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The conversation about masculinity has long been poisoned by those who mistake dominance for strength and conquest for achievement. This corruption is not new—it is the logic of tyrants and slavemasters that men of conscience have resisted throughout history.
True masculine energy—the kind that built movements, protected communities, and stood against empires—has nothing to do with accumulating power over others.
It's about cultivating power with others, channeling strength toward liberation rather than control.
When I think of masculine power done right, I think of Fred Hampton organizing the Rainbow Coalition at 21, Frederick Douglass risking everything to free others, MLK refusing to meet violence with violence, Jesus overturning tables in the temple, Thich Nhat Hanh disarming a soldier's fear through mindful communication, Morihei Ueshiba creating aikido as "the art of peace," Carl Sagan standing in awe before the cosmos. These men understood something fundamental: real strength means using the power you have in service to life itself, not in service to your ego or status.
From an ecological perspective, this difference becomes even clearer. Healthy ecosystems thrive on interdependence, not domination hierarchies. The most "successful" organisms aren't those that hoard resources or crush competitors—they're the ones that find their niche, contribute to the larger system, and recognize that their flourishing depends on the flourishing of the whole. Masculinity rooted in this understanding doesn't see relationships as zero-sum competitions or other people as threats to status. It sees itself as one part of an interconnected web where genuine strength comes from building resilience in the commons—the shared resources, relationships, and systems that sustain us all. This is Lao Tzu's teaching: "The best leaders are those the people hardly know exist... When the best leader's work is done, the people say, 'We did it ourselves.'" The masculine urge to protect and provide gets channeled not into controlling a nuclear family unit or defending property, but into defending the conditions that allow all life to thrive.
This is why authentic masculinity has always been revolutionary, not reactionary. The men who actually changed history—who freed slaves, challenged empires, built unions, resisted fascism—weren't defending hierarchies or seeking to dominate. They were fighting against domination itself, using their strength to dismantle systems of power rather than climb them. Frederick Douglass didn't escape slavery to become a master; he escaped to abolish the institution entirely. Hampton didn't want to be the boss; he wanted to build collective power that made bosses obsolete. Jesus didn't seek a throne; he washed feet and ate with outcasts. Daryl Davis dismantled hatred not through force but through the radical act of listening—sitting down with Klansmen, treating them as human beings capable of change, and watching them abandon white supremacy one conversation at a time. This is masculine energy aligned with the Sufi principle of fana—the dissolution of ego in service to something greater, what Rumi meant when he wrote, "Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray." It's the recognition that your individual power means nothing if it's not used to increase the power of the oppressed and protect the vulnerable.
The billionaire-worshipping, ICE-simping, pronoun-obsessed version of "masculinity" being sold today is a pathetic counterfeit.
Real men don't worship the rich—we recognize that billionaires are parasites extracting wealth from our collective labor and hoarding resources that belong to the commons.
Real men don't simp for fascists—we understand that authoritarianism is what cowards embrace when they're too weak to handle freedom and equality.
Real men aren't threatened by pronouns or feminism—we recognize that patriarchy damages everyone, including men, and that liberation means dismantling all hierarchies of domination.
The panic over "wokeness" is just ego fragility dressed up as principle. Thich Nhat Hanh would say it is an example of men suffering from seeds of prejudice, fear, hate and delusion, which causes them suffering and leads their suffering to spill onto others.
Daryl Davis understood this deeply enough to sit across from Klansmen and disarm their prejudice without shame or judgment. He recognized that Klansmen's hate depended on never actually knowing a Black person as a full human being—so he became impossible to caricature simply by being present, patient, and real. This is masculine strength as fierce compassion: the patience and moral clarity to live the larger story of brotherhood so confidently that the smaller story of hate lost its credibility one conversation at a time.
Fred Rogers practiced a similar principle when teaching children. When he said, "There's no person in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are," he was modeling radical acceptance—making space for everyone rather than demanding conformity.
LeVar Burton spent decades showing children that intelligence isn't something you prove by making others feel stupid—it's something you share by making others curious.
Bernie Sanders embodies the same principle in the political arena: masculine strength as a lifetime of service to working people, saying the same thing about economic justice for sixty years whether it's popular or not, joining labor strikes and fighting the good fight while other people his age long ago retired to play golf.
Ueshiba founded aikido on the principle that true victory is victory over oneself, redirecting an opponent's aggression rather than meeting it with greater violence. Thich Nhat Hanh taught that "peace is every step," that the work of transformation begins with breathing consciously and recognizing our interbeing with all life. This is the courage to be vulnerable, the discipline to choose compassion over cruelty, the wisdom to know that defending your ego is not the same as defending justice. It's Carl Sagan's humility before the vastness of the cosmos, recognizing we're made of starstuff and therefore responsible to all of life. It's the Sufi understanding that the divine is in everything, which means harming others is harming the sacred—what Rumi meant when he said "You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop." This is why he also taught that "the wound is the place where the Light enters you": even our brokenness is sacred, which means the places where we've been broken open are where empathy enters, where we learn to recognize ourselves in others' struggles.
The version of masculinity being sold by Trump, ICE enforcers, and grifters like Andrew Tate isn't just morally bankrupt—it's a trap that destroys the men who embrace it.
Thich Nhat Hanh taught that seeds of delusion, once watered, grow into suffering that consumes everything around them. When you build your identity on dominance, you become paranoid that someone will dominate you. When you prove your worth through cruelty, you can never rest because there's always someone to be cruel to, always another test of whether you're "hard" enough.
When you worship hierarchy, you spend your life either crushing those below you or submitting to those above, never experiencing actual freedom. This masculinity doesn't make you strong—it makes you a prisoner of your own performance, constantly proving you're man enough, terrified of the moment you slip and reveal softness. It's exhausting. It's lonely. And it poisons every relationship you have because you can never be fully human, never be seen, never reveal your true self.
What men gain from rejecting this counterfeit is something far more valuable than dominance: they gain actual human connection. Not the shallow brotherhood of hating the same people or the conditional respect that evaporates the moment you show weakness—but friendships where you can admit you're struggling without being seen as a failure. Relationships where your worth isn't measured by how much you earn, how many people you control, or how many women you sleep with. The ability to cry without shame, to ask for help without humiliation, to be uncertain without being dismissed as weak.
They gain purpose rooted in reality rather than fantasy. Instead of chasing some abstract "greatness" that requires stepping on others, they discover meaning in concrete acts: teaching a skill, protecting someone vulnerable, building something that lasts, showing up when people need them. Purpose that doesn't depend on maintaining an enemy or proving they're better than someone else—purpose that comes from being useful to the people and causes they care about.
They gain relationships where intimacy is actually possible—where their partner sees them as a full human being rather than a role to perform, where their children feel safe bringing them pain rather than only success, where their friends know who they actually are rather than the performance they maintain. Trust built on honesty rather than transactions, where vulnerability becomes the foundation of genuine intimacy instead of a liability to hide.
And they gain freedom from the exhausting performance of never being enough—the constant measuring, comparing, proving, defending. Freedom to just be human.
The sacred mission of masculine strength has always been this: to use whatever power you have to defend the commons, nurture what wants to grow, and stand against forces that treat life as disposable—including fascism, which sanctifies "law and order" to justify state brutality.
This is the honorable way to belong: not by dominating others, but by being worthy of trust when the moment demands it. By standing between ICE and your neighbors. By refusing to be a bystander when people are dehumanized. By raising children who know that real men don't prove themselves by creating victims. By protecting your family—and then widening that circle until "family" means everyone whose safety depends on collective resistance to cruelty.
Albert Einstein understood this when he wrote:
"A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe... He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
This isn't abstract philosophy—it's survival strategy. Because the world where ICE can brutalize some people with impunity is a world where state violence can eventually turn on anyone. Because your children aren't safe in a society built on disposability. Because none of us are free while any of us are crushed. This is masculine strength in service to life: using whatever power you have to widen the circle of who counts, who deserves safety, who gets to flourish—until the circle includes everyone and the systems that treat life as disposable have nowhere left to stand.
Tim Hjersted is the director and co-founder of Films For Action, a library dedicated to the people building a more free, regenerative and democratic society.
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