The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

by Bell Hooks

Patriarchal masculinity insists that real men must prove their manhood by idealizing aloneness and disconnection. Feminist masculinity tells men that they become more real through the act of connecting with others, through building community.

That love and domination can coexist is one of the most powerful lies patriarchy tells us all.

The popularization of gangsta rap, spearheaded by white male executives in the music industry, gave a public voice to patriarchy and woman-hating.

When feminist women insist that all men are powerful oppressors who victimize from the location of power, they obscure the reality that many victimize from the location of victimization. The violence they do to others is usually a mirroring of the violence enacted upon and within the self.

Whether males ever see themselves as working to end patriarchy, the fact remains that any man who chooses the way of compassion heals the spirit and moves away from domination.

Even though war is failing as a strategy for sustaining life and creating safety, our nation’s leaders force us into battle, giving new life to the dying patriarchy.

In dominator cultures most families are not safe places.

More than ever before in our nation’s history, females are encouraged to assume the patriarchal mask and bury their emotional selves as deeply as their male counterparts do. Females embrace this paradigm because they feel it is better to be a dominator than to be dominated. However, this is a perverse vision of gender equality that offers women equal access to the house of the dead. In that house there will be no love.