Reading: The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (bell hooks) / Chapter 3: Being a Boy To contextualise: How Nonviolence Protects the State related tags: #HNvPtS
Frankly, it is difficult to understand why these men who know so much about the way patriarchal thinking damages boys are unable to call the problem by its true name and by so doing free themselves to envision a world where the feelings of boys can really matter.
I don't know why it's difficult to understand that men who are doing this research may have accessed their positions via patriarchy and are thus still supporting it, even when they they might claim otherwise.
A lot of men wrongly believe they have achieved their positions through merit alone. While merit is certainly part of how they got there, their ability to access the fields and educations with more ease than anyone else often fosters a failure to recognise how they benefit from patriarchy (or they realise it and don't care).
So I find it difficult to believe that this would be a surprise of any sort. (Cis) men rarely call out patriarchy, and they mostly avoid doing so because they either can't see or won't see its impacts on... anyone.
It has been hard for many male thinkers about the emotional life of boys to see feminism as a helpful theory because to a grave extent antimale sentiments among some feminists have led the movement to focus very little attention on the development of boys.
... Right, blame feminism for being “antimale” (no evidence, btw) instead of blaming men for viewing it as antimale... Which is what they do. See: All movements adjacent to “men's rights.”
One of the tremendous failings of feminist theory and practice has been the lack of a concentrated study of boyhood, one that offers guidelines and strategies for alternative masculinity and ways of thinking about maleness.
I would argue that this isn't a failing of feminist theory because feminist theory has routinely included boys and how we need to raise boys. Again, there are no citations here for any kind of evidence or examples for what she's talking about.
While she does acknowledge how men treat feminism, she keeps blaming the victim... a common theme.
There are two major barriers preventing researchers from targeting patriarchy. Researchers fear that overtly political analysis will alienate readers on one hand, and on the other hand they may simply have no alternative visions to offer.
Right. These are the two major barriers. I might agree on the “fear that overtly political analysis will alienate readers,” but I'd also point to their desire to not lose their position within their field (especially women, who often have fewer chances to 'correct' their behaviour).
Feminist theory has offered us brilliant critiques of patriarchy and very few insightful ideas about alternative masculinity, especially in relation to boys. Many feminist women who birthed boys found themselves reluctant to challenge conventional aspects of patriarchal masculinity when their boys wanted to embrace those values. They found they did not want to deny their sons access to toy guns or to tell them to just be passive when another boy was attacking them on the playground. For many enlightened, single-parent feminist mothers with limited economic resources, the effort to consistently map for their sons alternatives to patriarchal masculinity simply takes too much time.
Citations needed, please and thank you. I'm really kind of tired of this “feminism is the problem” when she's unwilling to actually engage in more than anecdotal evidence? I'm also confused by the anecdote that she provides to support this assertion because uh... How exactly were years as a graduate student raising a child as a single mom easier than that of a working mother? Did the support network of “'cool' adult guys” that helped show examples of men who could engage in behaviours deemed socially feminine (or “alternative masculinities”) just up and vanish? Because these are things I'd expect to explore in the course of this anecdote.
What has been all but impossible to change is widespread cultural patriarchal propaganda.
... The snarky side of me just wants to add “which is the fault of feminism” because that really is how this reads half the time. She didn't say it, but it's hard not to think it.
A national survey of adolescent males revealed their passive acceptance of patriarchal masculinity. Researchers found that boys agreed that to be truly manly, they must command respect, be tough, not talk about problems, and dominate females.
It really annoys me that she doesn't say which one. Which national survey? I don't disbelieve it, but it'd be nice to know which survey she was looking at so that way we could maybe, I don't know, compare it to others (either contemporary or later surveys). I'm confused by academics who seem to not do the academic things that are actually helpful to the audience but expect us to believe everything they say. Why should we be doing the leg work here on the research side?
Tragically, were it not for the extreme violence that has erupted among teenage boys throughout our nation, the emotional life of boys would still be ignored. Although therapists tell us that mass media images of male violence and dominance teach boys that violence is alluring and satisfying, when individual boys are violent, especially when they murder randomly, pundits tend to behave as though it were a mystery why boys are so violent.
I have severely mixed feelings on the consumption of violent media. We know that consuming it doesn't inherently lead people to become more violent, though we do know that media impacts how many people think (especially if they are engaging it passively rather than actively). So I'm not going to say that there is no damage being done by it, but I have to wonder why it is that there's no... thoughts about people having conversations with children about the violent media they consume. Or any of the media they consume.
Media analysis is... a necessary skill, and it's one that we often don't support. (“It's just entertainment, don't think about it so much” or “You overthink everything.”) ... But do we have studies on the differences between passively engaged people and actively engaged people?
Honestly, I'm not keen on dropping something that sounds like Jack Thompson.
All over the world terrorist regimes use isolation to break people’s spirit. This weapon of psychological terrorism is daily deployed in our nation against teenage boys. In isolation they lose the sense of their value and worth. No wonder then that when they reenter a community, they bring with them killing rage as their primary defense.
Really hoping “terrorist regimes” also includes the so-called ~civilised~ world.
(More and more girls who embrace patriarchal thinking also embrace the notion that they must be violent to have power.)
It's weird to read the constant refrain about violence being inherently bad and without any nuanced engagement in violent strategies being useful for anything or assisting non-violent strategies... Because this book being used as a reference in Peter's work? Which claims nonviolence protects the state? Lol.
Time and time again we hear on our national news about the seemingly kind, quiet young male whose violent underpinnings are suddenly revealed.
Weird. Time and time again, we hear on all news that these “seemingly kind, quiet young” boys who go on to engage in mass murders... typically were reported for creepy behaviour over and over and over again... and people ignore it. That was true in 2004, and it's still true now. Men who engage in outward violence rarely have actually clean records towards people (especially women and queer folks); it's that people don't care to actually take it seriously. There are almost always warning signs and red flags, if people care to pay attention.
Which is a strange thing to ignore when you're a feminist writer who keeps blaming feminism for doing such little work on the world of boys and men.
Despite major changes in gender roles in public life, in private many boys are traumatized by relationships with distant or absent fathers.
This is interesting because we don't notice the opposite trend in discussion. What about girls with absent or distant mothers? No? Girls are expected to find role models wherever they can (while learning feminine things), but boys are expected to find male role models.
I think stopping to ask why this is... should be pertinent.
Without a positive connection to a real adult man, they are far more likely to invest in a hypermasculine patriarchal ideal.
Why? Do you not want to explore how nonsensical this notion is if you're going to explore why boys grow up the way they do?
Why are girls (if we're honest, basically every person who isn't a cis man) pushed to find love and care wherever they can find it, to grow with that? And boys are conditioned to need the love of their fathers or a male role model? This isn't being challenged here at all, and I think that's weird for a book purporting to want alternatives to how we raise boys.
Much of the mass media directed at young male consumers is created by self-hating, emotionally shutdown adult men who have only the pornography of violence to share with younger men.
What.
While feminism may ignore boys and young males, capitalist patriarchal men do not. It was adult, white, wealthy males in this country who first read and fell in love with the Harry Potter books. Though written by a British female, initially described by the rich white American men who “discovered” her as a working-class single mom, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books are clever modern reworkings of the English schoolboy novel.
Funny that you make this claim when it wouldn't have been published by Bloomsbury if ALICE NEWTON hadn't read it (at the request of her father) and had a fucking glowing review.
I hate Harry Potter, and JKR can fuck off until she can't and keep going... But this ahistorical bullshit is exhausting.
It was not boys who first fell in love with it, but all children. For the time it came out, it was universally beloved by children of all genders. Not just boys. For fuck's sake.
Whether they are reworkings of the British schoolboy novel is somewhat unhelpful because... your point is already shattered by reality. (Also, it's not just a schoolboy novel but a magic school novel, which has its own history, too. So ignoring that... is an interesting choice.)
A better thought here would be that JKR was asked to get a more neutral name because boys wouldn't read books written by women. And again, while I think she can take a long walk off a short pier for being a bigoted piece of shit, we should be asking ourselves questions: WHY CAN'T BOYS READ BOOKS BY WOMEN. Hmmm. Interesting to consider.
But these books also glorify war, depicted as killing on behalf of the “good.”
Again, this creates a very funny conundrum of bell hooks really not wanting to engage with the nuance of violence and Peter Gelderloos using her as evidence in a book about how nonviolence protects the state.
The Harry Potter movies glorify the use of violence to maintain control over others. In Harry Potter: The Chamber of Secrets violence when used by the acceptable groups is deemed positive.
... Well, interesting that you're not contradicting that here so that we can know what examples are considered “glorification.”
Sexism and racist thinking in the Harry Potter books are rarely critiqued. Had the author been a ruling-class white male, feminist thinkers might have been more active in challenging the imperialism, racism, and sexism of Rowling’s books.
Doubtful. While I'm pretty sure that, in 2004, the sexism and racism of the books was largely overlooked (though not undiscussed in certain circles... who weren't white), I can almost guarantee that the bourgeois feminist thinkers who exist today would be as upset about the imperialism or racism as hooks describes it... which is not. (And sexism? Who knows. They'd probably see the already trash Girl Boss Feminism that's poorly done in Hermione's character and think it's... fine.)