menby

This book is great so far. It is revealing a lot to me about reconciling my own relationship with my father, who despite all his failings and patriarchal attitudes (which are a fraction of what he experienced as a child to be fair) is still working hard and trying to love his children even in his late 60s. But its so hard to reconcile, because for every genuine nice text he sends there are countless times he made me feel small/worthless/failure of a man.

But most of all it has me wanting to change my kneejerk reaction to things especially as it pertains to the women in my life. Shortly after reading this, my wife and her sister got into a bit of a fight over facetime. I was feeling defensive, angry at my sister in law, and the comment i made out of those feelings were patriarchal, minimizing to my sister in laws feelings, made the fight worse. I felt bad, shut myself up, and everything ended OK.

Ive got my own actions and attitudes that i need to work on checking. But this book presents me a lot of hope that i dont need to just "work hard" to be a good man, i just need to let go of some things, listen, and learn to love myself and to lead my relationships not out of fear and anger but out of love.

Thanks for picking such a great book, i might end up finishing it ahead of time and will definitely be recommending it to others

whoops i read through chapter 2 as well

Good (re-)read. I hadn't heard the preface before (thanks TankieTube!) and that was a valuable add-on to the book. I remember thoroughly enjoying the first read-through and its take-down of contemporary feminist pitfalls. I feel like hooks' intersectional feminism has a much better hold on the U.S. now in contemporary liberal spheres compared to a decade ago, which I am happy to see. I have seen less "male tears" mugs and such and more cooperation and understanding. I think this book might be helpful in combating the online manosphere. Helping men understand that all these "pick-up artists" hate them and want to use them for money might be helpful. The other thing I was thinking is that this book desperately needs a Korean translation if it doesn't already have one as from the outside it appears Worst Korea is struggling with all of the mistakes of earlier versions of feminism that America has struggled with.

Once upon a time I thought it was a female thing, this fear of men. Yet when I began to talk with men about love, time and time again I heard stories of male fear of other males. Indeed, men who feel, who love, often hide their emotional awareness from other men for fear of being attacked and shamed. This is the big secret we all keep together—the fear of patriarchal maleness that binds everyone in our culture.

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

Finished the book earlier today, lot to process and think through. It’s a similar feeling to reading Kapital where everything suddenly just clicks and the entire world is recontextualized in a way that makes so much more sense. I didn’t realize how deep the patriarchal brain worms go, the book does a great job of getting you to look back at your childhood and see the ways you’ve been conditioned from day one. I’m still making connections between a lot of different thoughts, feelings, and formative experiences, everything really goes back to the same place. I didn’t realize that I have so much deeply ingrained misogyny to excise, so many ways my behavior and thinking is molded by adhering to a patriarchal ideal.

I hope to get my thoughts together and contribute more to further discussion threads, I’m just immensely grateful to everyone here that recommended this book! I’ve already started pushing it on everyone I know that I think would be even slightly receptive, it’s such a good introduction to feminist ideas. Begged my girlfriend to read it to no avail, really hoping I can get her to eventually as I’m not nearly as eloquent as bell hooks. Also doesn’t help that I can’t even try to describe some of the things mentioned without tearing up. I feel like this book perfectly describes the alienation I’ve felt from being with women that ask me to open up and then ignore me/get upset when I actually do. Fingers crossed it goes differently this time, I’ve already spoken very frankly about suicidal ideation and depression with her. Cried in her arms before we even officially started to date so if that didn’t scare her off hopefully some theory won’t

Late to the party but throwing in my thoughts at the buzzer: I really felt what she said about men’s relationship with expressing feelings. I’m not exactly stoic, my wife says I’m more emotional than her, but there always feels like there’s something risky and transgressive about doing so. Like it’ll either be seen as a weakness to exploit, or that it’ll be misinterpreted and then I’ll have no power to correct that misinterpretation and then I’m tethered to a feeling I didn’t actually have, or that if that it’s a negative emotion that people won’t want to deal with it or just focus on how it makes them feel bad, all of which leads to the feeling that I would’ve been better off not expressing the feeling. There’s definitely a recurring theme in my relationship where when my wife saying she’s not feeling loved, there’s a normalcy to that, but me doing vice versa is more dire, more laden with fallout. Which I think leads to a cycle of keeping mum and then letting it all out at once which isn’t productive.

I also get the anger thing because it often feels like people don’t take men seriously unless they’re expressing a level of, implicit or explicit, aggression. Like, it’s not that anger is good because masculine, it’s anger good because at least then people will listen to me instead of ignoring me. Which probably has a lot to do with growing up introverted in a house full of extroverts that seemed like they were chomping at the bit to talk over other people

I'm the youngest of three boys so the stuff about the rigidity of patriarchy hurting men really resonates with me. My dad died 6 years ago and although I'm the youngest by a good margin; I definitely 'grew up' the most after my dad passed. The entire pursuit of being the one doing the most has really shaped how my brothers and I all act as adults. I spent so much of my youth pushing to keep up with a standard of patriarchy. Even into adulthood I compete with my brothers by thinking I did the best adjusting to the loss of your father.

I read the first sections and most of the discussion here but don't feel like I have anything to add. Maybe re-reading the next chapters will bring some more inspiration.