bell hooks the will to change men masculinity and love

Not even for the love and respect of liberated women were men willing to come to the table of love as equal partners ready to share the feast.

The place where most men refused to change - believed themselves unable to change - was in their emotional lives. Men in patriarchal culture responded to feminist demand for greater equity in the work world and in the sexual world by making room, by sharing the spheres of power. The male bashing that was so intense when contemporary feminism first surfaced more than thirty years ago was in part the rageful cover-up of the shame women felt not because men refused to share their power but because we could not seduce, cajole, or entice men to share their emotions - to love us.īy claiming that they wanted the power men had, man-hating feminists (who were by no means the majority) covertly proclaimed that they too wanted to be rewarded for being out of touch with their feelings, for being unable to love. To speak our hunger for male love would demand that we name the intensity of our lack and our loss. And yet we dare not speak it for fear we will be mocked, pitied, shamed. Our collective hunger is so intense it rends us.

We live in a culture where emotionally starved, deprived females are desperately seeking male love. If she is heterosexual she wants the love of a male partner. Whether gay or straight, bisexual or celibate, she wants to feel the love of father, grandfather, uncle, brother, or male friend. Every woman wants to love and be loved by the males in her life. Every female wants to be loved by a male.

Bell hooks the will to change men masculinity and love