The fact is that manhood is an aspirational and not a stable state. It needs proving, but furthermore it needs context. Boys are brought up to understand that their gender is one that entitles them to autonomy and dominion over others, BUT they're also expected to defer to older, more powerful men.

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The contradiction between your gender being power and authority while also needing to obey your father, your teacher, your boss, your captain, is to treat those as temporary states, as "dues" you must pay before you get to have your turn with the Patriarch Stick, violating those below you.

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The way men haze each other in frats and militaries, the way they only claim femininity and emotionality in contexts that mock both, the way they subject each other to violence and penetration is not divorced from patriarchy just because there are no women present---though sometimes there are.

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Male homosociality IS shaped by rape culture. It is their rehearsal for how they are to treat their inferiors, especially women.

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Queer men and transfeminine individuals are most often relegated to the bottom of these hierarchies for obvious reasons, pun intended. But this happens to hetero, cis men too. They understand sex as power and authority and violence, and learn to exercise it over everyone they wish to dominate.

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