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What Is Decentering Men?

I have no idea when or where I first encountered the phrase 'decentering men.' All I know is that by the time it weaved its way into my vocabulary a few years ago, I seemed to understand it instinctively. This concept, wherever it came from, put words to something I'd been experiencing in my own life both consciously and subconsciously as my relationship to men—what I wanted from them, how I saw them, and how I saw myself in terms of them—began to shift in the latter half of my 20s. According to writer Sherese (Charlie) Taylor, who coined the phrase in her 2019 book, Decentering Men, that's the point. 'This phrase resonates because it gives language to a quiet, growing rage,' she tells Cosmo. 'It speaks to the exhaustion of organizing your life around men's potential, opinions, or comfort. It speaks to the clarity that comes when you finally stop contorting yourself, when you finally say, 'I will not sacrifice myself for a system that was built to consume me.'' In recent years, 'decentering men' has fully entered the zeitgeist, reaching buzzword status on TikTok and even popping up in conversations with stars like Hannah Berner and Paige Desorbo, who've discussed the concept on their Giggly Squad podcast as well as in a recent interview with CBS. 'Decentering men means when you wake up in the morning, do not base all your decisions around a man,' Berner told co-host Gayle King. But as with anything that gains traction online, the internet virality decentering men is currently enjoying leaves it vulnerable to potential misuse and misconceptions. So if you, like me, woke up one day to find this phrase had suddenly taken up residence in your brain without knowing exactly where it came from or what it means, here's an expert-backed guide to the trend that is actually not, in fact, as Taylor puts it, 'a cute trend,' but rather 'a political response, a rejection of the lie that our power comes from proximity to men.' Below, everything aspiring male decentrists should know about decentering men, from what it is to why it's popping off right now and what it really means to decenter men from your life—including your love life. 'To decenter men is to actively interrogate and undo the ways patriarchy has taught us to center them in our thoughts, decisions, and self-worth,' explains Taylor. 'Patriarchy embeds itself deep in our psyche. It teaches us that men are the prize, the rescuer, the final destination.' To decenter men is to acknowledge and unlearn these internalized beliefs and the systems they uphold and to reorient our lives around new ones. Gender equality writer and influencer Sommer Tothill adds that to understand what it means to decenter men, it may first be helpful to think about what it means to center them—which is something so ingrained in society that it can be difficult to identify. 'Essentially, women center men when we orient our life plans around securing a romantic relationship with a man,' Tothill explains, adding that women are also culturally pressured into maintaining these relationships even if they are not healthy, rewarding, or safe. But decentering men, and the ways in which life under patriarchy first teaches us to center them, is about more than the 'happily ever after' model of romantic relationships as the end-all, be-all that Disney movies of yore are (somewhat reductively albeit not unfairly) accused of spoon-feeding generations of young girls. The pressure women feel from a young age to get a boyfriend, a ring, a wedding, to orient our lives around the crowning achievement of locking it down with a man in the eyes of the law and all of our Instagram followers, is one of the most obvious manifestations of centering men at work. But the roots go much deeper. 'Women's entire lives are defined by patriarchal systems engineered to exploit our time and labour; it's so built into the fabric of society that we can even fail to notice it,' says Tothill. 'Decentering men is a conscious pushback against this exploitation.' Because that exploitation is so accepted as a default societal setting, its force often goes unnoticed—even and especially by the women it drains. 'I coined the term 'decentering men' when I realized I was exhausted from living with a man-shaped shadow in every decision,' says Taylor. 'It felt like I was living at 85 percent, waiting for someone to permit me to hit 100. That's what patriarchy does. It teaches women to hold back until we are chosen. Decentering men is a practice of naming that, confronting it, and choosing to live as sovereign women on our own terms.' Decentering men has quickly gained popularity since Taylor coined the term in 2019, becoming even more widespread in the last few years. Sex researcher Melissa A. Fabello, PhD, attributes this recent boom to the rise of TikTok and the breakneck speed with which trends gain traction on the platform, as well as the simultaneous increase in awareness of South Korea's 4B movement in the US, which encourages women to abstain entirely from dating, marrying, sex, and having children with men. Of course, both 4B and decentering men owe their recent rise in American consciousness to a current political climate that has reinforced and reinvigorated a regressive culture of misogyny. 'It's cruelly obvious in recent years that the patriarchal structures that define our society, as well as individual men, have little interest in actively advancing women's liberation,' says Tothill. 'After a string of high-profile political disappointments for women—the repeal of reproductive rights in the US, for example—women are realizing they will not be protected by men or male systems of power. So we are asking ourselves: do men even deserve our attention?' Meanwhile, for all the political regression in the air at the moment, our current era remains the first time in modern history that women have had the social and economic opportunity to choose singlehood, notes feminist dating coach Lily Womble, founder of Date Brazen and author of Thank You, More Please. Although, of course, it's worth noting that for many women, staying single remains financially risky if not impossible. Still, as women increasingly gain access to modern freedoms like financial independence and the ability to shape our lives on our terms, 'it's critical that we weigh those freedoms against the risks our relationships with men can pose to them,' says Tothill. The more freedom we get from men, the more we realize how much we have to lose to them. If decentering men is having a moment, it's because 'women are paying attention,' says Taylor. 'We are watching Roe v. Wade be reversed. We are watching incel culture go mainstream. We are watching our rights be stripped away, our safety threatened, our labor exploited, and our autonomy questioned. We are watching the rise of fascism cloaked in tradwife aesthetics, where women's value is reduced to submission and domesticity. And we are done pretending that this is normal. That is why it's resonating. Because women are waking up, and we are tired.' So if centering men begins with the societal pressure women face to build their lives around securing a romantic relationship with one, does decentering them have to mean going boy sober? Short answer, no, not necessarily. While, as Febos noted, decentering men is related to the 4B movement, it does not demand the same commitment to swearing off men entirely. In fact, Womble says the idea that decentering men means you can't or shouldn't date them is one of the biggest misconceptions surrounding it. 'The problem that the decentering men movement is aptly responding to is the patriarchal culture that tells women to shrink what they want and settle for emotionally lackluster relationships,' says Womble. 'Considering this patriarchal conditioning, of course women are taught that to date men is to inherently settle for and center them.' According to Womble, decentering men in your dating life is not about removing them from it entirely, but rather recentering yourself and your desires. And if those desires happen to include a relationship with a man, women are well within their rights to pursue that without compromising their values. 'The problem is when you make men (specifically those who were wrong for you) the focus—whether that's going on mediocre dates, staying in 'just okay' or even toxic relationships, or stopping your dating life altogether, even when you want partnership,' says Womble. 'I see women often turn their exes into 'evidence' that the relationship they want doesn't exist. That's another way of centering men instead of their own desires.' For some women, of course, decentering men may indeed involve forgoing romantic or sexual relationships with them. Because at its core, decentering men is about interrogating the societal conditioning that encourages women to prioritize romantic commitment to men and the heteropatriarchal structures with which it intersects. For some women, this may include 'asking themselves where they learned to chase concepts like marriage and nuclear family and whether or not that desire is authentic,' says Febos. 'It could look like valuing and enjoying being single, putting friends back at the center of one's life.' Either way, 'this isn't about rejecting love,' says Taylor. 'It's about rejecting the patriarchal conditioning that tells us we must suffer for it, earn it, or mold ourselves to be worthy of it.'