The current debates are not only about men without power.
They are also – and perhaps especially – about men in positions of power who do not behave patriarchally there.
Men who lead, decide, bear responsibility without dominating, devaluing, or systematically excluding others. Men who understand power not as an entitlement but as an obligation. And who nevertheless, in the current equality discourse, are either generally equated with problematic structures or made communicatively invisible.
This vagueness is not a marginal problem. It is a central deficit of a discourse that claims to speak about power in a differentiated way – and in doing so increasingly falls back on crude attributions.
When power is read only as an identity marker
The analysis of structural inequality is necessary. It was overdue and remains indispensable. It becomes problematic where power is no longer understood as a relational and action phenomenon, but primarily as a characteristic of certain groups.
In this mode, “being a man” becomes a shorthand for power, and power a shorthand for guilt.
What is lost in the process is the crucial distinction: that between structure and behavior.
Those who hold power bear responsibility. But responsibility is not identical with moral guilt for historical or current negative developments that one has neither caused nor reproduced. This distinction is becoming increasingly blurred in the discourse – with tangible consequences.
Especially men in positions of responsibility who strive for a reflective, fair, and non-patriarchal practice experience that their concrete attitude is hardly relevant anymore. Their position counts, their behavior less.
The paradoxical situation of non-patriarchal men in power roles
Non-patriarchal men – explicitly including those with influence, decision-making power, and institutional responsibility – find themselves in a paradoxical situation:
They are expected to exercise power sensitively, self-critically, and responsibly.
At the same time, this very way of exercising power is hardly recognized as an independent achievement or conscious practice.
Instead, they are under double pressure of expectations:
- They are supposed to consider and address structural problems,
- but can hardly articulate their own strain, ambivalence, or uncertainty without getting into patterns of justification.
Power is demanded – reflection as well – recognition, however, fails to appear.
The result is often silence, withdrawal, or a cautious distance from the discourse itself.
Responsibility without resonance
In many areas of society – leadership, organization, family, economic security – men still bear a considerable share of responsibility. Not because they are biologically predestined for it, but because existing structures continue to suggest or demand exactly that.
This responsibility is associated with real burdens:
constant availability, high decision costs, low tolerance for error, little room for exhaustion or doubt.
While other forms of structural overburdening are increasingly made visible and politicized, male overload – especially in power roles – conspicuously often remains unnamed. It is considered part of the package. Or worse: an illegitimate topic.
That sends a clear message:
Responsibility yes – but please without your own perspective.
When structural critique tips into collective guilt
Another critical point arises where structural analysis turns into moral generalization. When belonging to a group is implicitly read as proof of involvement in injustice, the discourse loses its analytical sharpness.
Non-patriarchal men – including those in positions of power – then experience:
- that their concrete actions become secondary,
- that attempts at differentiation are interpreted as defensiveness,
- that their voice counts only as part of a problem, not as part of a solution.
Something tips here.
Not the critique of power – but its capacity for distinction.
Polarization as a self-produced side effect
A discourse that no longer separates behavior from identity inevitably produces polarization. It loses those actors who would in principle be capable of dialogue and solidarity, because they feel addressed only under general suspicion.
That is not only unfair – it is strategically short-sighted.
Because many of the central lines of conflict of our time do not run neatly along gender lines, but along:
- attributions of performance and responsibility,
- deficits of recognition,
- emotional isolation,
- structural overburdening.
These phenomena affect people differently – but not exclusively.
A necessary correction, not a relativization
A further development of the equality discourse does not mean weakening criticism or trivializing power relations. It means becoming more precise.
This includes:
- analyzing power as practice, not as an identity marker,
- distinguishing responsibility from guilt,
- allowing male self-description without immediately pathologizing it,
- and acknowledging that non-patriarchal exercise of power really exists – and can be learned.
Non-patriarchal men are not a counterargument to the critique of power.
Precisely where they hold power, they are empirical proof that alternatives are possible.
Conclusion
Social critique does not gain strength by being simplified. It gains through differentiation.
A discourse that reads men in positions of power exclusively as representatives of problematic structures deprives itself of an important part of its effectiveness. It loses allies where it should actually be opening spaces for learning.
Non-patriarchal men – including and especially those with power – are not a blind spot by accident. They are the touchstone of whether an equality discourse can still distinguish between structural critique and moral attribution.
Where this distinction is lost, critique becomes loud – but no longer smart.
