Hello, comrades!
I have created this community in no small part because I have been focusing hard on deconstructing negative behaviors and habits socialized into me from birth. I have been focusing on personal, professional and revolutionary growth.
Importantly, I’ve been reading bell hooks’ The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love. It’s honestly brought me to tears more than a few times, and I’m only as of writing 60% of the way through it. I have not felt seen like this in what feels like a long time. Socialized and internalized patriarchal standards of living are actively destroying our potential as men to live, love, and achieve true self-actualization.
I highly recommend it to any man seeking to dismantle their internalized patriarchy. I also highly recommend it to feminist women and other non-men who innately fear us (rightly, much of the time), as hooks is intimately familiar with both the fear of males and male fear.
It is obvious that this manufactured fear cannot sustain life and love and it is up to all of us, regardless of gender or sex, to destroy the locus of this fear - as prof. hooks not-so-succinctly, yet aptly, puts it, imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
I desired to create a space where I, other men, and all others interested can discuss our issues regarding patriarchal conditioning and potentially how we are working to overcome them. It can also serve as a space for women and those who do not identify with manhood to ask questions of men, and hopefully gain some insight, if they are so inclined.
What do you think?
I also ask graciously of you, comrades, that if, in my language revolving around gendered oppression, I fail to achieve a proper standard of trans and gender non-conforming inclusivity, you correct me. No offense will be taken, thank you.
I feel you 100%. It feels so strange to say that I needed this, I needed to witness my traumas and faults deconstructed and be led to alternatives, a healthier path to masculinity and self-love.
I have limited experience with hospitalization. Ten years ago when I was a young teen I was hospitalized in a juvenile center because I told my doctor that I wanted to redacted myself but lacked the energy. I was let go after a week and a day because my insurance stopped paying for care. I realize now that much of the reason I wanted to end it all was because I couldn’t control my life, and embarassingly yet honestly I couldn’t dominate the attention and emotions of the women around me.
Parents were neglectful, busy and horribly depressed themselves. Attention and love was a commodity I was willing to destroy people for. The consciousness of others never entered the equation. I needed love and I would get it by any means necessary, including emotional manipulation and narcissistic abuse. It was awful, but I forgive myself and have been forgiven by those I hurt, thankfully.
I am so happy to hear about your excitement for this project, as I most certainly am excited, too!
When it comes to feminist praxis, I’ve found myself stuck on what to do as a man. I believe I have found the answer, or at least the beginning of one… we gotta evolve and destroy the shackles that bind us from actualizing ourselves and others, the shackles that bind us from complete empathy and genuine love. We gotta destroy our socialized inclination towards violence and domination and forge a new manhood based around mutual respect, honor, integrity and true strength - the strength not to harm, but to support, uplift and defend others. That’s what I think, anyway. 😊
I feel this. That was me in middle school. I was bullied, had no friends, and my parents couldn’t provide on an emotional level. I felt as though I deserved to be liked by the girls I liked if I was nice. That whole “nice guy syndrome” thing applied to me. I wasn’t angry at individual women, but at the time I was angry with women as a whole. “Why would they like the assholes that treat me like shit, and would treat them like shit, when I want nothing more than to shower them in affection?” I would think to myself. Throughout all of middle school I was going down the incel rabbit hole.
Luckily, I number of changes happened in the summer between middle and high school and I was able to escape that, though it took a bit before I could start exploring feminism in depth.
Again, true here as well. I couldn’t hold a conversation about anything with my parents. They had zero interest in anything I liked and made sure I knew it. If I asked about “adult things” like how much something costs, for example the electricity bill, I’d be told it was none of my business (which also crippled my ability to manage finances and caused several problems throughout my adulthood). They provided food, water, electricity, a roof. That was all.
So then I get to middle school, no friends, stupid hormones going nuts with only “abstinence” being taught in my household and schools, and a serious interest in BDSM themes. I say the themes because at the time I didn’t know the acronym, only that as my hormones went wild it wasn’t fantasies of sex that took me, but rather of submitting myself to someone I cared about. It took until something like 8th grade to even know what the word virgin meant.
So then comes my craving for women’s attention because I was denied it at home, and patriarchy was teaching me that to have value, to not be bullied, I need to “have” (possession, again patriarchy talk) a girlfriend. My step-dad had a very domineering way of parenting, and so that was all I had to work with. I became a stalker, thinking that maybe if these women give me a chance and spend time with me, they’ll have to like me because I am nice.
Obviously, stalking isn’t nice. I did apologize later, and the women I hurt said they forgave me. I made sure never to bother them again, and ended contact. One apologetic message, one reply. Don’t need to re-traumatize them by having my face in their friends lists or whatever.
I agree, and the beautiful thing is that feminist praxis, much like vegan praxis, you can make a massive difference even if you focus on living the feminist ideals. As communists, we (should) already strive for much of the organizing that will liberate women and other oppressed peoples from exploitation in the wider system. Communists already want things like zero wage gap, equal vacations, equal political representation, etc and organize to do it. A Communist march is a feminist march is a black liberation march is a Pride march is a… the list goes on. But feminist praxis involves a cultural change, and cultural change happens when groups of individuals change. So by changing yourself, you are creating a larger group of changing people, which shifts the culture. Call out bigotry and hate for what it is, and make patriarch’s uncomfortable. Force them to change and adapt to a culture that is leaving them behind.
The best thing we men can do is learn to love. To really love. Not obsess like middle school bleepingblorp, but love. When we do that, everyone around us will know.