Can you love men AND “decenter” them?

What this practice actually MEANS. #TransparentTuesday

Hi friend,

I’ve been writing a lot lately about the importance of “decentering men,” but I haven’t really stopped to actually define and explain this term for anyone who hasn’t come across it yet.

Decentering men is basically just the practice of consciously shifting the primary focus of a person’s life away from the male gaze, male validation, and patriarchal expectations. 

This specific term happens to be gaining some popularity and momentum in the zeitgeist right now, but the practice itself is nothing new—it’s just another way of talking about divesting from  patriarchy and rejecting self-objectification, and we’ve seen examples of it happening all throughout history. 

The Benguines, for example, was a movement that took place in 13th century medieval Europe, in which thousands of Christian women rejected the two options women were presented with at that time—traditional marriages to men, or becoming a nun—and chose instead to build unique, autonomous, women-led communities called “beguinages,” where they worked, supported each other, and lived freely. 

And in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a trend arose in which two women eschewed traditional marriage, instead forming their own household and building their lives around one another, which came to be referred to as a “Boston Marriage. (Note: some of these partnerships were romantic or sexual, but many others were not.)

And painter Georgia O’Keeffe famously traveled solo for her work, spending extended time painting in New Mexico while her husband stayed behind in New York, which was an extremely unusual marriage arrangement for the 1920s. 

So no, the concept of women choosing to decenter men and shift their focus toward their own agency, autonomy, passions, purpose, and fulfillment isn’t new… but it is disturbingly relevant right now. 

We’re in a moment when far right political influence is trying to drag us back into an era of traditional gender roles, traditional “family values,” and traditionally evangelical and gender essentialist ideas about “complimentarianism” and “helpmates.” A moment when regressive mainstream rhetoric is constantly reinforcing false bullshit about how men are biologically wired to be dominant, while women are wired to be submissive to him, and that unselfconsciously blames women for getting raped. A moment when the combined rise of GLP1s, plastic surgery, medical “tweakments,” and social media have made it so that appealing to the male gaze feels absolutely essential for many women, and doing it “right” is a costly full-time job. 

In other words, patriarchy is having a moment in the sun again—presumably as a sort of backlash to the progressive sociopolitical climate of the 2010s—and women are being heavily encouraged to view themselves as providers of care labor and objects of desire.

And the primary beneficiary of both roles is men. 

So yes, we absolutely must be aggressive and proactive in fighting back against patriarchy’s newly invigorated movement to push women deeper into their own captivity. 

• We must be identifying, challenging, and rejecting our own internalized oppression, including both our conscious and unconscious biases and beliefs that support or uphold the patriarchy. 

• We must be seeking to heal from, dismantle, and overcome the ways in which we’re being hijacked and disempowered by self-objectification—often first by cultivating body neutrality, but by no means stopping there. 

• We must stop thinking of male approval, validation, respect, praise, or even desire as inherently valuable, or as something worth seeking…which means we must learn how to provide those things to ourselves and each other, and cultivate a sense of ourselves which is already whole and worthy.

• And we must be learning to radically value, center, and prioritize our own needs, desires, dreams, goals, hobbies, passions, pleasure, joy, and relationships (other than romantic partnership).

Decentering men, then, is the crucial practice of identifying and rejecting your own false brainwashing about sex, gender, and relationships with men… and of choosing to stop organizing your own time, energy, interests, goals, identity, or confidence around men, male validation, or the male gaze whatsoever. 

But what does the practice of decentering men actually look like?

Well it will look different for each individual, because it’s entirely dependent on one’s circumstances, but it can be done through actions both big or small, and direct or indirect. It can take place externally through actions, or internally through changes in thoughts and feelings. It can be delivered with sweetness or with aggression. And it can directly involve your interactions with men or it can just be about choosing to prioritize yourself.

To give you an example, some women right now are indeed opting to stop dating, sleeping, and partnering with men altogether.

For some, this is because they’re bisexual or pansexual and have decided simply to shift their focus in the dating space, and for others it’s because they have recognized that partnering with a man is far worse for their health and happiness than being single. 

But decentering men doesn’t have to mean avoiding them altogether, and it doesn’t have to represent an actual rejection of men. Plenty of women who are married to men, raising boys, or simply loves men are engaging in this practice too.

Because decentering men isn’t about punishment, aversion, teaching men a lesson, or condemning them.

It’s about deciding to liberate yourself, and refuse to participate in your own oppression. It’s about deciding to fully claim and inhabit your own agency and power, even when the world says you can’t. It’s about deciding that you are already deserving, and centering your own happiness and fulfillment, instead of spending your life in search of wholeness or validation.

Decentering men is about refusing to continue participating in the make-believe power structure that patriarchy tells us is the “natural way of things,” and about deciding we don’t need to wait for the whole world to change to become free. 

When I’m working with clients, decentering men can look like:

1. Learning how to receive and enjoy pleasure without guilt or obligation, especially with regard to sex and orgasm.

2. Learning how to grieve and release the fantasy that if only she could be perfect enough, then a man would choose her and love her so powerfully that all her childhood wounds would be healed. 

3. Learning how to stop fawning/appeasing, advocate for herself, and hold men accountable for their words and behaviors. 

4. Learning how to set boundaries and stop over-functioning at home, so that her male partner is no longer unfairly benefitting from her labor, or protected from the consequences of his own actions. 

5. Reclaiming a large chunk of time and energy that was previously spent care-taking others, or making herself available to men (i.e.: her partner, potential dates, co-workers, etc.), and learning to redirect it toward connecting with, developing, and prioritizing her own interests, desires, and goals. 

6. Identifying the ways in which she has been unconsciously “performing femininity,” or performing “for the male gaze,” and challenging each individual layer until the performance has been dismantled and nothing is being done automatically; everything is a consciously decided choice.

One of the most frustrating parts of this work, however, is that there’s a big difference between the intellectual and the embodied. 

It’s very common to understand all of this on a conscious level, and to agree with every single word… but yet still find yourself unconsciously organizing your time, energy, decision-making, relationships, or sense of self-worth around men, the male gaze, and internalized patriarchal beliefs.

You know his disappointment isn’t technically yours to fix… but when your plans seem to visibly bum him out, you still battle with yourself about whether or not to change them. 

You know you’re deserving of care and pleasure, and that it’s totally fine for some sexual encounters to be focused entirely on you… but in the moment, you find yourself too anxious or self-conscious to really enjoy it, so at a certain point you flip the attention back onto him.

That gap between your feminist beliefs and what you actually find yourself thinking, feeling, and doing is exactly where coaching can help.

This is the work I’ve been doing with many of my female clients for a long time. In coaching, we can identify the specific places where patriarchal conditioning is running your life, practice interrupting the pattern, and learn to respond differently in the actual situations where you keep getting pulled back in. 

I’m now offering 1:1 coaching specifically focused on decentering men, rejecting self-objectification, and reclaiming your life from patriarchal conditioning.

If you know me primarily for body image coaching, this is a new, separate focus you can work with me on. You don’t need to have body image struggles to get support with any of the things we’ve talked about today.

(Although admittedly, they very often go hand-in-hand!)

The details aren’t up on my website yet, so hit reply and write “decentering” if you’d like to know more. I’ll send you how the coaching works and what it costs, and we can talk about whether it fits what you’re looking for. That one word is plenty to start the conversation.

Big hug,

Jessi