Gender decouplings: the future of relationships in the era of the patriarchal crisis

Gender-based violence continues to be part of social survival systems. But it is also the response to a system that is crumbling: the one founded on the so-called natural order of relationships between the genders that for centuries regulated power, relational, and destiny dynamics. Today that system no longer works. A transformation is underway concerning the progressive loss of correspondence between identity, social roles, and affective models. The concept of gender decoupling describes this process of separation, in which gender categories cease to determine personal, work, and relational identities. It is a political act: decoupling from the role assigned according to gender, historical and social.

In the 21st century women no longer depend on men to survive: the more women self-determine, the more technologies of control, censorship, and forms of normative violence increase. This is the real crisis: a male identity model that, not knowing how to redefine itself, reacts with resentment, control, and physical force. The phenomenon of incels is just one example. In South Korea, one of the most traditionalist contexts, the 2022 elections saw the victory of the conservative Yoon Suk-yeol – later impeached – also thanks to the vote of young men, frightened by the equity claims of their peers in a strongly misogynistic society. Here the 4B movement was born (B stands for “no”: no dating, no sex, no marriage, no childbirth), which partially spread to America, especially in response to some statements about the role of women in the world by the right-wing population that supported Trump’s victory in the elections. Signs of rupture from the patriarchal model are everywhere: in Iran, Nigeria, Kenya, girls increasingly have access to education and consequently speak out, found startups, challenge authoritarian power at the cost of their lives, as against the Taliban.

These movements today represent a political gesture: refusing to feed a system that demands reciprocity without equality. However, resistance to change also exists among women: in the West, among young, hyperconnected girls and women, the phenomenon of tradwives manifests. Millennial influencers who idealize the princess model in the role of guardian of the home and family, of elegant submission as a space of protection and identity, reinterpreting dependence as a conscious choice, a sort of refuge in the traditional role, as a response to a society producing anxiety and precariousness. It is Patriarchy 2.0: filtered, aestheticized, exalted and shared, exposed onlife.

Gender decoupling does not seem to be a passing phenomenon, but a structured attempt to redefine the boundaries between affectivity, relationships, and work. After patriarchy, the matriarchy will not come, but a phase of reorganization; we are already seeing its beginnings. The challenge, in the medium term, will be understanding how to transform this phase into an opportunity for rebalancing. The categories of masculine and feminine, increasingly fluid, will coexist with new criteria of recognition – economic, affective, technological – capable of redefining interdependencies. The future of gender relationships represents the possibility of tracing new paths, more dynamic and suited to the times, in which negotiation, awareness, and individual and collective responsibility become the central dimension of social and political life. Understanding how to build relationships and social structures capable of supporting self-determination without producing exclusion or violence is a great evolutionary opportunity; perhaps the only way out of the cycle of violence is to accept that the bond between genders is no longer a contract of domination, but a territory to explore together, thinking of those who will come after.