bell hooks teaches us how radical the act of loving can be

THE WILL TO CHANGE

bell hooks' on love and relationships

Love is a topic that bell hooks, the pseudonym of American essayist and feminist activist Gloria Jean Watkins, has never been shy about. In All About Love, she makes readers reflect on how we demonstrate love in our everyday lives; in The Female Search for Love, she talks about the search for companionship as a sort of hero’s journey – or better, heroine’s journey – and that communion is the best weapon to fight patriarchy.

However, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love is hooks's least “comfortable” and most controversial piece on the topic. In this book, hooks challenges both the patriarchal notions of masculinity and feminist thinking on love. At the very beginning of the book, hooks drops a hard pill to swallow:

 “Every female wants to be loved by a male. Whether gay or straight, bisexual or celibate, she wants to feel the love of a father, grandfather, uncle, brother, or male friend. We live in a culture where emotionally starved, deprived females are desperately seeking male love”.

This intro punches you in the stomach and, at least in my experience, makes you defensive. I won’t lie; I was suspicious as soon as I read these words. What about decentring men from our lives? Isn’t that the point of feminism?

Redefining masculinity

“Masculinity” is often associated with the most toxic traits, such as arrogance, possession, and emotional unavailability. Male violence is intertwined in our society to the point that women on social media started to share how ‘they 'd prefer the bear’ – they would prefer finding themselves alone in a forest with a bear rather than with men, as the chances of being slaughtered would be less. The concerns of women are not unfounded: gender violence is real, and all women experience it to different degrees.

However, the hard truth that bell hooks wants to remind us is that separatism is pointless. This doesn’t mean that feminism should accommodate male privilege or that women's spaces should not exist. Instead, anger and violence that many men express are fundamentally a sign of discomfort, sadness and emotional neglect. As a young girl, I was allowed to cry my eyes out if I fell and skinned a knee. As an adult, I can cry my eyes out at the end of a relationship, I can hug my friends and tell them that I love them without being deemed as “weak”.

Men are denied the ability to be in touch with their emotions. The only one that society allows them to express, hooks says, is anger. Clearly, it is a dog eating its own tail, as men perpetuate the same stereotypes that put them in a cage. However, what reading this book made me realise is that the passion of feminism can sometimes be misdirected. While hooks understands the distance and fears many women have towards men, she acknowledges that disregarding men’s emotional needs will not be helpful in the fight against the patriarchy.

Our ‘work of love’

We are all born and raised in a patriarchal society, and regardless of gender, it takes a lot of time to dismantle internalised misogyny. hooks believes that as feminists, our role is to fight for love as much as we fight for acceptance and rights. Without ending up in pathetic rhetoric – that today we could compare to comments like #NotAllMen – hooks forces us to reflect: how could we expect healthy masculinity from men – or people socialised as such – if it is part of our education to neglect them emotionally?

Understandably, this is not an easy read, and it takes time to internalise its message. It is difficult for many women who suffer from gender discrimination and violence every day to hear the words “love is the answer”. Ultimately, I still have mixed feelings about this message. I believe that, as women, we are already overcharged by emotional labour – being doomed to be the perfect mothers, sisters, and lovers and encouraged to be 'caring' and 'nurturing'.

But feminism is about breaking barriers. We may have more power than we ever thought we had in changing masculinity and associating it with love, kindness, communication and empathy. Maybe love is truly the answer.

hooks words invite us to have a moment of reflection:

“Our work of love should be to reclaim masculinity and not allow it to be held hostage to patriarchal domination”. 

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