Not so long ago, Ludo Gabriele – a New York-based French entrepreneur – was in denial about the way he perceived women.

He was, he says, stuck inside a “man box” of a culturally defined and ridged set of “manly” behaviours.

“Like many men, I was not comfortable with my feminine side,” Gabriele writes, in his groundbreaking blog post Coming Out As A Male Feminist. “I buried it so deep inside myself because my environment made it dangerous for me to be sensitive.”

It was the birth of Gabriele’s second child and first girl, Sofia, earlier this year (he was already a dad to six-year-old Enzo) that prompted him to identify as a proud feminist.

And ever since, he’s been on a mission to shatter the concept of tough, emotionally resilient men on his website Woke Daddy.

“It took deep introspection and painful audit of my behavior to realize that I was not the man I wanted to be,” he says.

Many men, he says, have a biased understanding of feminism: “They don't see feminism as advocating for equal rights and opportunities for both genders”.

But he firmly believes, “You can still be a feminist and be a man. Pinky swear.”

This feminist dad faces online hate as he works to shatter ‘tough manhood’ myths