Masculinity, Hierarchy, War, and Religious Submission

Riane Eisler, an Austrian-born American systems scientist, futurist, attorney, and human rights advocate, is renowned for her influential work on cultural transformation and gender equity. Best known for “The Chalice and the Blade,” she introduced the partnership versus dominator models of social organization. She has received many honours, including the Republic of Austria’s Cross of Honour for Science and Art, the Nuclear Peace Leadership Award, earlier awarded to the Dalai Lama, the Center for Compassion Humanitarian Award, the Humanist Pioneer Award, and induction into the California Hall of Fame. She is President of the Center for Partnership Systems and Editor-in-Chief of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies at the University of Minnesota. The three books of hers of note that could be highlighted are The Chalice and the Blade, now in its 57th U.S. printing with 30 foreign editions, The Real Wealth of Nations, and Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future (Oxford University Press, 2019). These contributions amount to a second series with Eisler.

In this interview, Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Riane Eisler examine masculinity, education, hierarchy, war, law, and religion through partnership theory. They discuss how punitive expectations shape boys, how hierarchical educational systems historically normalized corporal punishment, and how men themselves occupy different levels within domination structures. The conversation then turns to war, civilian vulnerability, journalists’ protections, biblical violence, religious fear, ritual, and Eisler’s criticism of theological systems built around submission to an all-powerful personal deity today.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I used to like, and still like, the work of the late Helen Fisher and her approach to certain relational dynamics. Fisher was a prominent biological anthropologist who studied romantic love, attachment, relationships, and human mating.

Another person, psychotherapist Esther Perel, has discussed the relative fragility of masculine identity. In one formulation, she has argued that the construction of gender identity can be more fragile for men and that masculinity is often defined partly through the rejection of traits culturally coded as feminine.

The frame I took from that argument seemed accurate but historically limited. Homo sapiens has existed for roughly 300,000 years, whereas complex urban civilizations and states arose much later. So when we say that masculinity has “always” been fragile, the word always depends heavily on the historical frame being used.

I was considering her point through your partnership-studies framework because I think her analysis captures something real but partial. Your framework attempts to place those gender dynamics within a much broader account of social organization.

Riane Eisler: Absolutely. It takes into account that we have a partnership alternative and that everything, and I mean everything, is different when social relations are organized differently, beginning with gender roles and relations.

The marginalization of family, childhood, gender stereotypes, and gender ranking as merely ancillary matters, or simply as “women’s issues” or “children’s issues,” is part of the fragmentation of consciousness. It is also part of the trauma that helps perpetuate domination systems.

Jacobsen: That is also reflected in coded expressions and epithets. Consider phrases such as “don’t be a boy,” “be a man,” or “man up.” These expressions can imply both that childhood is inferior to adulthood and that masculinity must be demonstrated through conformity to particular behavioural expectations.

In that sense, they can exert punitive pressure on boys to construct an identity around a restrictive model of manhood. How does that dynamic become embedded in educational systems when children themselves are treated as secondary or subordinate?

Eisler: The conventional educational systems we inherited were historically shaped, in many places, by highly hierarchical structures. Corporal punishment was once routine in schools and was widely regarded as a legitimate means of discipline.

If you study the history of education, you see that physical punishment was accepted across many educational traditions. Teachers and school authorities were often expected to discipline students physically, and failure to maintain strict discipline could be interpreted as weakness or ineffectiveness.

This fits within a broader domination hierarchy. Men may receive certain compensatory privileges within that system, such as being treated as the authority within the household or being permitted to dominate women and children. But most men are themselves situated somewhere within a larger hierarchy.

Many men historically occupied relatively subordinate positions and could ultimately be required to give their lives in wars ordered by political or military leaders. We can see a contemporary example in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where Russian forces have suffered substantial military casualties while the war has also inflicted enormous losses on Ukrainian civilians.

Jacobsen: In war, military casualties are expected because soldiers are combatants. What remains particularly disturbing is the scale of civilian death and injury. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion began on 24 February 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine had verified at least 16,431 civilians killed and 48,613 injured by the end of June 2026, while emphasizing that the true totals are likely higher.

When a major bombardment happens here, particularly during the overnight hours, the routine afterward can become grimly automatic. You wake up after disrupted sleep, go online, and ask: How many people were killed? How many were injured last night?

Every strike raises that possibility.

As a journalist working in an armed-conflict environment, I am also legally a civilian for purposes of international humanitarian law, provided I am not directly participating in hostilities. Journalists on dangerous professional missions in conflict zones are protected as civilians under international humanitarian law. They may not lawfully be made the object of attack unless and for such time as they directly participate in hostilities.

That protection does not mean journalists are never killed. It means deliberately targeting a journalist who retains civilian status is unlawful under the laws of armed conflict.

Eisler: The rules of law are bizarre, as far as I am concerned. So are some of the contradictions in religious texts. Look at the Bible.

One of the Ten Commandments is traditionally rendered in English as “Thou shalt not kill,” although the underlying Hebrew is more accurately translated as a prohibition against murder. Yet elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, God commands warfare involving the destruction of entire populations. First Samuel 15, for example, depicts Saul being condemned for failing to carry out the commanded destruction of the Amalekites completely.

The amount of fear embedded in some religious language is striking. I think I told you that I have always liked Mozart’s Requiem. I once went to hear it performed while the Latin text was displayed in translation. Mozart composed the Requiem in 1791 and left it unfinished at his death.

Seeing the words changed the experience for me. The language struck me as extraordinarily self-abasing: we are sinners, we plead for mercy, we adore you, you are perfect, and we are profoundly unworthy. I found it horrible. I did not want to hear another Mass after that.

Jacobsen: One of my favourite Monty Python scenes is the church sequence in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Michael Palin plays the chaplain, and the prayer comically exaggerates this kind of abasement by praising God for being enormously powerful while the congregation repeats the lines. The humour comes from making the flattery explicit and absurd.

As a broader point, I tend to view a great deal of religious ritual, practice, and recitation as functioning partly like ritualized anxiolytics. They can reduce anxiety by providing structure, predictability, shared explanations, and a sense that uncertainty is manageable.

Eisler: And if you believe in an all-powerful personal deity who can reward, punish, and control events, that conception can produce some very troubling implications.

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen is a Writer and Editor for The Good Men Project with more than 2,000 publications on the platform. He is the Founder and Publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343; 978-1-0673505) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN, 0018-7399; Online: ISSN, 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), Humanist Perspectives (ISSN: 1719-6337), A Further Inquiry (SubStack), Vocal, Medium, The New Enlightenment Project, The Washington Outsider, rabble.ca, and other media. His bibliography index can be found via the Jacobsen Bank at In-Sight Publishing comprised of more than 10,000 articles, interviews, and republications, in more than 200 outlets. He has served in national and international leadership roles within humanist and media organizations, held several academic, media, and research institution fellowships, and currently serves on numerous international boards. He is a member in good standing in numerous media organizations, including the Canadian Association of Journalists, PEN Canada (CRA: 88916 2541 RR0001), and Reporters Without Borders (SIREN: 343 684 221/SIRET: 343 684 221 00041/EIN: 20-0708028), and others.