cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/74524484

I'm having trouble putting my feelings about this book into words.

How do I go about describing the shattering of a window I didn't know I was peeking through? A slap in the face from someone I didn't know could exist?

My Kindle melted in my hands as I read. The plastic softened and turned to skin and the screen bent and twisted into eyes and a mouth and a nose, a face. I stared at the eyes, and as the words flickered and tears welled, I heard the mouth move to whisper and then speak and then scream, and I know it was the truth what it said.

bell hooks was a witch; of that, at least, I'm sure.

The Will to Change is honest, sober, and painfully aware of what it is that makes men men, and the systems that rip their nature from them. It describes the iron grip that crushes and shapes boys into loveless archetypes, writhing in a sea of needles that keeps them from being truly human; that same hand that puppeteers their mothers and sisters and lovers, and their fathers and brothers and friends, the same hand that sews their mouths shut as it rips their minds to shreds and chokes their hearts. This book is an indictment of patriarchy not just because of what it does to women, but especially for what it does to men; what it takes from them and the promises it shatters and the silence it demands.

That being said, every word is loving. It is a deep, powerful, raw yearning for love, for healing, for companionship and community. Every chapter begs men to reconsider, to change, to choose love and forego their pain and hurt, to choose to be people instead of dominators and patriarchs, to choose peace instead of violence and war. The Will to Change looks men in the eye and sees past the stoic veneer patriarchy demands and offers release: release from loveless marriages, release from unfulfilling sex, release from violence and grief, release from endless work, release from the burden of living according to a diseased and corrosive script instead of according to our needs and desires. Even as it ravages traditional notions of masculinity and maleness, the feminism of The Will to Change is a hand outstretched and a warm embrace; a guide and a tutor for a new kind of man that can live free and truly love.

And that's what I loved most about it. Anyone can point out the issues, and in fact many do: the male loneliness epidemic, men are unhappy, the sexual marketplace is a mess, nothing is good for men... Any struggling man or boy will find that their issues are recognized, that their strife is known and acknowledged, but the answers are always unsatisfying. You need to be more violent, more isolated, more hateful. Distrust, deny, control, dominate. Those are the answers you hear so very often. Then, as was already the case when the book was first published over 20 years ago, things got worse for the men that stuck with the old system, that corrosive and hateful system named with such a dreadfully misconstrued word as patriarchy. But The Will to Change is different: it offers a solution rooted in love and compassion. It moves away from the destruction that pervades traditional masculinity and describes a better future for men. It shows a glimpse of a nurturing masculinity, a kind masculinity, a passionate masculinity; it shows men that there's a path forward where the promises of the patriarchy, of pleasure and wholeness and self, can be fulfilled, away from pain and domination. The lonely man, the angry man, the hurt man, they all can read this book and find a guiding light.

bell hooks saw men and she makes a feminism that saves them. She truly saw and understood and loved, even as men hated and raged and hurt she loved, and as they thrashed around sightless and deaf and lost she loved, and she loved, and she loved, and she says that, to love, men need the will to change. Ultimately, I agree.

I only wish, one day, I can love as she so dearly hoped I would.

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Rating: READ IT NOW

Check it out here!

I personally didn't care for it. Her experiences with men were not good, but they didn't match my own. It struck me as being more about her personal circumstances than any broad insights about men in general.

I do get that, to an extent. I saw myself, as a man, quite a bit in what she described, in ways I hurt people by shutting off my feelings for instance, and I see the patriarchal man in a lot of the older men in my family and the people I've known.

That being said, I think I've managed positive change in recent years, and I've been lucky to have some very positive role models in my life, including my father, and I've realized that it really is emotion and kindness that can allow us to create lasting and powerful bonds, community, love, and ultimately happiness and fulfillment.

I think her personal circumstances are very much representative of patriarchal society at large (and I do think our society is patriarchal), though at times an extreme and brutal display of patriarchy and patriarchal thought (her father, in particular) and how that shapes both men and women.

It resonated with me, but I will say that I'm very happy you didn't see yourself or your experiences in what she described! It is not nice...

I don't mean to pry, but are you young? I'm in my mid-20s and I do think that kindness and emotion have slowly become more accepted and embraced in masculine spaces, as compared to what may have been the case 20 years ago, when she wrote this, or even 50 years ago, in bell hooks' youth. I think young men are less likely to be or become the sort of patriarchal stone-hearts and simmering rages she describes.

What do you think society is like? What have been your experiences?