Episode 3: How can we smash the patriarchy if we can’t stop breaking each other’s hearts? Bear Hebert on undoing patriarchy, natural inquiries into compatibility and aligning our behavior and words.

Bear Hebert is a writer, researcher, coach, artist and activist. They have been thinking about and working against patriarchy arguably for their whole life but certainly for the past fifteen years. Bear is a white, queer, working-class, genderqueer human with a background in activism and cultural organizing.  Bear is teaching a course called Undoing Patriarchy because through their relationships with the men they’ve worked with, dated and been friends with, they’ve seen the ways that internalized, unconscious patriarchal conditioning holds men back from intimacy, vulnerability, and connection. Patriarchy gives men privilege, but it can strip them of their humanity as well. Bear is invested in helping men to unlearn these unconscious patterns because they believe this work is essential for the liberation of all people.  The next cohort starts next week Jan 21-February 24 (Tuesdays 8-10 EST on zoom)  UNDOING PATRIARCHY: AN ONLINE COURSE FOR MEN+ For so many men, traditional masculinity doesn’t fit. There are spoken and unspoken rules that dictate how men are supposed to dress, walk, stand, talk, screw, look and feel that may not be in alignment with who you really are.  Because of this, traditionally male spaces can feel tremendously alienating. The locker room, the basketball court, or the corner bar: can you truly be yourself there?  But then what? If you don’t fit into patriarchy’s boxes of who a man can be, where do you go when there’s seemingly no other socially sanctioned way to be?  What are the options? Pretend to be a bro and suffer from living out of alignment with who you truly are or step outside of prescribed social norms and risk the consequences.  Compulsory masculinity is a trap, and the stakes for pretending otherwise are higher than ever.