Hello comrades, it's time for our first discussion thread for The Will to Change! Please share your thoughts below on the first two sections of the book. There's quite a lot to talk about between hooks' discussion of masculinity discourse within feminist circles, the ways both men and women uphold patriarchy, and the near universal experience of men being forced to suppress their rich emotional worlds from a young age. I'll be posting my thoughts in a little bit after I'm done with work.

If you haven't read the book yet but would like to, its available free on the Internet Archive in text form, as well as an audiobook on Youtube with content warnings at the start of each chapter, courtesy of the Anarchist Audio Library, and as an audiobook on our very own TankieTube! (note: the YT version is missing the Preface but the Tankietube version has it) Let me know if you'd like to be added to the ping list!

Our next discussion will be on Chapters 2 (Understanding Patriarchy) and 3 (Being a Boy), beginning on 12/4.

Thanks to everyone who is or will be participating, I'm really looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts! feminism

  • frauddogg [they/them, null/void]
    ·
    2 hours ago

    it just becomes very easy to grow resentful of men and to slip into a quasi-essentialist mindset.

    Admittedly, this is a lot of why I avoid women that aren't either related to me through marriage, or in a relationship with nowadays. Yeah, I've spent a decade trying to sand and polish and lacquer over all the rough parts of me that can and have given people mondo splinters before, but... If there's one thing that perennially gets me to avoid spaces, avoid thinking about fellowship, hell, even avoid meatspace friendship, it's because in those moments of experiencing what you've referred to as heteropessimism from women, it reminds me that I can do all the work on myself I want-- but because of what I was born with, I'm just immediately categorized a threat. Because harmful men oftentimes don't listen when those of us who have either started on, or been deeply enmeshed in that work a minute.

    I don't like being made to feel like I'm still a walking weapon when I'm the one who installed my safeties, when I'm the one who field-cleared my barrel, when I'm the one who removed my firing pin-- and it feels like nothing will change as long as there's dudes cutting us off for trying to tend to their toxicity. I'd be lying if I'd said I hadn't considered (physically) transitioning before just to try and cut down on the reasons people cross the street in front of me when they see me coming-- it's not like my mind is particularly attached to any presentation at this point.