Over the past two years, Beyond Patriarchy has been holding men-only* learning journeys as one part of a wider inquiry around the question:
What does it take to move beyond patriarchy — not just intellectually, but in the ways it shapes our relationships, bodies, and ways of organising?
The next men-only* learning journey begins online in March 2026. It builds on what has been learned over the past two years, and runs alongside our first all-gender* learning journey. We warmly invite you to join us.
By ‘men’, we mean anyone who identifies or has been socialised as a boy / man.
Why men-only*?
Many men who join this work do not identify as ‘patriarchal’. They are often reflective, values-driven, and committed to making the world a better place. And yet, similar patterns keep showing up:
Withdrawing emotionally.
Struggling to ask for help.
Becoming defensive when challenged.
Remaining silent when others cause harm.
Staying ‘in control’.
Living mostly in the head.
Confusing care with usefulness.
Defaulting to a ‘go it alone’ attitude.
We see these are learned responses — often rewarded, rarely questioned — shaped by patriarchal socialisation.
Men-only* spaces create a particular set of conditions: where responsibility can be shared, where shame can be transformed into something generative, and where we can practise noticing our patterns without performing innocence or expertise. This work is not about ‘fixing’ men or learning the ‘right’ language — it is about staying with how patriarchal patterns show up long enough for something different to become possible.
“It’s helping me to create changes that will actually last, because I’m addressing the needs that create harmful behaviour” — Joshua Stehr, participant in the Spring 2024 journey (full interview here)
Holding men-only spaces is one way of ensuring that the work of reflection, repair, and unlearning does not quietly fall back onto women, gender-diverse people, or those already carrying disproportionate care work. It is a practice of taking responsibility in the right places.
What the journey offers
This is a held, multi-session learning journey. Over several weeks, the group builds trust, continuity, and enough relational safety to move beyond surface-level reflection. Participants are invited to move from noticing patterns, to staying with discomfort, to experimenting with different responses — both in the group and in everyday life.
Each session begins with time to properly arrive — closing tabs, making tea and settling into the space — before moving into shared inquiry, reflection, and embodied practice.
Practices in the journey may include guided body-based reflection, structured dialogue, collective sense-making.
Between sessions, participants are invited into gentle ‘home-weaving‘ practices: small experiments that help integrate learning back into our everyday lives, relationships and wider systems.
“I think that, without this journey, I would not have taken the incredibly important step of engaging more deeply and sustainably with myself and my role within patriarchy” — Max Lehn, participant in the October 2025 journey (full interview here)
Harvesting and continuation
At the end of the journey, participants are invited into one or more follow-up pathways, supporting the transition from the learning space back into everyday life:
- a generative interview, published on the Beyond Patriarchy blog
- a follow-up session one month later
- and/or, for those in Berlin, a Shared Table Dinner at C*SPACE Berlin, co-hosted with Monika Jiang from The Oneliness Project (Sunday 19th April, TBC)
An invitation
This journey is an invitation into sustained, collective learning — towards greater responsibility, capacity, and care over time. We welcome curiosity and uncertainty, with no prior knowledge required or expected.
If this feels like the right moment to step into this work, you’re warmly invited to apply.
- 🗓️ Mondays, 19:00–21:00 CET
- 🌀 9th March – 6th April (5 sessions + 1 follow-up)
- 📍 Online
- 💛 Pay-what-you-can (sliding scale)
- 👥 12 participants
🙋 If you have questions or want to check whether this journey is a good fit, we’re hosting an info session on Friday 13th at 1pm CET: Sign-up here.
Or reach out to contact@beyondpatriarchy.org.
Deadline: 22nd February
How we work (for those who want to know more)
The learning journey draws on practices from a diverse range of methodologies and pedagogical lineages, including: Art of Hosting, Time To Think, Deep Democracy, Asset Based Community Development, Appreciative Inquiry, Generative Journalism, and the rich history of radical feminist popular education.
In practice, this means:
- We move between reflection, embodied practice, dialogue, and experimentation — allowing learning to circulate across thinking, feeling, sensing, and doing.
- We hold multiple scales of learning at once: inner experience, interpersonal dynamics, and the larger systems beneath and around us.
- We treat lived experience as a starting point, while orienting the learning towards collective liberation.
- We consider all experience as partial and situated, and learning by bringing multiple perspectives into relationship.
- We slow the pace of conversation to make space for noticing what usually goes unnamed or awkwardly bypassed.
- We orientate learning towards increasing collective capacity — not just understanding, but the ability to act together with care.
Facilitation in this context is about shaping the conditions in which learning can unfold collectively: pacing, trust, attention, and the ability to stay with complexity together.
👉 Learn more about our approach here: What we are learning through Beyond Patriarchy: Harvesting two years of practice
Beyond Patriarchy 