Part 2: The Death of Male Strength: Why Men Cling to Control

In Part 1 (read that before you dive in today), I shared my father's story and how it opened my eyes to the ways men use control as a substitute for genuine connection. Now I want to explore why this is happening, why so many men are clinging to dominance even as the world changes around us.

Read Part 1: Raking Leaves: My Father's Escape and What It Taught Me About Masculinity

Traditional Strength Doesn't Mean Anything Anymore

The more I sit with this, the clearer it becomes: traditional male strength means nothing anymore. We don't need to lift boulders or fight off wild animals to survive. I'm not hoisting a server over my head to run ChatGPT. I'm sitting in a chair typing.

Women and men are doing the same work now. The old physical advantages don't matter. The days are long gone when physical strength was our number one asset. And if those advantages go away, what are we left with? What do we cling to for identity?

Many men cling to control.

The Truth We've Avoided: Women Are the Godlike Ones

From the beginning of time, men have been the lesser of the two, physically bigger, maybe, but not more powerful. Women create life. Women endure. Women are emotionally complex in ways men weren't allowed to be. Women are as close to godly as you can get.

A woman creates one life in nine months. A man can go "deposit" anywhere, anytime. That's not a skill. That's not sacred. It's a biological function no more magical than a car starting.

Yet the propaganda machine told us the opposite: Men are superior. Men are leaders. Women should be controlled, suppressed, and domesticated.

Couldn't have credit cards. Couldn't buy homes. Couldn't hold jobs. Couldn't exist without us.

We had to push them down to a point where they had to give up many things and become submissive. They had to be under control. Maybe there was a time when I had to farm the land and work with steer and just needed to be physically strong. But those days are long gone.

That wasn't biology; it was insecurity wrapped in propaganda.

The Boomer Generation and Over-Sexualization

The older generation, the boomers currently melting down in the political sphere, grew up marinating in porn, shame, repression, and no emotional education whatsoever. My dad grew up with nothing but over-sexualization. Trump, Epstein, all these boomers we're discussing, they all grew up in a time of over-sexualization. They saw Ron Jeremy's 11-inch dick and then looked down at themselves and thought:

"I'm not enough. I'm not powerful. I'm not worthy."

So what did they chase? Power. Dominance. Control. Hierarchy. Fantasy. Submissiveness.

It's all fear-based. It's all inadequacies, and they're inadequate because they're not as powerful as women. They're not as godly as women. They're a workhorse out in the field, and now we don't really need that workhorse.

So what did they do? They brought down the whole United States. They brought down women. They blamed women. Entire political systems were built around those fears. They became monsters.

We Brought It Into Our Homes

And here's the uncomfortable truth: we didn't just watch this happen from a distance. We brought these toxic expectations into our homes, into our marriages, into our bedrooms. We expected women to perform. We expected them to be like the things we saw. We wanted to control them.

I was no exception to this. And that realization has been one of the hardest things I've had to face.

Next in this series: Part 3 - "Propaganda Becomes Blueprint: How We Learned to Control Instead of Connect"