bell hooks does a great job at separating masculinity from patriarchy an argument I’ve never heard made before.
All of the things I’ve often wondered about myself over the years: why I suppress my feelings, why I feel sexually inadequate, why I get reflexively angry, why I am driven to depression, were laid out in a way that made such sense.
But until I finished bell hooks’ The Will to Change an hour ago, I wasn’t aware of how to articulate this.īell hooks writes with such a deep, abiding empathy for the subjects of her polemics that I felt like she was speaking directly to me. Over the years, I came to realize that this is wrongheaded and unnecessary. That class wasn’t the singular reason why but it was quite impactful. I gradually came to see masculine expression as a bad thing and frequently juxtaposed it with (good) femininity.
It took me years to really unpack that and while my memory is hazy as to what else was said during the class, it really messed with me. I was taught to respect teachers as authority figures so I came away thinking of that wondering: That’s really all God thinks of my maleness? Being crammed into a parenting role I don’t want with an anger I don’t understand? Plus, I am the product of divorce (that scene was more than familiar) and, at the time, had zero desire to be a parent, then or ever. It was the first time in my life I was seriously examining the concept of masculinity and what that meant. It’s really not the biggest problem in the world to ask me to be uncomfortable for the sake of addressing privilege and critiquing the worst aspects of masculinity. Now let’s be clear: I’m a cishet white guy. I cannot recall the ensuing discussion or what else was taught but I remember feeling uncomfortable about that scene and finding the whole class hard to sit through. In it, a deadbeat dad played by (I think) Nick Nolte is depicted in a scene as being unable to relate to his young daughter and getting angry at her when she suggests she wants to see her mother. She taught our Spiritual Care class and in her lecture on masculinity, she had us watch a video of a movie, the title of which I can’t remember. I had a great professor in Seminary who I felt came up short in one regard.
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