From a very young age, women are conditioned to orient themselves around male approval. Long before conscious choice is possible, girls learn that safety, belonging, and worth are tied to being liked, desired, and accepted by men. This conditioning does not arrive as a single message but as a thousand subtle cues, reinforced through family dynamics, education, religion, media, and culture. Over time, it shapes how women see themselves, how they move through the world, and how they relate to their own emotions.
As a result, many women grow up deeply preoccupied with being attractive, agreeable, soft, and pleasant. Not because these qualities are inherently wrong, but because they are rewarded. The underlying message is clear: to be lovable is to be palatable. To be safe is to be non-threatening. To belong is to conform. This is not a personal failure or a lack of confidence. It is a learned survival strategy within a patriarchal system that has historically been built by men and for men.
This blog is based on the video of Myrthe Glasbergen, MSc. about this topic. You can watch her video below. Prefer to read on? Just scroll below the video.
When Worth Becomes External
This conditioning has profound psychological consequences. When a woman’s worth is implicitly tied to desirability and approval, her internal compass begins to shift outward. Instead of being guided by intuition, boundaries, and embodied knowing, she learns to monitor herself through the imagined gaze of others. Over time, this external orientation erodes self-trust and creates a chronic state of self-surveillance. Anxiety, insecurity, people-pleasing, and self-doubt are not random symptoms. They are the emotional cost of living disconnected from one’s own authority.
Rather than asking what feels right, many women learn to ask what will be accepted. Rather than trusting their inner signals, they learn to override them in order to maintain connection. This constant adaptation creates a subtle but persistent form of self-abandonment, one that is often mistaken for maturity, kindness, or emotional intelligence.
The Suppression of Anger and Intuition
One of the most significant losses under patriarchal conditioning is access to anger. From early childhood, many girls are taught that anger makes them difficult, unlovable, or dangerous. Assertiveness is reframed as aggression. Boundaries are interpreted as rejection. As a result, anger is suppressed long before it can mature into discernment. What remains is often anxiety, guilt, or a pervasive sense of unease that something is wrong without being able to name what it is.
Psychologically speaking, this suppression is not benign. Anger is not merely an emotion; it is a regulatory signal. It alerts us to violations, misalignment, and danger. When anger is chronically inhibited, the nervous system loses one of its most important feedback mechanisms. Women may still sense that something is off, but without permission to act on that knowing, the signal turns inward. The body carries the information, while the conscious mind learns to override it.
This disconnection from anger is closely tied to disconnection from intuition. Many women possess a highly sensitive internal radar. They feel when something is not right long before it can be rationally explained. Yet patriarchal conditioning teaches them to doubt this knowing, to prioritize politeness over truth, harmony over integrity. The cost of this self-betrayal accumulates over time.
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Anxiety as a Consequence of Disconnection
What begins as compliance often turns into exhaustion. What begins as adaptability turns into resentment. What begins as survival turns into self-erasure. Anxiety and insecurity frequently emerge not because women are weak, but because they are living in contradiction with their own internal signals. The nervous system remains on high alert, constantly scanning for approval, constantly adjusting, constantly suppressing authentic response.
Importantly, stepping out of the male gaze is not about rejecting men or cultivating hostility toward them. Patriarchy harms men too, albeit differently. The issue is not individual men but a system that has defined value, power, and authority through a narrow and distorted lens. When women orient themselves exclusively within that framework, they are forced to abandon parts of themselves that do not fit the mold.
Stepping Out of Male Approval
Reclamation begins when this conditioning is named. Not intellectually, but emotionally. Many women carry a deep, unspoken grief for the parts of themselves that were never allowed to fully exist. Grief for the anger that was silenced. Grief for the voice that learned to soften itself. Grief for the instincts that were overridden in order to stay connected. This grief is not weakness. It is evidence of truth resurfacing.
As women begin to loosen their attachment to male approval, something shifts internally. Boundaries start to feel less threatening. Saying no becomes possible without catastrophic guilt. Preferences re-emerge. Anger transforms from something explosive or shameful into something clarifying and grounded. The nervous system begins to recalibrate around internal authority rather than external validation.
This process is not comfortable. Letting go of the male gaze often feels destabilizing at first because it means stepping out of a familiar survival structure. The psyche may respond with fear, confusion, or a sense of emptiness. These reactions do not indicate failure. They indicate withdrawal from a conditioning that once ensured belonging.
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Reclaiming Female Authority and Collective Power
As this reclamation deepens, many women find themselves drawn toward other women. Not in competition, but in recognition. Sisterhood becomes possible again when women no longer see each other as rivals for approval. Shared wisdom replaces comparison. Collective remembering replaces isolation. This is not nostalgia or idealism. It is a restoration of relational structures that existed long before patriarchal systems fragmented them.
Within this space, different expressions of feminine power can coexist. The mother, the crone, the warrior, the intuitive, the creator. These are not archetypes to perform, but energies that arise naturally when women are no longer required to suppress themselves. With maturity, these energies integrate rather than compete. Strength no longer excludes softness. Anger no longer negates compassion. Authority no longer requires domination.
From Personal Reclamation to Collective Healing
On a collective level, this reclamation has far-reaching implications. Many of the trauma cycles we see today are perpetuated through emotional suppression, disconnection, and powerlessness. When women reconnect with their embodied authority, they interrupt these patterns at their root. Not through control or moral superiority, but through presence, discernment, and truth-telling.
The world does not need more compliant women or more perfectly adjusted individuals. It needs women who are anchored in themselves. Women who trust their perceptions. Women who are no longer governed by the need to be liked. Women who can hold anger without violence, boundaries without cruelty, and power without apology.
Stepping out of the male gaze is not a rebellion against men. It is a return to balance. A return to embodied wisdom. A return to a form of leadership that does not dominate but transforms. This is not a personal upgrade. It is a necessary movement toward collective healing.
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