Yesterday was Father’s Day, a day whose origin is very patriarchal. But considering we do live in patriarchal times, I would appeal to men to embrace a challenge: use your power as a father, to subvert patriarchy. Here’s why, and how.

If you live in today’s world, read the news and see television you are not totally unaware that feminism is a battle for gender equality. And yet, I find men faltering when they are asked to openly embrace it. Some are insecure and afraid of losing their power. But most men are simply afraid of being bullied for openly challenging masculinity.

But what men need to know is that masculinity is socially constructed, and therefore can be easily redefined. The traditional definition makes masculinity seem synonymous with aggression and violence. It is this definition of masculinity that forces men to compete with each other for power and resources, licenses them to treat women as property that can be exchanged or traded, and allows them to bully other men for lacking this brute force. In fact, there is much pressure on men to remain “masculine”.

Here is a video that explores this pressure. The speaker Jackson Katz is  an author, filmmaker, educator and social theorist who has worked in gender violence prevention work with diverse groups of men and boys in sports culture and the military, and has pioneered work in critical media literacy. Here he talks about how men condone violence for fear of being chastised.

While some men are still unable to see this failure in male culture, most men are aware of it. Yet very few men will speak against misogyny until it affects them personally. But it is time that men shrugged off this inertia and joined the march for equality.

Back to Father’s day. We do live in a patriarchal age, where little boys are asked to look up to their fathers and to father-figures for examples to follow. So maybe there is no better time than now for grown men to begin questioning masculinity and brute force. A few men brave enough to stand up against the masses, might help to create a generation that might be more open to ideas of equality and feminism.

And while this may be tough, this is also just as admirable.