..

The Will to Change

questions about love asked by men of all ages in our cul­ ture. I write in response to questions about love asked me

by the men I know most intimately who are still working to

find their way back to the open-hearted, emotionally

expressive selves they once were before they were told to

silence their longings and close their hearts.

The Will to Change is the offering I bring to the feast of

male reclamation and recovery of self, of their emotional

right to love and be loved. Women have believed that we

could save the men in our lives by giving them love, that this

love would serve as the cure for all the wounds i�flicted by

toxic assaults on their emotional systems, by the emotional

heart attacks they undergo every day. Women can share in

this healing process. We can guide, instruct, observe, share

information and skills, but we cannot do for boys and men

what they must do for themselves. Our love helps, but it

alone does not save boys or men. Ultimately boys and men save themselves when they learn the art of loving.

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2

Understanding Patriarchy

P atriarchy is the single most life-threatening social dis­

ease assaulting the male body and spirit in our nation.

Yet most men do not use the word "patriarchy'' in everyday

life. Most men never think about patriarchy-what it

means, how it is created and sustained. Many men in our

nation would not be able to spell the word or pronounce it

correctly. The word "patriarchy'' just is not a part of their

normal everyday thought or speech. Men who have heard

and know the word usually associate it with women's liber­

ation, with feminism, and therefore dismiss it as irrelevant

to their own experiences. I have been standing at podiums

talking about patriarchy for more than thirty years. It is a

word I use daily, and men who hear me use it often ask me

what I mean by it.

Nothing discounts the old antifeminist projection of

men as all-powerful more than their basic ignorance of a

major facet of the political system that shapes and informs

male identity and sense of self from birth until death. I

often use the phrase "imperialist white-supremacist capi­

talist patriarchy'' to describe the interlocking political sys­

tems that are the foundation of our nation's politics. Of

these systems the one that we all learn the most about

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