The Will to Change (by Bell Hooks)

Pg 4 - 5: 

• Barbara Deming writes: I think the reason that men are so very violent is that they know, deep in themselves, that they're acting out a lie, and so they're furious at being caught up in the lie. 

• My own father's pretended aggressiveness which he lacks the will to act upon; versus my own refusal to even threaten violence, since I know I won't go through with it and will find it all ridiculous and shameful. 

• Pg 6 - 7

  • When men talk about their feelings, it bothers other men and women alike. 

  • Men who talk about their feelings seen as "stealing the stage"

  • NEGATIVE feelings challenge the image of the strong man

  • Male pain about love feels like an indictment of female failure

• Pg 11 §2: To love maleness for being, not for doing

• Pg 12 §2: No male measures up to patriarchal standards without engaging in an ongoing practice of self-betrayal

• Pg 22

  • Kids are indoctrinated into patriarchy by violence or shame. 

  • Terrence Real writes about the "normal traumatization of boys"

• Pg 23

  • In psychotherapist John Bradshaw's Creating Love, he writes a definition of patriarchy: 

    • Blind obedience

    • No emotions except fear

    • No individual willpower

    • No thinking that differs from that of the authority figure

• Pg 26: On her own book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, Bell Hooks writes: Men oppress women. People (male and female) are hurt by sexist gender roles. Both realities COEXIST. 

• Pg 29: 

  • Using the workd "patriarchy" is passé. Audiences laugh at it as a way to show discomfort with being asked to join antipatriarchy. 

  • DEVALUATION of words as patriarchy's way of resisting: use the word and you will not be taken seriously. 

• Pg 38-39: Feminist antimale sentiment has the movement focusing very little attention on the development of boys and boyhood

• Pg 42 §1: Every day across this country boys consume mass media images that send them one message about how to deal with emotions, and that message is "Act out". Usually acting out means aggression directed outward.

• Pg 46 - 47:

  • James Saslow writes in Daddy was a Hot Number: Fathers shape boys through persuasion and example, but also through rejection 

  • Father shape their sons through competition. "I am the real man". Sons are merely the recruits in training. 

  • Having been brought up in this structure, I find myself asking: is there an alternative?

• Pg 49

  • In Man Enough: Fathers, Sons and the Search for Masculinity, Frank Pittman writes: I thought my father had some magical power he wasn't passing on to me, a secret he hadn't told me. 

  • An ideal of masculinity that young males are not sure how to attain and that undermines their self-esteem. 

  • Wanting to "find the father" or, in having children, becoming the father dreamt of. 

• Pg 52: Harry Potter as the mini-patriarch, ruling over smart kids, occasional girls and POC, glorifying war as killing on behalf of the "good". 

• Pg 53: No book for boys with alternative masculine heroes who do not resort to violence!

• Pg 57: 

  • Terrence Real in How Can I Get Through to You?: Fathers enacting rituals of power using shaming, withdrawal, threats and ultimately physical violence. 

  • Father as lawgiver must employ these tactics. But a wholesome father must have another, more loving side as well. 

• Pg 60: 

  • Wherever the issue of male violence is mentioned, men speak up to say not all men are violent. Yet men and boys are programmed to believe at some point they must be violent, physically or psychologically, to prove they are men. That is the "normal traumatization of boys". 

  • Terrence Real writes about the socialization of boys through injury. The male body is expendable, disposable and of no importance. 

• Pg 62: Teenage boys enraged at mothers who exercise power over them, being parents and caretakers, but are powerless outside the home due to patriarchal culture. 

• Pg 64: Dad as disciplinarian

• Pg 65: Learning to forego love for power and dominance through the frustration of losing the connection with the mother and testing the partner. 

• Pg 67 - 68: Women who seek the love of powerful patriarchal men are ready to tolerate some measure of abuse. 

• Pg 71 - 72: For the poor, violence is what is left to affirm manhood. They cannot be president, be rich, be leaders, be bosses. So... 

• Pg 75 - 76:

  • ♂ - finding love through sex

  • ♀ - finding sex through love

  • Women's liberation as a promise that women would become just as predatory as men. 

• Pg 80 - 81: 

  • Boys' relationship with the penis as both source of pleasure and dangerous weapon that can backfire, betray and destroy them

  • The split in teenage: boys are taught to secretly cultivate lust, but publicly engage in acts of repression, and women will impose repression, yet dare boys to prove their manhood. 

• Pg 81 - 82: Encouraged to relate to sex in an addictive way, men must then adjust to a world where they can rarely get it, never get it as much as they want, or where they can get it only by coercing and manipulating someone who does not want it.

• Pg 85: Robert Jensen writes in Patriarchal Sex about the male use of "fuck" as a slang for intercourse, but also for violente. 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. 

• Pg 85 - 86: Patriarchal sexuality is unsatisfying and fuels a need to be more violent in hopes of being more satisfied. Men cannot find the courage to admit there is no satisfaction. 

• Pg 86 - 87: Gay men in their intensely disordered desire, are as patriarchal about sex as straight men. Sex defines them. Patriarchal pornography is as space of shared masculinity for straight and gay men. 

• Pg 91 - 92: Work used to be the measure of a man's worth. Capitalism switched that for money (the "pennies"). Men agreed to dehumanizing work if it made them money, because it consolidated their identity as providers. Feminism jeopardized that identity, as women also became providers. 

• Pg 93: Men claim to measure their worth by their ability as providers, yet refuse to pay alimony or child support and squander their money on individual pleasures. 

• Pg 94: Men struggling to make money find that work drains their energy, leaving them with little time and energy for the "work of love", the emotional labor, which is seen as the role of women, even when they also work. Men feel entitled to that reprieve. 

• Pg 100 - 101: The message in American Beauty: if a man stops working, he loses his reason to live. Men will not be meaningfully empowered by learning how to love. 

• Pg 102: 

  • Emotionally numb men turn to alcohol to cope with work-related ailments. In AA, they find community and learn it is OK to feel and to name those feelings. But the return to the patriarchal world is hard. 

  • In the example at the end of § 1, the wife can't deal with her husband's negative feelings, prompting me to remember my own instances when I was told "insecurity isn't sexy", I was told to shut up about my feelings. 

• Pg 111 - 113

  • Critique of reformist and simplistic feminism: women assuming roles of patriarchal men and men becoming emasculated drags

  • Critique of Bly and his idea of the Wild Man and separating men and women. 

  • Critique of the Men's Movement. 

• Pg 114: Restore maleness as an ethical biological category divorced from the dominator model. 

• Pg 116: When culture is based on a dominator model, not only will it be violent, but it will frame all relationships as power struggles. 

• Pg 117: Feminist masculinity: strength defined not as "power over", but as capacity to be responsible for self and others. A trait for both genders. 

• Pg 117 - 118: CORE VALUES for a new masculinity privilege nonviolent action over violence. 

• Pg 119: Men must also have the choice not to embrace an identity that weds them to violence. 

• Pg 120: 

  • Patriarchy makes men believe it is better to be feared than to be loved. 

  • I have felt the power of being loved as a teacher. 

  • Patriarchal masculinity idealizes aloneness and disconnection. Feminist masculinity says men become more real in connectedness and building community. 

• Pg 126: Gender-based changes in the work force and sexual politics, while patriarchal notions of masculinity remain. That is the crisis. 

• Pg 127: As changes happened in the workplace, men who were unwilling to change found that they could only enact male dominance in the private sphere (home). 

• Pg 128: The Hulk

  • Violence and force as a way to solve conflict

  • White scientist vs. colored brute

  • Dissociative state has no moral responsibility over violent acts

  • Always on the run, never forming attachment, never committing. 

• Pg 129-130: Patriarchy deflecting sexism onto POC (rap and wars agains other cultures/races) and insanity.

• Pg 132: Good Will Hunting

• Pg 133: Monster's Ball

• Pg 136: Iron John by Robert Bly: blaming the mother for deadening male spirits as a form of patriarchal thinking. 

• Pg 137: Mothers who are prey to male dominance direct their frustrations onto their sons (weaker males) and often control and silence their spirit of wonder and tenderness for fear it will make them weak. 

• Pg 141: The Color Purple: male character changing from patriarchal masculinity  to someone who can participate in the community. 

• Pg 143 - 144: Who to turn to? 

  • Female partners will not listen for fear of losing their "protector/provider"

  • Male friends will find it weird and awkward

  • Sex workers: intimacy with no real emotional risk

• Pg 144

  • We tell fathers we love them when we are terrified to share our perceptions of them, our fear that if we disagree, we will be cast out...

  • Terrence Real writes: When they speak of fearing intimacy, what they really mean is that they fear subjugation. 

• Pg 146 - 147: The son who was controlled by the patriarchal mother eventually grows up and finds no trouble in turning against the female caregiver. He has learned not to be wear, learned that women are weak. 

• Pg 148 - 151: Healing the soul and moving from a dominator model to a model of compassion, regardless of religion. 

• Pg 153 - Learning to wear a mask (that word already embedded in the term "masculinity") is the first lesson in patriarchal masculinity that a boy learns. 

• Pg 153 - 154 - Creating a false self in order to be loved and fit in

• Pg 155 - 157 - Compartmentalizing

• Pg 158 - Work is often the space where men detach from feelings - Workaholism

• Pg 160 - 162: Men are not given the space to mourn.

• Pg 163 - 164: 

  • Fathers as envious of the son not being severed from feelings

  • Fathers who cannot admit to not knowing, for fear of disappointing their sons

  • Fathers who fear being replaced

  • Fathers who only respond with anger

• Pg 165 §3: Responsible men are capable of self-criticism (...) willing to acknowledge wrong-doings and make amends. When others have wronged them, they are able to forgive.