1710 || bell hooks || men aren't the enemy

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,

Druly America. If you struggle with consistency, let's build a little momentum together, whether you make your bed or not.

Good morning, Sunshine. Welcome to another day of the Make Your Dan Bed Podcast.

Over the last few days, we've been reading from Understanding Patriarchy by Bell Hooks,

and in this final episode, I want to start with her quote from Stift, the betrayal of the American man, written by Susan Faludi,

who says, quote, ask feminists to diagnose men's problems, and you'll often get a very clear explanation.

Men are in crisis because women are properly challenging male dominance.

Women are asking men to share the public reins, and men can't bear it.

Ask anti-feminists, and you'll get a diagnosis, that is, in one respect similar.

Men are troubled, many conservative pundits say, because women have gone far beyond their demands for equal treatment,

and are now trying to take power and control away from men.

The underlying message, men cannot be men, only units, if they're not in control.

Both the feminist and anti-feminist views are rooted in a peculiarly modern American perception,

that to be a man means to be at the controls, and at all times to feel yourself in control.

Later, she says, instead of wondering why men resist women's struggle for a freer and healthier life,

I began to wonder why men refrain from engaging in their own struggle.

Why, despite a crescendo of random tantrums, have they offered no methodical reasoned response for their predicament?

Given the untenable and insulting nature of the demands placed on men to prove themselves in our culture,

why don't men revolt?

Why haven't men responded to the series of betrayals in their own life?

To the failures of their fathers to make good on their promises, with some thing that is co-equal to feminism?

As Bell Hooks reminds us, patriarchy as a system has denied males access to their full emotional well-being,

which is not the same as feeling rewarded or successful or powerful because of one's capacity to assert control over others.

To truly address male pain and male crises, we must, as a nation, be willing to expose the harsh reality

that patriarchy has damaged men in the past and continues to damage them now.

If the patriarchy were rewarding to men, the violence and addiction and family life that is so all pervasive would not exist.

The violence was not created by feminism.

If patriarchy were rewarding, the overwhelming dissatisfaction that most men feel in their work lives would not exist.

Quote, the crisis facing men is not the crisis of masculinity.

It's the crisis of patriarchal masculinity.

Until we make this distinction clear, men will continue to fear that any critique of patriarchy represents a threat.

I really enjoyed this quote that she includes from therapist Terrence Reel again, who says,

psychological patriarchy is the dynamic between those qualities deemed masculine and feminine,

in which half of our human traits are exalted, while the other half is devalued.

Both men and women participate in this tortured value system.

Psychological patriarchy is a dance of contempt, a perverse form of connection that replaces true intimacy with complex,

covert layers of dominance and submission, collusion and manipulation.

It's the unacknowledged paradigm of relationships that as suffused or permeated western civilization

generation after generation, deforming both sexes and destroying the passionate bond between them.

Hooks ends this piece by saying, by highlighting psychological patriarchy, we see that everyone is

implicated, and we are freed from the misperception that men are the enemy. To end patriarchy,

we must challenge both its psychological and its concrete manifestations in daily life.

But there are folks who are able to critique patriarchy, but unable to act in an anti-patriarchal manner.

To end male pain, to respond effectively to male crisis, we have to name the problem.

We have to both acknowledge that the problem is patriarchy and the work to end it.

Terrence Reel offers this valuable insight, quote,

the reclamation of wholeness is a process even more fraught for men than it has been for women,

more difficult and more profoundly threatening to the culture at large.

Quoting hooks again, she says,

if men are to reclaim the essential goodness of male being,

if they are to regain the space of open-heartedness and emotional expressiveness,

that is the foundation of well-being, we must envision alternatives to patriarchal masculinity,

we must all change. I've always appreciate the insights of Bill Hooks,

the ability to see nuance and the different things that can all be true at once.

But one of the most powerful things, for me personally, that she contends,

and that I sometimes wrestle with, is her vision for collective insight, for collective liberation,

through collective work, through understanding that separatist movements don't work,

and sometimes I am quick to other, to say they, and to say the bad guys, and to say the villains,

and sometimes that's true, there are some fucking villains, and I refuse to pretend like they're

art, but it is a slippery slope when you start categorizing entire groups, like this type of man,

or this type of person, even if it's based on personality, it's still a bias, it's still

problematic, and it's still something that makes me feel so disconnected, and hopeless,

and desperate for a change that I don't think exists, even though I know that there are

absolutely better ways of life, and they are possible.

And because Hooks advocates for a collective resistance to patriarchy that involves everyone,

she calls for a critical examination of societal norms and values, and for personal and communal

efforts to cultivate alternative models of living, and relating based on equality, empathy,

and mutual support. As always, you can access the original source and the show notes if you're

interested. In the meantime, just know I love you so much, I hope you have a wonderful rest of

your day, and I will talk to you tomorrow while you make your damn bet. Goodbye cutie.

I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, and I'll talk to you tomorrow while you make your damn

bet.