The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

by bell hooks

pundits tend to behave as though it were a mystery why boys are so violent.

“Most women, like most men, feel that a mother’s influence will ultimately be harmful to a male child, that it will weaken him and that only the example of a man can lead a son into manhood. Single mothers in particular are haunted by the dread of producing a sissy.”

Homophobia underlies the fear that allowing boys to feel will turn them gay; this fear is often most intense in single-parent homes. As a consequence mothers in these families may be overly harsh and profoundly emotionally withholding with their sons, believing that this treatment will help the boys to be more masculine.

Patriarchal fathers cannot love their sons because the rules of patriarchy dictate that they stand in competition with their sons, ready to prove that they are the real man, the one in charge.

In his essay “Finding the Light and Keeping It in Front of Me,” Bob Vance describes walking behind his father as a boy longing to connect but knowing intuitively that no connection was possible: “Something inhibits me from asking him for what I need. I know, if a very young boy can intuit such things, that I am left out of his world and am somehow forbidden to ask him what I can do to have him take me into his world, to hold me playfully or tenderly. The rift begins here. This is the earliest memory I have of my father.”

To the patriarchal dad, sons can only be regarded as recruits in training, hence they must constantly be subjected to sadomasochistic power struggles designed to toughen them up, to...

despite the fact that it has been documented that cultures exist in the world where men are not violent in everyday life, where rape and murder are rare occurrences.

As women have gained the right to be patriarchal men in drag, women are engaging in acts of violence similar to those of their male counterparts.

Significantly, emotional abuse in families is not just a component of the couple bond; it can determine the way everyone in a family relates. If a woman is patriarchal, it can be present in a single-parent home with no adult males present. In many homes patriarchal power resides with teenage boys who are abusive to single-parent moms; this is male violence against women.

In my family of origin our dad in a booming, angry voice would often scream repeatedly at Mom, “I will kill you.” For years my nightmares were filled with an angry father sometimes killing Mom, sometimes killing me for trying to protect Mom. In our family, Dad was not consistently enraged, but the intense emotional and physical abuse that he unleashed on those rare occasions when he did act out violently kept everyone in check, living on the edge, living in fear.

Terrence Real calls this early indoctrination into patriarchal thinking the “normal traumatization” of boys:

When I first began looking at gender issues, I believed that violence was a by-product of boyhood socialization. But after listening more closely to men and their families, I have come to believe that violence is boyhood socialization.

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.

This indoctrination happens irrespective of whether a boy is raised in a two-parent household or in a single female-headed household.

The perpetuation of male violence through the teaching of a dominator model of relationships comes to boy children through both women and men. Patriarchy breeds ma...

Contrary to popular myths, single mothers are often the most brutal when it comes to coercing their sons to conform to patriarchal standards.

Researching boyhood, Olga Silverstein observed: “In single-parent families, it’s common to see boys who have become their mother’s ‘little man.’

Often these boys are very bossy children who patronize their mothers, who in fact do uncanny imitations of a certain kind of husband, being alternately possessive, protective, and seductive.”

Years ago the television show The Incredible Hulk was the favorite of many boys. It featured a mild-mannered scientist who turned into an angry green monster whenever he felt intense emotions. A sociologist interviewing boys about their passion for this show asked them what they would do if they had the power of the Hulk.

They replied that they would “smash their mommies.”

Clearly, patriarchal mothers who have rage at grown men act out with sons. They may either force the son to enter into an inappropriate relationship in which he must provide for her the emotional connection grown men deny her

Feminist idealization of mother-hood made it extremely difficult to call attention to maternal sadism, to the violence women enact with children, especially with boys.

And yet we know that whether it is a consequence of power dynamics in dominator culture or simply a reflection of rage, women are shockingly violent toward children. This fact should lead everyone to question any theory of gender differences that suggests that women are less violent than men.

In patriarchal culture women are as violent as men toward the groups that they have power over and can dominate freely; usually that group is children or weaker females. Like its male counterpart, much female violence toward children takes the form of emotional abuse, ...

To some extent the reformist feminist thinkers who have focused on women as the more ethical, kinder, gentler sex have stood in the way of an in-depth study of maternal sadism, of the ways women in patriarchal society act out violently with boys.

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.

patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.

Feminist movement offered to men and women the information needed to challenge this psychic slaughter, but that challenge never became a widespread aspect of the struggle for gender equality.

Women demanded of men that they give more emotionally, but most men really could not understand what was being asked of them. Having cut away the parts of themselves that could feel a wide range of emotional response, they were too disconnected. They simply could not give more emotionally or e...

He concludes: “In our culture, boys and men are not, nor have they ever been, raised to be intimate.”

Women seeking intimacy from men often find their expressions of longing belittled.

When I wanted to leave my first longtime partner, who had been continuously emotionally abusive and occasionally physically abusive, it was other women (my mother, close friends, acquaintances) who cautioned me about ending the relationship, letting me know that the man I was with was better than most men, that I was lucky.

Leaving him was a gesture of self-love and self-reliance that I have not regretted. Yet I found that the observations of the women who cautioned me about what most men were like were fairly accurate.

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.

They suffered by choosing to take a stand. They were ridiculed by other men,

Like gangsta rap, they celebrate male violence on all fronts, including the domination of women.

most studies of family life indicate that in that sphere gender relations did not undergo any major revolution. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild has provided important data showing that domestic gender dynamics between men and women remain fairly sexist; women work outside the home but continue to do the lion’s share of work in the home.

Men who try to develop a politics in support of feminism, whether gay or straight, are not in for an easy ride. They are likely to be met with derision from many other men, and from some women. It is almost a journalistic cliché that women despise Sensitive New Age Guys. They will not necessarily get warm support from feminist women.

Hard truth!

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. This fact does not lead men to cease obsessing about sex; it intensifies their lust and their longing.

Sadly, unenlightened approaches to child abuse lead many parents to fear celebration of their child’s body, especially the boy body, which may respond to playful physical closeness with an erection.

In patriarchal culture everyone is encouraged to see the penis, even the penis of a small boy, as a potential weapon. This is the psychology of a rape culture.

Boys learn that they should identify with the penis and the potential pleasure erections will bring, while simultaneously learning to fear the penis as though it were a weapon that could b...

During these formative years, when a boy’s sexual lust is often intense, he learns that patriarchal culture expects him to covertly cultivate that lust and the will to satisfy it while engaging in overt acts of sexual repression.

This splitting is part of the initiation into patriarchal masculinity; it is a rite of passage. The boy learns as well that females are the enemy when it comes to the satisfaction of sexual desire. They are the group that will impose on the boy the need to repress his sexual longings, and yet to prove his manhood, he must dare to move past repression and engage in sexual acts.

Kimmel contends that male consumption of pornography is fed by the sexual lust males are taught to feel all the time and their rage that this lust cannot be satisfied:

Don’t agree with this one.

Robert Jensen’s powerful and courageous essay “Patriarchal Sex” drives this message home. Defining patriarchal sex, he writes: “Sex is fucking. In patriarchy, there is an imperative to fuck—in rape and in ‘normal’ sex, with strangers and girlfriends and wives and estranged wives and children. What matters in patriarchal sex is the male need to fuck. When that need presents itself, sex occurs.” Boldly Jensen explains:

Attention to the meaning of the central male slang term for sexual intercourse—“fuck”—is instructive. To fuck a woman is to have sex with her. To fuck someone in another context…means to hurt or cheat a person. And when hurled as a simple insult (“fuck you”) the intent is denigration and the remark is often a prelude to violence or the threat of violence. Sex in patriarchy is fucking. That we live in a world in which people continue to use the same word for sex and violence, and then resist the notion that sex is routinely violent and claim to be outraged when sex becomes overtly violent, is testament to the power of patriarchy.

One of the antifeminist patriarchal sentiments that has gained ground in recent years is the notion that masses of men used to be content to slave away at meaningless labor to fulfill their role as providers and that it is feminist insistence on gender equality in the workforce that has created male discontent.

Underlying this assumption is the notion that women coming into the workforce, no longer looking to their men to be sole providers for the family, have undermined the well-being of men in patriarchal culture. Yet many sociological studies of men at work done prior to feminist movement indicate that males were already expressing grave discontent and depression about the nature and meaning of work in their lives.