More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
inundated
pedagogy
concomitant
the will to use violence is really not linked to biology but to a set of expectations about the nature of power in a dominator culture.
we are not allowed in this culture to speak the truth about what relationships with men are really like. This silence represents our collective cultural collusion with patriarchy. To be true to patriarchy we are all taught that we must keep men’s secrets.
emotional abuse is “an ongoing process in which one individual systematically diminishes and destroys the inner self of another. The essential ideas, feelings, perception, and personality characteristics of the victim are constantly belittled…. The most salient identifying characteristic of emotional abuse is its patterned aspect…. It is…the ongoing effort to demean and control, that constitutes emotional abuse.”
aberrant
The way we “turn boys into men” is through injury: We sever them from their mothers, research tells us, far too early. We pull them away from their own expressiveness, from their feelings, from sensitivity to others. The very phrase “Be a man” means suck it up and keep going. Disconnection is not fallout from traditional masculinity. Disconnection is masculinity.
In patriarchal culture boys learn early that the authority of the mother is limited, that her power comes solely from being a caretaker of patriarchy.
Mothers who ally themselves with patriarchy cannot love their sons rightly, for there will always come a moment when patriarchy will ask them to sacrifice their sons. Usually this moment comes in adolescence, when many caring and affectionate mothers stop giving their sons emotional nurturance for fear it will emasculate them. Unable to cope with the loss of emotional connection, boys internalize the pain and mask it with indifference or rage.
Man Enough Frank Pittman
love as the will to nurture one’s own and another’s spiritual and emotional growth,
Working with men who wanted to know love, I have advised them to think of it as a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust.
patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves.
Women demanded of men that they give more emotionally, but most men really could not understand what was being asked of them.
“Sensitivity to others, the capacity to identify and share his feelings, a willingness to put his needs aside in the service of the family.”
“In our culture, boys and men are not, nor have they ever been, raised to be intimate.”
Many men respond to females’ wanting emotional connection with emotional withdrawal and, in worst case scenarios, with abuse.
over...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
in a loving relationship, abuse is unacceptable. You should not have to tolerate any abuse to be loved.’
cynicism,
It is more difficult for men to do the work of emotional development because this work requires individuals to be emotionally aware—to feel.
Men of feeling often find themselves isolated from other men. This fear of isolation often acts as the mechanism to prevent males from becoming more emotionally aware.
repudiate
pundits
The patriarchal manhood that was supposed to satisfy does not. And by the time this awareness emerges, most patriarchal men are isolated and alienated; they cannot go back and reclaim a past happiness or joy, nor can they go forward. To go forward they would need to repudiate the patriarchal thinking that their identity has been based on.
“Gender Politics of Men,” R. W. Connell
men come to sex hoping that it will provide them with all the emotional satisfaction that would come from love. Most men think that sex will provide them with a sense of being alive, connected, that sex will offer closeness, intimacy, pleasure. And more often than not sex simply does not deliver the goods.
If women have been taught through sexist socialization that a journey through the difficult terrain of sex will lead us to our heart’s desire, men have been taught that their heart’s desire should be for sex and more sex.
gusto
The assumption that “he’s gotta have it” underlies much of our culture’s acceptance of male sexual violence.
They think that men will go mad if they cannot act sexually. This is the logic that produces what feminist thinkers call “a rape culture.”
Males, whether gay or straight, learn early on in life that one of the primary rewards offered to them for obedience to patriarchal thought and practice is the right to dominate females sexually. And if no female is around, they have the right to place a weaker male in the “female” position.
Lying about sexuality is an accepted part of patriarchal masculinity. Sex is where many men act out because it is the only social arena where the patriarchal promise of dominion can be easily realized. Without these perks, masses of men might have rebelled against patriarchy long ago.
For the patriarchal male, be he straight or gay, addictive sexuality is fundamentally about the need to constantly affirm and reaffirm one’s selfhood.
Many men are angry at women, but more profoundly, women are the targets for displaced male rage at the failure of patriarchy to make good on its promise of fulfillment, especially endless sexual fulfillment.
Patriarchal violence is a mental illness.
denigration
enamored
assuaged.
It is not just antifeminist backlash that has led to the normalization of pornographic sexual violence in our mass media and in common sexual practice; the desire to keep men from feeling and naming their pain fuels the need for consistent brainwashing.
Sex was, and is, presented as the road to real intimacy, complete closeness, as the arena in which it is okay to openly love, to be tender and vulnerable and yet remain safe, to not feel so deeply alone. Sex is the one place sensuality seems to be permissible, where we can be gentle with our own bodies and allow ourselves our overflowing passion. This is why men are so obsessed with sex…. But in no way can sex completely fulfill these needs. Such needs can only be fulfilled by healing from the effects of male conditioning and suffusing every area of our lives with relatedness and aliveness.
“no matter how much sex you encounter, it will not be enough to fill your enormous need to love and be close and express your passion and delight in your senses and feel life forces coursing through your muscles and skin.”
alimony
Work stands in the way of love for most men then because the long hours they work often drain their energies; there is little or no time left for emotional labor, for doing the work of love. The conflict between finding time for work and finding time for love and loved ones is rarely talked about in our nation.
When individual men stay home to do the work of homemaking and child rearing, the arrangement is still viewed as “unnatural” by most observers. Rather than being viewed as doing what they should do as people in relationships, homemaking men are seen as especially chivalrous, as sacrificing the power and privileges they could have as privileged male workers outside the home in order to do woman’s work inside the home.
Victor Seidler
Rediscovering Masculinity,
the male who defines his self through work seeks to do so because “this is the only identity that can traditionally belong to us…believing we can still prove our masculinity by showing we do not need anything from others.”
“Don’t wait until your life is near its end to find your feeling, to follow your heart. Don’t wait until it’s too late.”
