bell hooks

With the courage, honesty, and compassion that have made her one of America's most provocative authorities on modern culture, bell hooks takes on the interior lives of men and answers their most intimate questions about love. Everyone needs to love and be loved -- even men. In this groundbreaking book, bell hooks gets to the heart of the matter and shows men how to express the emotions that are a fundamental part of who they are -- whatever their age, ethnicity, or cultural persuasion. Written in response to the author's in-depth discussions with men who were inspired by her trilogy, All About Love, Salvation, and Communion, bell hooks's The Will to Change addresses maleness and masculinity in new and challenging ways. With trademark candor and fierce intelligence, hooks answers the most common concerns of men, such as fear of intimacy and loss of their patriarchal place in society. She believes men can find the way to spiritual unity by getting back in touch with the emotionally open part of themselves. Only through this liberation will they lay claim to the rich and rewarding inner lives that have historically been the exclusive province of women. Men can access these feelings by giving themselves permission to be vulnerable. As they grow more comfortable and start believing that it's okay to feel, to need, and to desire, they will thrive as equal partners in their intimate relationships. Whether they are straight or gay, black or white, The Will to Change helps men to reclaim the best part of themselves.

Men, Masculinity, and Love

The Will to Change

mira lee

“When I first began looking at gender issues, I believed that violence was a by-product of boyhood socialization. But after listening more closely to men and their families, I have come to believe that violence IS boyhood socialization. The way we "turn boys into men" is through injury: We sever them from their guardians, research tells us, far too early. We pull them away from their own expressiveness, from their feelings, from sensitivity to others. The very phrase "Be a man" means suck it up and keep going. Disconnection is not fallout from traditional masculinity. Disconnection IS masculinity.”

Rebecca Lum

Patriarchy has sought to repress and tame erotic passion precisely because of its power to draw us into greater and greater communion with ourselves, with those we know most intimately, and with the stranger.

Anger prevents love and isolated the one who is angry. It is an attempt, often successful, to push away what is most longed for—companionship and understanding. It is a denial of the humanness of others, as well as a denial of your own humanness. Anger is the agony of believing that you are not capable of being understood, and that you are not worthy of being understood. It is a wall that separates you from others as effectively as if it were concrete, thick, and very high. There is no way through it, under it, or over it.

Compassion is one of the principal things that make our lives meaningful. It is the source of all lasting happiness and joy. And it is the foundation of a good heart. Through kindness, through affection, through honesty, through truth and justice toward all others we ensure our own benefit. This is not a matter for complicated theorizing. It is a matter of common sense. ...There is no denying that our happiness is inextricably bound up with the happiness of others. There is no denying that if society suffers, we ourselves suffer....Thus we can reject everything else: religion, ideology, all received wisdom. But we cannot escape the necessity of love and compassion.

I am responsible for accepting or choosing the values by which I live. If I live by values I have accepted or adopted passively and unthinkingly, it is easy to imagine that they are just “my nature," just "who I am," and to avoid recognizing that choice is involved. If I am am willing to recognize that choices and decisions are crucial when values are adopted, then I can take a fresh look at my values, question them, and if necessary revise them. Again, it is taking responsibility that sets me free.

Men of integrity are not ashamed to serve. They are caretakers, guardians, keepers of the flame. They know joy.

If we are lucky enough as children to be surrounded by grownups who love us, then our sense of wholeness is not just the sense of completeness in ourselves but also is the sense of belonging to others and our place; it is an unconscious awareness of community, of having in common. It may be that this double sense of singular integrity and of communal belonging is our personal standard of health for as long as we live... we seem to know instinctively that health is not divided.

The root of the word "respect" means "to look a." Women want to be recognized, seen, and cared about by the men in our lives. We desire respect whether gender equality exists in all areas or not. When a woman and man have promised to give each other love, to be mutually supportive, to bring together care, commitment, knowledge, respect, responsibility, and trust, even if there are circumstances of inequality, no one uses that difference to enforce domination. Love cannot coexist with domination. Love can exist in circumstances where equality is not the order of the day. Inequality, in and of itself, does not breed domination. It can heighten awareness of the need to be more loving.

Pearl Bechard

While some women active in the feminist movement felt anguished about our collective inability to convert masses of men to feminist thinking, many women simply felt that feminism gave them permission to be indifferent to men, to turn away from male needs.

Fear keeps us from being close to the men in our lives; it keeps us from love.

The Will to Change quotes

Join the club