WANTED: MEN WHO LOVE
Every day on our television screens and in our nation’s newspapers we are brought news of continued male violence at home and all around the world. When we hear that teenage boys are arming themselves and killing their parents, their peers, or strangers, a sense of alarm permeates our culture. Folks want to have answers. They want to know, why is this happening? Why so much killing by boy children now? And in this historical moment? Yet no one talks about the role patriarchal notions of manhood play in teaching boys that it is their nature to kill, then teaching them that they can do nothing to change this nature—nothing, that is, that will leave their masculinity in tact. As our culture prepares males to embrace war, they must be all the more indoctrinated into patriarchal thinking that tells them that it is their nature to kill and to enjoy killing. Bombarded by news about male violence, we hear no news about men and love.
I began to think that women were afraid to speak openly about men, afraid to explore deeply our connections to them—what we have witnessed as daughters, sisters, grandmothers, mothers, aunts, lovers, occasional sex objects — and afraid even to acknowledge our ignorance, how much we really do not know about men. All that we do not know intensifies our sense of fear and threat. And certainly to know men only in relation to male violence, to the violence inflicted upon women and children, is a partial, inadequate knowing.
To simply label men as oppressors and dismiss them meant we never had to give voice to the gaps in our understanding or to talk about maleness in complex ways. We did not have to talk about the ways our fear of men distorted our perspectives and blocked our understanding. Hating men was just another way to not take men and masculinity seriously. It was simply easier for feminist women to talk about challenging and changing patriarchy then it was for us to talk about men—what we knew and did not know, about the ways we wanted to change.
Within the early writings of radical feminism, anger, rage, and even hatred of men was voiced, yet there was no meaningful attempt to offer ways to resolve these feelings, to imagine a culture of reconciliation where women and men might meet and find common ground. Militant feminism gave women permission to unleash their rage and hatred at men but it did not allow us to talk about what it meant to love men in patriarchal culture, to know how we could express that love without fear of exploitation and oppression. Feminist writing did not tell us about the deep inner misery of men. It did not tell us the terrible terror that gnaws at the soul when one cannot love. The truth we do not tell is that men are longing for love. Men want to love. And they want to know how to love.
To indoctrinate boys into the rules of patriarchy, we force them to feel pain and deny their feelings. If we cannot heal what we cannot feel, by supporting patriarchal culture that socializes people in the male experience to deny feelings, we doom them to live in states of emotional numbness. We construct a culture where male pain can have no voice, where male hurt cannot be named or healed. There is only one emotion that patriarchy values when it is expressed by men; that emotion is anger. “Real Men” get mad. And their mad-ness, no matter how violent or violating, is deemed natural—a positive expression for patriarchal masculinity. Anger is the best hiding place for anybody seeking to conceal pain or anguish of spirit. It is not just men who do not take their pain seriously. Most women do not want to deal with male pain if it interferes with the satisfaction of female desire.
Men cannot love if they are not taught the art of loving. It is not true that men are unwilling to change. It is true that many men are afraid to change. It is true that masses of men have not even begun to look at the ways that patriarchy keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with their feelings, from loving. To know love, men must be able to let go the will to dominate. They must be able to choose life over death. They must be willing to change.
We cannot love what we fear. We struggle then, in patriarchal culture, all of us, to love men. We may care about males deeply. We may cherish our connections with the men in our lives. And we may desperately feel that we cannot live without their presence, their company. We can feel all these passions in the face of maleness and yet stand removed, keeping the distance patriarchy has created, maintaining the boundaries we are told not to cross. Only a revolution of values in our nation will end male violence, and that revolution will necessarily be based on a love ethic. To create loving men, we must love males.
bell hooks, The Will To Change; Men, Masculinity, and Love (reordered excerpts by me)
// POETRY
// FIELD NOTES
stoked on this shift beyond “how are you” and invite ourselves and each other back into our bodies in between the moments of facing all this grief and carrying all this pain.
speaking of practicing true embodiment as trauma healing & radical liberation, Resmaa Menaken with a short exercise rooted in somatic abolitionism. practice practice practice, everything is a practice, free moments mean free reps <3
5. In leiu of Ricky Gervais’s new stand up, as well as Dave Chappelle’s opening set for John Mulaney, James Acaster does the real comedy by naming why transphobic jokes just aren’t funny.
6. “nothing has a stronger influence pyschologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.” cg jung
7. hulu’s docuseries “the deep end” about teal swan & her teachings, fascinating.
8. i am a freelance artist mostly working upaid as a full time caregiver and teacher since the start of the pandemic. i have been thinking a lot about different ways of economy and internally restructuring what value emotional and domestic labor has. with mae’s birthday coming up, I am planning to sell some small baskets, rainbow makers, prints, lighters, magnets, other weird shit i think up etc at a sliding scale in the next few weeks over on instagram: @caradenison :) please reach out directly if you have something in mind &/or want to skip social media.
9. Leading me to … ALICE exists and will continue to exist as a FREE bi-monthly newsletter. THANK YOU FOR READING & CONNECTING. In considering equity/wealth redistribution, inherent worth, growing seeds, the hidden work. In offering increased availablity, intuitive listening, and monthly surprises in your mailbox, I am inviting anyone in a place to share financial resources to contribute any monthly or annual amount to yours truly via venmo, square cash, or paypal.
10. this issue of ALICE is dedicated to movement facilitator and somatic teacher Prentis Hemphill of finding our way podcast. There are some real healers in our lifetime, offering us free information. Here’s one interview that feels like a hug.