this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2025
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menby

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A space for masculine folks to talk about living under patriarchy.

Detoxing masculinity since 1990!

You don’t get points for feminism, feminism is expected.

Guidelines:

  1. Questions over blame
  2. Humility over pride
  3. Wisdom over dogma
  4. Actions over image

Rules (expansions on the guidelines):

  1. Mistakes should be learning experiences when possible.
    • Do not attack comrades displaying vulnerability for what they acknowledge are mistakes.
    • If you see good-faith behavior that's toxic, do your best to explain why it's toxic.
    • If you don't have the energy to engage, report and move on.
    • This includes past mistakes. If you've overcome extreme reactionary behavior, we'd love to know how.
    • A widened range of acceptable discussion means a greater need for sensitivity and patience for your comrades.
    • Examples:
      • "This is reactionary. Here's why."
      • "I know that {reality}, but I feel like {toxicity}"
      • "I don't understand why this is reactionary, but it feels like it {spoilered details}"
  2. You are not entitled to the emotional labor of others.
    • Constantly info-dumping and letting us sort through your psyche is not healthy for any of us.
    • If you feel a criticism of you is unfair, do not lash out.
    • If you can't engage self-critically, delete your post.
    • If you don't know how to phrase why it's unfair, say so.
  3. No singular masculine ideal.
    • This includes promoting gender-neutral traits like "courage" or "integrity" as "manly".
    • Suggestions for an individual to replace a toxic ideal is fine.
    • Don't reinforce the idea the fulfillment requires masculinity.
    • This also includes tendency struggle-sessions.
  4. No lifestyle content.
    • Post the picture of your new grill in !food (feminine people like grills too smh my head).
    • Post the picture of the fish you caught in !sports (feminine people like fish too smdh my damn head).
    • At best, stuff like this is off-topic. At worst, it's reinforcing genders norms..
    • If you're not trying to be seen as masculine for your lifestyle content, it's irrelevant to this comm. If you are trying to be seen as masculine, let's have a discussion about why these things are seen as masculine.

Resources:

*The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by Bell Hooks

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"The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love" by bell hooks BOOK CLUB - Chapters 10, 11 and OVERALL Discussion (hexbear.net)
submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Hello comrades, it's time for our FINAL discussion thread for The Will to Change, covering Chapters 10 (Reclaiming Male Integrity), 11 (Loving Men) and the book as a whole. Thanks to everyone who's participated over the last couple months, I’m looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts again. And if you haven't started the book yet but would like to, this thread will stay pinned for a while so you can share your thoughts as you read!

As we reflect on the book as a whole, there are a few questions I'm curious to hear everyone's answers for:

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

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

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

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)

After this I would like to host another book club, probably here on /c/menby but it depends on what exactly we read. Please share any suggestions you have for books below!

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I really appreciate how easy this book is to go through, and how gentle it is for men even though I dont feel like a lot of men deserve that kindness (maybe myself included)

  1. my initial biggest takeaway was just how pervasive patriarchy is in all things. Its inescapable, even when the source is unintentionally perpetuating it. Realizing that family, society, media pushed masculine expectations on to me, whether intentionally or not, has made me have to reexamine a lot of my personality that I feel is pretty foundational in who I am. Maybe not always negatively, but they are parts of me that I accepted uncritically because I was supposed to, not because I wanted to.

Its also much more clear how very strongly intertwined capitalism and patriarchy are. Being emotionless beasts who give pats on the head to good performance and unbridled unempathetic anger to missing expectations is a perfectly binary cog in the profit machine. Everything that makes us human gunks up the machine, so as long as we can put on our Man Mask at work were doing a great job. Women are expected to do this too, if they want to advance.

  1. Finding out all this so late in my life is a little crushing but I can at least try to raise my kids without those toxic expectations. I have already had to talk to my parents about how they interact with their grandchildren and Im positive it will get more complicated as they age. Something that has helped me is labelling my emotions in front of my kids and partner. Instead of falling back on anger or more commonly some cold emotionless numbness, I try to say "That made me feel sad." I also try to check in on other peoples feelings because I will usually notice when someones in a certain mood but I try to dance around it rather than engage with it - even good moods.
  1. Elephant in the room question - reading all the struggle session posts makes me feel guilty even though I rarely post and dont think i've posted anything hugely reactionary, but dwelling on it some more I think being silent is part of the problem. I have seen some misogynistic posts on here and just kept moving on. I think all users should make it a point to correct them or at least tell the user to clarify what they said as it comes off mysogynistic or promotes toxic masculinity. And at least reporting the stray hitlerites that wander in from other instances.

That being said this site is really great and we can always do better. I feel like I don't have a lot of ways we as a community can improve without everyone saying theyll try to carry some of the mental load we leave to the power posters and mods.

Thanks for hosting this the book is great for rereading and dewormed my brain a lot. I wish I could have been more active but I did appreciate reading everyone elses comments.