Hello comrades, it’s time for our first discussion thread for The Will to Change! Please share your thoughts below on the first two sections of the book. There’s quite a lot to talk about between hooks’ discussion of masculinity discourse within feminist circles, the ways both men and women uphold patriarchy, and the near universal experience of men being forced to suppress their rich emotional worlds from a young age. I’ll be posting my thoughts in a little bit after I’m done with work.
If you haven’t read the book yet but would like to, its available free on the Internet Archive in text form, as well as an audiobook on Youtube with content warnings at the start of each chapter, courtesy of the Anarchist Audio Library, and as an audiobook on our very own TankieTube! (note: the YT version is missing the Preface but the Tankietube version has it) Let me know if you’d like to be added to the ping list!
Our next discussion will be on Chapters 2 (Understanding Patriarchy) and 3 (Being a Boy), beginning on 12/4.
Thanks to everyone who is or will be participating, I’m really looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts! 
I think I get what you’re saying. Given the dialectic nature of interactions with men and women in a patriarchal society, men are bent towards stoic, invulnerable nature. This nature and actions associated with it make this individual difficult to trust.
As an African man it bewilders me, the fear I perceive in interactions. I understand some of it is because of unconscious bias (unconscious racism?) but I hadn’t considered the role gender had to play. I read Mark Manson’s “Models: How to attract women through honesty” a long time ago. Not to say the book is perfect but perhaps a way men can move forward addressing that fear is by being honest.