57 Comments
User's avatar
DC's avatar

Well done, brother! I like the way you breakdown the "systemic" oppression of men.

One more think I've noticed when talking about men's challenges us that there's often pushback that blames men's behavior.

- Suicide: that's men hurting themselves;

- High rates of workplace fatalities: men being reckless;

- Boys doing poorly in school: they need to learn to behave themselves.

Expand full comment
David Stanley Lavery's avatar

feminists use tactics to make boys fail, it was done deliberately.

Expand full comment
Conrad Riker's avatar

So how can we fix suicide?

Maybe get Bezos, Gates, Musk the divorce raped billionaires to add a safety net. Put bachelor apartments in metros. Let the divorce raped men serve as monks for a couple of years while they get back on their feet.

Throw in some remasculization rites for the first two weeks of crisis when the state sponsored betrayal / struggle sessions kick in.

Let them use Grok for legal support and 0.001% of Amazon's charitable donations to civil rights for families.

Expand full comment
Douglas's avatar

"So how can we fix suicide?"

Care about it. Individually, of course, but as a society.

Until enough people in enough institutions bother to care about men, we won't solve the problem.

Expand full comment
Conrad Riker's avatar

This disposablity needs a remedy.

Maybe granting men a vital role.

Like how the patriarch in a Jewish house hold reads the holy book to everyone at the table.

He has a role. Like the pole holding up the tent of the family. Everyone is around him being guided as to history, morality, and tradition.

We aren't providers anymore.

Maybe we should abolish female providers by inventing even more production, GDP, and abundance from new energy and decentralised production like 3D printers and automated scientists and professionals from agentic AI.

Expand full comment
PAUL NATHANSON's avatar

"Maybe granting men a vital role." Men do indeed require what I call a "healthy identity," which does indeed depend on making at least one contribution to society, one that is (a) distinctive (women can't do it), (b) necessary (some people must do it) and publicly valued (it earns collective respect). I keep saying this, Conrad, and you're among the few people who get it.

The only problem is that this "vital role" cannot simply be "granted" like a student loan or conferred like a diploma. Nor can it be created expediently but artificially as a therapeutic measure. It must emerge self-evidently and inarguably as a given of the human condition--that is, from the existential need of every society. I think that there is a possibility, one that is currently "hiding in plain sight."

As you say, women (either alone or with help from the state) can protect and provide for themselves. That's not going to change in the foreseeable future. But fatherhood, in my opinion, is one thing that no woman can do (not even with help from the state), because fathers are not assistant mothers. As Tom Golden says (with an increasing number of others), "Mothers raise infants; fathers raise adults."

For over half a century, however, feminists have contradicted themselves by undermining not only motherhood (in the name of liberation for women to build "careers") but also fatherhood (in the name of "single mothers by choice"). As a result, fathers have become walking wallets at best and "deadbeat dads" or even potential molesters at worst. Restoring fathers to their central role in family life will require a major cultural effort.

Expand full comment
David Shackleton's avatar

This is a significant talent and strength you have, Tom, to take these generic theories and apply them to men and feminism in a systematic, detailed way. Well done.

Expand full comment
Tom Golden's avatar

Thank you David!

Expand full comment
War for the West's avatar

Thanks for this, Tom. Been reading you for a long time.

I have a criticism though. What put feminist ideology on this horrific path? I say it's the Marxism and Postmodernism that did it.

Look at Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, the bible of radical gender ideology. It's driven by Critical Theory and Postmodern ideas about discourse. Earlier feminists were fans of the French revolution, socialism and then Marx, and the 'struggle' was seen as part of overthrowing oppression by aristocrats and evil capitalists.

But you don't mention any of this. To me it's the ultimate cause of how this became so radical and pernicious.

Expand full comment
Tom Golden's avatar

I agree with you. All you need to do is look at the money to see who was funding feminism from the beginning and you find it was not only the govt but orgs like Rockefeller or Ford. Not even close to being a grass roots movement though the mythology claims it is. People are slowly waking to the dark side of feminism. Eventually we will get to the puppet masters.

My biggest concern is the welfare of men and I try to keep that as my theme.

Expand full comment
Allen Frantzen's avatar

It would be generous to say that these tactics against men are not intentional ("now being used — intentionally or not — against men"). They are, as DC notes below, systematic, not accidental. It is very useful to have these strategies listed and spelled out so that men, if they choose, can fight a system with a systematic tool. When I bring up some of these points, male friends often downplay them and even say that unfairness and outright discrimination are chances for us to man up. Too many men believe that it is their role to sacrifice, go the extra mile--put it however you like. These men believe that we have to be fair but don't need to be fairly treated, as if demanding fairness were somehow asking for a privilege. An excellent, informative, inspiring post. Thanks, Tom.

Expand full comment
Sadredin Moosavi's avatar

One way that men have to fight back is to resist the tendency to make sacrifices for women. Frankly, we need to treat them as toxic unless and until they show us proper dignity and respect. As with men who behave badly, we have no obligation to women whether to serve or sacrifice for them. If that leaves them in bad circumstances of their own making...too bad.

Expand full comment
Conrad Riker's avatar

I think the tax system puts men on their knees, whether or not they get respect.

When's the last time welfare entitled ladies and lords expressed profound gratitude for tax payers donating to their needs before their own families'?

Expand full comment
Conrad Riker's avatar

Fairness forgives patriarchy.

(satirical sloganeering)

Expand full comment
Hiccup's avatar

THIS is a great summary. While most of us can (and have repeatedly) regurgitated most of this list, it's great to have it in one place to help doubters with an overview. THANKS!

Expand full comment
Jack Kammer's avatar

Brilliantly organized and presented!

Expand full comment
Corona Studies's avatar

Reading this made me think of it in completely different terms. Women’s in group bias is also an intolerance of individuality. And we certainly see evidence of that.

Membership of the sisterhood is very much conditional on conforming to group think/ hive mind. Female critics of feminism / female MRA's lose their sisterhood privileges and the automatic protections and support that comes with it.

Female in-group bias only seems so unconditional because so many women do conform to the hive, at least in public.

Ironically, when women impose female herd behaviour onto other women, they then blame the resulting pressure to conform (to female beauty standards, social conventions etc) on men (the patriarchy). But even this misdirected blame is a display of loyalty to the cult of womanhood, and its commitment to in group bias/ group think.

The price of membership to the sisterhood, and its protections, is to surrender your capacity for free thought and to a great extent your agency as a woman. If we look at it this way, the idiotic attitudes and opinions expressed by so many 'modern women' (especially young women on social media) might actually provoke more sympathy. They have surrendered to the hive mind, in order to avoid being kicked out of the sisterhood.

Men, on the other hand, have far less in group bias, which can also be regarded in terms of a tolerance and celebration of other men doing whatever the hell they want with their lives (innovation, invention, exploration), which is a very strong component of what it is to be male.

The empathy and support that women swim in is conditional on surrendering free thought and agency and conforming to the hive. It is like warm treacle. Cosy, but restrictive.

The harsh and brutal existence that men have to endure may lack empathy and support, but it does offer more room for innovation, free thought and non conformity. It is more like swimming a cold river.

The point being... women's in group bias is most definitely a free lunch for women. And like all free lunches, it comes with a bunch of hidden costs :)

Expand full comment
Tom Golden's avatar

Yes indeed. Very well said.

Expand full comment
Marcel Abrahamsohn's avatar

I have faced this problem on both sides of the ocean. I attended meetings of groups that were allegedly for promoting men's rights. However, while the men who attended the meetings definitely were victims of the various problems that are described accurately in this editorial, what I saw on both sides of the world was that the men in the groups were often quite intolerant when men spoke of the problems they faced. Having men argue with a man complaining about some wrong done to him generates some men rejecting what the man in question is all about and often giving him a lecture about how he has to "be a man" as if those words were needed or justified. In more extreme cases, men only expressed anger and resentment when men spoke of their problems and tried to argue with the man who made his problem known, often telling him that he is the one to blame and that he should just stop with "alibis" that may well be justifiable complaints.

The lack of empathy that men expressed openly toward each other in these groups made me reach the conclusion that the bigoted feminist doctrine was being given a very easy victory because the men only rejected one another as they denounced a man who spoke of any difficulty that others might think are trivial or a sign that the man in question "brought it on himself" and is not deserving of any sympathetic treatment. The end result is a resounding victory for feminism as being the only valid way to live because men don't seem to want to be seen as "weak" when they face hostility that is raw gender discrimination that men bring on against themselves.

I documented my struggle for a decade and it was published and posted on Amazon, where it remains to this day. It's one thing to report a story of facing misandrist attitudes everywhere and another to try to present a standard that gives men at least equal rights. While I am very much interested in doing something to improve the status of men, I experienced plenty of rejection for speaking about my objections to misandrist mistreatment that men often direct at one another, leaving the path wide open for feminists to come in and turn the tables so that the men end up losing time and time again.

As I said, I have written about what I have endured, but I have come out feeling that nothing that I can say, write, or hear is going to change anything, and at times, men would tell me just to shut up, even though they couldn't explain why they gave up so easily. I admit that after suffering hellish situations because of women for many decades, I just don't feel that getting into a verbal game of King on the Mountain is going to improve the status of men.

Writing on this subject still drains my energies, which is the reason that I am closing now. I just feel overwhelmed and wish the situation was better, but it isn't and won't be if men persist in sniping at one another instead of finding ways to improve the status of men. I remember how one guy described it, but while it was 100% accurate, it's too obscene to post here, so with that, I close now.

Expand full comment
Tom Golden's avatar

I have seen what you are describing repeatedly. My assumption is that it is related to the fact that women have a very strong in-group bias. Women will stick together and will face great group pressure to maintain that bias. This is why feminism is a universal for women, they all want to support it. Don't support feminism and you get the boot from your in group. Women don't want that. Men OTOH have much less in group bias and instead live in a competitive hierarchy that slates their successes or failures and compares these to other men. Men, by their nature, want to succeed and be on top. This creates competition between men's groups and the men within the groups. It is this competition that sabotages a large consensus among men and an urge to fight for "men." There is less motivation to fight for your competitors. I believe this is the root of what you are describing and it is a severe handicap when it comes to fighting for a sane system that treated both sexes with respect and caring.

Expand full comment
Marcel Abrahamsohn's avatar

I believe that society is to blame that men are given no options other than to fight to be on top. A man who doesn't do that is immediately scorned and slandered; there is zero tolerance for a man who isn't ready to trample others to be a success. I think that anybody who ever saw the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying sees that as the basis of the story. It's all about a window washer who busts his ass to be at the top, with the other men singing the song "Gotta Stop That Man" because he is upwardly mobile in the corporate hierarchy. Watch this video and hear the song; it tells the story very clearly:

Gotta Stop That Man - I Believe In You (Reprise)

https://authorhouse.haus/4eXfFeF

Expand full comment
Grainger's avatar

Another homerun Tom. Great work identifying the malevolence that is unbridled feminism.

Expand full comment
Tom Golden's avatar

Thank you Grainger!

Expand full comment
Sadredin Moosavi's avatar

This article is a very accurate description of the situation Western society finds itself in. One question it doesn't answer is how it came to be that so many women seem to fall so easily into these nasty, seemingly unethical ways of manipulating others. The reality is that the coercive system of control in place is an extension of the manner in which women have always bullied others in society when men do not retain a firm hand and enforce social morays against bad behavior. If you doubt this, ask yourself where you see such bullying on a regular basis? Hint: Look at the behavior of teenage women against others. The problem is that women seem to be inherently prone to these types of social systems....validating societal systems to LIMIT the power and voices of women when they misbehave in this way.

Expand full comment
John Barry's avatar

That's pretty mind-blowing. Can you get Robert Jay Lifton onto your show?

Expand full comment
Tom Golden's avatar

I wish I could John. He's 99 years old and I am not sure he is interested in being interviewed but you never know. I will poke around a bit and see. He called all of this many years ago. It would be interesting to hear his take on our present mess.

Expand full comment
Conrad Riker's avatar

Maybe you could create a GPT persona to interview

Expand full comment
John Barry's avatar

At 99 he might not want to bother with Zoom etc, and rightly so. Maybe there is someone else with similar expertise?

Expand full comment
David Stanley Lavery's avatar

Feminism is anti male hatred and bullying, what ever men do women always blame us, i would love women to have the privileges men have, such as the men being killed fighting in Ukraine, and men who suffer rejection from women so that we suffer depression and are added to a list of people at risk of suicide which is what' s happened to me, women insult lonely men by calling us incel's , yet women have the luxury of being approached by men , taken on a date , every thing paid for, women can get as much sex as they want and get paid for it. Governments only help women, its a matriarchy where the victims are the ones being demonised by privileged women who are so spoiled and blameless they actualy believe men have it better. what hypocrites women are.

Expand full comment
Conrad Riker's avatar

Snow White will bring women to their senses.

Disney is spending big money on it.

It's all about the negative feminine and overcoming it in various ways.

Or was even snow white trammelled by the black boots of feminism?

Expand full comment
Conrad Riker's avatar

I've been through it all.

It is Maoist struggle sessions.

Family is seen as black (not red) and Marx's call to 'aufheben die Familie' (abolish the family) is enacted.

Chinese boys of a certain age were taught 《爹亲娘亲不如毛主席亲》in school, meaning Dear Dad and Dear Mum aren't as good as Chairman Mao's dearness. Or Mao is better than Mum and Dad. Leading to cultural revolution killing tens of millions.

Struggle sessions are 批斗 or 'wholesale bullying' short for 批判斗争” or 'judgement beatings'. They were even held in stadiums. Dengxiao Ping was marched down the street in a dunce hat for his right roading a few years before he assumed control of the party.

Re-education is 洗脑 literally washing brains. It still goes on in the 劳改 network of reform through labour camps. And local black prisons where you're trapped in a steel seat and berated until you sign a confession etc. They even tie it in with a social credit score.

It's not too strong to say this is actual evil. The playbook of leftists has escaped all reasonable bounds. Repressive tolerance has stripped us of redress. But at some point their birth rate of minus 50% per generation will cause a policy response.

However, there is nuance. Feminism in China is under party control. It's actually extremely unfeminist. And recent family law reforms in China might appear reasonable, if revolutionary. And could solve our problems.

In China, the kidnapping parent, usually the mother. Is immediately stripped of custody. We'd call her the resident parent in England or the accuser in US. The judge who innovated this was killed extra judicially by her 'customers' but then it was picked up as new state law. They use the continental system relying on written law there, not English law where you make it up as you go along applying case law.

You can't anymore expropriate your spouses assets either. Nor your in-laws assets. And houses belong to who bought them irrespective of title. So it bans gold digging retrospectively.

Come to think of it. China doesn't have REMO reciprocity to auto enslave men through child support or spousal maintenance. But Hongkong does.

Is China becoming a human rights bright spot for family law?

Expand full comment
Orr's avatar

"But at some point their birth rate of minus 50% per generation will cause a policy response."

It already has! It's called mass immigration. Mostly from Muslim countries who don't tolerate feminism. And since Muslim women greatly outbreed Western women, feminism will disappear in a few generations. Feminism is self-limiting, because it destroys the host population, by destroying reproduction. The future of the West is Muslim, it's a mathematical certainty.

Expand full comment
Conrad Riker's avatar

I genuinely would like to know more about the "intersection" of feminism and Islam.

Can Islam stand against postmodernity?

I very much doubt it.

Although Pakistan is targeting a population greater than half a billion by the end of the century. Won't they start demanding welfare to feed single mothers? If not, why not. Or simply migrate else where and start becoming feminist. Or intensify abortion.

Who knows?

Expand full comment
Peter1's avatar

The feminists never figured that one. By discouraging women from reproducing our population will wither and vanish to be replaced by third world baby producers. Some utopia.

Expand full comment
PAUL NATHANSON's avatar

The Left, unfortunately, has no monopoly on brainwashing techniques. Another example would have been Nazi Germany, when children were trained in school and in compulsory youth organizations for both boys and girls to believe that no one superseded the Leader in wisdom or authority, not even their own parents--and, as religious parents soon found out, not even God. As a result, parents worried, with good reason, that their own children might betray them for disobedience to the Nazi party or disloyalty to the Aryan race (let alone for hiding Jews or helping dissidents). As a result, many parents ended up colluding in private with teachers and other authority figures (along with propaganda) in brainwashing the nation.

Expand full comment
Orr's avatar

The Nazis did not use brainwashing techniques. Brainwashing was unknown during WWII. Brainwashing techniques were developed by communist regimes during the Cold War, and only came to Western attention through the work of Lifton and Biderman in the late 1950's. For example Biderman's Chart of Coercion published in 1957 identified eight specific methods employed by Chinese communist forces to brainwash captured US pilots during the Korean War: Isolation; Monopolization of perception; Induced debilitation and exhaustion; Threats; Occasional indulgences; Demonstrating "omnipotence" and "omniscience"; Degradation; Enforcing trivial demands. German schoolchildren and Hitler Youth were not subjected to these techniques. They were subjected to propaganda, not brainwashing. In the context of this article it's an important distinction.

Expand full comment
PAUL NATHANSON's avatar

I used "brainwashing" in a broad sense; maybe "indoctrination" would have been a better word. But the effects were similar, and so were the methods--which included far more than propaganda. Nazi indoctrination relied on systematic psychological manipulation and intimidation.

The Nazis understood that this process was easier with children, whose identities were more malleable than those of adults. Being a radical movement, not a conservative one, Nazi ideology saw in its children the seeds of a utopian society--one that could be attained only by first destroying the family, the church and all other traditional institutions.

But there were two differences in this respect between the Nazis and the Communists. The Communists applied their methods to individuals, while the Nazis applied theirs to communities. Moreover, the Nazis not only systematically undermined the identity of an in-group (the traditional identity of Germans as Christians or at least as individual moral agents) but also systematically attacked the identity of out-groups (such as Jews). Of greatest importance was how Germans perceived Jews, but the dehumanization was designed to affect Jews, too, and therefore to discourage resistance. Either way, the goal was to replace one identity with another in order to achieve political goals. I see a very useful parallel between women as the new Aryans and men as the new Jews. And what's most germane to this essay is the current manipulation of women and men.

Although the research of Lifton and Biderman is directly (historically) related to Communist techniques of mind control, more than a few of the findings can be applied to Nazi techniques--and indeed to those of religious cults. In my own work, I analyze both Communism and Nazism as "secular religions" of the type that is associated with fundamentalism.

Expand full comment
Orr's avatar

"The Communists applied their methods to individuals, while the Nazis applied theirs to communities."

Therein lies the fundamental difference between propaganda and brainwashing. Propaganda is broadcast to an entire population, via media, in schools, etc., while brainwashing is applied to the individual. As Tom puts it: "A psychological attack on your identity - followed by shame, blame, and the expectation that you publicly confess and "rebuild" yourself according to the group's ideology." Tom gives specific examples of Feminist brainwashing: "In HR meetings, classrooms, and even therapy, men are asked to "acknowledge their privilege," to "own their part in the patriarchy", and to pledge allegiance to ideologies that blame them collectively." To which I would add domestic violence rehabilitation programmes, where accused men (never women!) are forced to undergo humiliation, self-criticism, confession, etc., in week long camps away with other accused men. These programmes employ all the classic coercive techniques of brainwashing identified by Biderman in 1957. No such programmes were operated by the Nazis. Certainly there are striking parallels between Nazi treatment of Jews and Feminist treatment of men, but unlike Feminist efforts to brainwash men, the Nazis never sought to brainwash Jews. They sought to eradicate them completely.

Expand full comment
Conrad Riker's avatar

Good point.

Although they were so extreme, it's like horse shoe theory.

The socialists and nationalists wrapped around and embraced.

Expand full comment
Douglas's avatar

"...the family courts don’t just separate fathers from their children — they separate men from their dignity and their purpose..."

Great phrasing and good to read an acknowledgement of that part of social engineering.

This is not only in the USA. By my experience, in the UK, too. By what I have heard running a forum where many expressed their angst and bewilderment (having assumed that justice would prevail) it happens across huge areas of the world, too.

Meanwhile, the statistical evidence continues to build of the problems caused in society by children not having dad at home.

Expand full comment
Conrad Riker's avatar

This is a weak spot in the feminist Marxist edifice.

Most men don't believe it exists.

It's too evil to accept.

So spreading information would potentially enable it's down fall. It would only take restoration of principles of law such as fairness, considering everyone's interests, due process, natural rights, and constitutional law. It'll be just the stroke of a pen when it happens.

Right now we raise a brigade of new converts every day when USAs family courts hear 10,000 cases. At least 5,000 new men are inducted into the two tier injustice clown universe of "family law". They'll be mad, some won't make it, but many ultimately will accept reality.

Expand full comment
Steven Work's avatar

I publicly argue that anyone that separates or actively supports such separation of fathers-children or parents-children should be publicly killed along with every one that hired or professionally supports them or connected to them along with all older adults in all their bloodlines.

It would require a bullet in my brain to change my mind, and frankly that would be somewhat better than this Hell with so many insane evil Feminized vile putrid demonic-possessed forms called from the pits of Hell and wrapped in human skin.

Of course, when I am Rightly and Justly Pope-King of the world, I (we) will serve and shape the world out of Hell and into God's Grace and Love as He walks or gardens or dances or .. with us all though our days of Meaning, as we serve and finely Enthrone Truth, Justice, Order, Charity, Love, .. in my place at our death.

--

One of the best solutions to this Synagogue of Satan Witch controlled hell would be to discover those 15 or so most powerful international interconnected families that rule with Satanic help all the world and us peoples, and order families by power, greatest on top, by using NSA and other 5-eyes.

Include not less than 3 levels down their webs of Witches' control network that serve them and at lowest level have minions in our families and workplaces and powerful institutions etc.

Make public the most powerful family's adult members, and command them to rule us all - in public to improve the least of us the most, and all of us more by growing and spreading truth, justice, order, Joy, Love, Meaning, .. and every 6 months everyone polled world-wide, and if 2 consecutive 6-months periods with poor betterment metrics then the entire family's blood-line adults will be publicly hanged, and the 2nd most powerful family taken over.

This is Just because they have been ruling for centuries, serving Satan in the Dark. They want power and to rule, okay, they get it and must do it well - or die in public hanging over the corpses of their entire bloodline adults.

Seem Just?

Do we hope for a future we can raise big loving families in? Well then, .. I offer my service to us all;

"Multiverse Journal - Index Number 2211:, 16th May 2025, Proposal and Apologetic; I should be Accepted as world Pope-King, How and Why..."

https://stevenwork.substack.com/p/multiverse-journal-index-number-2211

Expand full comment
Mason Blake's avatar

‘Deadbeat dad’ works because it erases the timeline. No one asks what he went through before the label stuck…

Expand full comment
PAUL NATHANSON's avatar

This essay could well be your best ever, Tom, except that a few of your recent ones have met the same very high standard. You get an A+ for insight and clarity.

Of great importance is your willingness to add a specifically moral vocabulary to the usual psychological one. What we need so desperately is not so much group therapy, I think, but also moral reawakening. To regain moral stamina would mean recovering a specifically moral sensibility. No academic jargon can replace that.

Hatred is inherently evil, for instance, not merely ignorant or delusional or counterproductive (let alone something like "unnatural"). And unlike the ideologues, I suggest that its origin is not only "out there" with "them" but also "in here" within "us."

As it happens, we still have at our disposal (although we won't have it for long if we succumb to collective amnesia) is a moral vocabulary that has emerged over countless generations either through interpreting divine revelation (according to religious people) or through trial and error (according to secular people). No matter what its original context, the "golden rule" self-evidently makes moral sense as the bottom line for communal life at any time and in any place. No society can endure, in fact, unless everyone can agree on the need to "Do unto others ..." or "Do not do unto others ..." (or both). This is the sine qua non for any notion of fairness or justice and therefore our ultimate weapon in defense of our civilization (or any civilization) against any ideology--including feminism and its current allies.

Expand full comment