Laura: Most people think feminism is for women. But what if the most urgent argument for feminism is actually for men? Sophia: Hold on, that’s a bold start. You’re saying the movement famously centered on female liberation is secretly a rescue mission for guys? Laura: What if the very system that gives men power is also the one that's slowly killing their souls? That's the provocative idea we're tackling today. Sophia: Okay, now I'm hooked. That's a twist I didn't see coming. This has to be about a very specific kind of book. Laura: It is. We're diving into The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by the legendary bell hooks. Sophia: And bell hooks wasn't just any writer. She was a pioneering Black feminist scholar who wrote over 40 books, and she always styled her name in lowercase to keep the focus on her ideas, not her ego. It’s that level of intentionality she brings to this topic. Laura: Exactly. And this book is so highly-rated, yet also polarizing among readers, because it doesn't just critique men; it extends a compassionate, urgent invitation for them to heal. It’s a book that argues that to love men, we must demand that they change. Sophia: A compassionate demand. I like that. So where does she even begin with such a massive topic? Laura: She starts with a radical diagnosis. She argues that the problem isn't men themselves, but the toxic system they're born into.

Laura: hooks makes this absolutely stunning claim right at the beginning. She says, "Patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit in our nation." Sophia: Wow. Not a flaw, not a problem, but a disease. That completely reframes it. Usually, we talk about patriarchy in terms of how it oppresses women. She’s saying it’s a sickness that infects men first. Laura: Precisely. She argues that before a man can ever dominate a woman, he must first dominate himself. He has to perform what she calls "psychic self-mutilation"—killing off the emotional, vulnerable parts of his own soul to fit the rigid mold of "manhood." Sophia: Psychic self-mutilation. That’s a heavy phrase. How does this actually happen? Is it something that fathers just beat into their sons? Laura: Sometimes, yes, and she gives a chilling personal example. She tells a story from her childhood about playing marbles with her older brother. She was a girl, and she was better at it—more competitive, more skilled. And this deeply disturbed her patriarchal father. Sophia: Oh, I can see where this is going, and it’s not good. Laura: It’s devastating. One evening, the father tells the brother to get the marbles but instructs him to tell his sister that "girls did not play with marbles." When she insists, her father grabs a broken board from the screen door and beats her violently, yelling, "You're just a little girl. When I tell you to do something, I mean for you to do it." Sophia: That's just horrific. It’s pure power assertion. Laura: But here’s the crucial part of the analysis, getting back to your question. What did the boy learn in that moment? He learned that for him to be secure in his masculinity, his sister’s spirit had to be broken. He learned that male authority is enforced with violence. And he learned that his mother would stand by and do nothing, later telling the author, "You need to accept that you are just a little girl and girls can't do what boys do." Sophia: So the violence wasn't just aimed at the girl. It was a lesson for everyone. The boy learned the rules of the game, and the price of those rules is someone else's pain and his own emotional disconnection. Laura: Exactly. And hooks is clear that this happens even in homes without such overt violence. She references the work of therapist Terrence Real, who talks about the "normal traumatization" of boys. He tells a story about his own three-year-old son, Alexander, who loved dressing up as Barbie. Sophia: A three-year-old as Barbie. Adorable and harmless. Laura: Until a group of older boys came over to play with Alexander's older brother. They saw him in his Barbie outfit and just… stared. A ten-second, wordless transaction of shock and disapproval. Real says the message was broadcast in the potent emotion of shame. Alexander never dressed as Barbie again. Sophia: Wow. No one had to say a word. The system, the 'disease,' was transmitted through a look. He learned a core rule of patriarchy: there are parts of you that are unacceptable, and you must hide them to belong. Laura: That’s the psychic self-mutilation. He learned to kill a part of himself that was joyful and expressive because it didn't fit the code. And hooks argues this happens to boys constantly, in a thousand subtle and not-so-subtle ways. They are forced to feel pain and then deny their feelings about it. Sophia: Okay, so if this 'disease' of patriarchy forces boys to kill off their emotional selves from such a young age, how does that actually play out in adult men's lives? Where do we see the symptoms of this mass infection? Laura: That's the next critical piece of her argument. The suppressed pain doesn't just disappear. It metastasizes.

Laura: hooks argues that this buried emotional world erupts in predictable, destructive ways. The main symptoms she identifies are violence, a distorted relationship with sex, and a dysfunctional approach to work. Sophia: It’s like a pressure cooker. The emotion is the steam, and if you seal off the main valve—which is healthy vulnerability and love—it's going to burst out the sides as rage, or leak out as obsessive work or sex. Laura: That is a perfect analogy. Let's start with violence. hooks quotes another feminist thinker, Barbara Deming, who says, "I think the reason that men are so very violent is that they know, deep in themselves, that they’re acting a lie, and so they’re furious." The rage is a cover for the pain of their own inauthenticity. Sophia: So the anger we see isn't just anger. It's grief. It's fear. It's shame, all bundled up into the one emotion that patriarchy allows men to express. Laura: Precisely. And then there's sex. hooks argues that because men are starved for genuine emotional connection, they come to relationships looking for sex to provide the emotional satisfaction that only love can offer. Sophia: But it can't, right? It's like trying to quench your thirst with saltwater. Laura: Exactly. It often just intensifies the lust and the longing, creating a cycle of dissatisfaction. This is where her critique of pornography comes in. She argues that patriarchal pornography has become so widespread because it functions as a kind of cultural anesthetic. It creates a fantasy world where male sexual desire is endlessly satisfied, which keeps men from having to confront the patriarchal lie that their real-life relationships are emotionally barren. Sophia: That's a fascinating and controversial take. She's saying porn isn't just about sex; it's a tool to manage the emotional failures of patriarchy. It props up the system by offering a fake solution. Laura: A fake solution to a real pain. And this ties directly into the third symptom: work. For many men, work becomes the primary place they can flee from themselves. It's an arena where they can operate from a space of emotional numbness, where performance and control are what matter. Sophia: I can see that. The man who works 80 hours a week isn't just being ambitious; he's running from the quiet moments where he might have to actually feel something. He's afraid of the downtime. Laura: hooks quotes a therapist, Victor Seidler, who confesses his own fear of having free time, saying, "A feeling of panic and anxiety emerges at the very thought of spending more time with myself." Work becomes an addiction, a way to avoid the self. Sophia: So violence, compulsive sexuality, and workaholism are all, in a way, coping mechanisms for the original wound of having to kill off their true selves as boys. It's a really cohesive, if tragic, picture. Laura: It is. But what makes this book so powerful, and why it's had such a lasting cultural impact, is that hooks doesn't just leave us with the diagnosis and the symptoms. She offers a cure. Sophia: A cure for a disease this deeply embedded in our culture? That sounds like a tall order. What on earth does she propose? Laura: She proposes something that sounds simple but is profoundly radical: a feminist manhood.

Laura: And this is where the book really pivots from critique to a hopeful, actionable vision. hooks argues that the only way for men to heal is to actively engage in feminist resistance—not just for women's sake, but for their own liberation. Sophia: Okay, let's break that down, because for a lot of people, the term 'feminist man' can sound like a contradiction. What does that actually mean in hooks' view? Laura: It means reclaiming maleness as something separate from domination. It’s about building a masculinity founded on emotional awareness, integrity, and the capacity for partnership, not power. It's about men taking responsibility for their own emotional and spiritual well-being. Sophia: So it's not about becoming 'less of a man,' but about becoming a whole man. A man who hasn't had to cut off parts of himself to fit in. Laura: Exactly. And she gives this incredible literary example to show what this transformation looks like: the character of Mister from Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple. Sophia: Oh, that's a powerful choice. Mister starts as the absolute epitome of a cruel, abusive patriarch. Laura: The worst of the worst. He's violent, controlling, and emotionally dead. But through the course of the novel, and through his connection with Celie, he undergoes a profound transformation. He learns to feel. He learns to be vulnerable. He starts making quilts, a traditionally female art form. He moves from being a dominator to being a caring, nurturing member of the community. Sophia: He finds his joy not in power, but in connection and creation. He reclaims his own soul. Laura: Yes! And hooks uses this to show that even the most damaged men can change. It’s a utopian vision, she admits, but it’s a necessary one. It provides a blueprint. It shows that healing is possible. Sophia: That sounds beautiful in a novel, but let's be real. Is it realistic? Many feminists, and many women in general, feel exhausted. They feel like it's not their job to 'fix' men or do all this emotional labor for them. Laura: And hooks agrees with that 100%. She is very clear that men must do this work for themselves. They have to choose to heal. But she also argues that women's love, and our belief in men's capacity to change, is a vital part of the process. We can't just write them off as hopeless. She says we show our love for men by working to heal the wounds of those who suffer. Sophia: So it's a shared project, but with men taking the lead on their own journey. What's the first step on that journey? Laura: Integrity. She quotes Rabbi Harold Kushner, who defines integrity as being "whole, unbroken, undivided." For men, this means recovering all those parts of themselves they abandoned to perform the role of the sexist male. It means stopping the lies, the compartmentalization, the performance. Sophia: The performance of being tough, of not caring, of being in control. It means being honest, first with yourself. Laura: Yes. And that is painful. But she argues it's the only path to genuine self-esteem and the only way to build relationships based on love, which she defines as a practice of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, and trust. Love, she insists, cannot coexist with domination. Sophia: It's a complete rewiring of what it means to be a man, and what it means to be in a relationship. It’s moving from a power model to a partnership model. Laura: Exactly. It's a revolution of values.

Sophia: So, the journey that bell hooks lays out is really from a divided self, a man fractured and crippled by the demands of patriarchy, to a whole self, a man healed and made complete by embracing a feminist vision of love and integrity. Laura: That's it perfectly. It's a call for men to stop performing a rigid, painful role and to start living an authentic, feeling life. It’s a profound act of rebellion against a system that has hurt everyone. Sophia: And it really challenges the idea that feminism is somehow anti-male. In her view, it’s the most pro-male philosophy there is, because it offers men a path back to their own humanity. Laura: It’s the only blueprint for change, she says. And she leaves us with this powerful, lingering question, which feels like the perfect place to end. She asks us to imagine what the world would look like if men chose to love justice more than they loved the performance of manhood. Sophia: That's a question worth sitting with for a long time. It changes everything. We'd love to hear what our listeners think. What does a 'feminist masculinity' look like to you in your own life? Let us know your thoughts on our social channels. Laura: This is Aibrary, signing off.