The Greatest Threat to the Patriarchy: Men Getting in Touch with Their Feelings
How does feminism serve the patriarchy?
By Troy Cohen
Warning: This piece may offend everyone. The righteous, provocative tone is how the energy wished to be expressed at certain points. I went with it. And it was fun.
In her book, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, Bell Hooks shares that she does not believe feminism to be the greatest threat to patriarchy. Rather, she suggests the greatest threat to patriarchy is men getting in touch with their feelings of despair.
If men begin deeply feeling their emotional pain on a massive scale, the entire system that patriarchy is built upon may begin to crumble. When men start feeling, they’re no longer numb. When they’re no longer numb, they begin to care and they stop doing most of the fucked up shit that has the world in the mess it’s in. They begin questioning the ways they’re being conditioned and recognizing the ways they’ve bought into a system that turns them into mindless drones for the patriarchal war machine.
As I continued reflecting on Hooks’ message, I became aware of ways in which feminism actually serves this patriarchal agenda. A quote from Hooks’ book: “While feminism may ignore boys and young males, capitalist…
