Decentering men has completely changed my life. Here's how.
I have healed so much just by saying no thanks to patriarchal conditioning.
In queer community, we often joke about how one realization begets another. Once you start questioning one thing (like sexual identity), you start to question all things: gender, monogamy, marriage. Once it’s apparent that one part of your life has been socially constructed all along, you start to see how—well—everything is.
My journey to decentering men – the practice of rejecting patriarchal conditioning to prioritize men and their feelings over other genders, including the self – has been similar.
It started with realizing that I don’t have to date men. If I don’t find dating men particularly satisfying, especially compared to queer dating, I can just… stop, I thought.
Then I slowly understood all of the myriad ways that I was putting far too much effort into men, as I was ultimately too afraid to say no to patriarchy.
Are they reciprocating in our friendships? If not, bye. Are they dominating conversation in mixed company? I’m going to bring up astrology. Are they asking me for free professional labor? The answer is no.
What am I reading, watching, listening to? Who are the people I look to for philosophical and intellectual commentary? Who am I paying for services, from haircuts to tattoos to healthcare?
Who am I making myself uncomfortable for – to avoid their snide comments, mansplaining, or devil’s advocacy?
Eventually, this led to spending a lot less time with men in all spaces, both mental and physical, prioritizing and celebrating what marginalized genders offer instead.
And when men took up far less space in my life, a huge shift occurred: Not only did I stop hearing (and therefore, caring about) their opinions, but I started to heal so many parts of myself that had been wounded by patriarchy.
I’ve grown into an entirely different person.
Not just a feminist who knows better (Body size is irrelevant…), but can’t quite do better within patriarchy (…but I’m still on a diet). But someone who is better able to live her values now that patriarchy is being uprooted out of my system.
Here are just some of the ways that decentering men has changed my life:
Be honest: Are you reading this post because you’re interested in decentering men, but don’t know where to start. Are you worried that it involves divorcing your husband or going no-contact with your dad? I have good news: (1) No, it doesn’t have to mean those things at all. And (2) I can help you figure out what it means for you!
1. I’ve healed my relationships to food and my body.
At my heaviest weight, I’m at my happiest.
Most of us have been indoctrinated into the cult of thinness from birth. I remember thinking as a child that the mark of womanhood seemed to be perpetually being on a diet, as all of the women in my family seemed to be chasing thinness all the time. When an older cousin of mine who I looked up to started her first diet at twelve or so, I thought that was confirmation that it would come for me, too, eventually.
And of course it did. It took some time: I had a relatively healthy relationship to food and my body, at least compared to other adolescent girls, until my early twenties. Then, a breakup with an abusive partner, who’d commented repeatedly on the slight jiggle of my frame, led to an “I’ll show him!” diet – and then, an eating disorder.
For many years, I did most of my work in eating disorder recovery, anti-diet, and fat positive spaces, while still struggling with my own body, even relapsing into anorexia at that time. I certainly knew better. But it felt like those values applied to other people – not to me.
At this point in my life, my body has started aging, bringing on the potential for brand-new insecurities, and I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been. But I’m also the most chilled-out about my body I’ve ever been: not necessarily the most confident, but the most laissez-faire: I simply don’t care.
And I credit decentering men with this shift.
Beauty standards within sapphic spaces can surely remain oppressive. But they’re also much more relaxed. Queers who are attracted to women are attracted to women, with all of the fat, hair, stretch marks, dimples, and other so-called “imperfections” that that entails.
2. I have the room to deeply reprioritize friendships.
I recognize that these have always been the loves of my life.
Female friendships, especially with other queer femmes, have always been the most powerful connections of my life.
When I look back and think about who had the most profound impact on my self-development, it’s always my very best friends: my middle school bestie, who I wrote my college application essay about, who taught me to be brazen and bold; a group of girls I knew online in my teenage years, who solidified my queer identity; my college roommate, who challenged me to be more kind and compassionate.
Decentering men isn’t just about men themselves, on an interpersonal level. It’s also about divesting from that which cisheteropatriarchy tells us our goals should be, like romantic partnership, monogamous marriage, and a nuclear family system.
Decentering men inherently meant deprioritizing partnership. And that gave me much more room to connect to my community in deeper ways.
Without an incompetent male partner to care for, without a marriage to work on, without children to raise, I have more space for the relationships that have always mattered most to me.
3. Sexually, I am more present in my body and in my desire.
My authenticity shines through, and I have more fun.
Let me start by saying that I have had fantastic sexual connections with cis men over the course of my life (shout out to them). While it’s perfectly valid if other people have different experiences, I am not one to dismiss those relationships (and the fire sex within them) as fake. I’ve had great sex with cis men, and I am grateful for those experiences.
However, juxtaposed with similar sexual relationships with queers, there’s just no comparison to how much more fun and freeing sex can be when you’re not performing for the male gaze.
I am much more present in my body, not concerned with how it looks, tastes, smells. I am more present in my desire, able to name clearly what I want and what I don’t. I have no worry about incompetency on the part of my partner (incompatibility is another thing). I’m not bracing myself for when my partner says something childish or offensive. And even playing with roles of dominance and submission feels safer and more playful.
In feminist theory terms, I’m much more authentic in my connection to the erotic. And that makes sex more of a playground than a minefield.
4. I don’t cater to the male gaze—at all.
No longer dating men means not having to attract them.
A few years ago, I had just recently dyed my hair a mix of mermaid teal and emerald green, when a man on the street looked at me with an expression of disgust and complained, “Ugh.”
Although I’m fairly conventionally attractive, there are parts of my self-expression that the average man finds distasteful: I’m moderately tattooed. I have three nose rings (including the ever-hated septum). My hair is often A Color. And I’m often told, usually by Uber and Lyft drivers for some reason, that I would be so much prettier if only [insert comment on any of the above].
But getting an “ugh” on the street (I called it a reverse catcall) was a new one. And while at first, I was uncomfortable, it grew into a point of pride: That man looked at me and either sensed that I wasn’t “for” him or was so unimpressed with my self-expression that he was repulsed. Score, me!
I would argue that I’ve long not cared about male attention and desire. But there’s a small part of that statement that would be a lie. So long as I was attracted to and desirous of cis men, of course part of me wanted to be attractive to them.
Now that I no longer date cis men, I’ve grown less concerned with my looks (I don’t feel like I have to put on makeup to leave the house anymore!) and more queer in my gender expression (I want to be read as butch bait and nothing else).
5. Men’s opinions have little impact on my life.
They are no longer the authority on anything.
This happens in small ways: The only time I ever read a book by a man is if (a) it’s non-fiction, on a topic I’m very interested in, and a man has written a new book on it or (b) it’s fiction, and the male author is marginalized in another way (for example, I’ve read several novels by queer men of color in the past few years).
And it happens in larger ways: If I’m looking for professional advice or need a mentor, while I’ve had plenty of cis men in those roles (shout out to my dissertation committee), I seek out marginalized genders.
Partly, this is an explicit act of resistance. But it’s also partly just practical: Non-men have more interesting perspectives and deeper analysis.
What’s grown from this, though, is the realization that men are almost never truly authorities on anything because they miss so much of the richness that more marginalized people offer.
Hell, they’re not even the authorities on masculinity. Non-men, like one of my favorite human beings, Imran Siddiquee, who is genderqueer, but was assigned male at birth, have so much more to say about the construction of manhood than the vast majority of cis men.
In turn, men’s opinions have very little impact on my day-to-day life.
6. I do no labor for men: not emotionally, not sexually, not domestically.
I get to redirect my energy to people who can reciprocate.
I have an incredible t-shirt that reads, Literally nothing I do is for men. And I love it because it’s true.
When the relationships in my life – whether romantic, sexual, or platonic – center on marginalized genders, the need to labor for men almost entirely disappears.
When I offer a listening ear, constructive feedback, or (usually unsolicited, because this is something I need to work on) advice, it’s for women and other marginalized genders – people who often can reciprocate in ways that men, who aren’t socialized to be emotionally competent, can’t.
When I’m connecting with someone sexually, trading in the art of pleasure, it’s not for a class of people who have been taught to see my needs as less-than and my boundaries as negotiable.
When I clean my house, cook food, or do other household maintenance, it’s either just for myself (when I live alone) or for the benefit of another gender oppressed person (when I live with someone else).
Very little that I do benefits men. And without having to cater to weaponized incompetency, there is a lot less resentment in my life.
7. It’s changed my relationship to masculinity itself.
I now see queer masculinities as the norm.
I saw a fantastic video once of a femme sapphic woman talking about her attraction to queer masculinity. In it, she made the point that while the idea of masculinity is often tied to cis men, the truth is that she doesn’t see men as “masculine,” per se, because their gender presentation often involves zero intention.
To her, masculinity is a performance that is on-purpose. And while we could argue that all gender is a performance (hello, Judith Butler), the lack of thought that folks who adhere to binary, cisheteronormative, traditional gender presentation put into that performance bars them from a claim to an intentional masculinity (or femininity, for that matter).
Similarly, when I think of masculinity now, I think of queer masculinities: the disruptive and subversive ways in which butches, mascs, and studs perform masculinity; the history behind butch/femme dynamics and how they exist outside of cisheteronormative standards; trans and genderqueer experiences of masculinity, especially outside of the pressure to “pass.”
Masculinity, as far as I’m concerned, belongs to the queers.
And it’s much more interesting for it.
The practice of decentering men is often boiled down to misandry or man-hating. But that in and of itself centers men.
What if we reconceptualized decentering men as centering women and other marginalized genders? What if we understood decentering men for what it really is: an act of self-love in a world that teaches us to self-abandon for male attention and validation?
What if we thought less about what men lose when non-men reclaim themselves, and more about what we gain when we reject a patriarchal lens through which to develop self-concept?
Because I, for one, can tell you that what I’ve gained through this practice has only improved my life. And that’s just one small act of resistance.
Love,
Melissa