The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

by bell hooks

Competition with other men in the workplace can make it all the more difficult

In Rediscovering Masculinity Victor Seidler states that 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.”

our culture, often feel that aging allows them to break free of the patriarchy. With time on their hands, they are often compelled by extreme loneliness, alienation, a crisis of meaning, or other circumstances, to develop emotional selves. They are the elders who can speak to younger generations of men, debunking the patriarchal myth of work; those voices need to be heard. They are the voices that tell younger men, “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.” Work can and should be life-enhancing for all men. When daring men come to work loved and loving, the nature of work will be transformed and the workplace will no longer

girls. Yet these are some of the acts of men that led some feminist women to identify men as woman-hating. Even though not all men are misogynists, feminist thinkers were accurate when we stated that patriarchy in its most basic, unmediated form promotes fear and

Most men have clearly been willing to resist patriarchy when it interferes with individual desire, but they have not been willing to embrace feminism as a movement that would challenge, change, and ultimately end patriarchy.

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.

offered men by mainstream feminist thought. Men were expected to hold on to the ideas about strength and providing for others that were a part of patriarchal thought, while dropping their investment in domination and adding an investment in emotional growth. This vision of feminist masculinity was so fraught with contradictions,

Undoubtedly, one of the first revolutionary acts of visionary feminism must be to restore maleness and masculinity as an ethical biological category divorced from the dominator model. This is why the term patriarchal masculinity is so important, for it identifies male difference as being always and only about the superior rights of males to dominate, be their subordinates females or any group deemed weaker, by any means necessary. Rejecting this model for a feminist masculinity means that we must define maleness as a state of being rather than as performance. Male being, maleness, masculinity must stand for the essential core goodness of the self, of the human body that has a penis.

Key

And those of us committed to ending patriarchy can touch the hearts of real men where they live, not by demanding that they give up manhood or maleness, but by asking that they allow its meaning to be transformed, that they become disloyal to patriarchal masculinity in order to find a place for the masculine that does not make it synonymous with domination or the will to do violence.

To offer men a different way of being, we must first replace the dominator model with a partnership model that sees interbeing and interdependency as the organic relationship of all living beings.

Patriarchal masculinity teaches males to be pathologically narcissistic, infantile, and psychologically dependent for self-definition on the privileges (however relative) that they receive from having been born male. Hence many males feel that their very existence is threatened if these privileges are taken away. In a partnership model male identity, like its female counterpart, would be centered around the notion of an essential goodness that is inherently relationally oriented. Rather than assuming that males are born with the will to aggress, the culture would assume that males are born with the inherent will to connect. Feminist masculinity presupposes that it is enough for males to be to have value, that they do not have to “do,” to “perform,” to be affirmed and loved. Rather than defining strength as “power over,” feminist masculinity defines strength as one’s capacity to be responsible for self and others.

Feminisft Masculinigty

Currently, sexist definitions of male roles insist on defining maleness in relationship to winning, one-upmanship, domination: “Until we are willing to question many of the specifics of the male sex role, including most of the seven norms and stereotypes that psychologist Robert Levant names in a listing of its chief constituents—‘avoiding femininity, restrictive emotionality, seeking achievement and status, self-reliance, aggression, homophobia, and nonrelational attitudes toward sexuality’—we are going to deny men their full humanity. Feminist masculinity would have as its chief constituents integrity, self-love, emotional awareness, assertiveness, and relational skill, including the capacity to be empathic, autonomous, and connected.” The core of feminist masculinity is a commitment to gender equality and mutuality as crucial to interbeing and partnership in the creating and sustaining of life. Such a commitment always privileges nonviolent action over violence, peace over war, life over death.

Olga Silverstein rightly says that “what the world needs now is a different kind of man”—she posits that we need a “good” man—but this binary category automatically invests in a dominator model of either-or. What the world needs now is liberated men who have the qualities Silverstein cites, men who are “empathic and strong, autonomous and connected, responsible to self, to family and friends, and to society, and capable of understanding how those responsibilities are, ultimately, inseparable.” Men need feminist thinking. It is the theory that supports

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. There is no society in the world made up of one lone man. Even Thoreau in his solitary cabin wrote to his mother every day.

gender equality is more a norm. Unlike older generations of men, they do not have to be convinced that women are their equals. These are the young males who take women’s studies classes, who are not afraid to identify themselves as advocates of feminism. They are the feminist sons of feminist mothers. Hence in his afterword to his mother’s book The Courage to Raise Good Men, Michael Silverstein praises his mother’s work:

Parenting remains a setting where men can practice love as they let go of a dominator model and engage mutually with women who parent with them the children they share.

Why parental leave?

near the impact on male consciousness that feminist books focusing on womanhood were having on female consciousness. For the most part these white male writers did not strive to reconceptualize masculinity; instead they encouraged men to learn behavior patterns previously associated with females. They all agreed that economic changes coupled with changes in the status of women had produced a crisis in masculinity. Within modern advanced capitalist society, masculine power was traditionally seen as synonymous with the ability of males to provide financially. However, as more and more women have gained access to the work sphere, the sphere of provision, this centrally defining attribute

Key

even when those notions did not have a reality base. Hence the crisis in masculinity. A traditional institutionalized patriarchal social order was being challenged and changed even as there were no major changes in sexist thinking. Men experiencing this crisis could either cling for security and safety to the underlying assumptions of patriarchal ideology or they could ally themselves

ties or intimacy. A scientist by training (the ultimate personification of rational man), when he experiences anger, he turns into a creature of color and commits violent acts. After committing violence,

cannot assume responsibility for them. Since he is (like the hero of a popular adult drama, The Fugitive) unable to form sustained emotional bonds with friends or family, he cannot love. He thrives on disconnection and disassociation. Like the men of the Beat generation, like the more recent men of Generation X, he is the symbol of the ultimate patriarchal man—alone, on the road, forever drifting, driven by the beast within. The Incredible Hulk linked sexism and racism. The cool, level-headed, rational white-male scientist turned into a colored beast whenever his passions were aroused. Tormented by the knowledge of this transformation, he searches for a cure, a way to disassociate himself from the beast within. Writing about the connection between racism and the construction of masculinity in White Hero, Black Beast, Paul Hoch contends, “There is indeed a close interaction between the predominant Western conception of manhood and that of racial (and species)

Feminisft Masculinigty

some sense, ‘darker’—races, nations and social castes.” Recent movies like Men in Black, Independence Day, and The Matrix rely on these racialized narratives of dark versus light to valorize patriarchal white masculinity in the realm of fantasy. In our actual lives the imperialist white-supremacist policies of our government lead to enactments of rituals of white-male violent domination of a darker universe, as in both the Gulf War and the most recent war against Iraq. By making it appear that the threatening masculinity—the rapist, the terrorist, the murderer—is really a dark other, white male patriarchs are able to deflect attention away from their own misogyny, from their violence against women and children. The popularization of gangsta rap, spearheaded by white male executives in the music industry, gave a public voice to patriarchy and woman-hating. However, by promoting the voices of young black males (in the beginning many of whom were coming from the underclass), ruling-class white males could both

the trappings of patriarchal masculinity (money, power, sex) and simultaneously make their antifeminist messages the lessons that young white males would learn. Just as the conservative white men who control our government use individual black males—for example, Colin Powell—to preach the gospel of war to the American public (affirming the idea that the darker other is the threat that the heroic white male must annihilate), mass media demonization of black males as the epitome of brutal patriarchal masculinity

misogynist, he is blindly followed by his son until that moment when the grandson, who is deemed weak because he is antiracist and able to feel, confronts his father. The boy asks why the father does not love him and then shoots himself in the mouth. His suicide brings an end to the patriarchal cycle and leads to the transformation of his dad, who seeks redemption

popular culture that will teach men how to connect with others, how to communicate, how to love. 9 Healing Male Spirit Men cannot speak their pain in patriarchal culture.

Why parental leave?

“Intimacy and the pursuit of external power—the ability to manipulate and control—are incompatible.” Before most men can be intimate with others, they have to be intimate with themselves. They have to learn to feel and to be aware of their feelings. Men who mask feelings or suppress them simply do not want to feel the pain.

Visionary thinkers believe that by exposing the way the logic of domination has created the split and choosing the model of interbeing and interdependency, we can begin the work of restoring integrity, and with integrity comes care of the soul.

Men caught up in the logic of patriarchal masculinity have difficulty believing that their souls matter.

Men need to hear that their souls matter and that the care of their souls is the primary task of their being. Were all men seeking to uncover greater soulfulness in their lives rather than seeking power through a dominator model, then the world as we know it would be transformed for the better.

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.

Key concept

The Dalai Lama offers this wisdom: Compassion is one of the principal things that make our lives meaningful. It is the source of all lasting happiness and joy. And it is the foundation of a good heart. Through kindness, through affection, through honesty, through truth and justice toward all others we ensure our own benefit. This is not a matter for complicated theorizing. It is a matter of common sense.… There is no denying that our happiness is inextricably bound up with the happiness of others. There is no denying that if society suffers, we ourselves suffer.… Thus we can reject everything else: religion, ideology, all received wisdom. But we cannot escape the necessity of love and compassion.

For uncle ray

The quest for integrity is the heroic journey that can heal the masculinity crisis and prepare the hearts of men to give and receive love.

Learning to wear a mask (that word already embedded in the term “masculinity”) is the first lesson in patriarchal masculinity that a boy learns. He learns that his core feelings cannot be expressed if they do not conform to the acceptable behaviors sexism defines as male.

Anger often hides depression and profound sorrow. Depression often masks the inability to grieve. Males are not given the emotional space to grieve. Girls and women can cry, can express sorrow throughout our lives. We can just let it out. Males are still being taught to keep it in and, worse, to deny that they feel like crying.

process as they make the transition from being a small child to mature girlhood. Girls are allowed to mourn changes. Males have no rituals of mourning, as boys or men. One of the reasons the church has been so important in the lives of black men is that it is one of the locations where they are allowed to express emotions, where

To grow psychologically and spiritually, men need to mourn. The men who are doing the work of self-recovery testify that it is only when they are able to feel the pain that they can begin to heal.

When a man’s emotional capacity to mourn is arrested, he is likely to be frozen in time and unable to complete the process of growing up.

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. He will turn away from loved ones and choose his manhood over his personhood, isolation over connectedness.

when to let go; they can affirm the boy every step of the way. As Thomas Moore declares in his essay about boyhood, “Little Boy Found,” “If the fathers speak to us, we can preserve our golden spirits.… Fathers and sons need each other, for

to let our fathers be slow to grow up.… They need to take our childlike foolishness seriously, giving their

men have to have practice assuming responsibility. This is another component of healthy self-esteem. Nathaniel Brandon equates our capacity to be responsible with our capacity to experience joy, to be personally empowered. This sense of personal agency lets us break with imposed sex roles. This

letting go of perfectionism and accepting vulnerability. At the same time, constructive criticism works only when it is linked to a process of affirmation. Giving affirmation is

Key concept

an act of emotional care. Wounded men are not often able to say anything positive. They are the grump-and-groan guys; cloaked in cynicism, they stand at an emotional distance from themselves and others. Affirmation brings us closer together. It is the highest realization of compassion and empathy with others. One of the negative aspects of antimale feminist critiques of masculinity was the absence of any affirmation of that which is positive and potentially positive in male being. When individuals, including myself, wrote about the necessity of affirming men and identifying them as comrades in struggle, we were often labeled male-identified. The women who attacked us did not understand that it was possible to critique patriarchy without hating men. Indeed, recognizing all the ways

For uncle ray

was to find Dad in the photo, our father, the quintessential patriarch—a man of his times, raised for war. To write about men and love, I

again we have been told that civilization cannot survive men’s loving, for if men love, they will not be able to kill on command. However, if men were natural-born killers, hardwired by biology and destiny to take life, then there would be no need for patriarchal socialization

The love women are looking for in relationships with men is one based on mutuality in partnership. Mutuality is different from equality.

responsibility, respect, and trust—it can serve as the seductive catalyst for change. Any woman who supports patriarchy who then claims to either love the men in her life or be frustrated that they do not love her is in a state of denial. Women who want men to love know that that cannot really happen without a revolution of consciousness where men stop

“Fuel for Fantasy”: “The pornographic utopia is a world of abundance, abandon, and autonomy—a world, in short, utterly unlike the one we inhabit.… Most men don’t feel especially good about themselves,

we have to wrench it out of the materialistic and mechanistic body that we have created by means of our modern philosophies and reunite it