THE PATRIARCHY IS HOMOEROTIC

“To say that straight men are heterosexual is only to say that they engage in sex (fucking exclusively with the other sex, i.e., women). All or almost all of that which pertains to love, most straight men reserve exclusively for other men. The people whom they admire, respect, adore, revere, honor, whom they imitate, idolize, and form profound attachments to, whom they are willing to teach and from whom they are willing to learn, and whose respect, admiration, recognition, honor, reverence and love they desire… those are, overwhelmingly, other men. In their relations with women, what passes for respect is kindness, generosity or paternalism; what passes for honor is removal to the pedestal. From women they want devotion, service and sex.
Heterosexual male culture is homoerotic; it is man-loving.”
— Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality

Let’s start with a simple scene: a group of straight men. They swap stories about each other’s achievements. They nod appreciatively at a colleague’s promotion, hang on the words of a mentor, praise the boldness of a sports hero, maybe even whisper admiration for a fellow man’s sleek car or confident stride. Meanwhile, women in their orbit are praised differently: lovely dresses, sweet support, good cooking, dutiful devotion—qualities more akin to service than admiration.

Now imagine this pattern writ large, seeping through corporate boardrooms, sports stadia, military barracks, political parties, social media cliques—and you’ve got something like the structure of the patriarchy. Dubious formula: masculinity + male approval + male recognition = power. Women slip in as tokens, accessories, objects of sex, service and devotion—not as fellow power-players.

straight men’s erotic (sexual) lives are oriented toward women, but their emotional, intellectual, heroic, aspirational lives are oriented toward other men.

What Frye notes is straight men’s erotic (sexual) lives are oriented toward women, but their emotional, intellectual, heroic, aspirational lives are oriented toward other men. The patriarchy is homoerotic—not in the simplistic sense of “men secretly wanting each other,” but in the structural sense: male culture is built around male-to-male love, male recognition, male approval, male attachments, male homosocial bonds.

And yes: that has implications for why many women find themselves single (or dissatisfied) in heterosexual relationships. Because if your partner—meaning the straight male partner—is structurally aligned toward men, you may be placed in the role of service-object rather than equal partner. of single women (and ours as a gendered population) who wonder: “Why don’t they see me? Why don’t they value me?”

When boys grow up in patriarchal culture they’re handed scripts: Be a man. Don’t cry (much). Succeed. Have power. Earn respect. The script rarely says: “Be vulnerable, admit you need others, build community with women, value their admiration more than men’s.” Instead you hear: “Look up to men who made it. Emulate them. Compete with them. Seek their approval.”

What Frye observes is that straight men’s emotional investments—admiration, respect, love—are overwhelmingly reserved for other men, even if sex is with women. The quote above spells it out: “the people whom they admire… whose respect, admiration, recognition, honor, reverence and love they desire… those are, overwhelmingly, other men.”

Why does this matter? Because admiration is a currency in the patriarchy. A man who is admired by other men is elevated; a man who is rejected by men is marginalized—even if he has a “woman” attached to him. The real power circles happen between men. Thus straight men build alliances, mentorships, fraternities, sports teams, professional networks—all male. Their “love” (in the broader sense of esteem, aspiration, devotion) is male-to-male.

admiration is a currency in the patriarchy. A man who is admired by other men is elevated; a man who is rejected by men is marginalized—even if he has a “woman” attached to him.

It’s tempting to dismiss this as “men bonding” or harmless bromance. But the stakes go deeper: if men are oriented toward other men for their real belonging, then women become secondary actors—supporters, trophies, bedmates—not equals. This dynamic places women structurally in a service role: the man is busy achieving recognition among men; the woman helps him do so. She may believe (or hope) she’s partner, but the system treats her as adjunct. The patriarchy is homoerotic because its erotics of meaning, recognition, purpose and belonging revolve around men loving men.

This really shows up in examples: the “hero’s journey” myth is always male. The corporate chain of command: men mentoring men, male networks, male fraternities (literally and figuratively). The way sports heroes, political figures, tech founders are celebrated by men. Women may admire them too, but that admiration aside, the internal network—the real recognition economy—is male. And when men compete for that recognition, what’s required is often distancing from women: show up, dominate, win, don’t show weakness, don’t rely on female applause.

So while sex is with women, the love/reverence/aspiration is with men. “From women they want devotion, service and sex,” says Frye. That service/sex requirement is telling. It means that a straight man may want a woman, but he does not primarily look to her for his deepest attachments, his role-models, his mentors, his admired peers. He looks to other men. Women become objects of function rather than subjects of mutual admiration. This explains the homoerotic structural backbone of patriarchy: because male‐to‐male admiration, attachment and love (in its broader sense) is the engine of the system. Women are outside the engine; they power it, but they don’t drive it.

The moment we accept that men direct their primary emotional lives toward other men, the moment we see that women are not the chief objects of men’s admiration or aspiration, we begin to make sense of many puzzling patterns: men’s ambivalence toward women, men’s contempt, women feeling unseen, the hero-complex of men that excludes equal partnership.

If a straight man is primarily seeking the nod of other men, then the woman he partners with must serve several functions: she showcases his success to other men; she supports his achievement; she gives him sexual access—to fulfill the “straight” part—but not necessarily emotional equality. Consider the trophy wife scenario: the woman’s main function is to reflect back to the male peer group that the man has “won.” The admiration still flows among men. The wife is a symbol. That’s not necessarily because the man is consciously malicious; it’s because the system sets up this dynamic.

Hence Frye’s phrase: “In their relations with women, what passes for respect is kindness, generosity or paternalism; what passes for honor is removal to the pedestal.” The pedestal is critical: elevating a woman to hero-status is itself a way of keeping her separate, exceptional, not equal. If only one woman is “honored” among many men, the honor works as exception and token, not as structural parity. Honor is not granting full belonging, it’s granting exception. And service and devotion—from the woman—are part of the contract.

So for women who want equal partnership, real admiration, mutual mentorship, deep emotional attachment—they often find the terrain lacking. They may get sex, maybe even devotion. But they may also get something less: the man’s real attachment remains with his peer group; his real admiration remains among men. The woman may be loved, but she may not be loved the way other men are loved. She may be valued, but not in the same network of esteem.

This dynamic helps explain why many women in heterosexual partnerships feel unseen or secondary. The man still orients toward his male peer group for the most meaningful recognition. The woman becomes the accessory, the facilitator, the servant of his male‐to‐male recognition. That’s why even the kindest men—yes, the ones who treat women “well”—can still leave women feeling less than whole, because the ecology of his affection is built outside her.

And yes—this can breed contempt. If men see women as instruments to secure peer recognition (the nod, the trophy, the service), then they may unconsciously undervalue women’s subjectivity. They may expect women to fall in line, support their agendas, be grateful. Why else would paternalism and “kindness” pass for respect? Because if a woman is not in the picture of male peer networks, then she is only being given respect in token form—kindness, generosity, paternalism—not equal admiration or peer status.

So single women may say: “He treated me well—but he was still distant. He still looked up to his friends. He still sought applause elsewhere. I felt like part of the show, not part of the team.” That’s patriarchy in its homoerotic architecture at work.

So here’s the provocative question: could one reason so many women are single—or at least questioning heterosexual partnership—is because they intuitively sense that the man they might partner with is structurally oriented elsewhere? That the primary axis of his emotional life is not toward them, but toward other men and male networks? In other words: the patriarchy’s homoerotic structure is one layer of why women remain single.

If you are a woman and you sense that your partner loves his male friends more (or at least more centrally) than he loves you as his equal, why invest? If you sense that the admiration he craves, the recognition he seeks, comes from men he respects above you, then your role becomes supporting his status rather than co‐building your own. That dynamic is often invisible, but it underlies many relationships.

Therefore many single women are not simply “choosing to be single” because of bad men—they are choosing to refuse the setup entirely. They are opting out of a deal where they offer devotion, service, sexual access—and in exchange get kindness or paternalism but not peer recognition or mutual admiration. They say: “If you’re not going to include me in the circle of your real alliances, I’ll build my own circle.” And that’s not “man-hating”—it’s self-preservation.

The hate comes not always as hostility but as neglect, invisibility, diminishment—because the woman is outside the main economy of male recognition.

Is it that men “hate women”? Some do. But I would argue the problem is more structural than personal. The patriarchy trains men to love men in ways that women can’t fulfill (because they’re female). It trains men to see women as adjuncts to their male networks, not as cores. The hate comes not always as hostility but as neglect, invisibility, diminishment—because the woman is outside the main economy of male recognition. So yes: there’s contempt—but maybe it’s the contempt of structural exclusion, not necessarily individual malice (though that also exists).

In short: here's the chain: patriarchy builds male-to-male networks of admiration and belonging → straight men focus emotional life on other men → women in heterosexual partnerships become service/sex/devotion roles → women sense they are not fully seen or valued → many women decide to remain single or end relationships.

Let’s be clear: this doesn’t mean all heterosexual relationships are doomed. Some men resist the script. Some partnerships genuinely treat woman as equal partner, co-author, co-admirer, mutual mentor. But the blueprint of patriarchy still hovers in the wings, tugging at unconscious loyalties. Many men may genuinely want equality, but are still embedded in rituals of male approval they don’t even realize. And many women may genuinely want partnership, but feel the structural odds are stacked.

If patriarchy is homoerotic in structure, then dismantling it means rewriting the map of belonging. Men must be encouraged to direct their deepest attachments not only toward other men, but toward women—or toward human peers regardless of gender. Men must be willing to seek admiration from women, to be inspired by women, to learn from women, to form profound attachments to women—not as wives or bedmates, but as peers.

Women—who have been trained in the model of service and devotion—must reclaim the demand for mutual admiration, not just kindness. The pedestal must be dropped. Equal regard must become normal. A woman must be able to say: “I want to be the person you admire, not just the person you assign devotion to.”

For single women this means refusing the bargain: you will not settle for a man whose emotional life or recognition economy is constructed outside you. You will demand structural inclusion. And for men this means refusing the bargain: you will not only do sex and service with women, you will share your emotional world, your admiration circuit, your recognition economy with women.

If men continue to define their worth by other men’s approval, women will continue to be sidelines. If women continue to accept being side roles, the patriarchy continues unchallenged.

If men continue to define their worth by other men’s approval, women will continue to be sidelines. If women continue to accept being side roles, the patriarchy continues unchallenged. But what if we reversed the flow of admiration: men admire women, women admire men, they admire each other mutually and openly. What if the network of belonging and inspiration was gender-fluid, peer-centered, not male‐exclusive? That might be the key to partnerships rooted not in service or devotion or sex, but in mutual recognition, mutual admiration, and love that is not structured by exclusion.

Single women aren’t holding space in someone else’s absence — we are standing in it. Joyfully, purposefully, and with the clarity that freedom gives. We’re not waiting for men to rearrange their emotional circuitry; we’re building something entirely different. Over brunches, in group chats, across text threads that run into the night, we’re asking sharper questions about power, intimacy, and what partnership even means when women already have community, connection, and purpose without it.

We’re not “resisting” the patriarchy’s homoerotic architecture so much as stepping outside of it — opting out of a love economy that only rewards women for serving it. We are building our own networks of admiration, respect, and recognition — ones that flow horizontally, not hierarchically. We are not waiting for permission to belong; we’re rewriting the entire map of belonging itself.

And maybe that’s the quiet revolution: when women choose joy over justification, autonomy over apology, and conversation over compliance, the patriarchy loses its audience. Because once women stop waiting to be seen by men, we start seeing ourselves — fully, freely, and with the kind of love that’s bigger than romance. That’s not failure. That’s freedom.