The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

by bell hooks

No other contemporary film exposes the evil of patriarchy as masterfully as Monster’s Ball.

He must let go of his feelings of worthlessness and shame engendered by his traumatic past; he must choose life over death. His choice to love, to live, is the break with the patriarchal model that liberates his spirit.

The Power of Partnership Riane Eisler

Wendell Berry in The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

“if we removed the status and compensation from the destructive exploits we classify as ‘manly,’ men would be found to be suffering as much as women. They would be found to be suffering for the same reason: they are in exile from the communion of men and women, which is the deepest connection with the communion of all creatures.”

“I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. And that in wondering bout the big things, and asking about the big things you learn about the little ones, almost by acident. But you never know nothing more bout the big things that you start out with. The more I wonder, he say, the more I love.”

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. As the Sylvia cartoon I have previously mentioned reminds us, women are fearful of hearing men voice feelings. I did not want to hear the pain of my male partner because hearing it required that I surrender my investment in the patriarchal ideal of the male as protector of the wounded. If he was wounded, then how could he protect me?

boys parented by patriarchal women are controlled via their longing for maternal closeness. In maternal sadism, the manipulative woman exploits the boy’s emotional vulnerability to bind him to her will, to subjugate him. This early experience resides at the heart of many a man’s fear of being intimate with a grown woman. And it may explain why so many men in patriarchal culture seek intimacy with girls or women young enough to be their daughters.

As Zukav and Francis boldly state in The Heart of the Soul, “Intimacy and the pursuit of external power—the ability to manipulate and control—are incompatible.”

“The feeling that I have done something wrong, that I really don’t know what it is, that there’s something terribly wrong with my very being, leads to a sense of utter hopelessness. This hopelessness is the deepest cut of the mystified state. It means there is no possibility for me as I am; there is no way I can matter or be worthy of anyone’s love as long as I remain myself. I must find a way to be someone else—someone who is lovable. Someone who is not me.”

According to Bradshaw they learn that “relationships are based on power, control, secrecy, fear, shame, isolation, and distance.” These are the traits often admired in the patriarchal adult man.

Living a Life That Matters, Rabbi Harold Kushner

Since most men have been socialized to believe that compartmentalization is a positive practice, it feels right, it feels comfortable. To practice integrity, then, is difficult; it hurts. Peck makes the crucial point: “Integrity is painful. But without it there can be no wholeness.” To be whole men must practice integrity.

Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, Nathaniel Branden

“I succeeded in protecting no one, least of all myself. If part of my motive was to spare people I cared about, I inflicted a worse pain than they would otherwise have experienced. If part of my motive was to protect my self-esteem by avoiding a conflict among my values and loyalties, it was my self-esteem that I damaged.” This faulty logic he describes is the same that many patriarchal men use to avoid telling the truth and practicing integrity.

If they truly do love me enough to keep on criticizing, then maybe I get to the point where I think, “Could they be right? Could there possibly be something wrong with the great Scott Peck?” And if I answer yes, then that’s depressing. But if I can hang in there with that depressing notion—that maybe there really is something wrong with me—and start to wonder what it might be, if I contemplate it and analyze it and isolate it, and identify it, then I can go about the process of killing it and purifying myself of it. Having done—fully completed—the work of depression, I will then emerge at the other end as a new man, a resurrected human being, a better person.

What is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. I know anger. My body contains as much anger as water. It is the material from which I have built my house: blood red bricks that cry in the rain…. It is the face and posture I show the world. It is the way, sometimes the only way, I am granted an audience. It is sometimes the way I show affection. I am angry because of the treatment I am afforded as a Black man. That fiery anger is stoked with the fuels of contempt and despisal shown me by my community because I am gay. I cannot go home as I am.

I also recall early in life that when I asked my father a question to which he did not know the answer, he became angry, as if to say, “Look, I don’t know the answer to your question and because of that I should kick your ass!” Of course, I realized this almost immediately and I stopped looking to my father for answers. Perhaps if he had taken the time to say to me, “Son, I don’t know the answer to that, let’s look it up together and find out.” Only a father capable of being whole can have the integrity to acknowledge ignorance to his son without feeling diminished.

The warrior ethic has damaged us. As we move into the twenty-first century we need to mature beyond war and warriors. I disagree with those men’s movement writers and activists who speak so highly of the warrior. I appreciate some of his traits—like courage, teamwork, loyalty—but the archetype itself is bankrupt at this point in history. We surely need guardians, boundary-setters, husbandmen, and citizens. If we are to survive on this planet, so threatened by war and warriors, we must get beyond the obsolete archetype of the warrior and value images such as the peacemaker, the partner, and the husbandman who cares for the earth and animals.

Importantly, when men love, it changes the nature of their sexuality, both how they think about sex and how they perform sexually. Many men fear learning to love because they cannot imagine a sexuality beyond the patriarchal model. In a world where men love, a focus on eros and eroticism will naturally replace male obsession with sex. All men could have the opportunity to enjoy sexual pleasure, and that includes sexual fantasy, for its own sake and not as a substitute for fantasies of domination or as a way to assert manhood in place of selfhood, were they taught a healthy eroticism.

The Soul of Sex James Hillman

Steve Bearman explains male compulsion for sex as interrupted eros in his essay “Why Men Are So Obsessed with Sex”:

Loving sexual intimacy…expresses care and appreciation. It is mutual giving, not mutual taking. It is an arena in which individuals nurture each other rather than exploit each other. In loving sexual intimacy, sexual partners are not interchangeable. They are unique in their histories, aptitudes, struggles, and joys. They know each other and care for each other. They empathize. They are interested in each other. They use physical intimacy to deepen their emotional intimacy…. They are committed to growing together.

our affinity for one another, caring connections with people of all ages and backgrounds and genders, sensual enjoyment of our bodies, passionate self-expression, exhilarating desire, tender love for ourselves and for another, vulnerability, help with our difficulties, gentle rest, getting and staying close with many people in many kinds of relationships.

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.

Men seeking help often find it difficult to find support. We ask them to change without creating a culture of change to affirm and assist them.

For both men and women, Good Men can be somewhat disturbing to be around because they usually do not act in ways associated with typical men; they listen more than they talk; they self-reflect on their behavior and motives, they actively educate themselves about women’s reality by seeking out women’s culture and listening to women…. They avoid using women for vicarious emotional expression…. When they err—and they do err—they look to women for guidance, and receive criticism with gratitude. They practice enduring uncertainty while waiting for a new way of being to reveal previously unconsidered alternatives to controlling and abusive behavior. They intervene in other men’s misogynist behavior, even when women are not present, and they work hard to recognize and challenge their own. Perhaps most amazingly, Good Men perceive the value of a feminist practice for themselves, and they advocate it not because it’s politically correct, or because they want women to like them, or even because they want women to have equality, but because they understand that male privilege prevents them not only from becoming whole, authentic human beings but also from knowing the truth about the world…. They offer proof that men can change.

Fisher’s poem “Who Will Cry for the Little Boy?”