Reviews and Comments

I think I like this book even more than the others in this series, which are also books that I adore. This one has a bit of a clever solution, even if some of the clues start lining up a bit early. If you're not reading it to solve it, it's not going to be overtly obvious what's happening and what machinations are taking place.

I also found that there were a lot of interesting philosophical conversations taking place, which I found quite interesting. They weren't overly long or verbose, and they also fit quite neatly into the narrative without bogging it down. Each of them felt exactly like how someone thinking of a problem would vocalise their random thoughts.

I wish the questioning the Feinberg presents got more attention, especially because those questions feel like they're being drowned out by the intended discussion of Ancient Greece (something that makes me bristle for the failure of a lot of people to really understand the dynamics happening there) and then a random discussion of Ancient Rome. The following is an example of questions (as statements) that appear at the end of Chapter 7:

As I began to write this chapter, I thought about how the past has been interpreted only from the standpoint of women and men, without taking transgender, bigender, transsexuality, or intersexuality into account.

This is worth considering! We do need more lenses on history, to ask different questions and explore them. And much of our historical work, as it's told, simply doesn't do that.

Here's another example! These are questions that we still need people to deal with today (regarding drivers licensing and passports):

Why am I forced to check off an For an M on these documents in the first place? For identification? Both a driver’s license and a passport include photographs! Most cops and passport agents would feel insulted to think they needed an M or an F to determine if a person is a man or a woman.

But then it weaves right back to an somewhat adequate history of Ancient Rome...

I find these things far more engaging, personally. And I'd like to see them tied into the histories better, especially the latter point about documentation and laws.

While I appreciate that this book is largely Leslie Feinberg learning about hirself via hir exploration of history, I find that its subtitling (Making History from Joan of Arc to...) creates an expectation that isn't met or explored. I do think this is a valid critique, regardless of how many people I've encountered keep telling me that it being "a history" isn't the point... except it kind of is? And if it wasn't, then the subtitle should've been something else entirely.

There are parts where it is frustrating because even I know they're not entirely true. For example, when discussing how patriarchy came to be, zie highlights that it was men who domesticated large herd animals (no citation) and ignores how there are cultures where women, children, and the elderly engaged in the role of animal husbandry (of Steppe Nomads, we know that those three categories took care of and herded sheep).

I'm also not fond of hir analysis around Joan of Arc. It may well be true, and I do see Joan of Arc as having a role within trans history (and the history of the development of gender within specific contexts)... but there are things that Feinberg also includes in hir short exploration that make me ask further questions... because I think they needed to be asked, as the exploration makes some broad assumptions that I don't find myself entirely comfortable with (because I lack context on certain aspects of both Joan of Arc as an individual and the peoples of Lorraine and their social organisation).

I much more appreciate the memoir-esque elements of this book, and I wish more of the historical detailing was through that lens alone.

Regardless of how a person might feel, this book is written in a way that is super engaging. The original version is much better in this regard because its sometimes raw structure leads to more concise and clear discussion, even if the phrasing is "off."

The revision often gets bogged down in trying to be more correct for modern sensibilities; I still think that the book should've been left as it was but incorporated new essays in different sections or footnotes to elaborate. I also find the modernising of the text—swapping older pop culture people or items for newer ones—is bizarre and makes the text sound really confused when Bornstein chooses not to update the text for modern sensibilities.

A lot of stuff Bornstein wrote about still rings true, and I kind of find that a little disappointing. Perhaps I find it more disappointing because people constantly talked about how the world is better! And how accepting people were! And... now we're watching that so-called acceptance slide back to where it all was before because too many people got complacent and too many people wanted to assimilate instead of keep going, keep questioning, keep pushing for better lives.

Anyway, if you read this... I'd say either read the original version or read them side-by-side so you can compare the major changes and additions. I didn't enjoy the writing in the revised version nearly as much. It just wasn't as punchy, and it felt watered down.

Chapter 15 is the play Hidden: A Gender that Bornstein wrote. It's... not my cup of tea, as it's written. I see some interesting aspects that can be developed on, but it's not really something I always like. Though, I like this one line that's in Act II, Scene 1:

Gender is the feeling that you need to be one or the other. Gender is the need to belong—it doesn’t matter to what. Gender is the need to fit in, be part of something. All the rest is marketing. Sales. Public Relations.

This is a rough estimation of how I've felt for a long time, trying to figure it all out, realising I'm agender, and then... not really caring which one I fit into.

Even though it's couched in the language of the 1990s (in the original), I like seeing the idea that being trans doesn't have to be just one thing. I've pulled a phrasing change from the revision ("pre-transition person"), since that is one of the changes that I don't mind:

Through it’s insistence and fierce maintenance of the man/woman dichotomy, the culture puts the pre-transition person in the position of needing to say a permanent good-bye to one gender, and then and only then say hello to another. While that good-bye/hello is certainly an option, this culture is making it the only option. A viable solution to such a “choice” is to disentangle oneself long enough from the culture or individual presenting the two alternatives, so that you can explore some other options.

While this is a thing that I know and have talked with friends about for a long while, it's still nice to come across it in a text because of how... uncommon it feels to see and hear other people recognise.

There are a lot of points like that, which do make me appreciate aspects of this book. Like, another is:

Doing away with gender is key to the doing away with the patriarchy, as well as ending the many injustices perpetrated in the name of gender inequity. There is no gender inequity that doesn’t first assume there is gender—and only two genders at that. Gender inequities include sexism, homophobia, and misogyny.

I very rarely encounter anything that even looks remotely gender abolitionist, so I find it interesting to see something that looks that way here (or can be read that way). I also like the recognition that a lot of injustices and bigotries are interconnected as a result of gender (as one form of analysis, at least).

There are some interesting bits about 'being the fool' (like a jester or a trickster), especially as Bornstein sees them as the people who question society. As a weirdo who has always been interested in jesters, especially in modern fictional portrayals, I find this to make sense.

Though, it does come off a bit clunky and confusing. The original version is quippy and amusing, even if not entirely something I agree with. The new version struggles under both a call back to Bornstein's work on I Am Cait (with Caitlyn Jenner), where it feels more sinister than it's probably intended as a result of today's political landscape:

I had the great good fortune to accompany Caitlyn Jenner and company as a regular cast member of E! TV’s reality series I Am Cait. It was one of the very best times of my life. I remember at one point, Caitlyn Jenner was defending her right-wing politics to several of us, saying that if a right-winger ever ended up as president of the United States, she, Caitlyn, would be in a great position to be that president’s trans ambassador. Well, that made me think. And think. And think. And about a week later, I announced my solidarity with CJ, saying I would be in a great position to be that Republican president’s court jester.

It doesn't help that, currently, a refusal to even stand with trans people is a bipartisan affair (pretty much anywhere). It doesn't help that the modern Republicans are overt fascists (and were even in 2016, when the new version of this book was published).

If anything, it makes reading the new version feel incredibly disappointing.

This book is rubbish, and it's nothing short of constantly reinforcing the so-called masculinity it claims it wants to dismantle.

I've effectively made an essay for each chapter in the book comments here, but I just... I cannot with this book. I have always wondered why it is that I see so many abusive men, especially abusive men who claim to be "progressive" or "radical leftists" or "anarchists," promoting it and utilising it in their screeds that support abuse apologia... And now I know why.

Every claim comes with zero references or citations. When she does cite someone, they're frequently conservative white men. One of them was a former associate and romantic partner of Ayn Rand (Nathaniel Branden), while two others were Oprah-promoted "therapists" who comment on the attractiveness of their patients (Terrence Real and John Bradshaw)... Or another interesting one is Michael Kimmel (but that's because he later resigned from his role in a gender equality campaign group after being accused of sexual harassment in 2018—she probably didn't know about this one in 2004, but it's still an interesting pattern of the men she cites). There's also Gary Zukav, who once wrote that dolphins are killing themselves and giving themselves sicknesses because they're exhausted (not that humans are, you know, fucking up their environment).

Chapter 11. I'm finished. I don't want to write a long review, so I'm probably going to keep the essay to the chapter comment.

This chapter... I have a headache. She keeps doing this thing where, though she sometimes will critique the hyperfocus of US culture on the nuclear family, she places the responsibility for everything squarely within the nuclear family. It's like she can't decide if she wants to critique it (she doesn't in this book) or support it, and she routinely ignores... any aspect of communal child-rearing and communal support of families. It's a bit bizarre, and this is especially true because of her gross fascination with boys always needing male role models (if they don't have them at home, what about communal care? she avoids this conversation, and her work maintains a weird position on the role of parents).

She then drops this paragraph on the reader:

The notion that lesbian women are antimale always proves false when groups of women gather and talk about men. The most vicious man-hating comments are always made by women who are with men and who plan to be with them for the rest of their lives. After forty-nine years of marriage, my mother is angry with our dad. The perfect subordinated wife, now when they are both over seventy years in age, is upset that he is not more emotionally giving. Since she is not a feminist, she does not see that it is a contradiction to expect this old-time patriarch to suddenly give her love. Her anger surprises and enrages him. Mama’s anger masks her fear that any day now she could die without ever feeling loved by the man she has devoted her entire life to pleasing. Like the men who feel that patriarchy’s promise has not been fulfilled, Mama feels that she is left with broken promises, without the reward for performing the subordinate role she was told a good woman should perform.

And I find it to be one of the most unempathetic things I've ever read, especially coming from someone who keeps saying that we need to show real and genuine love (but I guess that real and genuine love is for cis men only, since apparently we can just ignore it in this instance).

Like, first: Why is she just dropping lesbians in here? It's like she's trying to say that lesbians are good, actually, because they don't hate men as much as the stereotype says!

Second: She provides no evidence for this claim. I don't think it's true, honestly. I think this is bell hooks conflating complaints of cis women in heterosexual romantic relationships with cis men who are tired of, well... the stereotypical ways that many men behave. That's not necessarily "man-hating." That's being exhausted and wanting their partner to actually be part of their relationship.

Third: What a weird way to show you have no empathy for your own mother? I don't think this is a contradiction. I think, after 49 years of marriage (as of this book's publication), it's frustration for all she's put up with, for the life she probably feels stuck in and unable to leave, and for the man who has dominated her family for as long as she can remember. Why is her mother not allowed to complain about this? It's so weird.

I also struggle with this paragraph for so many reasons, too:

Many women despair of men because they believe that ultimately men care more about being dominators than they do about being loving partners. They believe this because so many men refuse to make the changes that would make mutual love possible. Women have not proven that they care enough about the hearts of men, about their emotional well-being, to challenge patriarchy on behalf of those men with whom they want to know love. We read self-help books that tell us all the time that we cannot change anyone, and this is a useful truism. It is however equally true that when we give love, real love—not the emotional exchange of I will give you what you want if you give me what I want, but genuine care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust—it can serve as the seductive catalyst for change. Any woman who supports patriarchy who then claims to either love the men in her life or be frustrated that they do not love her is in a state of denial.

It feels like a disjointed jumble of thoughts that don't go together, but it also just feels like a verbose way of trying to say "if you love them correctly, then they might be able to change." It's hard not to read this as a victim-blaming text, especially because it puts the onus on women (because they "have not proven they care enough about the hearts of men").

Also, this strange assumption that we're all out here reading self-help books? I mean, I'm reading this one, but a lot of people keep portraying it as philosophy or feminist theory... which I disagree with.

Yet another paragraph that is just weird is this one:

Women who want men to love know that that cannot really happen without a revolution of consciousness where men stop patriarchal thinking and action. Because sexist roles have always given women support for emotional development, it has been easier for women to find our way to love. We do not love better or more than men, but we do find it easier to get in touch with feelings because even patriarchal society supports this trait in us. Men will never receive support from patriarchal culture for their emotional development. But if as enlightened witnesses we offer the men we love (our fathers, brothers, lovers, friends, comrades) affirmation that they can change as well as assurance that we will accept them when they are changed, transformation will not seem as risky.

It does precisely the thing I keep complaining about where she starts off with a thought that isn't all that bad (the first sentence) and the swerves hard-right into being like, "You know the men who have been abusive toward you? If you love them genuinely enough, they'll change." It also presumes that because women are afforded more space to have a wider range of emotions... that it makes it easier for them to "find their way into love." That is weird.

Either way, bell hooks really keeps putting the onus for men's emotional development and ability to change... on women. How is that feminist?

And the final paragraph that made me want to headdesk into oblivion:

Time and time again when I struggled to do the work of love with a male partner who was not changing, I was told to give up on him, to kick him to the curb. I was told I was wasting my time. All this negative feedback made me ponder whether healing places exist where wounded males can go where they will not be turned away, especially when positive change is not happening fast or fast enough. Women who have been victimized by men, women who have suffered ongoing hurt at the hands of men, naturally are wisely cautious about the energy that they can expend in the service of helping men heal. Yet there are many women who have been both helped and hurt by men.

This is literally abuse apologia and support for abusers over their victims. It's also nonsensical because it's conflating not changing at all with not changing fast enough.

Chapter 10. One more to go, ugh.

Snarky comment: I'm starting to think that bell hooks genre of "feminism" should be "Oprah Book Club Feminism," which isn't feminist at all.

She keeps referencing ~therapists~ who are highly questionable and have been supported by Oprah, like Terrence Real and John Bradshaw... both of whom seem to mention, in their books, the attractiveness of their patients (especially female). Or, and this is my favourite one, Nathaniel Branden! Who was a former associate and romantic partner of Ayn Rand. And once again, she references Gary Zukav and Linda Francis.

Seriously, the people she chooses to quote or reference... it is fucking wild that anyone would perceive this book as even a glimmer of being radical or visionary. (Yet, at no point will she actually cite or reference studies or researchers or anything of that nature.)

Imagine if I wrote a book about feminism, but the only people whose work I positively engaged with were all manosphere losers. It wouldn't make sense, and that's how this book feels with the choices she made. (I think one of the few people who she quotes that isn't strange is James Baldwin.)

It also doesn't help that every time she says something where you're like, "Sure, that idea makes sense," she has to immediately follow it with something ludicrous: a personal responsibility quip related to some kind of abuse a person endures, trite religious nonsense, a refusal to actually analyse the situation and opting for a general statement that doesn't make sense in any context... It's really baffling.

Chapter 9 makes me want to throw the book, except I'm reading an ebook on my computer... so I don't think I should do that.

A few parts of this chapter are completely recognisable to me, and that's because they are parts that I've seen both abusive radical men (such as a certain anarcho-celebrity) and Men's Rights Activists referencing... as a way to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions. You see, it's because:

Many men in our society have no status, no privilege; they receive no freely given compensation, no perks with capitalist patriarchy.

Which is bullshit, even if you buy in to the logic of what she's saying. It's bullshit because it doesn't matter if they "don't have status." Cis men (because, let's face it, she's not here talking about any other kind of men) hold status over people of marginalised genders; though there are aspects of this that are largely dependent upon context, as a general statement... it's not hard to find examples, even across social classes. (If we add in things like race or sexuality or disability... It obviously is going to complicate things quite a bit in the discussion, and even hooks isn't really dealing with anything beyond a straight gender binary here.)

But why would men behave in ways that support patriarchy if they got nothing out of it? They perceive their status as superior (or that it should be superior, and this is how they access that superiority), they recognise that they get some degree of privilege by following that social structure... Maybe they're not being given better jobs all the time, but they're still getting some kind of privilege that they feel they benefit from.

If there was nothing gained (even a perception of something gained), there would be no functional logic for why patriarchy still exists. It's illogical to claim this.

There's also this bit that makes me feel like I'm kind of losing my mind:

I am always disturbed when male students request references to literature that will serve as a guide as they struggle to interrogate patriarchy and create progressive identities, because there is so little literature to offer them. By contrast, I can offer countless references to any female student who tells me she is trying to critically understand and change sexist female roles. There needs to be more feminist work that specifically addresses males. They need feminist blueprints for change.

I am not opposed to more feminist literature discussing masculinity, but I will say that this book is not that. It further entrenches masculinity in a lot of ways (whether she cared to recognise that or not), and it does not feel very feminist (especially with all the weird people she decides to quote as her minimal "proof," and all of them are anything but feminists).

But let me ask, why is it that yet again men are unable to understand texts unless they are catered to? Can men not read things that discuss gender roles and extrapolate to themselves? Are they only able to understand things when we directly address their needs perfectly? Can they not critically analyse the texts they are suggested and then see how it relates to themselves?

I find this truly baffling. There is such a repetitive notion of maintaining what feels like men needing perpetual mothering. No one else seems to need things to always be catered to them, but men seem uniquely positioned to be incapable of understanding anything unless we make everything easy for them to identify with.

That feels insulting rather than—as bell hooks keeps implying her work to be—"visionary."

Also, not a fan of the huge right turn into spiritualism and religiosity at the end.

Chapter 8 has so much wrong with it, and most of that comes down the fact that watching and reading things is a skill. There are so many fundamentally incorrect analyses about movies and children's shows here that it's beyond ridiculous. It's to the point that I feel like I'm being gaslit about these pieces of media because, if you actually pay attention to many of the pieces... Many of their story arcs for core characters... support the exact "redefining masculinity" that you'd think she'd want to see happen.

Again, no fucking sources. Citing sources was too hard, I guess. (And now that I've also seen people say that "she proved" things in this book while trying to hunt down fucking sources that might have even been used while she wrote the damned thing... it makes me hate this book even more. She has proven nothing here because she has provided no actual evidence of any of her claims.)

Chapter 7! And I feel like I'm losing my mind because of so many repeated things.

First is my common refrain: Why does she provide no evidence of claims she makes? And why do her claims sound so reactionary even as she claimed them to be part of a visionary feminism? For example:

Starting in early childhood, males need models of men with integrity, that is, men who are whole, who are not divided against themselves. While individual women acting as single mothers have shown that they can raise healthy, loving boys who become responsible, loving men, in every case where this model of parenting has been successful, women have chosen adult males—fathers, grandfathers, uncles, friends, and comrades—to exemplify for their sons the adult manhood they should strive to achieve.

There is no source for this. Do we know that the successful single mothers "choose adult males to exemplify [adult manhood] for their sons"? Or are these single mothers successful regardless, possibly because they have a supportive community around them who helps take care of her and her (in this case) son?

Also, why is she so invested in making sure that (cis) boys have male role models? She doesn't seem to share this for anyone of other genders to have them, and we know that people of other genders successfully grow up having people of other genders as role models. Tell me how many non-binary or agender adults had same-gender role models as children. It seems that (cis) girls don't always need female role models and are capable of finding role models in anyone (which should also be relevant to someone like bell hooks who critiqued pop culture—weird that so much media is made in a way that assumes boys can't identify with anyone other than boys and men, but everyone else can identify with whatever's on screen regardless—since it's a similar argument as representation).

Maybe the argument should be made that (cis) boys need to stop being encouraged to have male-only role models and seek out people who they want to emulate, whatever their gender.

This is a constant thing in the books of bell hooks' that I've read, and it makes me feel like I'm losing my mind at how often it happens. "We want boys and men to change, but they can only change if through a lens that caters to them" is the message I keep getting.

I'm also perplexed at her failure (or refusal) to understand what the point of Men's Rights movements (and other adjacent spaces) were or were forced into by an inability to push out harmful elements. She keeps critiquing that they "made no sustained critique of patriarchy," but many of the Men's Rights movements were formed as a response (a backlash, if you will) to feminist movements. Even the very few that were formed as "space for men to engage in feminism" found that they were co-opted, and some of the men who joined them seeking what they thought they were (to discuss liberation, not to critique feminism)... left because of what those groups actually showed themselves to be. (And this pattern has repeated time and time again, so it's probably hard for someone who experienced Gamergate—which was nothing more than misogyny wearing the "ethics in journalism" trenchcoat—to believe that someone could be this ignorant of that pattern. It wasn't even a new one in 2004.)

Lastly, I don't know why she cites or references Gary Zukav and his understanding of masculinity. he man who wrote the following passage is among the last people I want to take any advice from:

After several years of marriage to a willful partner, an acquaintance of mine found herself suffocating in the relationship, unable to express her deepest desires and her creativity. One winter morning her husband’s jeep, which was parked on their steep driveway, broke loose and rolled over her, crushing her pelvic area. Surgery and chemicals healed her hips and eased the pain of her body, but can surgery mend the damage that is done when a woman’s creativity—represented, in this case, by her pelvic area, her reproductive capability, the physical symbol of her feminine creativity—is crushed by the uncontrolled macho masculinity of her husband—represented, in this case, by a runaway jeep? Can chemicals ease the pain of a suffering soul?

(All of this makes me curious about bell hooks' older books. It feels like she ran into the path of New Age hacks, like Marianne Williamson, and just kept going with their bullshit and thinking it was 'visionary' or even largely helpful.)

One of the most exhausting things about this book is that she flippantly says shit for a sentence and then moves on like there's nothing to discuss, and it really pisses me off.

Sometimes they're really interesting things that could be expanded upon, other times it's that she just drops a few ideas into one place as if the paragraph can support all of them despite the fact that she... hasn't addressed any of them. Then there are times where she drops two contradicting sentences next to each other (or if not contradicting sentences, then they don't actually support each other).

An example of all of these is this bit that talks about how "no one has really tried to examine what men feel about the loss of time with children, partners, loved ones, and the loss of time for self-development," which is immediately followed with mentioning Susan Faludi's work on workers who "do not express concern about not having enough time for self-reflection and emotional connection with self and others." If no one has tried to examine this, then Susan's work wouldn't be there because she clearly did (according to this passage) try to examine it. If anything, what ends up being said is that these men opted not to express those concerns for whatever reason. (It also fails to engage with why this kind of research isn't often done. I wonder if there's something in varying institutional hierarchies that might also prevent this. It's very strange. /s)

I'm also bewildered by her choice in using the movie American Beauty to discuss anything about unhappy men who are engaged in "critical reflection" to become happier without actually engage with anything that happens in the movie that could be even the tiniest bit thematically defeating. (It's also not a movie that I would've used to discuss any of this.)