By bell hooks
Patriarchy wounds men; feminism heals
Subject
Themes
Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit, yet most men cannot even define the word. It is a political-social system that insists males are inherently dominating, superior to everything deemed weak, and entitled to maintain dominance through psychological terrorism and violence. Both women and men are socialised into this system from birth. Patriarchal thinking is taught through religion, reinforced in schools and workplaces, and perpetuated by mass media. Female-headed households can promote patriarchal values with even greater passion than two-parent homes, because the system is embedded in the collective psyche, not merely in individual men.
Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit, yet most men cannot even define the word. It is a political-social system that insists males are inherently dominating, superior to everything deemed weak, and entitled to maintain dominance through…
The Will to Change arrived in 2004 at a moment when public conversations about masculinity were intensifying but remained largely disconnected from feminist analysis. The men's movement of the 1990s, typified by Robert Bly's Iron John, had encouraged men to explore their emotional lives but…
Patriarchy is not simply male domination of women. It is a political-social system that insists males are inherently dominating, superior to everything deemed weak, and entitled to maintain that dominance through psychological terrorism and violence. What makes this analysis distinctive is the…
The assault on male emotional life begins at birth. Male babies actually express themselves more than female babies; they cry longer and louder, arriving in the world wanting to be seen and heard. Yet from the earliest moments, patriarchal thinking leads parents to withhold comfort from infant boys,…
Love is defined not as a feeling but as an action. Drawing on M. Scott Peck's notion of love as the will to nurture one's own and another's spiritual and emotional growth, combined with Erich Fromm's insight that love is action rather than solely feeling, a comprehensive definition emerges. Love is…
Learning to wear a mask is the first lesson in patriarchal masculinity. The word "masculinity" itself contains the word "mask," a coincidence that carries symbolic weight. John Bradshaw describes the psychological splitting that occurs when a boy learns his organic feelings are unacceptable: he…
Visionary feminist movement is the only struggle for justice that emphasises the need to end patriarchy. No mass body of women has collectively challenged patriarchy, and no group of men has come together to lead the struggle either. Yet feminist thinking and practice offer men the only viable path…
Every female, whether gay or straight, hungers for male love. That hunger begins in childhood with the desperate longing for a father's attention. A girl who cannot win her father's notice through good behaviour learns to accept pain as the only form of acknowledgement available, becoming "Daddy's…
Boys are not seen as lovable in patriarchal culture. Despite having higher status than girls, status is not the same as being loved. Male babies actually express themselves more than female babies; they cry longer and louder, arriving in the world wanting to be seen and heard. Yet sexist thinking…
Most men and women are not having satisfying sex. Men come to sex hoping it will deliver emotional connection, closeness, and a sense of being alive, but it rarely does. Rather than leading men to stop obsessing, this disappointment intensifies their lust and longing. In patriarchal culture, sex is…
Calling oneself a feminist risks being seen as the enemy by most men. Most young women fear losing male favour if they claim the label. Popular opinion holds that feminism hurt men, yet no feminists have murdered or raped men. The antimale faction within feminist movement was always a small…
A childhood memory captures a church deacon who wept openly during testimony, pouring tears into a big white handkerchief. The children were embarrassed for him; the men beside him turned their eyes away, ashamed to see a man express intense feeling. Yet those tears, recalled later in autobiography,…
A father is remembered through photographs: the young soldier, the boxer, the man at the pool hall in his glory. His children searched for him in these images because they were not allowed to know him in life. He was the provider, the protector, the stranger in the house. They stood in front of the…
By bell hooks
Subject
Themes
Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit, yet most men cannot even define the word. It is a political-social system that insists males are inherently dominating, superior to everything deemed weak, and entitled to maintain dominance through psychological terrorism and violence. Both women and men are socialised into this system from birth. Patriarchal thinking is taught through religion, reinforced in schools and workplaces, and perpetuated by mass media. Female-headed households can promote patriarchal values with even greater passion than two-parent homes, because the system is embedded in the collective psyche, not merely in individual men.