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A review by skeltonse
The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks
4.25
Fascinating to read with 20yrs of hindsight. Hooks‘ premise - that patriarchy is a system that demands rigid emotional suppression from men in return for an illusion of power - has I think become less controversial. It’s also become less controversial that everyone, including women, have a role to play in perpetuating patriarchal norms, and especially in teaching them to children. The class analysis in this book is also great.
Hooks comes out swingling against both the mainstream of 90’s feminism and the backlash against it on both practical and moral grounds. Practically, because liberation from patriarchal norms requires the participation of everyone, and this will require men to accept that patriarchal norms limit and damage them. And morally, because Hooks is also interested in the emotional well being and (a word she embraces) the souls of men.
Which is of course a bit more controversial, because a (sometimes painfully) psycho-analytical expansion for why men are violent towards women, and especially towards family and partners, sometimes teeters close to criticizing victims of violence for not helping oppressors through their damage. However, I think this is a problem not with Hooks’ theorizing, but a painful reality of how political and personal lives collide. If we do not want to be reduced to one dimensional stereotypes of operated and oppressor, then emotional messiness and forgiveness need to be embraced at some point. The trick of course is when, and for who, and by whom.
A few small and lazy criticisms: Hooks is very binary in her language and thinking, but not in a manner essential to the work. I also think her discussion of sex and sexuality is a bit restrictive — it reduces all casual and power imbalanced expressions of sexuality to allegories of patriarchal violence (or at least rage, repression, etc). Thankfully I can’t comment on straight men‘s relationships with porn, which is half of that chapter, but I think her overall picture of queer sexuality and the connection between sexuality and emotional repression is a bit reductionist.
The interesting part of the book is power, and the ways both men and women use patriarchy (or sometimes versions of feminism) to obtain or maintain it. These criticisms hold up, and Hooks comes close to anticipating the situation today. Men have more opportunities and more of a genuine choice between a rejection of patriarchy, with the opportunities got emotional openness and closeness that affords, or a resentful clinging to patriarchy. Movements like Insels, discourse around the male loneliness, or the manosphere could be seen as a reaction against precisely this increased freedom. If I had to guess, Hooks had some Nietzsche implicitly in mind as she crafted the concepts within, and I would love to see a more explicit connection worked out.
Hooks comes out swingling against both the mainstream of 90’s feminism and the backlash against it on both practical and moral grounds. Practically, because liberation from patriarchal norms requires the participation of everyone, and this will require men to accept that patriarchal norms limit and damage them. And morally, because Hooks is also interested in the emotional well being and (a word she embraces) the souls of men.
Which is of course a bit more controversial, because a (sometimes painfully) psycho-analytical expansion for why men are violent towards women, and especially towards family and partners, sometimes teeters close to criticizing victims of violence for not helping oppressors through their damage. However, I think this is a problem not with Hooks’ theorizing, but a painful reality of how political and personal lives collide. If we do not want to be reduced to one dimensional stereotypes of operated and oppressor, then emotional messiness and forgiveness need to be embraced at some point. The trick of course is when, and for who, and by whom.
A few small and lazy criticisms: Hooks is very binary in her language and thinking, but not in a manner essential to the work. I also think her discussion of sex and sexuality is a bit restrictive — it reduces all casual and power imbalanced expressions of sexuality to allegories of patriarchal violence (or at least rage, repression, etc). Thankfully I can’t comment on straight men‘s relationships with porn, which is half of that chapter, but I think her overall picture of queer sexuality and the connection between sexuality and emotional repression is a bit reductionist.
The interesting part of the book is power, and the ways both men and women use patriarchy (or sometimes versions of feminism) to obtain or maintain it. These criticisms hold up, and Hooks comes close to anticipating the situation today. Men have more opportunities and more of a genuine choice between a rejection of patriarchy, with the opportunities got emotional openness and closeness that affords, or a resentful clinging to patriarchy. Movements like Insels, discourse around the male loneliness, or the manosphere could be seen as a reaction against precisely this increased freedom. If I had to guess, Hooks had some Nietzsche implicitly in mind as she crafted the concepts within, and I would love to see a more explicit connection worked out.