The conversation around gender equity is evolving. Slowly, more people are beginning to recognize that patriarchy is not just a “women’s issue.” Patriarchy is a systemic structure that harms everyone — including men — by promoting silence, shame, and dominance over empathy, autonomy, and mutual respect. It dictates who is allowed to speak, whose pain is validated, and whose humanity is recognized. And for generations, it has quietly dictated the rules of power while convincing society that these rules are natural.
But as long-overdue discussions begin to surface, there is a familiar pattern that often interrupts them: deflection. When women speak about violence, erasure, or systemic inequality, the response is too often an immediate pivot: “Not all men.” “Men suffer too.” “What about us?” In doing so, the focus shifts away from the specific harm being addressed and onto the comfort of those who feel implicated.
These reactions aren’t just unproductive — they are a survival mechanism of the system itself. By derailing the conversation, the status quo remains intact. And the cycle of dismissal, invalidation, and avoidance continues. It’s a tactic as old as the system itself: keep the conversation away from change by making it about offense instead of injustice.
Yet society has been conditioned to interpret calls for justice as personal attacks — especially when those calls come from marginalized voices. This is how empathy gets replaced with defensiveness, and listening gets replaced with rebuttal. When every story of inequality is met with “What about me?”, the original point is lost, and the problem remains unsolved.
The truth is, patriarchy enforces roles and expectations that limit the emotional, physical, and intellectual freedom of everyone. It shames men for being vulnerable, forcing them into emotional isolation. It punishes women for being outspoken, branding assertiveness as hostility. It erases nonbinary and trans people altogether, denying their existence and their rights. These harms are interconnected — but they are not interchangeable. Each requires its own acknowledgment and its own solutions.
To move forward, we must center the voices that have been silenced the longest. That means listening without defensiveness, even when the truth is uncomfortable. It means addressing systemic inequality without rerouting the narrative to soothe fragile egos. It means showing up for others’ struggles without demanding equal airtime for your own in that moment. And it means understanding that solidarity requires discomfort, because comfort is a privilege of the unaffected.
Justice cannot be built on silence. It begins by refusing to deflect and choosing, instead, to listen. Listening is not passive — it is an active choice to make space for truth, to let discomfort transform understanding, and to allow empathy to replace defensiveness. The work of equity begins here, in this choice to hear and to stay present.