menby

Excellent last 2 chapters, I was particularly moved by her description of compartmentalization in the masc mind. I can identify so many examples of that in my own life and way of looking at things, too many to even count. Mentally separating aspects of your life in that way allows a lot of reactionary attitudes and actions to breed and I want to kill those parts of my psyche for the sake of my comrades and myself.

As far as my own questions I posed in the OP:

What was your biggest takeaway from reading The Will to Change?

For me its the idea that it's impossible to be emotionally and spiritually whole without being vulnerable. It's so hard to do so when you're in your 30s and have been conditioned from day one to suppress and deny and push down your feelings. I've talked before about my desire to go to therapy again and I know that's a great first step, but even just simple things like being emotionally honest and vulnerable with my own (masc) friends feels like a huge challenge because they received the same patriarchal conditioning that I did and are extremely averse to open honest discussions of difficult emotions. I'm hoping I can convince a few of them to read this book because it'd be a great jumping off point for starting that discussion.

How has the book's material and hooks' insights affected your everyday life?

The most immediate change for me was learning to be less afraid of expressing my true self and being authentic to the little boy inside of me who loves people and hates bigotry. I still have a long ways to go with this but even before reading the book I was bursting at the seams to take up more space and assert what I know is true and right. I've lived alone for the last several years and that isolation has definitely not helped me in that regard. I feel more fearful and more disconnected from people than maybe any other time in my life and I want to change that.

The other big change is how I see the effects of patriarchy EVERYWHERE now after reading hooks' description of what patriarchy is and how it manifests. In media, in everyday life, around the internet, and even here on the hexagonal bear site. Once the problem is diagnosed and explained so beautifully, it's like putting on the They Live glasses. I'm especially aware now of the more subtle, insidious ways patriarchy manifests, which are even more common and widespread than the really obvious stuff like domestic violence and blatant erosion of women's political rights.

How can we apply hooks' lessons on healthy, non-patriarchal masculinity to improve the site culture of Hexbear?

Many of hooks' points about masc fragility and the "dominator model" of relationships are things I see from many masc users here on HB. An unwillingness to listen, hiding deeply entrenched negative emotions behind a veneer of hostility and anger, and a general aversion to self-critique or any conception that maybe they're holding onto deeply reactionary, violent ideas that patriarchy programmed into them. Unfortunately a lot of these same users lack "the will to change" and I'm not really sure how to resolve that. hooks is abundantly clear that even though non-masc people are an important part of the healing process, mascs must ultimately choose change for themselves. Our heavier moderation against misogyny has definitely helped, but only in the sense that reactionary users are removed from the space. How do we change the hearts and minds of people who have absolutely no interest in personal growth?

For my part I feel the best thing I can do is set an example. I have to believe there is some positive effect for a user with he/him pronouns like myself acting distinctly unpatriarchal, that attempting to be something resembling a role model has the potential to inspire other mascs to positive change. Or maybe they'll just call me a 1984 authoritarian cop when I call them out on their bullshit. Either way, challenging patriarchy on HB is a community effort, not something one individual can fix on their own. So I deeply appreciate everyone who's come on this journey through feminist theory and I'm very curious to hear others thoughts on what we can do better