Review: The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks

The crisis facing men is not the crisis of masculinity, it is the crisis of patriarchal masculinity.

A compelling collection of essays that successfully argues that the true enemy of the feminist movement is not men, but patriarchy.

At its core, this sounds obvious. We all know that individuals aren't the cause of systemic issues, but what many have failed to observe when it comes to gender politics is that "masculinity" and "patriarchal masculinity" are two separate entities and the former deserves to be acknowledged and supported as much as women are in the fight against the common enemy.

Patriarchy [is] a system women and men support equally, even if men receive more rewards from that system.

Everyone in Western society has internalized more than they can even consciously comprehend when it comes to misogyny. It infiltrates nearly every aspect of daily life. hooks manages to tackle this reality from every angle: love, boyhood, violence, sexuality, work, pop culture, and beyond. This book serves as a guide to its readers, as a slap in the face to remind everyone that the way we currently operate only feeds into the problem. We paint "masculinity" a nasty portrait. And that becomes the model people think they need to live by, or to run from.

But we must remember that there is nothing "inherently evil, bad, or unworthy about maleness." It's only patriarchal maleness that we need to eliminate. It's a system we need to break down, not a population we need to attack. And we all need to work together to do it.

This collection holds a very precious gem at its core, and is well argued. A few of the pieces felt repetitive to me (and the pop culture tangents felt unconvincing), hence my star rating, but I would still call it a valuable work to read.

Finally, the external academic sources cited were enlightening. I'll be chewing on many of Terrance Real's words for years to come:

'I have come to believe that violence is boyhood socialization. The way we 'turn boys into men' is through injury... Disconnection is masculinity.'