The Will to Change: bell hooks
book synopsis
The Will to Change (First Half)
This is the most painful truth of male domination, that men wield patriarchal power in daily life in ways that are awesomely life-threatening, that women and children cower in fear and various states of powerlessness, believing that the only way out of their suffering, their only hope is for men to die…Women and female and male children…have wanted them dead because they believe that these men are not willing to change. (p xv). It is not true that men are unwilling to change. It is true that many men are afraid to change. (p xvii)
Women want men (including fathers, uncles, brothers, friends, colleagues, and male sexual/romantic partners) to love them.
Many people who seek love (and sex) from men/male bodies in unhealthy ways because of the lack of feeling loved by early father figures/men in their lives.
You can see this in the way that some folks attach too quickly and cannot verbalize or stick to/uphold boundaries.
Emotions and the desire to change to become more in touch with emotions are often perceived to be weaknesses in men
Men are seen as strong if they do not display negative/difficult emotions (such as sadness or loneliness).
Showing emotions and/or a desire to change might reduce the chances to engage (romantically, sexually) with women/other people.
The ‘emotions’ and responses that are seen as acceptable are anger and stoicism. These do not allow for communication around consent, vulnerabilities (eg, experience levels, boundaries, desires), which make engagement more risky.
Men are seen as more / less valuable based on what they do (action), not who they are (emotions, thoughts).
Thus, men are not encouraged or educated on how to communicate
“‘Something missing within’... again and again, a man would tell me about early childhood feelings of emotional exuberance, of unrepressed joy, of feeling connected to life and to other people, and then a rupture happened, a disconnect, and that feeling of being loved, of being embraced, was gone
How does this impact the ability to connect with others, to read their emotions, desire, engagement?
How does this impact you?
[boys are] taught that that their value would be determined by their will do violence (albeit in appropriate settings)
Do you feel that you were socialized to express yourself through anger or other “strong”, “masculine” emotions? If so, how does that impact you? And does it affect how you engage with others?
Were you taught that “gentleness” or “softness” were “bad” qualities to have as a male bodied person? How does that impact you, and your perception and behavior toward others?
Violence (eg, punishment, rejection) is used as a tool to enforce gender norms.
This could be as simple as other men disapproving of you of doing something that as seen as “unmanly”, eg., not wanting to engage sexualy with someone when you have an opportunity.
“...equate violent domination and abuse of women with privilege”
What do you think of that statement? Do you feel like society teaches men (you?) that?
Patriarchal violence is seen as necessary for social control and organizing society.
How might that be deeply embedded into male behavior? Into your behavior?
But the patriarchy and associated violence is also the same system that denies men satisfaction in work and shackles them emotionally. It contributes to unhappy personal and familial relationships and addiction.
Men are not born without emotions
Male babies are more emotionally expressive than female babies, and male babies cry longer.
There’s a study that included parents taking their sons to get vaccinated, and when little boys (think 5 and 6 years old) cried, parents generally told their sons to be “tough” or “manly”.
Men are trained to be “manly” through the use of shame/shaming - by their peers, father figures, and even by their mothers in single-parent (mother) households.
How might learned shame affect how you relate and communicate with others?
“Men who may have seeds of negativity and domination within them along with positive traits may find the negative burgeoning at times of crisis in their lives.”
Research shows that men who have higher ACE scores (‘adverse childhood experiences’, which include emotional negligence and substance abuse in the family) are more likely to sexually assault someone. I’ve found through the incidents that I’ve helped with that people who cause harm are more likely to do so when they are experiencing difficulty in their lives/psyche.
How do you acknowledge and cope with crises or difficult times in your life? What are some ways you can improve?
Some research on rape shows that if you phrase something a specific way, eg, “forcing a woman sexually” or “non consensual sex”, men are more likely to say the behavior was okay than if you call it assault or abuse.
bell hooks writes about men being violent to future partners because they have residual anger at their mothers for enforcing the patriarchy upon them.
This is because mothers are emotionally violent toward their sons, and encourage/contribute to their sons becoming emotionally disconnected.
“...men come to sex hoping it will provide them with all the emotional satisfaction that would come from love.”
This intensifies lust and longing…to desire more and more sex.
We don’t talk about loneliness or love, we talk about, show (eg, movies, tv) sex.
There’s a notion that men will “act out or go crazy” without sex, thus justifying prison rape (that men need to have sex, and will do so no matter what)...and that logic justifies date, marital, acquaintance rape.
The need to dominate anyone “weaker”, be that a woman or a weaker man. Sexuality becomes the ultimate proving ground of this type of strength and “domination”.
In society, many men are ‘taught’ that women have the ‘power’ to withhold sex. This plays out in highly sexualized spaces (eg, porn). This can be used as a justification for sexual harm of women.
“To fuck a woman is to have sex with her. To fuck someone in another context…means to hurt or cheat a person”
“men of conscience in patriarchal society fear sex with the same intensity that females often fear sex”
…because sex as taught to us can be an instrument of “domination, cruelty, violence, and death”
The Will to Change (Second Half)
Men are offered addictions that make unsatisfying work more bearable p 92
Sex and porn are the “addictions” that are offered up to compensate for work that can be exploitative and often dehumanizing.
The valuation and nature of work has changed; men have lost their “economic authority” in the last three generations (which means that the ancestral trauma - the inherited trauma - of that shift is still felt by the children and grandchildren of those that survived that shift).
Could this shift contribute to the need for validation through sex and feeling “seen” by potential partners? In “our communities”, in which gender is viewed differently from many others, and in which there are many well educated/high income women…could there potentially be a greater drive to prove yourself in ways that don’t relate to money and “work”?
Barbara Ehrenreich’s The Hearts of Men: men are not always eager to be providers, the idea of the “playboy” (maybe “fuckboi” or Peter Pan in our community/time/place) is rooted in the longing to escape this role and to have another means of proving one’s manhood.
Men may increase demands for sexual favors or seek out more sex as a means to prove themselves.
Middle class (and higher classes) men feel more in power than working class men, as working class men realize their vulnerability and powerlessness in the class hierarchy
This is for you to think about: if you were raised middle class or “higher”, were you given the sense that you were privileged or “in power” compared to others?
Many men “often feel that aging allows them to break free of the patriarchy”
Do you feel this? Do you think that you can express emotion and communicate more as you grow older?
Victor Seidler’s Rediscovering Masculinity “A feeling of panic and anxiety emerges at the very thought of spending more time with myself”
How does the thought of doing nothing, eg, not going to sex parties or seeking new partners, make you feel?
“...the self is something we have to control tightly”
How does that relate to sex and especially to domination in sex?
Most men have clearly been willing to resist patriarchy when it interferes with individual desire.
…many men may be progressive in many ways, eg, campaigning on other social justice issues (or sexually and socially progressive, as you see in “our communities”), but may be more sexist or cruel in their personal (romantic, sexual) relationships
There is a study that if you show men a set of photos, describe the women in each photo, then ask them to rate the women in terms of attractiveness…they’ll find the same woman/photo less attractive if she’s described as intelligent. Yet most men state they seek “intelligence” in a female partner.
“Feminist masculinity” asks men to drop their investment in domination and invest in emotional growth…
Does being “emotional” run contrary to being dominant?
“Restore maleness and masculinity as an ethical biological category divorced from the dominator model”
How does domination relate to being seen as “masculine” or “powerful”?
How does domination relate to “power and control over others” and to your views/ingrained thinking about traditional masculinity?
Replace the dominator model with the partnership model, where all are seen as equals and “goodness” is based on relational orientation (that is, emotional intelligence, caring for and loving others).
Privilege is essential to the masculine, and to the “dominator”
Taking away privilege is “threatening” the identity of the patriarchal masculine archetype.
Olga Silverstein The Courage to Raise Good Men…seeking status is “masculine” (eg, validation is a form of status).
Indoctrination into patriarchy through mass media
In the 1970s, there were a series of books about redefining masculinity, just as there were feminist books (eg, The Feminine Mystique)...we’re aware of the feminine and feminist revolution; the male/masculine media was not embraced in the same way.
Mass media often focuses on male violence, including real life violence (eg, black-on-black crime), and domination and violence toward women is “entertainment” (eg, the OJ Simpson trial, or “missing white woman” syndrome).
Shows like The Incredible Hulk indoctrinate young men at young ages - Hulk is very much about traditional masculinity.
He is a scientist, the ultimate “rational man”
He literally transforms when he feels anger, and he cannot remember his actions when he returns to his normal self - which means he cannot be held responsible for those violent actions.
He is always on the run, unable to commit or form intimate relationships
There is a racialized narrative of “dark vs light” masculinity seen in the media (The Matrix, wars in the Middle East)...which allows for white men to not address their own harms.
She cites the Hillside Strangler (a white man who was a “hard worker” with a “lovely blond wife and a baby son”) as someone who police struggled to arrest, and the public didn’t want to believe it…then his mother is blamed for whipping him as a child (the trope of a serial killer/rapist becoming a rapist/killer because of his mother takes the responsibility off of him and transfers it to his mother/to a woman).
Healing male spirit
Psychologist David Winter found women living in countries/periods of extreme male domination tended to be very controlling of their sons.
The violence men do onto others is violence that was done onto them
Men who are imprisoned for sexual violence have considerable higher ACE (adverse childhood experience) scores than men who aren’t. One of the strongest correlations is substance abuse. Other correlations include emotional neglect and divorce.
Dehumanized himself, it is easy for him to feel justified in dehumanizing others.
Can kink be a way to “dehumanize”, to play out exaggerated versions of traditional gender roles, and to objectify and be objectified?
Male Integrity
Men are taught to compartmentalize, eg., separating out your “good self” from your “bad deeds” as a way to avoid feeling pain.
In the situation, are behaviors or people “compartmentalized”?