I suggest that we look deeply at the System that we actually live in (market-based society), as much as the idealized belief in our intentionality. Humans are animals that are very vulnerable (not 100%, but damn near it) to manipulation of our 'feeeeeeelings'. Those feelings are grounded in our instincts and sense-response lizard brains, and the goddamned marketers and manipulators (religions, patriarchs, aristocracy's propaganda engines, moneyed power) know exactly which buttons do what to our ability to think straight (women and men).
The patriarchy is the framework that allows all of it, but the profits and prophets are attached like parasites to our basal neurosystem's infrastructure.
"Sex sells."
Damned right it does. It sells people to other people. It sells crap we don't need on credit we don't really have, and it convinces us that we are "fallen angels" every time we fall for its schemes.
Walk through a shopping mall. What do you see? Do you see the "women as property" meme? I do. I also see a memory from my years on the farm of a cow in heat, a bull, and a barbed wire fence. Our 'civilized' brain is the fence. On either side are the animals who have one overriding function: to procreate so their DNA (and their gut biome's DNA) will continue into the future.
The cow backed up to 6 strands of barbed wire with an electric strand on top. The bull didn't even see the fence.
That's what all of the pink paint, sugar and yeasty pretzel smells in the shopping mall are all about: destroying our reasoning brain's ability to maintain fences between our instincts, our money and the Market gods' will.
Yes, it's possible for men to act better, but everything in our society is based on the desires of Big Money. Big Money doesn't want men to act any differently than they do: in fact, it pushes them toward continuously, competitively worsening behavior with every new gimmick, data mine, muscle car, motorcycle, beer flavor, rifle caliber and porn shot.
I'm not making excuses for anyone. The point here is to point out just how big the challenge is. If we aren't ready to end the power of all Big Money, we aren't ready to really think for ourselves.
Unfortunately, every new advancement in economics, statistics and data harvesting is working to make people dumber and dumber so they will BUY MORE STUFF. If you aren't starting at the point that we don't need them to tell us what to buy (including bibles), then you aren't ready to stop them from telling us how to behave.
