Link to Reading
Really loved this one, and there’s a lot to think about from what’s said in this book. Some excerpts below
The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.
It is a stance that seems to be more a reaction to patriar- chal masculinity than a creative loving response that can separate maleness and manhood from all the identifying traits patriarchy has imposed on the self that has a penis. Our work of love should be to reclaim masculinity and not allow it to be held hostage to patriarchal domination. There is a creative, life-sustaining, life-enhancing place for the masculine in a nondominator culture. And those of us committed to ending patriarchy can touch the hearts of real men where they live, not by demanding that they give up manhood or maleness, but by asking that they allow its meaning to be transformed, that they become disloyal to patriarchal masculinity in order to find a place for the mas- culine that does not make it synonymous with domination or the will to do violence.
When father figures are healthy, they know when to let ing that choice is involved. I go; they can affirm the boy every step of the way. As ognize that choices and Thomas Moore declares in his essay about boyhood, “Little when values are adopted, t Boy Found,” “If the fathers speak to us, we can preserve our look at my values, questic golden spirits… Fathers and sons need each other, for they sary revise them. Again, it sustain each other. We need to let our fathers be slow to that sets me free. grow up. … They need to take our childlike foolishness seriously, giving their lives for it, so that we can be fathers ourselves from our place in the sun.”
I am responsible for accepting or choosing the values by which I live. If I live by values I have accepted or adopted passively and unthinkingly, it is easy to imagine that they are just “my nature,” just “who I am,” and to avoid recogniz- ing that choice is involved. If 1 am willing to rec- ognize that choices and decisions are crucial when values are adopted, then I can take a fresh look at my values, question them, and if neces- sary revise them. Again, it is taking responsibility that sets me free.
What a mystery it is to be a boy, so close to death and birth, so uneducated and therefore so fresh and uncynical. We should end our dispar- agement of the boy, of our own immaturities, of our tardiness in growing up, of our sheer delight in beauty, of our love of the sun, of our vertical inclinations, and of our wanderings and great falls. … We could speak words of encouragement to this boy where we find him-in our friends and students, in our institutions, and in our own hearts. If we do not speak to him in this way, he will be lost, and we will have lost with him, all tenderness and grace.