The point is that they get perpetuated through any words. "Ban" a word and a phrase will take its place.

This is very visible in the words used for those with mental disabilities. They used to be called "idiots" by doctors. Then, as idiot became a common insult, doctors moved on to "<people with a> mental retard". When that became a common insult, they moved on to "mentally challenged" and so on. This will be a never-ending arms-race though: as long as people insist on insulting others by comparing them to those that have a mental disability, they will always pick up the current medical terminology for them and use it as an insult.

Note that I'm not saying we should be calling children with Down syndrome "idiots" or "retards". Even though the "fight" will probably be endless, it's worth it not to use known derogatory terms for your pacients. Similarly, even though racists and other bigots can express their bigotry even with perfectly neutral language, it doesn't mean we should accept the use of slurs.

But it's also important not to get a false impression that just because Richard Spencer isn't using the n-word to refer to black people (in public), it means he's not being racist. You can always use language to teach others to hate BIPOC and ask for them to be thrown out of the country, along with LGBTQIA+ people if you're at it.

By every single sense and aspect of you.

Hearing those words is a thing, yes. Men wearing floral perfumes will be shamed for it (patriarchy sees this as feminine). Men will receive less gentle physical touches, caresses, care, either in an expectation that it makes them weaker, or that they don't need it. Men are expected to dress a certain way.

Men don't commit suicide _just_ because they're told to man up and deal with it. They do it because of a socially enforced dreadful lack of emotional comfort. A hug doesn't need words to comfort someone, not being judged or looked at wrongly for going away from the mold doesn't need words to comfort someone. That's why it's a social construct, not a verbal construct. It permeates everything around you.

No. It’s not that simple. Yes there is a legacy of cultural practices to contend with, but it isn’t this all encompassing reality you imagine.

Consider that levels of affection afforded to men (or harshness they are expected to endure) vary significantly across cultures and very much between subcultures in a modern nation like the US. It’s trivial to find groups of people who are very positive about affection vs people who are very traditional within a few miles of each other.

These groups speak very differently about their ideas of masculinity (since you introduced that example) and will make different arguments about what is right. Those arguments absolutely do inform group members and newcomers alike about what is considered acceptable.

Language is of course not everything - people do learn through mimicry, but you might be surprised how easy it is to use language to get someone to try something they didn’t think was for them. Advertisers do this all the time.

I don’t really see how someone can sit there with a straight face and say language doesn’t matter because of patriarchy.

Also patriarchy doesn’t ‘see’ anything because patriarchy isn’t a person and doesn’t have eyes. Patriarchy is an academic term for a set of ideas, not a mystical being.