Hello comrades, it's time for our first discussion thread for The Will to Change! Please share your thoughts below on the first two sections of the book. There's quite a lot to talk about between hooks' discussion of masculinity discourse within feminist circles, the ways both men and women uphold patriarchy, and the near universal experience of men being forced to suppress their rich emotional worlds from a young age. I'll be posting my thoughts in a little bit after I'm done with work.
If you haven't read the book yet but would like to, its available free on the Internet Archive in text form, as well as an audiobook on Youtube with content warnings at the start of each chapter, courtesy of the Anarchist Audio Library, and as an audiobook on our very own TankieTube! (note: the YT version is missing the Preface but the Tankietube version has it) Let me know if you'd like to be added to the ping list!
Our next discussion will be on Chapters 2 (Understanding Patriarchy) and 3 (Being a Boy), beginning on 12/4.
Thanks to everyone who is or will be participating, I'm really looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts! 
I think this is the big key passage in the first chapter for me. The fear of the attack on emotions and shame by men against woman and other men. I feel like the on-going and ubiquitous social culture about shaming and mocking of men mostly by other men when they express any emotion or show an interest in something "unmanly" is common across all genders. My own father was never pushing stoicism or macho behavior on me or my brothers. But the social behavior from my peers and mass media was enough to get it engrained deep in my head enough that I can't see when I am hiding my own emotions from myself or self censoring about my life. It puts up a wall about expressing anything that isn't "acceptable" in front of other men. I find it hard to express myself to my male friends unless its the small core group who I trust will understand what I am saying and won't mock it. Or only express it unless I know they have the same interest if its something that isn't traditionally masculine. The more men together the more frightening it becomes.
This relates to a discussed I had with some mixed gender friends about "Bachelor Parties". The woman were saying that they didn't trust bachelor parties. When getting down to the why and they didn't hate that their partners were going to them or even their partners having bachelor parties but it was the random ones. They said that when out and they say a bachelor party they would feel less safe. Thinking about it I felt similar. I know that if I got a group of my male friends together it would be fine. Even if I was in a bachelor party I would feel unsafe if another bachelor party came in. Its the fact that the risk of a really toxic man increases and the group dynamics encourage terrible behavior of conformality to this patriarchal ideal is the problem. The larger the group the more likely it that the dynamic shifts that way. Its the same bullying bell hook's mentions above