Bianca Zander investigates the trend for women ‘decentering men’ from their lives, and asks: is technology driving men and women further apart than ever?
Each generation comes up with a new way to chip away at that dusty old relic, the patriarchy, and in this current minute, when life is lived online and nothing is nuanced, we have You Tube and Tiktok influencers shouting at women to stop putting men at the centre of their lives.
The “Decentering men” phenomenon started in the early 2020s and has gained traction, particularly among cis heterosexual women, exploding into every corner of the media. Of course it’s huge on social media, but there are also podcasts, online manuals, more than one book. Search “Decenter Men” on Tiktok and take your pick from 28.5 million posts. Much of what you’ll find takes the form of advice and it sounds like this: “Don’t give up your self-worth for the sake of dating a man.” “Don’t prioritise men over your friendships with women.” And my favourite: “Decentering men in my life forced me to step back and really see men for what they are. I realise they are just human beings, with often inflated egos. I don’t need to be huffing and puffing over them so much. They’re simply not that big a deal.”
We’ve been here before, of course, burning bras and peering into hand mirrors, but this time we’re doing it in shellac nails and hydrating primer, and navigating a pretty toxic dating culture.
“I’m a little cynical about the Decentering Men movement” says Tania Domett, from New Zealand feminist innovation studio Project Gender. “It feels like a throw-back to 1970s feminism with its key messages of self-love and empowerment. There’s nothing wrong with these messages but where we’re at now in the struggle for gender equity needs a more strategic approach.”
To this point, the gender pay gap is still nudging 10 percent, and the retirement savings gap between men and women is 36 percent. “Bringing about social change requires going to where the power is,” says Domett. “Men still have the power and we need to do the opposite of decentering them, they need to pony up and start sharing power – the patriarchy will not be dismantled by women alone.”
'I would be in charge, like a mum'
At a personal level, among straight women, decentering men usually takes the form of building a life that’s happily and decidedly single. Papamoa dog trainer Misha Gildenberger, 39, has been decentering men from her life for almost three years and insists she’s never been happier. “I do whatever I want, whenever I want. If I want to go for a weekend somewhere, I just go. If I want to spend the day in my pyjamas, I just do it. If I want to work all day, I just do it. My time is mine. Once you realise how amazing that is to not have to worry about anyone in your life except for your dog, it's just such a peace of mind.”
Originally from Argentina, Gildenberger has gone out with Argentine, Canadian and New Zealand men, but it made no difference where they came from. “Unfortunately, in all of my relationships, the men I’ve been with at some point became children. I would be in charge of everything, like a mum, and I only found one man in all my relationships who was self-sufficient. One man that could clean his own clothes, cook dinner for us, have a plan for the weekend. We were equals.”
When she looks around for positive relationship role models, she can’t find any. “Every time I meet with friends and they have partners, they just either complain 24/7 about how wrong their partners are for this, this or this reason, or they are fully surrendered to whatever the man does or says, and I just look at them and go, my God!”
Gildenberger says she could understand this scenario if the man was a multi-millionaire and the woman was in it for the lifestyle that money affords. “But when you are in a relationship and you are equals but somehow you end up doing lots more and knowing lots more than the other one. To the point of cleaning the house, picking up the freaking socks that they leave everywhere, walking the dog, cooking for both of us, adding romanticism to the couple like date nights and restaurants and getaways and you end up doing everything…”
Whenever she feels lonely, which is rarely, Gildenberger only has to conjure up all of the other feelings that come with bringing a man into her life, and the longing for one goes away. “Yes, I don’t have all of the love part, but I don’t have all of the drama part.”
'Women expect more from men than ever before'
Relationship and family therapist Serafin Upton, one of the founders of the Men’s Health Collective, Aotearoa, says men have been outsourced and that masculinity is in crisis. “Men aren’t socialised to have social and emotional skills, women expect more from men than they ever have before, but men are massively lacking in the skills needed to be relational with women and with one another. Men who harm women are both ashamed and they [have a sense of entitlement] because they have not been shown how to traverse modern relationships with anyone.”
“Fourth wave feminism has been a disaster in a lot of ways. These days when I refer to myself as a feminist, I feel my heart sink a little bit because whilst I am passionate about women's rights and women's safety, I really worry about men's wellbeing and mental health because half of my clients are good men and I am raising a boy to become a good man. It's complex.”
Around the world, men and women are becoming increasingly polarised by their political views. While women are voting for liberal agendas, men are gravitating towards authoritarian leaders and conservative regimes. Underpinning this are statistics that women are steadily becoming better educated than men, with about ten per cent more women gaining tertiary degrees in both America and the EU. The trend is reflected here with RNZ reporting in 2022 that male university attendance had hit an all time low of 39 percent. Going to university arguably makes you more likely to absorb a progressive, egalitarian outlook and so that gap contributes to a drifting apart of the sexes. In many Western countries, including this one, birth and marriage rates are declining. New Zealand’s birth rate has reached it’s lowest point since World War II.
'Social media has this dehumanising effect'
“Like it or not, we’re on the planet together, we’re in communities together, with families together,” says Richie Hardcore, who is an educator and speaker on masculinity and sexual and family violence prevention. “Is there a legitimate set of grievances that women can hold towards men in regards to domestic violence, sexual violence, and who gets a say in policy and legislation and business? Yes, entirely.” But, he says, to take it a step further and remove relationships between men and women does a lot to re-entrench historical divisions.
Technology has a lot to answer for. We live in a world where radical polarisation is the norm, aided by social media algorithms that are fuelling gender segregation. While women are served videos on how to Decenter Men without ruining your mani-pedi, over in the “Manosphere” – an interconnected network of anti-feminist blogs and influencers – dudes are seeing rants about Men Going Their Own Way, a separatist movement where men slowly cut women out of their lives.
“You can't have these conversations about 'men going their own way' or 'decentering men' and not reflect on the fact that we've got incredibly high rates of anxiety and depression,” says Hardcore. “People are on all manner of psychiatric drugs to deal with this when in fact a lot of what could help our mental health statistics is this coming together in human connection. If we forget about the fact that we’re innately social creatures and we require strong social networks for wellbeing, then none of that’s going to get better.”
Hardcore doesn’t think anyone should get a pass for bad behaviour but: “If we want our boys to be nicer to our girls, our sons to our daughters, our young men with our young women, we really need to show them what that looks like.” What does that look like? Hardcore works with young boys in school to help them step outside the stereotypical boxes of masculinity and to model experiences that help them develop empathy, which they are not getting in a world saturated with social media, gaming and porn. “Social media has this dehumanising effect. Computer games have a dehumanising effect. Pornography objectifies women and reduces them to sexual commodities to be used, and we’re doing nowhere near enough about it.”
Belgian-American psychologist and author Esther Perel talks about the rise of Artificial Intimacy since technology entered our relationships, and how it is depriving us of real connection. Hardcore sees this too, in the way hook-up apps encourage a culture of fast sexual intimacy and ghosting that is harming young people. “I understand the impetus, and there’s logical self-preservation in suggesting that you don't need men to be in your life if you have continuously been hurt by men. But if that’s become a viral movement and a TikTok trend and it's influencing young people's perceptions of how to form relationships, it strikes me as understandable but counterproductive.”
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