hooks - The Will to Change

Keith Edwards' referral called me to read hooks' The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love. hooks' writing is insightful, engaging, and compassionate while still recognizing the peril that male domination presents. hooks admonishes men and women to draw together in combatting a mutual adversary - patriarchy and the toxic masculinity that emerges from it. And of men, hooks says, "To know love, men must be able to let go the will to dominate. They must be able to choose life over death" (Loc 92).

"Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence" (p. 17). One of the most powerful foundations of patriarchy is emotional stoicism, which results in men believing that they cannot feel if they want to be manly. Should they feel even a shadow of emotion, they extinguish it and certainly don't let other men know. Both men's and women's silence about what they experience in families, often void of emotion and connection, maintains the patriarchal culture without question. By contrast to the silence, hooks advocated as early as 1984 that both men and women should join as comrades in the struggle.

The perpetuation of patriarchy is fostered in many ways and the dynamics are notably more powerful during the adolescent years for boys. During this liminal period of not being a child but not being an adult, feeling out of control is common. It is during this period that boys are told to "be a man" when they feel pain or when they face disappointment, thus starting down the path toward denial and stuffing down their feelings. This disembodiment of emotion and feeling is tantamount to lying as young men take on the role of male chauvinists and sexists. Chauvinism claims male superiority which is known in the deeper selves of most men and women to be destructive and untrue.

Having learned their lessons well, boys move into adulthood struggling to establish authentic emotional connections with men or women. The beginning of the tragedy of men's and women's life partnerships is that, if not changed, relationships with women are frozen in time. Appearing to be almost a compensation for lack of capacity in relationships, patriarchal culture then places the most value on what men do, the work they perform. To reverse the pattern, hooks proposed love and defined it as "the will to nurture one's own and another's spiritual and emotional growth" in ways that "combine care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust" (p. 65). hooks' response to changing masculinity that diminishes and threatens is to love men out of their lethargy - support them in taking off the imposed mask to release them to a fuller way of being.

Edwards - Unmasking: Toward Authentic Masculinity

I downloaded Unmasking: Toward Authentic Masculinity (Edwards, 2023) essentially because I had become acquainted with Keith Edwards from his interviews for "Student Affairs Now." My immediate impression of Keith was that he was an attentive listener who demonstrated great curiosity.  The impression was no doubt derived from the skills he refined through the research methodology behind his book - progressive interviews with a sample of young men who shared their stories of coming to understand their masculinity in unique ways.

Unmasking... referenced bell hooks', The Will to Change, which caused me to read it as well, although after reading Keith's book. hooks provided important philosophical background that Keith characterized by saying, "For many centuries and millennia, men as a group, often with many other dominant identities, have been controlling and utilizing political power, scientific discoveries, business development, and more for their benefit" (p. 9). While these systemic conditions have benefited men, "the same patriarchal system granting men these privileges also harms men through the gender expectations it places on them" (p. 10). The purpose and process of Keith's research was to listen and to give his subjects, and men who are reading his book, permission to explore who they were expected to be in comparison to who they really are or wanted to be.

Germain to, and confirmation of, my life experience is that masking has been enforced over time as a way of protecting male privilege while simultaneously putting men in a strait jacket of expectation. Men either conform, uncomfortably accommodate, or resist the masculine images that they hardly notice - unnoticed because the messages are like the air we breathe. Men who conform either naturally or uncomfortably project what they believe are masculine images of dominance in presence and presentation, often including "Breaking the rules... by showing independence from social norms, irreverence for authority, and indifference to the impact on others" (p. 72). Conforming to a rule breaking and uncaring image can be seen in behavior patterns from elementary school on through higher education, contributing to boys and men achieving less in studies and in fact being represented in lower proportion to women by the time they could be entering college. Even in the cases where boys and men do things outside the typical masculine image (e.g., playing piano or violin, painting, dancing, or cooking), the only way to escape derision is to excel in competitive ways, beating one's peers.

Conformity to masculine stereotypes results in harm to others and to self, including oppression of women, hierarchies of masculinity, relationship avoidance, and a general lack of well-being. Perhaps one of the most tragic consequences of masking is what Keith terms as "manestesia," the inability for men to share with and be vulnerable even with good friends. Keith offers numerous insights on identity development, intersectional identities, and the costs and benefits of unmasking. He also offers a way out of masking and moving toward openness to authentic being, which include focusing on the success strategies of 1. Well-being, 2, Strengths, 3. Be grateful, 4. Practice mindfulness and meditation, 5. Be kind, and 6. Foster relationships. Keith's admission that "I am harshest with men who remind me of previous versions of myself..." through "blaming and shaming" (p. 162) was particularly helpful because behind these judgments is the desire to be the good male who doesn't hurt himself or others. The lesson is that standing apart in judgment does little to invite other men into unmasking with you.

For an introduction to Edward's Unmasking, see his interview on Student Affairs Now. Sudent affairs staff are essential to help male students explore issues of identity, especially since enrollment and retention among men has declined in recent years.