Implicit Bias and Blind Spots in Therapy for Men

Therapy has been shaped by many important cultural movements, including feminism. This has brought real benefits: greater awareness of power dynamics, emotional abuse, relational harm, trauma, and the importance of being able to speak openly about pain.

Women’s rights matter. Emotional safety matters. Challenging harmful relationship dynamics matters.

At the same time, it is fair to ask a more difficult question: Does modern therapy always fit the way some men experience distress, seek help, and make change? Exploring why many men may struggle to engage with therapy does not mean rejecting feminism or dismissing therapy. Rather, it may suggest that some underlying assumptions, frameworks, or cultural presuppositions within therapy can influence how men experience the therapeutic process.

Therapy is not culturally neutral; there are blind spots

Feminist-informed approaches have helped therapy better recognise power, coercion, emotional labour, trauma, and inequality relating to women. These are important contributions. However, any framework can develop blind spots when it becomes dominant.

One possible blind spot is that some men may experience therapy as a space where masculinity is automatically treated with suspicion. Stoicism, independence, emotional containment, or action-focused coping may be seen only as avoidance, rather than also being understood as strategies that may have helped a man survive, function, or maintain control. This can create a sense that therapy is not trying to understand men, but correct them, and this is where disengagement can begin.

The Complexity of Gendered Frameworks

Some critics of the Duluth Model domestic violence framework have argued that it unintentionally presents a biased view of gender dynamics. Developed in the 1980s as a feminist-informed approach to understanding domestic violence through power and control dynamics, the model has played an important role in recognizing patterns of coercive control and intimate partner violence, particularly violence against women.

At the same time, critics have argued that aspects of the model may not fully account for bidirectional violence, female perpetration, male victimization, same-sex relationship dynamics, or the psychological complexity underlying abusive behavior. Research exploring these gaps indicates that when intervention models rely solely on a gender-asymmetrical framework, they frequently overlook the lived experiences of men facing female-perpetrated abuse (Machado et al., 2020).

Consequently, some researchers and clinicians have suggested that overly rigid applications of these gendered frameworks can create critical blind spots in assessment and treatment. This is particularly evident when working with male clients who present as victims of abuse, trauma, shame, or relational distress, as traditional intake and screening tools may struggle to categorize them accurately (Machado et al., 2020).

This does not invalidate the importance of recognizing violence against women or power imbalances in relationships. However, it does reinforce the importance of maintaining flexibility, nuance, and individualized assessment within therapeutic practice. The issue is not whether gendered frameworks should exist, but whether any single framework can adequately explain the diversity and complexity of human relationships.

Is Not Always Intentional

It is important to be careful here.

Saying therapy may contain implicit bias does not mean individual therapists are deliberately biased against men. Most therapists are genuinely trying to help.

But implicit bias can show up in subtle ways:

• assuming emotional verbalisation is always the healthiest path

• viewing male guardedness only as dysfunction

• treating anger only as risk, without exploring shame, grief, or helplessness underneath

• overlooking how important competence, status, usefulness, and agency can be for many men

• assuming that “opening up” is always experienced as safe

These are not necessarily failures of individual therapists. They may reflect broader cultural assumptions within therapy training, professional discourse, and social narratives about men.

This Is Not Anti-Feminist

Critiquing the fit between therapy and men does not require rejecting feminism.

Feminism has helped name real forms of harm and expand the emotional language available in relationships and therapy.

But no single framework explains everything.

Men’s mental health also deserves its own serious, respectful, evidence-informed attention.

If men are not engaging with therapy, the answer cannot only be:

“Men need to open up.”

Sometimes the better question is:

“What kind of support would actually make sense to them?”

An Invitation for Men

At Men’s Evolution Therapy, the aim is not to pressure men into therapy because society says they should go. It is to offer a structured, practical, respectful space for men who are curious about understanding themselves better, improving their relationships, reducing anxiety, and rebuilding direction.

Learn more at:www.mensevolutiontherapy.com.au

References

Machado, A., Hines, D., & Douglas, E. M. (2020). Male victims of female-perpetrated partner violence: A qualitative analysis of men’s experiences, the impact of violence, and perceptions of their worth. Psychology of Men & Masculinities, 21(4), 612–621. https://doi.org/10.1037/men0000285