The Myth of One Masculinity: Connell’s Foundational Inversion of Reality

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In this extended critique, we dismantle the first axiom of Raewyn Connell’s hegemonic masculinity theory — the idea that masculinity is a singular structure of dominance. We show how this claim not only collapses under empirical scrutiny, but performs a profound inversion of evolutionary, symbolic, and social realities. Drawing on Gramsci, Jung, and Cognitive Gynocentric Telegony (CGT), we expose how Connell’s theory functions as an ideological mechanism of control, not liberation.

Part 1

The Logical Fallacy, The Inversions of Meaning, The Hegemonic Deflections and the Strategical Rewriting of History and biological - evolutionary reality

Raewyn Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity rests on a foundational axiom: that there exists a singular, dominant ideal of masculinity that organizes gender relations hierarchically. According to Connell, this hegemonic masculinity legitimizes male dominance over women and subordinates other men who fail to embody its traits — whether due to race, class, sexuality, or emotional disposition.

But this is not a sociological insight — it is an ideological construction. A masterstroke of narrative capture that rewrites existential reality in order to produce a politically convenient moral schema. Connell’s theory does not describe power — it constructs a myth of power in order to redistribute moral blame. It is not a framework of analysis, but a framework of accusation. And its primary target is not elite men, but ordinary ones.

Let us begin with the first and most glaring problem: there has never been one hegemonic masculinity. The diversity of male traits, temperaments, strategies, and social roles has always been wide-ranging — from the stoic protector to the cunning artisan, the tribal leader, the flute playing Shepherd, the heartbroken musician (Orpheus), the quiet mystic and to the secluded monk, only to name a few of them. These are not merely cultural constructions; they are archetypal expressions of deeply rooted evolutionary and psychological patterns. Masculinity, like femininity, is a spectrum of responses to biological imperatives shaped by historical and geographical context. What Connell calls “hegemony” is, in reality, the natural consequence of evolutionary differentiation — not an imposition, but an adaptation.

By collapsing this rich plurality into a monolithic villain — “hegemonic masculinity” — Connell commits a double inversion. First, she recasts evolutionarily adaptive traits (strength, assertiveness, protection, provisioning, sacrifice) as hegemonic tools of domination. Then, she lumps all non-conforming men into three neatly pathologized categories: subordinate, marginalized, and complicit masculinities. This is not an act of liberation, but of hegemonic categorization — precisely the kind of power move Connell pretends to critique.

And it gets worse.

Connell ignores a central truth of gendered development: social-cultural expressions of gender are built upon existential-biological foundations. The social is not in opposition to the biological; it is its elaboration. To claim that masculinity is merely a cultural construct, as Connell implies, is akin to arguing that the second floor of a building floats in midair, disconnected from its foundation. In doing so, she repeats the same feminist ontological rupture we have seen throughout the gender-industrial narrative: deny the roots, condemn the branches.

Gramscian Hegemony Turned Upside Down

Connell’s theory also weaponizes the very concept of hegemony she borrows from Antonio Gramsci. For Gramsci, hegemony describes how ruling classes maintain control not through force, but through cultural leadership and the manufacturing of moral consensus. In Connell’s case, however, it is not ruling men who manufacture consensus — it is feminist academia, elite bureaucracies, and ideological media that do so.

Her theory flips Gramsci’s original insight: rather than exposing how oppressed groups internalize elite values, she accuses oppressed men of embodying elite dominance. Thus, working-class men, disabled men, emotionally introverted men — all of whom have suffered exclusion and disposability — are paradoxically recast as agents of patriarchal oppression simply for not rebelling loud enough.

This is the ultimate hegemonic projection. Connell’s framework functions as a form of Gramscian reversal: those most harmed by the system are portrayed as its defenders. This ideological sleight of hand neutralizes working-class resistance, delegitimizes male suffering, and repackages feminist power as social justice. It is not only intellectually dishonest — it is an act of epistemic violence.

CGT and the Deep Conditioning of Male Identity

Cognitive Gynocentric Telegony (CGT) offers a deeper lens into this dynamic. CGT posits that men are culturally programmed from early life to derive worth not from their inherent being, but from their instrumental utility, especially in relation to female validation. Male identity, under CGT, becomes a performance designed to earn approval — particularly from women and the social order that encodes their moral authority.

Connell’s framework intensifies this dynamic. By framing hegemonic masculinity as the only recognized form of male worth — and then condemning it — she closes the loop of psychic capture. The man cannot be accepted unless he disavows what he was conditioned to become. He must either perform the condemned script (and be vilified) or reject it (and be pathologized as complicit or confused). There is no escape — only moral self-subjugation.

In this way, Connell’s theory is not an emancipatory framework. It is a moral machine of guilt, shame, and symbolic castration. The man is forever on trial — not for what he has done, but for who he has been told to become.

The Archetypal Erasure of Masculine Multiplicity

From a Jungian perspective, Connell’s theory performs another grave error: it erases the archetypal diversity of masculine expression. Jung saw masculinity not as a fixed identity but as a constellation of archetypes — the Warrior, the King, the Magician, the Lover — each offering a path to individuation. These archetypes are not bound to domination, nor to violence. They are symbolic energies within the psyche — spiritual blueprints for wholeness.

But Connell flattens all masculine archetypes into a single toxic caricature. In her schema, the Warrior becomes violent, the King becomes authoritarian, the Magician becomes manipulative, and the Lover becomes predatory. There is no redemption, no transcendence, no initiation. Masculinity is not a journey — it is a crime. And this is not theory. This is mythic inversion.

Connell’s framework thus denies men their archetypal birthright. It robs them of symbolic tools for healing. It cuts them off from the unconscious — from dreams, symbols, mythologies that could help them integrate rather than disavow their masculine essence. In this way, Connell’s theory is not only sociologically flawed — it is spiritually violent.

In Conclusion: A Framework of Subjugation, Not Liberation

Connell’s first axiom — the existence of a single hegemonic masculinity — is not a neutral observation. It is a moral accusation wrapped in sociological garb. It projects feminist hegemony onto the male condition, delegitimizes evolutionary and archetypal plurality, and locks men into a psychological double bind. And by doing so, it performs the very ideological function Gramsci warned us about: the transformation of systemic suffering into personal guilt.

It is time we call this theory what it truly is — not emancipatory scholarship, but a priesthood of shame, built on bad science, moral essentialism, and hegemonic inversion. Men do not need to repent for the crime of being. They need to reclaim the full spectrum of who they are — not to dominate, but to heal. Not to silence, but to speak. Not to oppress, but to become whole.

Part 2

From Cathar Dualism to Feminist Dogma: The Metaphysical Roots of Connell’s Masculinity Binary

Raewyn Connell’s theoretical structure is not just sociologically flawed or ideologically manipulative — it is the contemporary echo of a much older metaphysical heresy. The binary she constructs between “hegemonic masculinity” and its subordinate forms is not a new innovation in feminist theory. It is, in fact, the secular continuation of a dualist religious worldview, most explicitly found in the Cathar heresy of the 12th and 13th centuries — and reanimated in Marxism, postmodernism, and ultimately, intersectional feminism. Her framework does not merely misrepresent social reality — it re-enchants it with a mythic moral code: masculinity becomes the demiurgic force of domination, and those who reject or submit to its inversion become the spiritually enlightened. This is not social theory. It is theological mythology in sociological dress.

The Cathars believed in two gods — one good, one evil. The God of Light, spiritual and transcendent, opposed the evil God of Matter, whom they identified with the creator of the physical world — the Old Testament God. The Cathars therefore saw the Judaic creator deity as the source of all suffering, violence, and material corruption and the Catholic church part of the Demiurge's scheme. This anti-materialism was not just philosophical; it was racial and metaphysical. Jews, masculinity, matter, and patriarchy were symbolically fused into one: the fallen architecture of the world. The true spiritual path, they believed, was to reject all of these — to feminize, spiritualize, and escape. Connell’s theory replicates this very structure: masculinity, particularly that which is tied to material production, strength, and hierarchy, is demonized as the modern demiurge. “Hegemonic masculinity” is the worldly evil that must be disavowed, and all who fail to do so are either complicit, marginalized, or subordinate. There is no neutrality. There is no plurality. There is only moral positioning in a mythic battle between good and evil — between submission and domination.

This theological structure was preserved — not dismantled — by Marxism. Karl Marx, influenced by Feuerbach and Hegel, inherited the Cathar suspicion of the material world. But he redirected the metaphysical dichotomy into class warfare: capitalism became the new demiurge, the bourgeoisie the priests of material exploitation, and religion itself — particularly Judaism — became symbolic of everything to be overcome. In his infamous 1844 essay On the Jewish Question, Marx did not merely critique religion. He pathologized the Jew as the avatar of capitalism: “The practical Jew,” he wrote, “is the practical man, is the man of money.” Judaism, for Marx, was not just a faith — it was the cultural expression of selfishness, trade, and the material spirit. Thus, capitalism and patriarchy became synonymous with a deeper ontological fall — one tied directly to Jewish masculinity.

Connell’s framework of subordinated, marginalized, and complicit masculinities mirrors this Cathar cosmological caste system with startling precision. In her schema, hegemonic masculinity functions analogously to the Cathar image of the masculine demiurge — the fallen creator god associated with patriarchy, violence, material domination, and, by historical association, Judaism. The men aligned with this hegemonic model — typically coded as white, heterosexual, middle-class, and Western — are cast as the metaphysical oppressors. But the structure does not end there. Just as the Cathars viewed Catholic men as part of the corrupted material order — privileged by their position within the worldly Church yet still fallen — so too does Connell assign non-hegemonic men within dominant systems (e.g., working-class or emotionally stoic men) a role as complicit masculinities. These are not entirely damned, but they are morally suspect: they benefit from the system, even if they do not fully control it.

Similarly, non-Christian, non-Jewish men — such as racialized or colonized men outside the Western sphere — map onto marginalized masculinities in Connell’s theory: they are part of the structure, but positioned lower, less powerful, and therefore more redeemable, though still not spiritually pure. And finally, the subordinate masculinities, especially those coded as queer, trans, emotionally feminized, or post-masculine, resemble the Cathar "perfecti" — the purified, ascended few who have renounced the material order of "patriarchy" and achieved moral superiority. In this schema, Jewish men occupy the greatest evil of all, implicitly coded as the original agents of patriarchal creation, bearing the full metaphysical weight of the demiurgic sin — simultaneously hyper-visible as hegemonic (in banking, law, or capitalism) and yet uniquely disqualified from victimhood within intersectional theory. It doesn't mean anything that Jewish men (and women) rose from the Ashes of one of humanity's greatest atrocities. It doesn't matter that even today Jews continue to reap this hate, they're still privileged, especially the Jewish white man. In this way, Connell’s hierarchy is not only theological in structure, but racialized in application, reenacting ancient metaphysical scapegoating beneath the guise of progressive scholarship.

Feminist and intersectional theory, far from breaking with this pattern, intensified it. In their cosmology, patriarchy replaces the demiurge, and intersectional power replaces salvation theology. Those furthest from hegemonic masculinity — queer, disabled, female, black, trans, Muslim — are imagined as spiritually pure, ontologically innocent, and morally authorized to speak “truth to power.” Meanwhile, the Jewish male — historically dispossessed, disarmed, and persecuted — is re-coded as a white, Western patriarch. His memory is erased. His suffering is denied. And in its place, he becomes the new oppressor, the bearer of hegemonic history. This is not a mistake — it is a spiritual recoding. In this new priesthood, “white Jewish man” = demiurge. “Trans body of color” = redeemer. And masculinity as such — unless it is reconfigured as subordinate or submissive — is equated with a kind of metaphysical contagion.

Connell’s framework follows this exact Gnostic-Catharic formula. First, she defines hegemonic masculinity not as a diverse archetype rooted in evolutionary and symbolic realities, but as a monolithic force of domination. Then, all other forms of male being are organized in relation to it — not in horizontal pluralism, but in vertical submission. There is no recognition of diverse male psychology, archetypes, or cultural roles across time. There is no understanding of historical disposability. Instead, masculinity is cast as the fallen principle of the world — to be resisted, deconstructed, and transcended. Subordinate and marginalized masculinities are, in Connell’s theology, the “redeemed” — those who have either submitted to feminist norms, or have been structurally disempowered enough to serve as proof of patriarchy’s cruelty. But in both cases, the only path to legitimacy is through emasculation and confession.

What Connell effectively does is borrow the underlying metaphysical architecture of the Cathar heresy — a dualistic cosmology in which masculinity is equated with ontological evil, and redemption can only be achieved through spiritualized rejection of the material and the male. In this structure, hegemonic masculinity functions as the eternal demiurge: all-pervasive, dominating, and fallen — a force to be renounced, not understood. But Connell updates the players: she replaces the Cathar categories of spiritual hierarchy with modern sociological roles — subordinate, marginalized, and complicit masculinities — each assigned a position in the new theological caste system. Just as the Cathars saw the masculine, material order as corrupt unless transcended through feminine grace, self-denial, and surrender, Connell’s framework ritualizes male redemption through self-hatred, symbolic emasculation, castration and moral obedience to feminist epistemology. This is not merely theory. It is myth transfigured into ideology — a re-enchanted political theology in sociological disguise.

This is not liberation. It is religious subjugation. It is the ritualization of shame disguised as sociology. And most insidiously, it is built on a theological and racial inversion that survives in the academic bloodstream of feminist theory: the association of patriarchy, materiality, and capitalism with Jewish masculinity, and the casting of resistance as a spiritualized, feminized moral elite. This is why intersectional feminism can condemn Jewish men who lost entire families in the Holocaust as “white oppressors,” and frame those who reject emasculation as agents of “toxic power.”

Connell’s theory is therefore not just wrong — it is metaphysically violent and supremacist. It performs a multi-layered inversion:

1. Biological diversity becomes moral hierarchy.

2. Evolutionary traits become accusations.

3. Spiritual archetypes become toxic scripts.

4. Jewish male historical trauma becomes a sign of privilege.

It is a Gnostic framework masquerading as gender theory. And its purpose is not to explain reality — it is to rewrite it in service of a new hegemonic priesthood that speaks the language of liberation while practicing the metaphysics of inversion.

Part 3

Empirical Evidence: Connell’s Theory vs. Reality

For a theory to hold weight in the sociological domain, it must eventually meet the test of reality. Connell’s framework collapses under precisely this pressure. The empirical record does not support her assertion of a singular hegemonic masculinity, nor the idea that most men are "complicit" in a system that serves them.

On the contrary, what we see is systemic misandry and structural disposability — a condition that directly contradicts the narrative of male dominance and uniform benefit. As documented by Dr. Pasi Malmi, perhaps the most empirically grounded researcher of male disadvantage in institutional systems, men are routinely discriminated against in areas such as:

1. Family courts (bias in custody and alimony)

2. Reproductive rights (no legal paternal opt-out)

3. Military conscription (male-only draft policies)

4. Education (boys underperforming and increasingly disengaged)

5. Healthcare (male-specific issues underfunded and stigmatized)

6. Criminal justice (harsher sentencing for men, particularly working-class men)

Malmi’s findings conclusively show that the male experience is not one of hegemonic power, but of silent institutional abandonment. In this light, the idea that men benefit from a monolithic structure of dominance becomes absurd. If anything, men — especially white working-class men, racial minorities, and low-income men — form the disposable class that sustains a system which now blames them for its own contradictions.

Statistical data reinforces this.

1. Workplace fatalities: Over 90% are men.

2. Homelessness: Up to 80% male in most Western countries.

3. Suicide rates: Men are 3–4 times more likely to take their own lives.

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5. Education: Boys are now a demographic minority in higher education, with widening gaps in literacy and engagement.

5. Divorce and custody: Women initiate ~70–80% of divorces, and men are overwhelmingly excluded from primary custody.

These are not the outcomes of power. These are symptoms of a class of people deemed expendable.

But perhaps the most profound dismantling of Connell’s assumptions comes from Susan Carol Rogers, whose anthropological research challenges the very myth of male dominance. In her landmark essay, Female Forms of Power and the Myth of Male Dominance, Rogers reveals that what is often framed as “patriarchal power” is frequently formal and symbolic, while real, functional, community-level power is exercised informally by women — especially through familial, religious, and kinship structures.

This means Connell’s hierarchy is epistemologically inverted: it names the visible but symbolic structures as oppressive and ignores the invisible, functional power dynamics that often operate in women’s favor. Just as feminist scholarship once revealed hidden forms of female oppression, it now refuses to acknowledge hidden forms of female power — even when they are empirically verifiable.

Conclusion: The Data Does Not Lie

Connell’s theoretical framework is not a reflection of social reality — it is a hegemonic fiction. It serves the ideological purpose of pathologizing masculinity while reinforcing feminist moral authority over the symbolic order. It does so by rewriting history, suppressing diversity, and gaslighting both men and women into accepting a rigid moral narrative at odds with the facts.

When we combine Gramscian critique, CGT, Jungian archetypes, and empirical sociological research, a coherent pattern emerges: Connell’s theory is not merely flawed — it is a totalizing myth of guilt and complicity designed to discipline male identity into ideological obedience. And it fails every test of reality, psychology, and truth.

Economic Power Reversal: The Silent Inversion

Another fatal blow to Connell’s framework comes from the empirical data on women’s economic power, which challenges the assumption that men control material capital while women remain structurally disadvantaged. This picture is not just outdated — it is inverted.

The statistical data shows:

1. Women control over 80% of consumer purchasing decisions in most Western economies.

2. Even in undeveloped countries or traditional ones labeled by feminists as patriarchal (like Saudi Arabia) women own or influence up to 70% of household wealth.

3. The global female consumer economy is valued at over $30 trillion, dwarfing male spending power.

4. Women are the primary beneficiaries of state welfare programs, which are largely funded by male taxpayers but redistributed to women through child benefits, housing, and legal aid systems which shows that the working class men, the very ones consisting the majority of workplace deaths, majority of workplace disease affected, the main group creating the wealth that later being redistributed to women but as Pasi Malmi showed abandoned as disposable tool, are lumped as oppressors and beneficiaries of patriarchal privilege.

5. Marketing, advertising, and entire sectors of service economies are oriented around the female consumer, not the male provider.

What this demonstrates is that the economy is not structured to empower men, but rather to extract their productivity and redistribute its fruits. In short, men produce and die; women spend and thrive — not because of innate superiority, but because of structural preference. Not because of patriarchy, simultaneously exploiting men while assigning the patriarchal domination as oppressors but because the gynocentric hegemonic order collaborates with a few powerful men to repay with wealth and status to oppress men of all kinds.

This economic asymmetry goes hand in hand with cultural programming: men are conditioned to be self-sacrificing providers under CGT (Cognitive Gynocentric Telegony), while women are socialized into emotional and consumer entitlement — a dynamic that Connell completely ignores in her focus on “hegemonic” male economic control.

Thus, the actual economic structure of late liberal capitalism is not patriarchal — it is gynocentric. It treats men as labor inputs and women as consumption endpoints. This is not only seen in wages and employment, but in how social value is assigned. Male value is tied to production. Female value is tied to consumption. And consumption, in our time, is power.

Connell’s omission of this massive structural fact is not innocent. It reveals the ideological purpose of her theory: to uphold the illusion of male dominance in order to justify further extraction from men and moral elevation of women. She does not analyze power; she ritualizes guilt.

Afterword: The Path Forward Raewyn Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity is not just flawed — it is a profound inversion of truth, structure, and symbol. It rewrites masculinity as pathology, overlays spiritual scapegoating onto evolutionary traits, and rebrands ancient dualisms as liberation. In doing so, it misleads the academy, gaslights men, and legitimizes a cultural order built not on justice, but on ritual humiliation. To move forward, we must reclaim not only empirical truth, but the symbolic dignity of masculine being. This means breaking the grip of hegemonic feminist theology and building frameworks rooted in pluralism, evolutionary integrity, archetypal depth, and ethical clarity. Men are not guilty of being men. And no theory that demands they be should be called emancipatory.

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