Reading: The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (bell hooks) / Chapter 11: Loving Men To contextualise: How Nonviolence Protects the State related tags: #HNvPtS
To create the culture that will enable boys to love, we must see the family as having as its primary function the giving of love (providing food and shelter are loving acts).
Too often she keeps putting things within the realm of the family and rarely (if ever—I think never for this book) acknowledges that raising children should be communal.
The notion that lesbian women are antimale always proves false when groups of women gather and talk about men. The most vicious man-hating comments are always made by women who are with men and who plan to be with them for the rest of their lives. After forty-nine years of marriage, my mother is angry with our dad. The perfect subordinated wife, now when they are both over seventy years in age, is upset that he is not more emotionally giving. Since she is not a feminist, she does not see that it is a contradiction to expect this old-time patriarch to suddenly give her love. Her anger surprises and enrages him. Mama’s anger masks her fear that any day now she could die without ever feeling loved by the man she has devoted her entire life to pleasing. Like the men who feel that patriarchy’s promise has not been fulfilled, Mama feels that she is left with broken promises, without the reward for performing the subordinate role she was told a good woman should perform.
First, I want proof of how man-hating these women are. Lesbians and heterosexual women. Let's go. Cite it. Give me your evidence.
Second, how is it a contradiction? It's understandable. As of this book's publication, her mother went through 49 years of a marriage that probably felt loveless and stressful. She probably recognised that a divorce was out of the question (because of the lack of supports for older women divorcing men).
I don't think it's wrong for her mother, whether she was a feminist or not, to want her husband to actually be part of the marriage and to work on changing for the better. This attitude is weird.
ALSO, WHY IS SHE BRINGING UP LESBIANS? What the fuck is this weird use of lesbians that she does?
Women who are not feminist, women who support patriarchy, who do not have problems with sexism, share with their feminist, antisexist counterparts the wish that men would be more loving.
While I wish everyone would be feminists, dismantle patriarchy, and have problems with sexism... It's almost like these women are people who... have thoughts that people normally have.
Also, as a feminist, I don't care if men are more loving. Something that feels like it keeps getting separated from the actual actions is this concept of “being loving,” and it's part of why so many abusive people can tell their victims that they love them.
Many women despair of men because they believe that ultimately men care more about being dominators than they do about being loving partners. They believe this because so many men refuse to make the changes that would make mutual love possible. Women have not proven that they care enough about the hearts of men, about their emotional well-being, to challenge patriarchy on behalf of those men with whom they want to know love. We read self-help books that tell us all the time that we cannot change anyone, and this is a useful truism. It is however equally true that when we give love, real love—not the emotional exchange of I will give you what you want if you give me what I want, but genuine care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust—it can serve as the seductive catalyst for change. Any woman who supports patriarchy who then claims to either love the men in her life or be frustrated that they do not love her is in a state of denial.
This feels so disjointed as a coherent thought. Women despair that men don't want to change, they (correctly? except hooks implies they're wrong) believe this because men refuse to change... but women haven't proven that they care, therefore men... won't change? But also men aren't really the dominators we... know them to be??? But in order to have a seductive catalyst, we need to give genuine and real love...?
I'm sorry, what the fuck is this paragraph. It's like watching a fucking pinball machine that's managed to break the glass and ping straight between your eyes.
Also, what is this assumption that we're reading self-help books? I mean, I am now because I was fooled into thinking this was some kind of philosophy... even if it's clearly self-help bullshit.
Women who want men to love know that that cannot really happen without a revolution of consciousness where men stop patriarchal thinking and action. Because sexist roles have always given women support for emotional development, it has been easier for women to find our way to love. We do not love better or more than men, but we do find it easier to get in touch with feelings because even patriarchal society supports this trait in us. Men will never receive support from patriarchal culture for their emotional development. But if as enlightened witnesses we offer the men we love (our fathers, brothers, lovers, friends, comrades) affirmation that they can change as well as assurance that we will accept them when they are changed, transformation will not seem as risky.
This is the perfect example of bell hooks saying something that makes sense or doesn't seem so bad (the first sentence)... and then once you parse what she's said later... it's like “What the fuck are you saying?”
Because basically, she's telling women that if they just love the men in their lives enough (including the abusive ones because she constantly goes back to how she started loving her abusive father)... they'll change! They can change! You can support their change!
... At the expense of yourself.
She never once addresses the fact that marginalised genders (especially those perceived via a feminine lens) are often expected to function as loving servants trained to handle men's emotional development (or lack thereof). Many of us spend an inordinate amount of time trying to cater to men's feelings in our daily lives (home, work, family, hobbies)... Weird that she ignores this.
Time and time again when I struggled to do the work of love with a male partner who was not changing, I was told to give up on him, to kick him to the curb. I was told I was wasting my time. All this negative feedback made me ponder whether healing places exist where wounded males can go where they will not be turned away, especially when positive change is not happening fast or fast enough. Women who have been victimized by men, women who have suffered ongoing hurt at the hands of men, naturally are wisely cautious about the energy that they can expend in the service of helping men heal. Yet there are many women who have been both helped and hurt by men.
... This is her choice? But if a man isn't doing the work to change, then uh... Idk. You can leave him. It's not that he's “not changing fast enough,” it's that he's not trying at all. There is a difference.
This is also just an asinine comment. What, you want me to pretend that I have some weird belief that women never interact with men or something? That men can't ever be helpful? This is just ridiculous. Yes, men can help and hurt women... so what?