patriarchy & gender
We need to highlight the role women play in perpetuating and sustaining patriarchal culture so that we will recognize patriarchy as a system women and men support equally, even if men receive more rewards from that system.
bell hooks • The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love
The work of men is to lose the self, the work of women is to build the self precisely because we are conditioned to do the opposite. If marriage books recognized this pre-requisite work on the self, they would be WAY more effective in teaching us how to come together.
The thing no one tells you about marriage is this: in order to form deep bonds of intimacy in heterosexual relationships, in order to truly love and be truly loved- both partners must do the very thing they’ve been taught their entire lives NOT to do. They must learn to disobey the script they were handed at birth called “how to be a man” and “how... See more