Why Patriarchal Self-Help Doesn’t Work
The self-help industry has focused on these talking points for decades. It needs to change.
What does it mean to be a man or a woman?
For a lot of right-wing grifters, one of their “final questions” they love to ask in videos is “what is a woman?” It’s an attempt to get a rise out of people or to further prove some strange and contrived point they tell their base.
But aside from political commentators asking it, it’s a question that the self-help industry has been trying to answer for a very long time. You might not have realized it is all.
In a less charged environment, often these opinions are nudged to us in various ways. Encouraging certain products, discussing particular topics in a non-hostile or debate setting.
But the biggest is through books.
Geared as a way of someone giving you more narrow advice, “patriarchal self-help” books have had specific messaging within the pages of some of the most influential if not best-selling novels in the industry. Some are so obvious they’re the titles of these books.
This isn’t so much an issue towards female readers. Many feminist self-help books value advocacy, healing, and put particular emphasis on emotional…
