Everyone needs to love and be loved - even men. But to know love, men must be able to look at the ways that patriarchal culture keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with their feelings, from loving.
In The Will to Change, bell hooks gets to the heart of the matter and shows men how to express the emotions that are a fundamental part of who they are—whatever their age, marital status, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. But toxic masculinity punishes those fundamental emotions, and it’s so …
Everyone needs to love and be loved - even men. But to know love, men must be able to look at the ways that patriarchal culture keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with their feelings, from loving.
In The Will to Change, bell hooks gets to the heart of the matter and shows men how to express the emotions that are a fundamental part of who they are—whatever their age, marital status, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. But toxic masculinity punishes those fundamental emotions, and it’s so deeply ingrained in our society that it’s hard for men to not comply—but hooks wants to help change that.
With trademark candor and fierce intelligence, hooks addresses the most common concerns of men, such as fear of intimacy and loss of their patriarchal place in society, in new and challenging ways. She believes men can find the way to spiritual unity by getting back in touch with the emotionally open part of themselves—and lay claim to the rich and rewarding inner lives that have historically been the exclusive province of women. A brave and astonishing work, The Will to Change is designed to help men reclaim the best part of themselves.
Paperback, 188 pages
English language
Published June 5, 2025 by Simon & Schuster.
Patriarchy and domination harm men, too, feminism and gender equality movements should also aim to support men flourishing outside of patriarchal models. The writers she is responding to are an odd often shallow mix and the later essays meander more from the opening vitality.
I was surprised by how little there was for me in this. It doesn't seem like a truly transcendental idea that men are also people who are harmed by patriarchy? I didn't feel like hooks had much to say about that, and mostly repeated herself: men have feelings and needs they can't express & explore under patriarchy, this paucity of outlets hurts men and others who relate to them, anecdotes illustrating this point and then a few recaps. Maybe I've just already done a fair bit of thinking about men and masculinity, so the core thesis of this document didn't need to inspire much new thought for me?
