Book Review: The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks

The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks

"[This book] is the offering I bring to the feast of male reclamation and recovery of self, of their emotional right to love and be loved...Women can share in this healing process...but we cannot do for boys and men what they must do for themselves...Ultimately boys and men save themselves when they learn the art of loving." hooks says of the purpose of her book.

I needed this book in my life. I have never read bell hooks before. I am by no means a feminist scholar, but I am a woman concerned with equality between men and women and I have been struggling lately with the question: why not just leave men behind, as they seem to be the common denominator with all the ills of our society? It is with this question in mind that hooks challenged me, forcing to reflect on my views, molding them with her eloquence. I did not agree with everything she said, but she served me a healthy debate by dissecting the mechanisms by which patriarchy sinks its hooks into all of us.

I started the book in May, then put it down for a few months, to finish it in October. Between its start and its finish, I changed my mind about a statement she makes: that it is false feminism to think women can find their power in a world without men. In May, I disagreed, thinking that women would better find and nurture their power in the absence of men. By the time I had finished the book in October, her words, and my own life experiences, had changed my mind.

hooks makes her point that men are worth saving by describing the ways that patriarchy systematically fractures a young boy from his own emotions, a type of violence against him that also glorifies domination as the only way to achieve happiness in the gulf left behind where the authentic joy of intimacy once lived. She describes how media, work, peers, fathers and mothers all enforce the patriarchy for various reasons and to varying degrees: how we are all culpable.

What hit extra hard in our pseudo-fascist American government is her statement that "In the wake of feminist, antiracist, and post colonial critiques of imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the backlash that aims to reinscribe patriarchy is fierce." So true: it's happening before my eyes.

Another major theme is how we can create subcultures or sanctuaries for boys and men to be authentically themselves. There is a shortage of these for men, yet are required if they are to resist the patriarchy and the violence it demands. Many times, we must start these "communities of resistance" in our own home. I find this idea compelling in that we can take direct action: we can tell the men in our lives that they are safe with us: safe to express themselves and expose vulnerability. That we will love them regardless of their flaws, that we will stand by them as they tread the difficult path toward healing.

By October, I had changed my mind. I now believe women can find their power among men. They cannot find their power within the current paradigm of patriarchy, but they can find their power through actions in the home: challenge your children to feel fully and authentically regardless of their gender, challenge your husband to find eros rather than raw mechanical sex, challenge your media consumption to ingest stories of men who reject patriarchy and are happier for it. It is encouraging that there are actions we can take, today, to repair the damage.

The question she failed to answer is: what shall replace patriarchy? Will it be a system? A model (she does mention the "partnership model")? Perhaps we remove the status and compensation reaped from destructive exploits (anti-capitalism)? Certainly it will be the antithesis of hierarchy, of the notion that one type of person or entity has the right to dominate another, so matriarchy is out of the question. But...what? She offers "feminism" as the "way out," but we need clear instructions! I'm taking notes.