“Within the early writings of radical feminism, anger, rage, and even hatred of men was voiced, yet there was no meaningful attempt to offer ways to resolve these feelings” (xii).
“I believe that the only way we can get where we have to go is by never refusing to face the truth of our feelings as they rise up in us—even when we wish it were not the truth” (xii).
“My grief was party that my father, whom I loved, was dying. But it was also that I knew already that his death would allow me to feel freer” (xiv).
“the most painful truth of male domination, is that men wield patriarchal power in daily life in ways that are awesomely life-threatening, that women and children cower in fear and various states of powerlessness, believing that the only way out of their suffering, their only hope is for men to die, for the patriarchal father not to come home” (xv).
“It is a fiction of false feminism that we women can find our power in a world without men, in a world where we deny our connections to men” (xvi).
“To know love, men must be able to let go the will to dominate” (xvii).
“If they dared to love us, in patriarchal culture they would cease to be real “men”” (3).
“The masculine pretense is that real men feel no pain” (6).
“To know from birth that simply being gives them value, the right to be cherished and loved” (12).
“Embracing patriarchal thinking, like everyone else around them, they taught it to their children because it seemed like a “natural” way to organize life” (18).
“My brother was taught that a boy should not express feelings . . . that girls could and should express feelings, or at least some of them. Rage was not an appropriate feminine feeling” (19).
“Women can be as wedded to patriarchal thinking and action as men” (23).
“By placing the blame for the perpetuation of sexism solely on men, these women could maintain their won allegiance to patriarchy, their own lust for power” (25).
“These changes in his thinking and behavior were triggered by his desire to be accepted and affirmed in a patriarchal workplace and rationalized by his desire to get ahead” (28).
“Citizens in this nation fear challenging patriarchy even as they lack overt awareness that they are fearful, so deeply embedded in our collective unconscious are the rules of patriarchy” (29).
“The crisis facing men is not the crisis of masculinity, it is the crisis of patriarchal masculinity” (32).
“We have to both acknowledge that the problem is patriarchy and work to end patriarchy” (33).
“To love boys rightly we must value their inner lives enough to construct worlds, both private and public, where their right to wholeness can be constantly celebrated and affirmed, where their need to love and be loved can be fulfilled” (54).
“Every day in America men are violent. Their violence is deemed “natural” by the psychology of patriarchy, which insists that there is a biological connection between having a penis and the will to do violence” (55).
“Many television shows and movies we have watched depict the hero is the good man who uses violence to win the fight with bad men” (55)
“The most passive, kind, quiet man can come to violence if the seeds of patriarchal thinking hav been embedded in his psyche” (59).
“Masses of boys and men have been programmed from birth on to believe that at some point they must be violent, whether psychologically or physically, to prove that they are men” (60).
“Violence is boyhood socialization. We pull them away from their own expressiveness, from their feelings, from sensitivity to others. The very phrase “Be a man” means suck it up and keep going” (60).
“In patriarchal culture women are as violent as men toward the groups that they have power over and can dominate freely” (63).
“Patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves” (66).
“Men who win on patriarchal terms end up losing in terms of their substantive quality of life. They choose patriarchal manhood over loving connection, first foregoing self-love and then the love they could give and receive that would connect them to others” (72).
“It is not easy for males, young or old, to reject the codes of patriarchal masculinity” (73).
“Ultimately the men who choose against violence, against death, do so because they want to live fully and well, because they want to know love” (74).
“More often than not sex simply does not deliver the goods” (75).
“Children today learn more about sex from mass media than from any other source” (77).
“Little boys learns early in life that sexuality is the ultimate proving ground where their patriarchal masculinity will be tested” (79).
“The more intense the pain of fear, unworthiness, and feeling unlovable becomes, the more obsessive becomes the need to have a sexual interaction” (82).
“Patriarchal men have no outlet to express their pain, so they simply seek release” (82).
“No matter how much sex you encounter, it will not be enough to fill your enormous need to love and be close and express your passion and delight in your senses and feel life forces coursing through your muscles and skin” (Bearman—hooks 90).
“To recover the power and passion of male sexuality unsullied by patriarchal assault, males of all ages must be allowed to speak openly of their sexual longing” (90).
“We are told that money offers fulfillment and that work is a way to acquire money” (91).
“The behavior of men who make money yet refuse to pay alimony or child support, or their peers who head households yet squander their paycheck on individual pleasures, challenges the patriarchal insistence that men are eager to be caretakers and providers” (93).
“Many men use work as the pleasure where they can flee from the self, from emotional awareness, where they can lose themselves and operate from a space of emotional numbness” (97).
“Unemployment feels so emotionally threatening because it means that there would be time to fill” (97).
“Despite changes in gender roles, ours is still a patriarchal culture where sexism rules the day. If it were not so men could see periods of unemployment as timeouts where they could do the work of healing” (102).
“Popular opinion about the impact of feminist movement on men's lives is that feminism hurt men. Conservative antifeminist women and men insist that feminism is destroying family life” (107).
“Most men have clearly been willing to resist patriarchy when it interferes with individual desire, but they have not been willing to embrace feminism as a movement that would challenge, change, and ultimately end patriarchy” (108).
“The vast majority of feminist women I encounter feel sorry for men because they see how patriarchy wounds them and yet men remain wedded to patriarchal culture” (109).
“Feminist masculinity defines strength as one's capacity to be responsible for self and others. This strength is a trait males and females need to possess” (117).
“The core of feminist masculinity is a commitment to gender equality and mutuality as crucial to inter-being and partnership in creating and sustaining of life. Such a commitment always privileges nonviolent action over violence, peace over war, life over death” (118).
“Lots of women survive leading happy, fulfilling lives because we do not embrace an identity which weds us to violence; men must have the same choice” (119).
“Feminist masculinity tells men that they become more real through the act of connecting with others, through building community” (121).
“Parenting remains a setting where men can practice love as they let go of a dominator model and engage mutually with women who parent with them the children they share” (123).
“That love and domination can coexist is one of the most powerful lies patriarchy tells us all” (123).
“Feminist masculinity offers men a way to reconnect with selfhood, uncovering the essential goodness of maleness and allowing everyone, male and female, to find glory in loving manhood” (124).
“Mass media do the work of continually indoctrinating boys and men, teaching them the rules of patriarchal thinking and practice” (125).
“Gender equality in the workforce freed lots of men to speak their truth that they were not necessarily interested in the role of the provider” (126).
“Enlightened men must claim mass media as the space of their public voice and create a progressive popular culture that will teach men how to connect with others, how to communicate, how to love” (134).
“Men cannot speak their pain in patriarchal culture” (135).
“Many mothers in patriarchal culture silence the wild spirit in their sons, the spirit of wonder and playful tenderness, for fear that their sons will be weak, will not be prepared to be macho men, real men, men other men will envy and look up to” (137).
“Men learn to cover up their rage, their sense of powerlessness” (138).
“As their pain intensifies, so does their need to do violence . . . the violence they do to others is usually a mirroring of the violence enacted upon and within the self” (139).
“There is little feminist discussion of maternal sadism in relation to boys because it has been difficult for feminist thinkers to find a language to name the power mothers wield over children in a patriarchal culture” (145).
“They have to be intimate with themselves, learn to feel and to be aware of their feelings” (146).
“ We live in a time of deep division, in which mind is separated from body and spirituality is at odds with materialism” (148).
“Men need to hear that their souls matter and that the care of their souls is the primary task of their being. Were all men seeking to uncover greater soulfulness in their lives rather than seeking power through a dominator model, then the world as we know it would be transformed for the better” (149).
“A principle characteristic of genuine happiness is inner peace” (149).
“The quest for integrity is the heroic journey that can heal the masculinity crisis and prepare the hearts of men to give and receive love” (153).
“Sexist roles restrict the identity formation of male and female children, but the process is far more damaging to boys because not only are the roles required of them more rigid and confining, but they are much more likely to receive severe punishment when they deviate from these roles” (154).
“Anytime any of us takes significant steps to grow, we go through a process of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance” (159).
“Men need to mourn the old self and create the space for a new self to be born if they are to change and be wholly transformed” (162).
“It is taking responsibility that sets me free” (165).
“Wounded men are not often able to say anything positive” (166).
“ When men learn to affirm themselves and others, giving this soul care, then they are on the path to wholeness” (166).
“The gendered nature of war makes men predators and women prey” (171).
“To create the culture that will enable boys to love, we must see the family as having as its primary function the giving of love (providing food and shelter are loving acts” (173).
“Men are on the path to love when they choose to become emotionally aware” (175).
“After being taught to be obsessed with sex via patriarchal conditioning, males are “then subjected to continuous conditioning to repress sensuality, numb feelings, ignore our bodies, and separate from our natural closeness with human beings”” (180/181).
“If all men were in touch with primal positive passion, the categories of gay and straight would lose their charged significance” (183).
“Healing does not take place in isolation” (188).
“Exercise the will to change” (188).
