For generations, men have been conditioned to compete for status, struggling to rise to the top of a vast Darwinian pyramid framed by a simple but ruthless set of rules. But men who compete to win in our man box culture are collectively doomed to fail. The game is rigged. /1
Men are wasting our lives chasing a fake rabbit around a track, convinced there’s meat to be had. There is no meat. We are the meat. The slow realization that man box culture is rigged is the unspoken unacknowledged source of the male panic/rage surging through our culture. /2
Like many men, I’ve wasted decades of my life trying to perform the man box model of manhood, which by design, leaves us struggling to prove our manhood while never allowing us to completely do so. /3
Man box culture is so deeply ingrained in us because it begins exerting its influence in the days after we are born. Little boys begin suppressing our naturally occurring capacities for emotional and relational connection, thus setting us on a path for a lifetime of isolation. /4
The damage our bullying man box culture does to boys and men is done before we are even old enough to understand what is happening. /5
The central relational capacities that man box culture suppresses in boys and men includes empathy. The suppression of boys’ empathy is no accident. It is the suppression of empathy that makes a culture of ruthless competition, bullying and codified inequality possible. /6
It is in the absence of empathy that men fail to see women’s equality and many other social issues for what they are: simple and easily enacted moral imperatives. /7
It is remarkable that in spite of our man box culture, many men continue to fight for connection, community and equality in the world. But this happens in spite of everything man box culture does to us. /8
Imagine a world where we encourage every child’s relational intelligence instead of suppressing it. Imagine a world without the man box. /9
What are the rules of the man box? Go to any high school classroom. Ask the boys there to tell you the rules for being a man. They’ll all tell you the same things. Always be tough. Always be successful. Always be confident. Always have the last word. Always be the leader. /10
But one of the most important rules of manhood these boys will tell you is that “real men” don’t show their emotions. The implications of this single prohibition run deep, informing nearly every aspect of men’s, and by extension, women’s lives. /11
To this day, we coach our sons to present a facade of emotional toughness and our daughters to admire that facade in men. Even in infancy, little boys are expected to begin modeling stoicism, confidence, physical toughness, authority, and dominance. /12
The strong and silent type remains a central American symbol of how to be a “real man.” These rules for being a “real man,” often referred to as man box culture, are the reason why nostalgia for a bygone 1950’s era America is so compelling for some men. /13
That earlier America, where large numbers of women accepted their status as second-class citizens, provided the cultural container that made man box culture seemingly rewarding for men, and its catastrophic personal costs relatively invisible. /14
But now, after a century or more of women’s hard-fought battle towards equality, the remnant of our retrogressive 1950’s era cultural container is collapsing. /15
As it does, the brutal and isolating costs of man box culture become more evident to men, minus the countervailing benefits it once provided when women (and people of color, and LGBTQ people, and immigrants, and so many others) had no choice but to play along. /16
Now men are experiencing deep uncertainty. Long reliant on the command and control hierarchy of male culture, we have never been taught to manage uncertainty, while women, who have historically been subject to the whims of men, have had to manage it all their lives. /17
Because men’s man-box-constructed identities are not based on creating diverse authentic relationships, but instead on a strict adherence to hierarchical roles, the loss of the cultural container that validates those roles feels like a terrifying loss of core identity. /18
The result is a doubling down on the battle against equality by some men who's very sense of identity is threatened by an egalitarian culture of gender, racial, sexual religious and social equality. Meanwhile the ultimate cost for men is epidemic levels of social isolation. /19
Men's epidemic levels of social isolation, a direct result of man box culture's stripping away of boys' relational capacities, is the root cause of men's rising rates of suicide, addiction, divorce, violence and early mortality. /20
In just 75 short pages, The Little #MeToo Book for Men lays out how our culture of manhood methodically robs our children of a lifetime of connection and compassion. Please support our work, and THANK YOU! Order print and eBook now on Amazon. a.co/d/h8L8z9F /21 
THANKS FOR SHARING THIS THREAD. It represents a single chapter from The Little #MeToo Book for Men. Get a copy for the men in your life! ----> a.co/d/h8L8z9F I also put this thread up as an article over on Medium, if you prefer.
medium.com/@remakingmanho… /22
medium.com/@remakingmanho… /22
