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Goat Format Structure Deck Tournament I, Hosted by HOUDINI
Think you’ve got what it takes to master the Structure Deck Series? Sign up by Dec 17 to playtest and battle it out for a Sasuke Ninja hoodie—embroidered $50 value.
📜 View the decks here: https://templeofra.neocities.org/resources/goat_format/structure_decks
💡 Important: This is a preconstructed format—players must use the decks as-is without modifications.
🎟 Players: You will have 24 hours to duel your opponent and report your results. Please include your replays and tag @Pharaoh when you do.
Make sure to join the Temple of Ra discord to play! https://discord.gg/BPeTMPHRbS
New to Goat Format? Check out the site and join the official discord! https://www.goatformat.com/
The State of Things: The Actions of Luigi Mangione Have Shifted the Discourse
The Feds are caught between a rock and a hard place right now. If they let this case go to trial, it’s going to be a spectacle—a massive one. Here’s what we know: he had back surgery when he was 20, already battling chronic pain. At 26, he hit the Logan’s Run wall—aging out of his parents' health coverage and facing a system designed to discard him. Imagine knowing your life is effectively over because you can’t afford the care that would keep you alive or functional. That’s the brutal reality millions face every day in this country, but his defiance shattered the narrative. He chose action over despair, saying, “If this system has already written my death sentence, I won’t go quietly.”
The government doesn’t want that story out there. They fear what happens when people see this trial, hear the arguments, and understand the scale of the systemic rot. They fear the memes, the viral videos, the court exchanges that will shine a light on a system designed to chew people up and spit them out. They fear what happens when millions realize they’re one injury, one medical crisis away from being in his shoes. That’s why they’re scrambling, trying to smear him, dredging up tweets, pushing culture war nonsense to muddy the waters. But here’s the real question: can they afford to let him have his day in court?
If they kill him in his jail cell, that would be a line crossed that cannot be uncrossed. It’s not like it hasn’t been done before. The regime has extra-judicially silenced people more powerful and higher-profile than him, ruled it a suicide, and swept it under the rug. We all know that. The fact we can even have this conversation tells you how far gone things are. The fact that it’s plausible, that people would immediately assume it wasn’t a suicide if he were found dead, says everything about the state of the so-called social contract. When people believe the government can execute its citizens in secret, it’s clear the trust between the governed and those governing has eroded to nothing.
Here’s the hard truth no one wants to say out loud: if they kill him, they make him a martyr. They spark something they can’t control. His death in that context sends a message that there’s no turning back, no reform, no reconciliation. It tells people, "This system will kill you for stepping out of line." And if that happens, more actions like his will follow, because what else is left? They fear that just as much as they fear letting him speak his truth in a court of law.
The material conditions leading us here should be obvious. The elites—the capitalists and their enablers—have built an entire system predicated on the suffering of others. Their wealth, their power, their yachts and ski trips, all depend on millions of people grinding themselves into dust just to scrape by. These elites have insulated themselves for decades, convincing themselves that their suffering subjects either worship them as "job creators" or fear them as untouchable gods. But what happens when that insulation fails? What happens when those who suffer realize they have nothing left to lose?
Imagine their lives. They can’t go outside without bodyguards. They can’t vacation without paranoia. Every ski instructor, every deckhand, every waiter, every driver—they side-eye them all, wondering who might take their shot. Who might decide, in a moment of desperation, to shove a knife between their ribs? The irony is, for all their power, they’re prisoners of the fear their wealth creates. That’s the reality they live in, and it’s not as comfortable as they’d like you to think.
And still, they dare to call this system sustainable. Look at UnitedHealth’s CEO Andrew Witty, carrying on the legacy of Brian Thompson by openly declaring that “unnecessary care” must be cut for "sustainability reasons." Think about that. Your suffering is their sustainability. Your death is their profit margin. This is the system they fight tooth and nail to preserve—$1 million per member of Congress in 2024 alone, all to make sure nothing changes. That’s blood money, paid to keep the machine running smoothly.
This man who acted at 26 is a product of that machine. Back surgery at 20. Kicked off his parents’ healthcare at 26. Then the shooting. That’s what happens when the policies designed to crush millions finally meet someone who refuses to be crushed. That’s what the Logan’s Run wall represents. He wasn’t supposed to make it. The system was supposed to quietly grind him into a death of despair. Instead, he said, “No. If I’m going out, I’m going out on my terms.” That’s what they fear. That’s what they’ll do anything to suppress.
But here’s the thing: his defiance isn’t unique. He’s not some outlier. He’s just the latest to show what happens when despair collides with determination. This is bigger than one man. This is about the millions facing the same system, the same despair, the same crushing indifference. The regime can smear him, bury him, or even kill him, but they can’t stop the truth from spreading: this system is unsustainable, and those it’s destroying will not go quietly.
JFK said it best: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” The question is not whether the system can sustain itself. It clearly can’t. The question is how much longer they can pretend otherwise before the cracks widen into chasms, and the whole thing comes crashing down. That’s the reckoning they fear. And it’s coming, whether they like it or not.
A Message to Josh Shapiro: Violence Has Always Been Your Language
Josh Shapiro wants to stand on his little moral soapbox and tell us, “In America, we don’t kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint.” Really? Tell me, Governor, how do you even let those words leave your mouth when your own state literally dropped C4 bombs from a helicopter onto a residential neighborhood in 1985? The MOVE Bombing. Eleven people—six adults, five children—dead. Sixty-one homes destroyed. Two hundred and fifty people left homeless. That wasn’t justice; that was an execution, carried out by the state, in cold blood, to “send a message.”
And you didn’t just kill them. You desecrated them. You stole the remains of a 12-year-old girl, and you didn’t even have the decency to let her rest. Her bones are still sitting in the Penn museum. A museum, like her life was some kind of artifact to be poked and prodded. Source: Whyy.org And you’re out here talking about how “we don’t kill people to make a point”? Don’t lie to me. Don’t lie to the people. This country was built on killing people to make a point.
The truth is, the state kills all the time. You just don’t call it that when it’s done by people with badges, gavels, and suits. You want to talk about violence? Let’s talk about violence:
- Violence is when you deny someone healthcare, and they die from a treatable illness because they couldn’t afford the bill.
- Violence is evicting a family because rent costs are through the roof, leaving kids sleeping in cars.
- Violence is a knee surgery denied by insurance that leaves a worker crippled, their family homeless, their lives destroyed.
You think that’s not violence, Shapiro? You think that doesn’t count because no one pulled a trigger? The only people who believe that are the ones sitting comfortably at the top of the hierarchy—the ones who profit from this system. Because violence from the top, the kind of violence that props up this whole rotten system, is invisible to those who benefit from it. But the people at the bottom? We feel it. Every day. Every rejection letter, every unpaid bill, every hungry night—it’s violence, plain and simple.
So let’s be real here: this isn’t about condemning violence. It’s about maintaining control. Shapiro and people like him don’t care about morality. They care about monopoly. The state gets to be the only one allowed to dish out death, destruction, and despair. When it’s a bomb from a helicopter, when it’s a policy that quietly kills a family, that’s fine. That’s orderly. That’s acceptable. But when the violence comes back to them, suddenly it’s a moral crisis.
Here’s the truth they don’t want you to think about: they’re scared. They’re scared because they know their violence has been one-sided for too long. They’re scared because people are starting to realize that the system was never built to serve them—it was built to exploit and crush them. And they’re scared because they know that when people at the bottom start fighting back, the game changes.
This isn’t just about one governor’s hypocritical statement. This is about who gets to define what violence is, and who gets to commit it. When the state kills, it’s policy. When the people fight back, it’s a crime. That’s the hierarchy, plain and simple.
So no, Shapiro, you don’t get to lecture us. Not when the state you represent dropped bombs on its own citizens. Not when the system you defend murders quietly every single day. Your words are as hollow as the homes your regime burned in 1985, and we’re not buying it.
-Erik Houdini
REST IN PISS BOZO 🤣🤡(DENY, DEFEND, DEPOSE) MIX BY DJ HOLLER FOR HOUDINI MAGAZINE
IMAGINE CAPPING A CEO IN BROAD DAYLIGHT, IN MANHATTAN, ALL THE CAMERAS IN THE WORLD ON YOU, 14 BILLION DOLLARS OF SURVEILLANCE ! SCORE ONE FOR THE WORKING MAN ! REST IN PISS BOZO 🤣🤣🤣🤡🤡🤡
7 New Games in the HOUDINI Arcade - Introducing the TIC-80
7 new games have dropped at the HOUDINI Giga Groovy Games Arcade, including 4 TIC-80 gems. For those not in the know, the TIC-80 is a retro fantasy console like the PICO-8, but with less horsepower. Don’t let that worry you—we dug through the crates to find some standout titles worth your time.
Highlighting Kiana and Biscuit, a Wario Land-inspired platformer that’s as busty as it is addictive. If Cyberpunk 2077’s hacking minigame was your jam, check out Net.haxe for that made into a full puzzle game.
We’re here to feature indie creators, small-time artists, and the people grinding their nine-to-fives but still putting out high-quality, interactive art. These games are more than just fun—they’re a part of the culture we love. So check out these 7 picks and see what’s fresh in the arcade.
Enter the Arcade
Thoughts on the CEO Killing
There’s a lot I could say about the CEO killing and what it represents, but let me start with something personal. You’re reading this because I know how to get a message in front of people—I run a brand, I market things, I’ve learned how to speak to people in my day job. So when a sales company reached out, looking to recruit me to sell health insurance, I thought: why not? Let me see what this game is really like. I didn’t take the job, but I spent three weeks in their world. I sat in on the trainings, absorbed the culture, ambienced around in their meetings. And what I saw left me sick.
Here’s how it works: They don’t sell health insurance. They sell fear. In one meeting, they were coaching sales reps to “lean into the fear.” If you’re pitching a 32-year-old woman who’s slightly overweight? Talk about diabetes. Talk about heart disease. Hammer home the risks, and then upsell her as far as her wallet will stretch. They didn’t see people. They saw piggy banks. Your job as a salesperson? Shake that piggy bank, take the commission, and move on to the next. Boom. Done. Too easy. Grindset. Mindset.
That culture? It was the Pharisees in real-time. This killing? It’s someone flipping the table. It’s a direct response to a system that turns human lives into cash cows and then walks away from the mess it creates. It’s no wonder the public’s reaction to this feels different. It’s not apathy, and it’s not just outrage—it’s a visceral, instinctual response to a system we all know is killing us. This wasn’t impersonal. It was a reckoning.
The ruling class doesn’t want us to see it that way. They’re spinning the narrative, doing everything they can to frame this as random, isolated, senseless. Why? Because the last thing they want is for people to connect the dots. To see the billions poured into law enforcement and military as what they are: not enforcement, but deterrence. Paper tigers. Because the truth is this: no amount of armored cars or corporate lawyers can stop someone with a gun, a grievance, and a plan.
And the killer? Look around. Every other Instagram story has their mugshot with little hearts. Thirty thousand people laughing at the Facebook post the company put up. People aren’t just ambivalent—they’re celebrating. They see this for what it is: someone striking back. And that terrifies the system. Do you really think they want the poor—people who’ve been killing each other for scraps in the streets—to start looking at this and thinking, damn, that motherfucker got a lot of clout? Everybody loves this guy. The last thing they want is for this to inspire others. So don’t be surprised when the media starts working overtime to smear this person, to turn the narrative into something ugly, to drown out the spark before it catches fire.
That’s what makes this moment so dangerous to them—and so important to us. This isn't just a random act of violence; it's a spark. It brought into focus what many of us have always known: this system kills. And it doesn’t just kill with guns or knives—it kills with pens, with policies, with calculated cruelty dressed up as business as usual. CEOs like the one who died didn’t physically strangle anyone, but they signed away people’s lives with the same detached precision. Delay. Deny. Defend. That was the message left behind. A damning echo of the policies that condemned countless people to die while their organs failed and their families mourned.
I’ve heard people say Americans are too docile, too beaten down to fight back. But this reaction tells a different story. It taps into something primal, something buried deep. A sense of rage that doesn’t just see this act as justified, but as inevitable. For decades, these ghouls thought they could poison the world, rake in their millions, and retreat to private islands, free from consequences. This killing shattered that illusion.
The system is panicking, and rightly so. Whether they catch this person or pin it on a patsy, their goal will be the same: suppress this spark before it becomes a blaze. They’ll never risk a jury trial—how do you find 12 Americans who wouldn’t see through the bullshit and nullify the charges? They won’t advertise the fact that one person, armed with nothing but a grievance and a will, can shake the very foundation of their power. But that’s exactly what this act has done. It’s shown us that the system bleeds.
Let me be clear: this isn’t about glorifying one act of violence. It’s about naming the violence that already exists—the violence capitalism enacts every single day. The bloodless violence of eviction notices, denied healthcare, and lives ground into dust so shareholders can see another uptick in their portfolios. The violence is systemic, and this act tore away the mask.
For too long, they’ve hidden the language that would let us name this for what it is. They don’t want us to know terms like social murder. They want us to believe that violence is only what you can see, not the invisible, insidious brutality that leaves millions to die quietly while their families grieve in isolation. But this? This was different. This was personal. A personal response to an impersonal system. A flipped table.
We need to channel the spark. That spark that’s ignited in so many people right now—how do we shape it into something that can actually shift the balance of power? The answer is simple: get organized.
Alright, so you think this guy is the most badass person to ever do anything, ever. You’re hyped up, fired up, scrolling through Instagram stories, liking TikToks, making memes. That energy? It’s real. That anger, that sense of possibility? It’s real. But what are you doing with it? Do you know anyone else who feels the same way? Are you talking to them, planning with them?
Here’s what you do: link up with your local Food Not Bombs chapter. Plug into a communist, socialist, or anarchist organization you feel comfortable with. Got four friends and a heart? Start your own. Download Signal, start cracking. Learn Op Sec. Know your risk tolerance. Build reliable, loyal networks. Never snitch—don’t be fucking a rat. Check out https://crimethinc.com/tools for ways to get started.
And these orgs? They’ve been waiting for someone like you. They’ve got structure. They’ve got plans. They’ve got work that needs doing. That work? That’s how we stop just talking about change and start making it real. That’s how we put pressure on the system where it hurts.
No one’s coming to save us—it’s on us.
-Erik Houdini
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HOUDINI Magazine Presents: Strawberryg0th in Conversation with Nullifeye
HOUDINI Magazine is proud to announce an exclusive interview with Strawberryg0th, an up-and-coming artist making waves in the scene with their new single, Treat You Like a Man, dropping December 15th. This interview will be hosted by one of our close allies, Nullifeye—a leading voice in the Florida goth scene who’s been instrumental in shaping the subculture. We all know why Florida hits different. It’s not just the reactionary politics, the regressive laws, or the fascist marches—it’s the pushback. Florida is a hotbed of revolution, and the Florida goth scene is among the strongest countercultural forces in the country. From the 11,000 PSL voters to the countless comrades fighting back, this is where friction turns into energy, and energy turns into action.
This interview isn’t just about music; it’s about the heart of a counterculture pushing back against oppression.
Stay tuned for this hot new single and powerful interview, live on December 15th.
Strawberryg0th on InstagramNullifeye on Instagram
The Streets Have Spoken - UnitedHealthcare CEO Assassinated
Today, on the anniversary of the assassination of Fred Hampton, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare has been assassinated in a targeted attack in Manhattan. Police confirm this was no random act. This was intentional, deliberate, and aimed squarely at the top. The working class is restless, disillusioned, and increasingly unafraid to challenge those who profit from their misery. Decades of systemic neglect, greed, and corporate overreach have pushed people to the brink.
The streets are buzzing. The group chats are alive. For many, this is the first crack in the facade of invulnerable corporate elites. It’s a visceral, undeniable moment that lays bare the anger simmering in the working class—the exhaustion, the injustice, the desperation that too many have been forced to swallow for too long.
But this isn’t just a headline or a fleeting moment. This is a message. A declaration that the systems that exploit, crush, and profit off the suffering of millions can’t operate unchecked forever. No one is untouchable. The walls of privilege aren’t as high as the powerful think.
-Erik Houdini
Blue Cross Blue Shield in Connecticut, New York and Missouri has declared it will no longer pay for anesthesia for the full length of some surgeries.
It the procedure goes over a certain time, anesthesia will not be covered for the duration.https://t.co/Bj6At1nwFt
A Generation of Young Men Caught Between Two Masks
He sat on the edge of the couch, fiddling with his phone, the hum of the air conditioner filling the silence in the small apartment. Across the room, his older roommate leaned against the counter, holding her coffee cup like a gavel, her expression incredulous. He’d asked her something simple, something honest, something that felt like a normal part of being young and trying to figure out life. There was a woman he’d met through Mercari, and they’d had a brief but pleasant chat about the sale. She seemed interesting, like someone he might want to get to know better, maybe even date. So he’d asked: how do you take that kind of chance encounter and turn it into something more?
The reaction wasn’t what he expected. Her response had been immediate, cutting, her voice laced with irritation. “You can’t just approach women like that,” she snapped. “Women don’t go out into the world to get harassed by men looking for easy sex. If you want something like that, install a dating app, join a singles group on Facebook.” (He didn't have Facebook)
Her words hit him like a slap. Harassment? Easy sex? That wasn’t what he’d meant at all. It wasn’t about manipulation or some grand scheme to trick this woman into something she didn’t want. He liked her glasses. She was wearing a band shirt for a group he’d seen live, and maybe they had something in common. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to date her. Maybe they’d just click as friends. But now, sitting there on the couch, he felt as though he’d confessed to some crime he didn’t even know existed. The advice wasn’t just unhelpful—it was isolating. It left him stuck, unsure of how to approach others without being seen as a threat. It painted his curiosity, his interest, even his humanity, as something to be ashamed of.
The roommate wasn’t trying to be cruel. Her reaction came from her own experiences, her own generation's battles fought in a world that often ignored or dismissed women’s boundaries. If you’ve ever stumbled across a relic of pre-2010s TV for men—shows like Manswers—you’ll know exactly what I mean. Billiam’s video on the subject lays it out perfectly: hyper-masculine nonsense peddling a cartoonish version of manhood built on domination, objectification. Men as hollow and dumb machines driven solely be their cocks. It was absurd, but it was also pervasive, shaping an entire generation’s idea of what it meant to be a man. Millennials were right to push back against that. They were right to challenge the toxic masculinity that told boys their value lay in their ability to conquer, consume, and crush. But that was then. This is now.
At first, he thought her advice made sense. Maybe he had been overthinking it. The world was different now; women were navigating a minefield of their own, and maybe stepping back was the respectful thing to do. So, he started keeping his thoughts to himself. But those decisions started to pile up. He found himself hesitating in ways he hadn’t before. Once, at a bookstore, he noticed a cashier wearing earrings shaped like tiny mushrooms—delicate, hand-painted, and unlike anything he’d seen before. He thought about complimenting her, asking if she’d made them herself. But before the words could form, doubt crept in. What if she thought he was flirting? What if his comment, however genuine, made her feel uneasy? He shook his head, paid for his book, and left without saying anything. Compliments, he told himself, could too easily be misread, could too easily cross a line he might not even see. He wanted to be a good man, someone who respected women and their boundaries, someone who didn’t make others uncomfortable. The world had taught him that his interactions with women were inherently suspect, that his intentions, no matter how harmless, were likely to be misinterpreted. So he stopped trying. It felt safer that way.
Later, sitting in the car, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. It wasn’t the earrings that stayed with him, but the way he’d silenced himself. What would have been the harm? he wondered. Yet, even as he tried to rationalize it, a deeper instinct told him he’d done the right thing. He hadn’t risked making her uncomfortable. He hadn’t risked being that guy. Yet the rules didn’t make him feel empowered. They made him feel small, boxed in, ashamed of something he couldn’t even define. Little by little, this habit of holding back became a way of life. It wasn’t just compliments he avoided anymore. He started choosing the male cashier over the female one, walking to the far end of the bar instead of sitting next to a woman who was alone. His actions weren’t loud or deliberate—they were quiet, almost imperceptible, the kind of thing no one would notice but him.
The culture that gave birth to channels like Spike TV—absurd, hyper-masculine nonsense where every joke revolved around boobs, beer, and brute force—wasn’t the dominant narrative anymore. It had been replaced by something more self-aware, more critical. Millennials had been right to push back against the toxic ideals they inherited, but the solutions they offered weren’t designed for the world he lived in now. They were relics of their time, rigid frameworks built to fight battles that weren’t his.
One night, scrolling through TikTok, he stumbled on a video of a woman about his age. Her beauty was effortless, the kind that turned heads without trying. She was talking to the camera, her voice tinged with frustration. “Why don’t men approach women anymore?” she said. “No one talks to you in real life anymore. What happened to just… meeting people?”
He stared at the screen, feeling something twist in his chest. Wasn't this what women wanted? Men staying in their lane, keeping their distance, leaving any potential connection to the curated dating apps? And yet, here was this woman, lamenting the very thing he’d been told to avoid.
This wasn’t how human interaction was supposed to work, was it? The rigid frameworks, the unspoken rules—they seemed designed not to foster connection, but to alienate. Approaching someone with shared interests wasn’t harassment; it was curiosity. It was how people met, how they built relationships. The problem wasn’t the approach—it was the inability to navigate rejection with grace and respect. Yet the advice he’d been given reduced all curiosity to threat, all interaction to intrusion.
The loneliness came with a bitterness he didn’t like to admit. He didn’t want to resent women for the boundaries they set, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that the world had given them permission to navigate relationships on their own terms while he was left floundering, unsure of how to connect without crossing some invisible line. Yet, it wasn’t just the progressive rhetoric that boxed him in. The regressive narratives weren’t any better. On the other side of the spectrum, the hyper-masculine rhetoric he saw in corners of the internet was even more suffocating, even more toxic. It told him that his worth as a man was tied to his ability to dominate, to conquer, to treat women as prizes to be won. It peddled consumerist fantasies of masculinity—buy this beard oil, learn how to neg, start mewing, act like an alpha—and called it empowerment.
When he finally did meet someone—someone who seemed to like him back—he thought things might be different. She was sharp, funny, and gorgeous, the kind of person who could make the world feel a little more alive just by being in it. They’d only met once before, a casual coffee date that left him feeling unexpectedly light. She’d asked if she could come over tonight, just to hang out, maybe watch a movie. It felt normal, easy in a way that so many things hadn’t been lately.
When she excused herself to use the bathroom, he scrolled through movie options, trying to settle on something that wouldn’t feel like a cliché. He barely registered the sound of the bathroom door opening behind him until she stepped into view. His heart skipped. She was completely naked, her confidence undeniable, her intentions written plainly in the curve of her smile.
“Don’t keep me waiting,” she said, her voice light but deliberate. She stood there, not as a question but as a statement, her body an offering, her eyes challenging him to respond.
The moment froze in his mind, a collision of instincts and expectations. He wanted to say something—to laugh, to explain, to let her know that she didn’t need to do this, that he was happy just watching a movie with her, talking, learning more about her. But the words wouldn’t come. His hesitation wasn’t just about her—it was about himself, the knot of fear and doubt tightening in his chest.
Wasn’t this what he was supposed to want? The voices in his head spoke over each other, each louder than the last. The regressive rhetoric whispered, You’re the man here. Take control. Don’t let her lead. If you do, you’re weak. You’re not a real man. The progressive ideals he’d worked so hard to embrace offered no reprieve: What kind of man rejects a woman’s confidence? Are you rejecting her body? Her empowerment? Isn’t this exactly the kind of assertiveness you’ve always said you admired?
But there was something deeper, something harder to admit even to himself. He wasn’t ready—not for this, not like this. He liked her, but this was their second time together, and he wanted time to build trust, to make sure they were on the same page. He wanted to know her as a person before he knew her like this. But how could he explain that without sounding timid, ungrateful, or worse, emasculated?
He didn’t blame her. How could he? She’d taken the lead because he hadn’t, filling the silence with her own confidence. Maybe she’d grown up being told that women had to be assertive to be seen, that if she wanted something, she couldn’t wait for it to come to her. Maybe she’d been burned before, judged for being too passive or too shy, told that men liked women who knew what they wanted. Maybe this was her way of navigating the same rigid frameworks he was trapped in, her assertiveness the mirror image of his neurotic hesitance.
His friends never really talked about sex—not in any real way, at least. If it ever came up, it was always wrapped in an unspoken agreement to tread lightly, as though even acknowledging their desires risked turning them into “those types of guys.” So the subject stayed mostly off-limits, relegated to vague jokes or the occasional shared meme, never enough to start a real conversation. Still, his instincts painted a different picture. There was a part of him that wanted to talk about it, to ask if they ever felt the same confusion he did, the same tangled mess of desire and doubt. But even imagining the words left him feeling exposed. What if they thought he was overthinking things? What if they didn’t take him seriously? The progressive ideals he’d been trying to live by told him that sex was something men took from women, that male desire was inherently predatory. Would they just roll their eyes and say, “You got laid, what’s the problem?”
Then there was the other voice, the regressive devil on his shoulder, hissing in his ear: Why aren’t you thinking the same thing? You got laid. Isn’t that all that matters? Isn’t that the win? That voice was insidious, leaning into every insecurity he had, feeding on the shame that lingered after the encounter. It mocked his discomfort, telling him he should feel triumphant, not confused. That if he felt anything else, it was a sign of weakness, proof he wasn’t enough of a man to handle what had happened.
That was the trap, wasn’t it? Both voices came from the same place. Both assumed the same thing: that sex was a transaction, something men either took from women or earned from women. They framed it differently, dressed it up in opposing ideologies, but the core idea remained the same. And in that framework, there was no room for what he felt now—the emptiness, the confusion, the quiet sense of having been betrayed by himself as much as by anyone else.
This is what bell hooks meant when she wrote, “Learning to wear a mask (that word already embedded in the term ‘masculinity’) is the first lesson in patriarchal masculinity that a boy learns. He learns that his core feelings cannot be expressed if they do not conform to the acceptable behaviors sexism defines as male. Asked to give up the true self in order to realize the patriarchal ideal, boys learn self-betrayal early and are rewarded for these acts of soul murder.”
The mask was everywhere, woven into everything he did and everything he didn’t do. It was in the way he silenced himself in the bookstore, the way he let the night unfold without stopping it, the way he couldn’t bring himself to tell his friends what had happened. It wasn’t just one mask—it was two. One of progressiveness, stagnated into shame, and one of regressive materialism, steeped in conquest and control. Both demanded he betray himself. Both left him alienated from the world he was trying so hard to navigate.
The progressive framework, for all its good intentions, told him that his desires were inherently dangerous, that he needed to suppress them, analyze them, apologize for them. The regressive framework, in its loud, 'alpha-male' way, told him the opposite: that his desires were his birthright, something to be claimed without question or hesitation. But both frameworks reduced sex to a commodity and women to either gatekeepers or prizes. And neither gave him the tools to navigate moments like this—moments that didn’t fit neatly into either narrative.
For men in our generation, navigating our world of hyper-visibility, being terminally online, and rapidly shifting gender norms, these rigid rules feel like tools for a different task—well-intentioned but ultimately alienating. They were built for the battles of another time, battles that needed to be fought but have left behind frameworks ill-suited for the realities of the mid-2020s.
If we’re going to move forward, we need to stop treating these frameworks as sacred. We need to recognize that they’ve served their purpose and that it’s time to rethink them. It’s time to acknowledge that young men, especially working class men—while they do benefit from certain privileges in a patriarchal capitalist society—are also deeply harmed by that same system. The expectations placed on men to conform to rigid ideas of masculinity, whether regressive or progressive, are isolating. They alienate men not just from others, but from themselves. That’s the thing about progress: it changes. It moves. It evolves. It isn’t static, and it shouldn’t be. Progress means asking questions, bending rules, examining what came before and daring to think about what could come next. What did we get wrong? What can we do better? We need to be asking these questions about how young men see ourselves in the world—about the frameworks that shape us, the expectations that define us, and the spaces we’re allowed to occupy.
Here’s the truth: most young men aren’t looking for excuses to dominate or oppress. They’re looking for a way to exist in the world without feeling like a problem to be solved. They’re looking for a way to be seen, to be understood, to be loved. And they’re trying to find that way in a world that often tells them they don’t deserve it, or that they have to earn it through dehumanizing performance.
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