The Picture of Dorian Grey: Hidden in Plain Sight
Is anything truly selfless? Altruism, they say, is self-serving—an act performed not out of pure concern for others, but to feel good about oneself. To hold up a mirror and see oneself reflected as noble. I’ve committed myself to the cause of healing men, driven by a mission that feels, at first glance, like altruism. But no—there’s nothing selfless about it. I speak in whiskey circles, churches, secondary schools, post secondary schools, planting compassion in susceptible boys and broken men. I orchestrate men’s support groups in which my gender excludes me from participating. I do all this in a desperate attempt that there may be one more man in the world who is good—who sees women as human. Not for society’s sake. Not for abstract justice. But for the selfish reason that maybe, then, I will feel safer in the world. Maybe then, I can breathe a little easier.
How did we get here?
To this state of things?
I am reading The Picture of Dorian Grey, and the pseudo-intellectual banter between Harry and the protagonist ring eerily suspicious in the subtlety of its satire. The egregious belief that women are but shallow actors, soulless in substance, it is terrifyingly familiar. They speak with the same oily conviction of modern manosphere podcasts. It’s disturbing to realize that this mirror of reality we call fiction is still reflecting modern life with such clarity, even a century later. Their contempt, dressed up as sophistication. To them, women are “charmingly artificial”, puppets for male pleasure. Men like Harry, like Dorian, are still walking among us, nodding along to podcasts that tell them they are superior, that women exist only as mirrors for their own egos, ready to be picked up and put down as they please. That women crave male approval, and men are the arbiters of worth.
How did we get here?
And it’s true, women are taught to crave male approval. As Margaret Atwood once wrote: “You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman.” The male gaze lives within us. And the cruelest part of this, what makes it so insidious, is that women have internalised this gaze as truth. This objectifying gaze that robs the subject of their humanity. Even after 134 years, the misogyny that degrades Dorian Gray’s portrait is still received by some modern men and pick me women with a nod, the point lost on them. For who wants to admit that while women may despair for male approval, a man’s sense of self is often precariously balanced on his perceived dominance over women?
How did we get here?
To this miserable state of things?
Awareness does nothing to free us from our patriarchal curses. I can identify the male gaze, but I cannot escape it. Men can realise their prejudice, but still perpetuate it. The Lord Henrys of the world, the Jordan Petersons and Elon Musks, insist that these dynamics are natural—dominance for men, submission for women—this is the order of things, they say. They warn that challenging it means unraveling civilization itself. But what is civilization if not a persistent reenactment of a deeply ingrained hypnosis? One that says men must dominate and women must be subjugated? This isn’t nature. It’s a story. And like all stories, it can be rewritten. Yet, here we are, clinging to it like drunks to their bottles, poisoning ourselves slowly. The patriarchal poison works its way through our veins, and we are complicit in the slow death of our own souls.
How did we get here?
They call us agents of chaos. Soulless actors. Emotional wrecks. Harbingers of hysteria. As I type this, there are hoards of men nodding in agreeance, a sea of bobble heads. These words—this rhetoric—has been re-popularised by the messiahs of the manosphere, men who proclaim to know the truth about women. Even if these sexist labels had a kernel of truth to them, that women were dramatic in emotion and shallow in thought, what result would you expect of a human denied their humanity? Trained to deny themselves for the favour of a man?
Meanwhile, when men are exposed for their own bobble-headed behavior—for eagerly parroting these myths about women—their humanity is left unscathed. Feminists often soften their criticisms of men, blaming the irresistible power of the patriarchal waters we are swimming in. Yet still, the mantrum that follows the harsh light shone upon their fragile egos translates directly into violence against women.
How did we get here? To this state of things?
In 2024, France and Britain have had no choice but to classify violence against women as domestic terrorism. Violence has escalated to such a degree that governments are finally acknowledging what women have long known—that we are living under public threat. Gender-based violence is not random; it is deliberate. It is an act of control and subjugation, committed by men who see themselves as rightful rulers of women’s bodies and lives.
There are men, of course, who have stopped bobbing their heads. Men who have had their moments of reckoning, who have seen through the veil of lies and realized that women, indeed, have souls. There are even those who have carried this knowledge all their lives. But they are few, scattered like stars in a dark sky. For so many others, enlightenment still waits. Many women are still awaiting their own enlightenment, with white knuckles, gripping the keys to their own prison cell, shouting, “Everything’s fine! We are equal now!” As 72/104 men accepted invitations to rape Gisèle Pelicot, and the other 32 remained in protective silence.
I sometimes find myself hanging on to my soul by a thread.
I don’t know how we got here, but here we are.
This is the state of things
My soulless flesh is his to take pleasure in. But the beat that compels my impertinent fingers to type, that is my own. The force that vibrates in my throat as I herald in a chaos that liberates, that is my soul fighting for its life.