I just finished reading Bell Hooks book The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (affiliate link) and it was thought and emotion provoking read. What it made me really consider was the price of patriarchy on men, and how this has shown up in my life.
Even though I’ve never considered myself an advocate for patriarchy, I see how much it, in some ways benefits me, and other ways disempowers me. As a man, it benefits me because patriarchy prioritizes men and the way men take up space in the world around them. On the other hand patriarchy also disempowers men because of how it isolates us from expressing ourselves. I have spent much of my life walled up when it has come to emotions such as loneliness, anger, fear and depression. It has caused me a lot of grief and pain because I haven’t been able to open up to other people around me in a real and authentic way up until recently.
And then there’s sex. When I read the author’s thoughts on sex, it caused me to reflect on my own male entitlement around sex and where that entitlement came from. I see how this entitlement has actually caused me to focus on a very narrow perspective and experience around sex, while missing out on some of the more subtle nuances and experiences around sex. I also see how it can exclude love from sex because the emphasis on sex is fixated around performance and how sex reinforces a man’s image of himself.
I look at how patriarchy has played a role in my experiences. It’s something I’ve often not even thought about for much of my life (an example of male privilege) and my realization has really come about because of getting involved in the men’s movement and through conversations I’ve had around the impact of patriarchy with other people in my life. I see how patriarchy has damaged my relationships with lovers, and I also see how it has isolated for most of my life. I have only recently, in the scale of my life, developed healthy relationships with other men and I am in the same process of figuring out how to have healthy relationships with women.
I feel sad about the impact patriarchy has had on my life. It has shaped me in ways that has kept me from being fully present in the relationships I have been in. It has limited me in ways that I am only now realizing because of how it has conditioned me to look at the world through a very specific filter. Yet I also know that this is part of men’s work: We become aware of the programming and packaging that effects our lives and we fully accept how it has benefitted and harmed us, so that we can make changes.
