The identity crisis of modern teenage boys is often misinterpreted as a personal pathology, when in fact it is a structural conflict triggered by rigid gender expectations. This study aims to unravel the mechanisms of masculinity and formulate the implications of Sato Reang’s dissent in Eka Kurniawan’s novel The Dog Meows, The Cat Barks as a form of resistance. This is achieved by using the key theory of aesthetic politics proposed by Jacques Rancière (dissent and police order). This research is interpretative qualitative research that synthesizes close reading and empirical validation through focus group discussions. The results show that the police order of masculinity represented by the figure of the father attempts to render adolescent vulnerability invisible (conceptualization of the police order of masculinity). The dissensual acts of the character Sato Reang, manifested through apathy and withdrawal, successfully disrupt this consensus and demonstrate that the complexities of masculinity are products of structural failure within the social sphere rather than individual failure. The synthesis of the findings confirms that the crisis of adolescent identity must be redefined as a social crisis. Young people are urged to transform destructive dissent into personal political action that legitimizes emotional vulnerability as a political implication of aesthetics. In Eka Kurniawan’s fiction, dissent serves as an aesthetic and political call, urging society to redistribute gender roles to achieve a more empathetic and inclusive equality.
Afdholy et al. (Fri,) studied this question.