Reviews and Comments

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.)

Chapter 5 hit me with a quasi-bait and switch where it started off reasonable and then just hit some notes that are incredibly... baffling for a book that is a "feminist" look at men. It's perpetually infuriating because there are a lot of truthful statements that are buried under a lot of things that make me ask "What the hell?" because they come out of nowhere.

At first, it started with addressing the common stereotypes of how men only think about sex and the ways in which they view it... and then it just throws any attempts to engage with these stereotypes, how pervasive they are, etc straight into the nearest bin and opts to discuss some very weirdly framed things.

Like how mothers "do not like" or "don't know what to do with" their sons' penises and that they don't communicate to their boys that their penises are "wonderful, special, marvelous." And that their fathers are also afraid of them so they just don't address them at all, teaching them nothing. (I showed the passage where this is found to two people without any name attached and asked them what kind of nonfiction writing this sound like; my friend said it sounded like Ray Blanchard or his ilk, and my partner asked me why I was reading a manosphere book.)

Or how "lying about sexuality is an accepted part of patriarchal masculinity" by referencing an essay where a man was writing about the lies and embellishments of his father's abuse (and weirdly chose to edit the quote in a way that makes him sound homophobic). This quote wasn't just about lying to "cover up" his father being gay, but it was also in relation to the abuse he endured as a child. I don't think it's a good piece of evidence for the socially accepted aspect of lying about sexuality.

It also includes what I'd consider to be an interesting typo (where Eric Guitierrez wrote about his "flashy, gay dad" and bell hooks copied it as "flashing, gay dad").

And not gonna lie, but a lot of the conversation around pornography and sex addiction reads like it's coming out of evangelical or conservative new age spaces. It doesn't help that 'patriarchal' is attached to the front of 'pornography' every now and then, especially when it reverts back to generics.

I just don't think this is doing a good job at, like... unravelling the dynamics that it purports to discuss.

The absolute lack of specific examples and the overreliance upon vague notions of things existing annoys me. The first example of this in Chapter 4 happens at the precise beginning:

Every day in America men are violent. Their violence is deemed “natural” by the psychology of patriarchy... This thinking continues to shape notions of manhood in our society despite the fact that it has been documented that cultures exist in the world where men are not violent in everyday life, where rape and murder are rare occurrences.

What are these documented cultures? Do you want your audience to learn anything? Why not cite them? Why not point to them?

There are a bunch of times this happens, and a lot of it is tied to victim-blaming structures of "analysis." This bit is tied to how women stand by and watch their sons get brutalised (and then says it's done because of allegiance to patriarchy, which I find to be a lazy and harmful way to discuss the actual dynamics):

No wonder then that male rage is often most directed at women in intimate relationships.

But there's no citations to it, and it's bizarre. Men's violence aganist women is formed as a result of their boyhood trauma because... women were bystanders (for whatever reason, though that reason is far more likely related to a desire for safety and a decrease in their own brutalisation)? I get the social conditioning of boys to participate in patriarchy, but I find it weird that this is just left there as an excuse for why men abuse women.

Then there's this gem about single moms that comes with no evidence and a quote that doesn't even support it (because it's irrelevant to the opening of the paragraph):

Contrary to popular myths, single mothers are often the most brutal when it comes to coercing their sons to conform to patriarchal standards.

She then goes on to say that their sons will be little patriarchs, and then says that this happens regardless of single or dual parent household... So... Why does it happen in dual-parent households? And what does the phenomenon have to do with single mothers? Weird setup, if we're honest.

I'm not going to keep listing examples of all the times I kept screaming "EXAMPLES? CITATIONS? REFERENCES? ANYTHING AT ALL?" because that would be almost every paragraph. The assertions she makes have a grain of truth behind them, but I don't agree with the analysis (and often find it to be erring too much on the side of victim-blaming women and "the feminist movement") while simultaneously making sure you know she thinks this violence against women is bad.

I'm not comfortable with giving abusers an out or an excuse, and I'm not comfortable letting them weaponise their abuse as a reason for why they're abusive. At that point, their trauma and abuse doesn't matter; they are hurting someone, and there is no reason for it. If anything, her writing reminds me frequently of the ways in which manipulative people often engage in trauma-bonding, trying to break down a person's defenses and get too close too quickly so that they can manipulate and abuse them.

... It's also hard to read a list of movies that she (mostly) correctly labels as "glorifying war" (those movies including Saving Private Ryan, Independence Day, Blackhawk Down, Pearl Harbor, and Men in Black—the latter of which I never felt glorified war but did glorify secret agencies, even while trying to prevent destruction)... and then says they are "patriarchal antifeminist backlash." While there might be antifeminist messages in those films, I don't know that I'd label them as backlash because... these kinds of movies were not uncommon genres. (It's also weird to see Will Smith get hit twice here? Especially when he's known for playing characters that usually break stereotypes, even of masculinity. Or characters who might have what is recognised as traditional masculinity but also aren't afraid of other expressions that aren't gendered as masculine. It's weird that he's here as 'patriarchal antifeminist backlash'.)

Maybe it's also because 'backlash', to me, implies that they are responding to that particular movement and in that particular way. I don't think Men in Black is responding to feminism; I don't think Independence Day is responding to it, either. Either way, this part is distracting (along with the dig at 'gangsta' rap for being violently misogynistic—not like other genres... like country or random pop songs by guys who literally outline stalking in the lyrics).

I also find a lot of the analysis about women's tolerance for abusive men lacking.

I find it really hard not to be annoyed at this book and the structure it takes, and I also find it so obnoxious that there are so many places where she could cite examples and... chooses not to. Sometimes I wonder if it's because it requires actually looking for it, and sometimes I wonder if it's because the anecdote is only half true. You'd think an academic would, I don't know, cite things more often.

Part of my annoyance comes from the fact that I'm like "Yeah, that's a true sentiment," and then I'm annoyed because she relies on super ahistorical nonsense to make her point (edit: see later, not the next point).

Like, okay. I hate JKR and her horrible wizard book of bigotry, but the fact that she says it "glorifies violence as long as the right side does it" is a bit weird? Perhaps it does (she gives no examples of what she means here—the scenes I remember most frequently are people retaliating to violence done against them... but there are probably examples of vengeance being done). On top of this, she also doesn't provide any kind of nuanced discussion of violence and implies that it is always bad. She doesn't think about the strategic use of violence (as a means to support other aspects of life), and she tosses in this bold parenthetical:

(More and more girls who embrace patriarchal thinking also embrace the notion that they must be violent to have power.)

This is completely refusing to engage with how women might use violence. There's a lot of nuanced discussion to have here, and she just... doesn't. I get that it's a book about men, but the kinds of violence that might be used by oppressed and marginalised groups... may have differences from when dominant groups use it against them. I refuse to claim all violence is bad, especially when we can't even accurately define what violence actually is in society.

There's also this weird bit about how Harry Potter was marketed primarily to boys? Which doesn't make sense because Bloomsbury started publishing it after the editor made his daughter test-read it. What she might want to say is that she was told to use a more neutral name because "boys won't read books by women." This might have actually helped bell hooks' argument that she ignored, too! Which is this constant refrain of [cis] boys needing male role models but never considering that no one says the same thing about non-cis boys. Trans boys and trans girls are never said to need relevant trans role models (except as representation in media! never anywhere else); non-binary and agender kids are never said to need relevant non-binary and agender role models; [cis] girls aren't really said to need female role models. But boys always need male role models... Why is that? Why do children of other genders manage to find role models in people of different genders? Why doesn't bell hooks mention this? (JKR would be a terrible role model for anyone, but we weren't aware of just how horrible she would show herself to be in 2004.)

There's also this anecdote about single moms enabling patriarchal patterns because they have "no time." In it, she talks about how her friend was parenting her son to do what he liked (use his middle name, which was Ruby; paint his nails) by either showing all the men named Ruby who did cool things to the children at her son's school or calling the "cool" adult men to come show that he could do it when his male peers told him he couldn't and made fun of him. She was only able to do this during graduate school (when she... had more time???), and this stopped when she started working (because she lacked time). I feel like it would prompt a huge question: Did her community just... vanish, leaving her and her son to fend for themselves entirely on their own? Or did they exist in the first place? It's a weird anecdote, but it should prompt more questions about what alternatives we could have... and doesn't. It just throws those questions on the ground and runs from them.

Something I hate about this printing of the book (or maybe it's all printings? I only have this one) is that they italicise the honorific '-san' (and I'd guess all the others, too? haven't encountered others). They do it because it's ~foreign~, but it reads more like a bunch of snarky jerks sneering the honorific at each other. I wish English books would stop this nonsense of italicising other language terminology; it's so obnoxious and dated.

Anyway, I like the story thus far.

Chapter 2. I was going to read two chapters before bed, but I'm stopping here because I keep wanting to shake my head.

Overwhelmingly, I don't disagree with the premise that patriarchy is responsible for men's pain. It definitely has a lot of responsibility for it. However, I find it hard to take this chapter seriously in many ways because I've... seen GamerGate, the many trials of women against their abusers (especially high-profile queer women) and the public smear campaigns that their former partners put them (and sometimes their children) through, the trials of women against abusive non-partner men in their lives and those smear campaigns, the way that abusive men are able to weasel out of responsibility for their actions (frequently by partnering with more conservative men who support them), the creation of various men's rights and manosphere projects (which solely blame feminism for their problems)... and people focusing on this so-called "male loneliness epidemic" when... Oh, right, it's an everyone loneliness epidemic called alienation.

So when I see her also blame feminism for not taking men's pain seriously, it's a difficult pill to swallow because if any movement has even tried to consider the pain of men... it has been feminism. Men's rights movements haven't done so; they've wasted their time yelling at feminists for ruining the world (as if feminism is why all their common talking points happen, even though most of their common talking points are patently untrue or are only true in certain contexts).

I find it weird that she doesn't engage with the fact that, if men have a "basic ignorance" over their position in a system... that the system is working as it's intended because they're not meant to recognise the defaults. If they notice it, they might question it. Instead, she claims that this is something that "discounts" the project of "men as all-powerful." That doesn't negate their privileged position (or the power they derive from it).

There are also a lot of claims where I know the evidence doesn't support her (implications that being abused leads to enacting more abuse—the "hurt people hurt people" thing is not really as true as we make it out to be, and people who are abused as children are more likely to be abused as adults) or where I'd like her to provide evidence. For example, she claims that "many female-headed households endorse and promote patriarchal thinking with far greater passion than two-parent households," but provides zero citations for this. Do we know this to be true? Was it true in 2004?

And while I haven't read Susan Faludi (and do not plan to because I've already dumped enough work on myself), I find it interesting that the quotes she provides don't quite say what she's analysed them to... at least in the form we're provided. As such, there are potentially valid questions ("Given the untenable and insulting nature of the demands placed on men to prove themselves in our culture, why don’t men revolt?") that she neglects in favour of placing responsibility on feminism (and feminists) for prompting men to change (despite also claiming that this is their own responsibility) and creating the blueprints for them to change.

Chapter 2. I was going to read two chapters before bed, but I'm stopping here because I keep wanting to shake my head.

Overwhelmingly, I don't disagree with the premise that patriarchy is responsible for men's pain. It definitely has a lot of responsibility for it. However, I find it hard to take this chapter seriously in many ways because I've... seen GamerGate, the many trials of women against their abusers (especially high-profile queer women) and the public smear campaigns their former partners or other abusive men have put them (and sometimes their children) through, the creation of various men's rights and manosphere projects (which solely blame feminism for their problems)... and people focusing on this so-called "male loneliness epidemic" when... Oh, right, it's an everyone loneliness epidemic called alienation.

So when I see her also blame feminism for not taking men's pain seriously, it's a difficult pill to swallow because if any movement has even tried to consider the pain of men... it has been feminism. Men's rights movements haven't done so; they've wasted their time yelling at feminists for ruining the world (as if feminism is why all their common talking points happen, even though most of their common talking points are patently untrue or are only true in certain contexts).

I find it weird that she doesn't engage with the fact that, if men have a "basic ignorance" over their position in a system... that the system is working as it's intended because they're not meant to recognise the defaults. If they notice it, they might question it. Instead, she claims that this is something that "discounts" the project of "men as all-powerful." That doesn't negate their privileged position (or the power they derive from it).

There are also a lot of claims where I know the evidence doesn't support her or where I'd like her to provid evidence. For example, she claims that "many female-headed households endorse and promote patriarchal thinking with far greater passion than two-parent households," but provides zero citations for this. Do we know this to be true? Was it true in 2004?

And while I haven't read Susan Faludi (and do not plan to because I've already dumped enough work on myself), I find it interesting that the quotes she provides don't quite say what she's analysed them to... at least in the form we're provided. As such, there are potentially valid questions ("Given the untenable and insulting nature of the demands placed on men to prove themselves in our culture, why don’t men revolt?") that she neglects in favour of placing responsibility on feminism (and feminists) for prompting men to change (despite also claiming that this is their own responsibility) and creating the blueprints for them to change.

So far, so cute. I will say the one strange thing is how fast everyone seems to know that Coco conducted forbidden magic without permission but was allowed to keep her memories despite that while becoming an apprentice (because Qifrey wants to know where she got the book from). I wonder if it's just not fully presenting how much time took place between Qifrey helping her escape her house (after she did a spell that turned her mother to stone) and getting to his atelier... Either that, or news moves super fast among witches.

So far, so cute. I will say the one strange thing is how fast everyone seems to know that Coco conducted forbidden magic without permission but was allowed to keep her memories despite that while becoming an apprentice (because Qifrey wants to know where she got the book from). I wonder if it's just not fully presenting how much time took place between Qifrey helping her escape her house (after she did a spell that turned her mother to stone) and getting to his atelier... Either that, or news moves super fast among witches.

Chapter 1 starts off claiming that "females" seek "male love," which I find nonsensical. I am not seeking "male love," and most of the people around me are not specifically seeking "male love." (And when they are, it's not really in this way? It's more that there are men who they love and they want those men to show love in return. Which I do not think is inherently "seeking male love," as the implication is that we're seeking explicitly "male love" because we all need it in some capacity.)

They are, however, seeking the love of people around them and to build spaces where people feel comfortable showing the kinds of care and respect that come along with loving other people. Wanting to be loved by the people around you, wanting to be respected by the people around you... That's not the same thing as specifically seeking "male love." (She also claims that we're desperately seeking it, and again... No.)

I also have to note that I hate the constant "female" and "male" phrasing, but it's perhaps because I'm reading this as an agender person... So again, that gender binary enforcement is not helping.

It's a weird chapter that ends in saying that men and boys are responsible for doing the work of learning the art of loving... but the entire chapter is basically saying that feminists didn't create blueprints or spaces for men to have emotions or be loving... Like, cool that you acknowledge men are responsible for their own willingness to learn (or unlearn), but you've still pinned responsibility on a whole movement (and specifically all the women in it)...

The chapter on death is probably one of the better chapters in the whole book, though I don't think that people are worshiping death as much as they are obsessed with it and their future lack of existence. She does mention that aspect, but it is still done more in the way of people worshiping death...

The next chapter (on healing) has this little bit of total book irony:

I am disturbed by the weighty emphasis on self in so much New Age writing on the topic, and in our culture as a whole.

Because immediately before it is something talking about how we are responsible for our well-being and being open to our salvation (and confessing our brokenness and woundedness).

But also throughout the whole book, it's structured as discussing more intrapersonal ways to learn to love. Yeah, she mentions society and culture, but the focus is largely on how the individual operates.

Not to mention, check the verbs above. It's very religious in structure yet again.

Western travelers journey to the poorest countries and are astounded by the level of communion between people who, though not materially rich, have full hearts. It is no accident that so many of the spiritual teachers we gravitate to in our affluent society, which is driven by the ethos of rugged individualism, come from cultures that value interdependency and working for a collective good over independence and individual gain.

Can we also look at some of the most pervasive grifters and cult heads that a lot of Westerners tend to gravitate toward? Because I think that needs some fucking exploration. (Not to mention that a lot of the people they gravitate toward are not poor, and they view the very people they praise through a very Orientalist structure that still enables their racism and ethnocentrism to be pervasive.)

No organization dedicated to healing demonstrates this principle more than Alcoholics Anonymous. The millions of people who attend AA meetings seek a place of recovery and find that the affirming community that surrounds them creates an environment of healing.

For a person who purports to be an academic, she certainly showed zero forms of curiosity about AA and the criticisms they have received from participants throughout the year (including the fact that the 12 steps strongly suggest, if not demand, that people relinquish themselves to a higher power). Steps 2-3, 4-7 and 11 all literally reference either a "Power greater than ourselves," God, or Him; step 12 is "having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these Steps."

So it's interesting just how much she claims this book doesn't require a specific faith but keeps referencing things that enforce or coerce it.

Not to mention, even when AA suggests that people seek outside assistance, it's not any kind of science-based treatment... It's more spiritualism of some degree. If they truly wanted people to get and stay sober, you'd think they'd spend more time looking at things that actually help people.

And the final chapter in this book that doesn't require a specific faith is about angels.

There are elements of chapter ten that I can take seriously, but when she starts talking about having found/known true love ("I have had a taste of true love") because she had a dream and then went to a conference (because that dream told her she'd meet her true love), and then it ends like this:

As our conversation progressed he told me he was in a committed relationship. I was puzzled and disturbed. I could not believe divine forces in the universe would lead me to this man of my dreams when there was no real possibility of fully realizing those dreams. Of course, those dreams were all about being in a romantic relationship.

... My ability to take it seriously decreases.

I also find that again it lets men off the hook for their behaviours way more than it does women, especially when talking about how sexual pleasure takes precedence for some people; men simply don't know what love is because they've been taught to perceive sex as super important... not like they've ever been told otherwise anywhere else, right? (There's also a statement claiming that women don't put sex before feelings, which uh... I don't know, a lot of women have been trained to conflate sex with feelings of love.)

I also still think there is way too much conflation between love and romance happening here, despite the claim otherwise. Every time here is a comment about how it doesn't have to be romantic, there is a comment following it that reinforces romantic love as the focus. It's bizarre, and it's kind of infuriating.

Went back to this book to read the second story and ugh. It's all so boring, and I feel like that's its greatest crime. I don't mind the writing style, but it all feels so trite and convoluted... all the time.

I probably would've liked it more had I not read the introduction to this edition... which basically told me how to think about this woman author and her place in the world... rather than just giving me context for why her stories are just like that.