The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love
By bell hooks
If there could be a handbook made on the reasoning behind our patriarchal society and why men have such a hard time deviating from the path to patriarchy, bell hooks' book, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love is closest thing to a beginners guide for understanding. Her approach is to explain men, love, and patriarchy as separate entities and then help the reader understand their connection by weaving together feminist theory and a great deal of personal experience. Love, as she emphasizes repeatedly in the book, is the single most important factor in helping men understand their masculinity and the role they play in perpetuating patriarchy, whether they realize it or not. hooks believes that from the time young boys are able to communicate, they are socialized to repress their emotions and express any feelings of love sparingly. They are taught to expect to be comforted and served by women, they are taught not to take on any role resembling that of a caregiver, and that they need to financially provide for their family or their worth will be at an embarrassingly low status. hooks often references her personal relationships with men and memories from her childhood to support her theories on patriarchy. Her childhood was filled with punishments from her authoritarian father for being more aggressive than her brother and she speaks of the sadness she felt watching her brother change from a loving and emotional human being, to a rigid and empty man on his personal path into accepting his place in patriarchy. hooks offers several suggestions for how to break the cycle of patriarchy, but her most important message involves helping men rediscover their ability to love and be loved without fear. This is the starting point for her theory on men, masculinity, and love.
hooks begins The Will to Change by pointing out how severely women crave the love of men and just how much women value it. It all begins with the relationships boys and girls have with their fathers. Patriarchal culture tells us that the love of a father is something to be cherished for it is far more scarce than that of a mother. Mothers have to love their children. It is their duty as women on this earth. Therefore, children learn to overvalue whatever form of love their fathers offer them. They learn to make exceptions and new standards for love received by their fathers. hooks sees this behavior as a coping mechanism for children so that they don't allow themselves to feel the pain of an emotionally empty relationship with their father. Although it is the responsibility of men as fathers, sons, husbands, brothers, and lovers to take ownership of their emotional relationships, hooks reminds her readers that women are also involved in the continuation of patriarchal behavior.
hooks says, "It is no accident that feminists began to use the word 'patriarchy' to replace the more commonly used 'male chauvinism' and 'sexism'" (hooks p.25) and that is because patriarchy affects all of us equally and to change we all must work together. Obviously men are targeted because they receive more benefits than women due to patriarchy, but it is hard for them to change when women do not try to change as well. hooks argues that women enable men's inability to feel by not allowing men to express feelings of hurt, pain, and sadness without judgment. Since women are socialized to provide comfort and stability for their men, they often feel as though they have failed when the men in their lives show any sign of weakness. It makes women uncomfortable, which only deters men from being open with their feelings that much more. Pent up emotions in men are best hidden as anger and conveniently enough, anger is one of the few socially accepted emotions that men can express. The solution to this knot of wanting emotions, denying emotions, and then hiding emotions is communication, says hooks. "To end male pain, to respond effectively to the male crisis, we have to name the problem. We have to both acknowledge that the problem is patriarchy and work to end patriarchy," (hooks p.33). hooks is saying that we rarely, if ever, name patriarchy for what it is: the cause of this rift in communication. Instead we as a society choose silence, and with silence comes the denial of the problem at hand. It is not hard to see that hooks is aiming to illustrate the circulating system of emotional hurt and confusion perpetuated by patriarchy.
Certainly the most fascinating theory that hooks offers in The Will to Change is that men are brainwashed, through patriarchal ideology, to believe that their domination of women is beneficial when actually, that is the farthest thing from the truth. Many of hooks' readers are undoubtedly shocked upon first reading such an idea due to the fact that we are raised to think that a man's power over women acts as one of his most valued benefits as a man. However, as hooks points out, most individuals forget how important emotions are and, "As long as men are brainwashed to equate violent domination and abuse of women with privilege, they will have no understanding of the damage done to themselves or to others, and no motivation to change," (hooks p. 27) and thus remain emotional cripples. Men will remain this way until we decide to start talking about patriarchy's repercussions, which will in turn start to tear down the monumental walls that keep men and women so emotionally detached from each other.
As a future teacher, this book has reinforced my passion for changing the way children are socialized; especially young boys. At first glance, many might think that hooks' book is intended for women who are in relationships with men, whether they are mothers, sisters, girlfriends, or spouses. Some men may even find the book as a useful guide in discovering the meaning of their own life journey. Not many would read this book and immediately think that every teacher should have a copy in their library, however, I would have to disagree. This book gives light to the roots of patriarchy and as an elementary education teacher in training, I feel this book will certainly prepare me for all of the individual cases I will see in my future teaching career.
Surely this isn't the first time that masculinity and patriarchy have been examined as the links to understanding why men struggle with expressing love, emotion, and vulnerability, but bell hooks has managed to put together a wonderfully concise compilation of explanations, reasoning, and possible solutions in her book, The Will to Change . She uses personal experiences, media representation (including a reference to the problems with the popular children's book series, Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling), and popular feminist theory to map out the problems that our society must address in order to obtain a patriarchy-free world. hooks makes note of the fact that although feminist theory has offered a great many critiques of patriarchy, feminist theory has done little in the means of creating ideas for an alternative masculinity, especially concerning the time when men are at their most vulnerable stage: boyhood. The Will to Change gives its readers the knowledge and direction to pick up where Ms. hooks as left off and help men rediscover who they are not as men, but as living, breathing, and feeling human beings. - C.C.