Reading: The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (bell hooks) / Preface To contextualise: How Nonviolence Protects the State related tags: #HNvPtS
Starting with the preface, and I'm going to guess that I'll be coming away rolling my eyes.
Nowadays I am amazed that women who advocate feminist politics have had so little to say about men and masculinity.
It is bizarre to see this because I remember 2004, and I remember the feminist movement (at least the liberal aspect of it) not shutting the fuck up about men and masculinity... in precisely the manner she wants. It's part of why now we have to listen to absolute horseshit like the “male loneliness epidemic” from people calling themselves feminists, even though everyone is lonely. It's part of why now we are told that we should empathise with men who are abusive because they, too, have been abused... even as so many victims of their abuse do not get to have that same empathy (and are often completely derided and disbelieved).
And that's not even to say we shouldn't think about patriarchy's impacts on men or masculinity, but it is to say that even in 2004? This book was already ahistorical in its own presentation.
Within the early writings of radical feminism, anger, rage, and even hatred of men was voiced, yet there was no meaningful attempt to offer ways to resolve these feelings, to imagine a culture of reconciliation where women and men might meet and find common ground. Militant feminism gave women permission to unleash their rage and hatred at men but it did not allow us to talk about what it meant to love men in patriarchal culture, to know how we could express that love without fear of exploitation and oppression.
I think it's rather important to also recognise that having the space to exercise this ability to voice rage and anger toward men, to critique their behaviours and adherence to patriarchy? Was liberating for a lot of people who were (and still are) coerced into playing nice just for the sake of their own safety. Hatred may've been expressed, but critiques more often than not get buffered by a coerced “not all men” preface because apparently the people (not just men but also definitely men) who read these works can't help but bristle if we're so imprecise.
I also want examples of what she calls hatred because a lot of people—women included—conflate critique of behaviour and action with hatred and being mean. We see this in any hierarchical structure, honestly. We're expected to be nice to have our points heard and understood if we're not at the top of a hierarchy (or recognised as being above the person we're critiquing).
While some women active in the feminist movement felt anguished about our collective inability to convert masses of men to feminist thinking, many women simply felt that feminism gave them permission to be indifferent to men, to turn away from male needs.
Considering the complete lack of consideration for the needs of the non-men (non-cis men, specifically for this book), I think it is acceptable for women to turn away from “male needs,” depending on what definitions we intend to use. (What does that mean, by the way? Which needs? And in what ways were they 'turning away'?)
We were the feminists who did not believe in female superiority any more than we believed in male superiority.
I'm getting the feeling that hooks needs to actually point at the feminist movement she's talking about, and she really never does. There were multiple feminist movements, and the “contemporary” one that she points to is earlier than the book's publication (mostly reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s—but it doesn't remind me of what I entered into and experienced in the 2000s, even though this book was published in 2004).
Better to just express our desire to have men disappear, to see them dead and gone.
She first frames this whole thing as most women seriously wanting all men gone (and that that's part of serious theory), and it is ludicrous. Then she goes on to show that it's individual men (while again flipping back and forth to indicate that it's all men)... I don't like that structure because it's negligent.
Women and children all over the world want men to die so that they can live.
This line comes after she elaborates that she wished her father and later her partner would die so that they could feel free. It's almost as if there are specific men that women wish dead because of their abusiveness. And I don't think this is inherently a problem (I think the fact that they're abusive is a problem, but I think it's fine to wish them dead).
Women and female and male children, dominated by men, have wanted them dead because they believe that these men are not willing to change.
If they believed they were willing to change, they wouldn't wish them dead. But they probably don't believe they're willing to change because they have shown no desire to learn and grow, they have doubled down on their abhorrent views, and they continue to harass them and others in ways that show their lack of change.
There are men in my life who have feigned learning about feminist causes. I did not wish them dead while I believed them capable of change, but I did start wishing for their deaths when they showed me how willing they were to use these strategies to pretend to be good men... only to later abuse me or other people.
Our first instinct is not to wish them dead, but we do start wishing them dead when they prove to be harmful and unwilling. We have evidence of their lack of desire to be better; those sorts want to hold that position of power, and we know they refuse to change because they tell and show us every day.
They believe that men who are not dominators will not protect them.
... I'm sorry, where is this idea coming from? How would the feminist movement benefit from men who are dominators? This still relies on sexist stereotypes, which isn't to say that some people calling themselves feminists don't rely on them... but it also doesn't make sense to think most feminists think men can't change (but also don't want them to change because we need dominators to protect us).
It is a fiction of false feminism that we women can find our power in a world without men, in a world where we deny our connections to men.
Again, this is not speaking the truth to the feminist movement that was available to me in 2004. We were being inundated with Girl Boss Feminism and corporate “feminist” products to fight against, and no part of that was about denying our connections to men (if anything, it was about exploiting people like men to get ahead).
She needs to define which feminism she's focusing on because it's not “contemporary” to the book she published.
Men cannot change if there are no blueprints for change. Men cannot love if they are not taught the art of loving.
I agree, but I also think it's important to note that feminist thought has frequently provided blueprints for men to change, that men have never been fully excluded from the feminist movement (and were, in fact, welcomed into it when they sought to be part of it and showed interest).
But we've had hundreds of years of women trying their damnedest and getting fed up with men because... I wonder who was putting who down, who was getting in the way, who was creating obstacles...
I also know I'm going to be infuriated by the strict gender binary of this book and how that's going to force me into speaking in such terms.
It is not true that men are unwilling to change. It is true that many men are afraid to change. It is true that masses of men have not even begun to look at the ways that patriarchy keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with their feelings, from loving. To know love, men must be able to let go the will to dominate. They must be able to choose life over death. They must be willing to change.
This paragraph is just weirdly structured. The beginning says it's untrue that they're unwilling to change (which, in 2026, I find to be entirely wrong because a lot of [cis] men are unwilling to change and are actively harmful to a range of social movements, including those related to queer and trans people), but the end follows up with “must be willing” (which implies that they aren't).