The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

My reconciliation with my father began with my recognition that I wanted and needed his love—and that if I could not have his love, then at least I needed to heal the wound in my heart his violence had created.

No wonder then that male rage is often most directed at women in intimate relationships. Such relationships clearly trigger for many males the anger and rage they felt in childhood when their mothers did not protect them or ruthlessly severed emotional bonds in the name of patriarchy.

Whenever women thinkers, especially advocates of feminism, speak about the widespread problem of male violence, folks are eager to stand up and make the point that most men are not violent. They refuse to acknowledge that masses of boys and men have been programmed from birth on to believe that at some point they must be violent, whether psychologically or physically, to prove that they are men.

It was as though he felt that I was too powerful, and that perception empowered him to challenge that power, to wound and hurt.

Significantly, emotional abuse in families is not just a component of the couple bond; it can determine the way everyone in a family relates.

In Harry Potter: The Chamber of Secrets violence when used by the acceptable groups is deemed positive. Sexism and racist thinking in the Harry Potter books are rarely critiqued. Had the author been a ruling-class white male, feminist thinkers might have been more active in challenging the imperialism, racism, and sexism of Rowling’s books.

While feminism may ignore boys and young males, capitalist patriarchal men do not.

Teenagers are often feared precisely because they are often exposing the hypocrisy of parents and of the world around them

Sustaining relationships with others requires a good relationship to ourselves.

Patriarchal fathers cannot love their sons because the rules of patriarchy dictate that they stand in competition with their sons, ready to prove that they are the real man, the one in charge.