(CW: chapters 4 and 5 contain explicit discussions of sexual assault)
Hello comrades, it's time for our third discussion thread for The Will to Change, covering Chapters 4 (Stopping Male Violence) and 5 (Male Sexual Being). Thanks to everyone who participated the last few weeks, I’m looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts again. And if you’re just joining the book club this week, welcome!
I'll be sharing my full thoughts later as there's quite a lot of unpack in these chapters.
In Ch.4 hooks delves into how patriarchal repression of men's emotional worlds most often manifests as violence and rage, especially against women and children, and how patriarchy conditions both young boys and young girls to perpetuate the cycle. Ch.5 explores how patriarchal attitudes extend to the bedroom and twist our popular conceptions of sexuality, sexual fulfillment, and physical and emotional satisfaction.
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)
As always let me know if you'd like to be added to the ping list!
Our next discussion will be on Chapters 6 (Work: What's Love Got To Do With It?) and 7 (Feminist Manhood), beginning on 12/18.
edit: the previous post didn't have the proper links to the pdf book and audiobooks, sorry for that
Chapter 5 stuck with me a lot because I've been trying to interrogate sexuality as much as possible, both for myself as well as in a more general sense. As a cishet guy who has been the target demographic of patriarchal continuation for my entire life I've found myself thinking:
Is this desire my own?
Do I want to do this or is this just what I'm supposed to do?
What harm may be done to myself or someone else?
hooks writes about the entitlement towards sex that is encouraged in men. It wasn't until I was in my thirties that I understood that sexual arousal was like any other emotion and didn't demand action every time it occurred. A few years on an SSRI that killed my libido was a big factor in hitting the pause button as well and gave me some room to realize that sex didn't have to claim such a large part of my waking hours. One of the reasons I stopped taking it was I was feeling sexually unfulfilled having no libido, and since then the balance feels much healthier and not alienating for either me or my partner who has undergone her own changes and journey over the years. It was having time to stop and think and having someone to speak with openly and honestly about my feelings that helped facilitate that growth. I know I likely wouldn't have reached these conclusions on my own.
It's so easy as a man to get caught up in the current of sex that permeates everything, especially during this period of extreme isolation and alienation. It's literally everywhere, provides a quick easy high to keep the darkness at bay, and requires practice to recognize it and then reject it. A problem I've encountered is people can be so protective of their sexuality that suggesting that they take some time to truly understand it is akin to asking them to dissect and ruin one of their favorite things. It's this thing where we're taught that our sexuality is our own and no one else's, so who am I to suggest there might be something unhealthy about it?
I'm stuck with the thought that sexual desire and practice are so much more complex than many people want to accept and that we're stuck in a state of arrested development that will need something akin to a Cultural Revolution to uproot the gnarly mess we've made for ourselves. I think about how things might have been different if the Nazis hadn't destroyed the German Institute for Sexual Sciences. I think about the horrible repression every time there's been a Great Awakening in the US where patriarchy reasserts itself as violently as possible. There's millennia worth of thoughts like this to fall into, but that only reminds me of the importance of putting in the work now to change it.
I think sex is useful for cultivating joy in your life when things are hard. Its free and a way to love you're self but I think we have an unhealthy expectations that sex in only PIV that should solve all your problems. We need to make place for intimacy, closeness between people that is non-sexual as well as a better emphasis on sex satisfaction being something you can give yourself not as a sad consolation prize but a means to itself. Add in the strange shame brought on by the No-Fab movement online, and from any Church there is so much shame around these desires.
This is going to be hard for most people since the patriarchy says that being Gay is the worst thing a man can be. So people don't want to explore their sexuality because they are afraid of that. Moreover, I think the culture has a strong anti-pleasure /anti-kink / anti-self expression around sexuality that people don't want to touch. The idea that someone looks at porn too long, they have to find harder things (group sex, kink, etc.) to satisfy their growing lust is ridiculous. But this idea is everywhere and toxic. Add on the fact that most men have their kinks at puberty and woman for reasons cultural and maybe biological get them later in life leads a lot of men ashamed of what they actually like. Add on the fact that women and other men will call people freaks and deviants if they want anything besides missionary PIV in dark for the purpose of procreation. Even the more sex positive messages is about having sex with lots of people not satisfy sex. There are a lot of different messages telling people to avoid finding what they like.