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Welcome to the Make Your Dan Bed Podcast, a daily motivation podcast designed to help you get out of bed every morning with a little company from me,
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Druly America. If you struggle with consistency, let's build a little momentum together, whether you make your bed or not.
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Good morning, Sunshine. Welcome to another day of the Make Your Dan Bed Podcast.
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Over the last few days, we've been reading from Understanding Patriarchy by Bell Hooks,
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and in this final episode, I want to start with her quote from Stift, the betrayal of the American man, written by Susan Faludi,
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who says, quote, ask feminists to diagnose men's problems, and you'll often get a very clear explanation.
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Men are in crisis because women are properly challenging male dominance.
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Women are asking men to share the public reins, and men can't bear it.
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Ask anti-feminists, and you'll get a diagnosis, that is, in one respect similar.
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Men are troubled, many conservative pundits say, because women have gone far beyond their demands for equal treatment,
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and are now trying to take power and control away from men.
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The underlying message, men cannot be men, only units, if they're not in control.
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Both the feminist and anti-feminist views are rooted in a peculiarly modern American perception,
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that to be a man means to be at the controls, and at all times to feel yourself in control.
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Later, she says, instead of wondering why men resist women's struggle for a freer and healthier life,
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I began to wonder why men refrain from engaging in their own struggle.
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Why, despite a crescendo of random tantrums, have they offered no methodical reasoned response for their predicament?
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Given the untenable and insulting nature of the demands placed on men to prove themselves in our culture,
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why don't men revolt?
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Why haven't men responded to the series of betrayals in their own life?
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To the failures of their fathers to make good on their promises, with some thing that is co-equal to feminism?
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As Bell Hooks reminds us, patriarchy as a system has denied males access to their full emotional well-being,
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which is not the same as feeling rewarded or successful or powerful because of one's capacity to assert control over others.
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To truly address male pain and male crises, we must, as a nation, be willing to expose the harsh reality
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that patriarchy has damaged men in the past and continues to damage them now.
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If the patriarchy were rewarding to men, the violence and addiction and family life that is so all pervasive would not exist.
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The violence was not created by feminism.
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If patriarchy were rewarding, the overwhelming dissatisfaction that most men feel in their work lives would not exist.
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Quote, the crisis facing men is not the crisis of masculinity.
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It's the crisis of patriarchal masculinity.
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Until we make this distinction clear, men will continue to fear that any critique of patriarchy represents a threat.
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I really enjoyed this quote that she includes from therapist Terrence Reel again, who says,
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psychological patriarchy is the dynamic between those qualities deemed masculine and feminine,
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in which half of our human traits are exalted, while the other half is devalued.
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Both men and women participate in this tortured value system.
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Psychological patriarchy is a dance of contempt, a perverse form of connection that replaces true intimacy with complex,
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covert layers of dominance and submission, collusion and manipulation.
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It's the unacknowledged paradigm of relationships that as suffused or permeated western civilization
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generation after generation, deforming both sexes and destroying the passionate bond between them.
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Hooks ends this piece by saying, by highlighting psychological patriarchy, we see that everyone is
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implicated, and we are freed from the misperception that men are the enemy. To end patriarchy,
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we must challenge both its psychological and its concrete manifestations in daily life.
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But there are folks who are able to critique patriarchy, but unable to act in an anti-patriarchal manner.
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To end male pain, to respond effectively to male crisis, we have to name the problem.
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We have to both acknowledge that the problem is patriarchy and the work to end it.
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Terrence Reel offers this valuable insight, quote,
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the reclamation of wholeness is a process even more fraught for men than it has been for women,
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more difficult and more profoundly threatening to the culture at large.
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Quoting hooks again, she says,
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if men are to reclaim the essential goodness of male being,
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if they are to regain the space of open-heartedness and emotional expressiveness,
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that is the foundation of well-being, we must envision alternatives to patriarchal masculinity,
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we must all change. I've always appreciate the insights of Bill Hooks,
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the ability to see nuance and the different things that can all be true at once.
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But one of the most powerful things, for me personally, that she contends,
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and that I sometimes wrestle with, is her vision for collective insight, for collective liberation,
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through collective work, through understanding that separatist movements don't work,
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and sometimes I am quick to other, to say they, and to say the bad guys, and to say the villains,
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and sometimes that's true, there are some fucking villains, and I refuse to pretend like they're
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art, but it is a slippery slope when you start categorizing entire groups, like this type of man,
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or this type of person, even if it's based on personality, it's still a bias, it's still
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problematic, and it's still something that makes me feel so disconnected, and hopeless,
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and desperate for a change that I don't think exists, even though I know that there are
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absolutely better ways of life, and they are possible.
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And because Hooks advocates for a collective resistance to patriarchy that involves everyone,
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she calls for a critical examination of societal norms and values, and for personal and communal
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efforts to cultivate alternative models of living, and relating based on equality, empathy,
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and mutual support. As always, you can access the original source and the show notes if you're
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interested. In the meantime, just know I love you so much, I hope you have a wonderful rest of
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your day, and I will talk to you tomorrow while you make your damn bet. Goodbye cutie.
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I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, and I'll talk to you tomorrow while you make your damn