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] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Thank you for hosting! I loved this book!

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

Two main things: A lot of personal reflection about my own socialization, that can't quickly be put into words and a renewed resolve to strive for kindness and compassion towards others and myself, especially where it goes against patriarchal conditioning and expectations.

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

It gave me room to think about things and I recommended it to many friends. I'm more aware of patriarchal behavior.

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

I don't know and I don't understand enough about hexbear to suggest anything. I hope, that it already helped a bit. In the last chapter, hooks says she used to wonder if there was a place, where patriarchal men, who did hurtful things and were accordingly excluded, could turn to. Where they could go to change and grow. I don't know, if a virtual thing like a website can ever be that place. I can't imagine us stopping to ban toxic people. Maybe the best we can hope for is to encourage people to try and find a place like that in their lives and maybe help those who have the will to change along the way. And like I said, this book club might already have done a lot for the people who participated.

For a practical takeaway, here are some ideas, that might have been tried before: Leftist spaces in real life should actively encourage masc-socialized people to engage in self reflection. Within any org or movement, there could be a feminist structure, where men do group meetings and learn and share. And they could also be tasked by the awareness team with staging interventions if a man in the group engaged in any form of patriarchal violence. They could then work directly with the preparator (given the consent of the affected) and do a large part of the often neglected long-term work of community accountability and restorative justice.

That way, men who hurt comrades, but want to change wouldn't be automatically excluded from the org or movement. And the burden to deal with more of their patriarchal bullshit, which will probably come up on the way towards healing, wouldn't fall on women and marginalized genders, but on people with male privilege.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Thanks for your thoughts comrade, the kind of space you're describing is exactly what I want /c/menby to be. The main worry I have is that the messiness of working through mutual patriarchal brainworms doesn't interfere with making the site a safe and welcoming environment for marginalized comrades. I've been thinking about how to strike a good balance and I feel the simplest thing we can do is just relentlessly interrogate and rebuke patriarchal attitudes anywhere and everywhere we see them on the site, no matter how small they might seem. If people can be helped to listen and change in a genuinely constructive way that leaves everyone the better off for it, that's ideal. If they won't listen or self-crit at all then out the door they go