Hello comrades, it’s time for our first discussion thread for The Will to Change! Please share your thoughts below on the first two sections of the book. There’s quite a lot to talk about between hooks’ discussion of masculinity discourse within feminist circles, the ways both men and women uphold patriarchy, and the near universal experience of men being forced to suppress their rich emotional worlds from a young age. I’ll be posting my thoughts in a little bit after I’m done with work.

If you haven’t read the book yet but would like to, its available free on the Internet Archive in text form, as well as an audiobook on Youtube with content warnings at the start of each chapter, courtesy of the Anarchist Audio Library, and as an audiobook on our very own TankieTube! (note: the YT version is missing the Preface but the Tankietube version has it) Let me know if you’d like to be added to the ping list!

Our next discussion will be on Chapters 2 (Understanding Patriarchy) and 3 (Being a Boy), beginning on 12/4.

Thanks to everyone who is or will be participating, I’m really looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts! feminism

  • PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    28·
    27 days ago

    I read this about ten years ago, but it was interesting revisiting it for this. A couple of thoughts

    1. I’m nonbinary, but I was raised as a male, and I found it and continue to find it incredibly alienating, as hooks talks about. I don’t know how to relate to most men, and yet I find it hard to approach women for friendship. The one long-term friend I have who I thought was male came out as trans a couple of years ago.

    2. WRT what hooks says about anger being the only acceptable emotion for men. I went to therapy some years ago to deal with some anger issues and I realized that anger feels like a “safe” emotion. That a lot of times when I thought I was angry I was actually feeling sad, or hurt or insecure. But because those emotions weren’t safe, I would process them as anger instead.

    • frauddogg [null/void, undecided]@hexbear.netEnglish
      15·
      26 days ago

      That a lot of times when I thought I was angry I was actually feeling sad, or hurt or insecure. But because those emotions weren’t safe, I would process them as anger instead.

      “I can’t do anything with sadness; but anger can be burned as fuel” was basically how I lived the first twenty years of my life. Anything ‘compromising’ would get turned, and burned in the furnace of spite that’s arguably kept me alive for that long. And yeah, unlearning that is a royal motherfucker; because even after everything-- I still hate how incapacitated sadness can leave me. Shit like that makes me freeze; and it used to be making it anger that kept me moving.

      One of the things I still haven’t learned is how to keep moving in the face of nontransmuted negative emotion.

    • Melonius [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      7·
      26 days ago

      WRT what hooks says about anger being the only acceptable emotion for men. I went to therapy some years ago to deal with some anger issues and I realized that anger feels like a “safe” emotion.

      I relate to this. In my teen years I kept getting in trouble for my anger, too, so I “learned” to not express that either. When my sister came back home after a long hiatus she said she was impressed with how I had gotten my anger under control. Which yeah was good for everyone else but I have nothing left

    • dumplesEnglish
      5·
      22 days ago

      That a lot of times when I thought I was angry I was actually feeling sad, or hurt or insecure. But because those emotions weren’t safe, I would process them as anger instead

      I think this is a universal statement for when you are AMAB or raised male. Anger was the only acceptable emotion and it is just a mask for sadness. I feel that a lot with reactionary anger to progress is sadness or jealousy that they didn’t get that option and now are angry that others get to.