When I went to the Feminist Bookshop in Brighton I bought a haul of great looking books about men, boys and masculinity. It has struck me lately that since I know and am so comfortable in the realm of working with and understanding women and girls I need to spend some time extending that knowledge to boys and men (thought the lens of feminism.) Whilst reading ‘Why Does Patriarchy Persist?’ by Naomi Snider and Carol Gilligan, which is fast turning out to be one of the most helpful and interesting books I’ve read in a long time, I am gaining a much richer understanding of what patriarchy is and how it effects us all, this is has only highlighted the gaps in my knowledge about the male experience of growing up in a patriarchal culture. I also have found that throughout my research process so far it’s very easy to just find myself hating them all!!!
Men, I mean, I get so frustrated and oscillate greatly between collectively feeling sorry for them and also resenting them for needing to have the hands held through such processes of self reflection and self realisation. I resent these collective dads for leaving their partners with the job of ‘doing the work’ and sitting back to rest on their laurels of parental controls and wide view socio-evolutionary aspersions whilst patting themselves on the back for doing a good job. Sort it out, participate and contribute like all the women do for fucks sake!
Anyway, point is, I find myself so down the rabbit hole of research sometimes that I just end up lumping “them” into one large amorphous, useless and violent lump which is neither true or fair. So I am trying to flex my empathy and understanding with some of these masculinity based research. Hopefully it will help me work through ways to get them more engaged in future interventions as well as understand how to come at the problems from their perspectives.
I’m adding a link to the Charlie XCX song I’ve quoted in the title of this post if for no other reason than I hope anyone reading this enjoys a few minutes of thinking ’bout boys!