The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

by bell hooks

The unhappiness of men in relationships, the grief men feel about the failure of love, often goes unnoticed in our society precisely because the patriarchal culture really does not care if men are unhappy.

When I was in my twenties, I would go to couples therapy, and my partner of more than ten years would explain how I asked him to talk about his feelings and when he did, I would freak out.

Many women cannot hear male pain about love because it sounds like an indictment of female failure.

Sexism and racist thinking in the Harry Potter books are rarely critiqued. Had the author been a ruling-class white male, feminist thinkers might have been more active in challenging the imperialism, racism, and sexism of Rowling’s books.

Sadly there is no body of recent feminist writing addressing men that is accessible, clear, and concise. There is little work done from a feminist standpoint concentrating on boyhood. No significant body of feminist writing addresses boys directly, letting them know how they can construct an identity that is not rooted in sexism. There is no body of feminist children’s literature that can serve as an alternative to patriarchal perspectives, which abound in the world of children’s books.

Teachers of children see gender equality mostly in terms of ensuring that girls get to have the same privileges and rights as boys within the existing social structure; they do not see it in terms of granting boys the same rights as girls—for instance, the right to choose not to engage in aggressive or violent play, the right to play with dolls, to play dress up, to wear costumes of either gender, the right to choose.

Or viewing fathers as caregivers on equal footing with mothers. The number of times teachers and school faculty refuse to engage with me, despite my visibility as an engaged caregiver, is frustrating. Dad's contributions to childcare get ignored by teachers submerged in patriarchy.

Starting in early childhood, males need models of men with integrity, that is, men who are whole, who are not divided against themselves.

There was a time when I would often ask the man in my life to tell me his feelings. And yet when he began to speak, I would either interrupt or silence him by crying, sending him the message that his feelings were too heavy for anyone to bear, so it was best if he kept them to himself.

People who learn to lie to themselves and others cannot love because they are crippled in their capacity to tell the truth and therefore unable to trust. This is the heart of the psychological damage done to men in patriarchy. It is a form of abuse that this culture continues to deny.

He confesses that, like many men, he once convinced himself that it was important to tell lies to protect other people, but eventually he had to face the truth that “lies do not work.” To honor his self-esteem, to practice integrity, he learned that the truth had to be told, that “by procrastinating and delaying I merely made the consequences for everyone more terrible.”

If a man is not willing to break patriarchal rules that say that he should never change—especially to satisfy someone else, particularly a female—then he will choose being right over being loved.

We do not love better or more than men, but we do find it easier to get in touch with feelings because even patriarchal society supports this trait in us. Men will never receive support from patriarchal culture for their emotional development.

As individual men have become more aware of the lovelessness in their lives, they have also recognized their longing for love.