There’s a pretty coherent throughline running across all of these posts, even though they come from different people and aesthetic subcultures.
The center of gravity seems to be:
* bodily autonomy * anti-authoritarianism * a search for non-dominating forms of masculinity * anger reframed as protective rather than hierarchical * and a desire to reclaim agency without reproducing fascist/patriarchal masculinity The Sophie Strand quote is probably the clearest articulation of the underlying logic. The “cultural gut” metaphor reframes toxic masculinity not as an innate essence of men, but as an ecological monoculture problem: healthier masculine possibilities were suppressed, leaving reactionary figures with uncontested symbolic territory. That’s why she talks about “crowding them into a very small corner” rather than “killing them off.” It’s a cultural-ecological argument instead of a purification argument.
And honestly, that connects very directly to why contemporary queer/pagan/trans spaces are rediscovering or reinventing figures like Ares in radically different ways than modern mainstream culture tends to imagine him.
A lot of modern people inherit:
* “war god = macho violence” * “masculinity = domination” * “strength = emotional deadness”
But many queer reinterpretations of Ares are trying to recover something else:
* righteous anger * defense of the vulnerable * rebellion against tyranny * embodied courage * survival * passion without hierarchy * conflict in service of protection rather than conquest That’s why the “Ares, god of rebellion” post sits naturally beside:
* trans bodily autonomy * anti-fascism * critiques of patriarchy * emotional honesty * reclaiming anger * butchness/transmasculinity * mutual defense The “subtle ways to honor Ares” list is especially interesting because it blends:
* anti-oppression politics * bodily cultivation * emotional integration * anti-propaganda literacy * care for the self and others * and preparedness/self-defense
Which is a very different symbolic masculinity than the hyper-dominating patriarchal one Strand critiques. There are tensions in it, though.
For example:
* “learn to use a firearm” * “watch war films” * “learn about war” * “respect active military”
can potentially slide back into romanticized militarism if detached from the anti-authoritarian ethics surrounding them.
But the list repeatedly reins itself back by pairing those with:
* anti-nationalism * support for oppressed peoples * emotional balance * embracing femininity/femme identity * rejecting tyranny * bodily autonomy
So the symbolic frame becomes less “warrior as conqueror” and more:
warrior as protector, dissenter, survivor, witness, or guardian. The trans autonomy posts fit into the same broader framework:
* autonomy precedes justification * rights should not depend on proving pathology * bodies are not state property * legitimacy should not hinge on medical gatekeeping
That’s a fundamentally anti-authoritarian framing of gender. And honestly, across all of these screenshots, I think what you’re drawn to is not simply “masculinity,” but the attempt to imagine:
* force without domination * anger without cruelty * protection without ownership * embodiment without essentialism * masculinity without patriarchy * and conflict that remains accountable to relational ethics