The historical and ongoing oppression of women is an undeniable truth. For centuries, systemic structures have limited, controlled, and subordinated women. The fight for equality—for basic rights, safety, autonomy, and opportunity—remains our urgent and necessary work. It is from this clear starting point that we must carefully examine the path forward.In the vital effort to dismantle these systems, a tempting but flawed narrative can emerge, particularly in how we consider raising the next generation. It’s the idea that if the old model enforced male dominance, then the corrective must be to simply reverse the roles. This sometimes manifests as a belief that boys should be raised primarily to serve, defer, and orbit the needs of girls, framing masculinity itself as a problem to be managed. Yet justice is not a seesaw, and true equality is never achieved by placing a different group under the weight.
Choosing to raise boys to be subservient to women doesn’t solve the core issue; it simply engineers new social problems. This approach replicates the very harmful model it seeks to replace, as subservience requires the diminishment of the self. Teaching any child that their primary value lies in unquestioning service to another group is a dehumanizing dynamic, not a blueprint for collaboration. It also stunts emotional development. Boys raised under this ethos often learn to suppress their own valid needs, boundaries, and emotions to avoid being labeled problematic. This doesn’t cultivate empathetic allies; it risks creating young men filled with repressed resentment and a fractured sense of identity, solving an “empathy gap” by denying them their own full humanity.
Furthermore, this framework undermines the potential for authentic relationships. Healthy connections—romantic, professional, or platonic—are built on mutual respect and the ability for both people to show up as full, autonomous individuals. A dynamic of mandated deference makes genuine partnership impossible, instead laying groundwork for dependency and covert power struggles. Finally, this binary view collapses under the reality of intersectionality. A boy facing marginalization due to race, class, or disability does not navigate a world of simple privilege. Instructing him in blanket subservience ignores his complex layers of experience, potentially further alienating him within the broader pursuit of justice.
The alternative, then, is not to switch who holds the leash, but to break the leash altogether. Our goal should be to raise children capable of equal partnership. For our sons, this means fostering self-awareness and emotional literacy, so they can healthily understand their own feelings and thereby genuinely respect the feelings of others. It means nurturing critical thinkers, not blanket apologists—boys who understand historical inequities not to wear a hair shirt of guilt, but to develop a passionate commitment to justice. They must become boundary-respecters who also hold their own boundaries, understanding that consent and autonomy are mutual. Ultimately, we must guide them to be partners, not protectors or servants; teammates in building a life or a better world, not characters locked in a reversed hierarchy.
True feminism, the kind that liberates everyone, was never about supremacy. It is about dismantling a system that boxes everyone into restrictive, painful roles. As bell hooks taught us, feminism is for everybody. The rigid, dominating model of traditional masculinity harms men, too. Raising boys to be subservient doesn’t heal that harm; it inflicts a different version of it.
Let’s not raise our sons to serve women. Let’s raise them to stand beside women, and beside all people, as fully realized, respectful, and liberated human beings. The destination isn’t a flipped power structure. It’s a level field where everyone can finally stand tall, together.
