unintentionally telling them: “Let her define the terms because if you do, she’ll leave you.”
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What Happens When We Stop Teaching submission as a Requirement
The solution, however, isn’t to preach masculinity or to reduce feminism to “women need men who aren’t weak.” It’s to reclaim the idea of partnership as fluid, reciprocal, and *necessarily uncomfortable*. How terrifying to consider that some of us *might* need others as much as we might *want* them.
To raise boys who aren’t submitting but *competing for an equal seat* at the table? That means teaching them:
- To lead by listening—not because it’s his submissive duty, but because partnership means his desires deserve a space, too.
- To value vulnerability not as shame but as the foundation of intimacy—because a man who fears his emotions is a boy who won’t grow into the complex role he’s supposed to play.
- To love not as a negotiation but as an equation—where her needs aren’t demands, but part of a shared narrative they’re building together.
Until we teach boys that love includes them—even as *participants*—we’ll keep getting what we’ve been training for: sons who feel like extras in their own lives, and daughters who wonder why all their best allies feel so much smaller than them.
Feminism didn’t just change the game—it changed the *board*. Now it’s their turn.
