CW: chapter 2 contains a detailed description of child abuse by a parent
Hello comrades, it’s time for our second discussion thread for The Will to Change, covering Chapters 2 (Understanding Patriarchy) and 3 (Being a Boy). Thanks to everyone who participated last week, I’m looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts again. And if you’re just joining the book club this week, welcome!
In Ch.2 hooks defines patriarchy, how it is enforced by parental figures and society at large, and the struggle of antipatriarchal parents to raise children outside of these rigid norms when the border culture is so immersed in them. Ch.3 delves deeper into the effects of patriarchy on young boys and girls and the systemic apparatuses that reinforce gender norms.
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)
As always let me know if you’d like to be added to the ping list!
Our next discussion will be on Chapters 4 (Stopping Male Violence) and 5 (Male Sexual Being), beginning on 12/11.
The strangest thing I see about the incel epidemic is how these people most hurt by the patriarchal gender roles are doubling down on it. These rigid roles and expectations are not working for them but they insist that these are the only rules for the game.
There’s a perverse logic to it if you’re entrenched in the mentality. Let’s just assume for the hypothetical’s sake, that you’re an incel with a ten-year pin. You were around for the heyday of Roosh V, you used to have an account on We Hunted The Mammoth or whatever that sewage trough of a forum was called, you watched MGTOW span from just some philosophy a couple jilted, cheated-on dudes coined into a full on sect of toxic masculinity.
Every day, you see men, powerful, statused-up, straining-billfolds and freshly-pressed suits men getting out of pricey cars with their trophy wives on the lockscreens of their phones-- and you know you want that; the society you live in has primed you to not only desire that with every iota of your being; but has more or less told you that if you play the game of Patriarchy correctly, you’d get it.
Then the very people that you perceive as “withholding” the privileges of “successful Patriarchal living” come by, or worse, men that you perceive as “corrupted”/“whipped”/“henpecked”/“b/ed” (all epithets I’ve had hurled in my direction for trying to tend this mentality, btw) by the people you perceive as “withholding” come by to tell you that not only is what you desire with every iota of your being wrong, but it’s actively killing you, mind, body, and soul. Telling them the score as it is terrifies them. It enrages them.
Now, just by virtue of being in this thread in general, (presumably) your feet aren’t stayed by this kind of fear-- but the average incel? The fear of change, the fear of trying to learn new rules to play by, and the fact that there isn’t really that much of a brass ring in their eyes compared to what Patriarchy would give them if they could just do it right, keeps them right where they are; unwilling to change. I’m starting to think this is something that can only reliably be tackled at the same time as capitalism is; because the more I think about it, the more it feels like a perverse risk/value assessment on their parts, and I’m not sure how you position the benefits of nonpatriarchal masculinity as worth more compared to all the tangibles that toxic patriarchy provides its adherents.
These people don’t value true friendship, internal security, or peace with one’s self and surroundings, so how do you make that ‘worth more’ in the eyes of someone who predominantly values violence, domination, and control?
The crazy thing is that if you are a walking Red Flag like these guys the only way to get women is by playing the Patriarchy game correctly. They can’t not play that game because they would have to change and take accountability for your actions. If you are a walking Red Flag all women and most men will run away at the first sign of being asshole. Except those who are using you for something else like money or status. So for this powerful statused-up assholes the only women they see want to use them because they self-select that way. Everyone else would run away or not engage. So from their perspective they are correct but they don’t see their world isn’t the only one.
The thing about these Manosphere / success influences is they want people to play their own game by their own rules because they are already winning that game. Its like a MLM where you need people to buy in or else it all collapsed. They need people to play their success game using their rules so they can win. I have recently tried to remind myself that I am trying to play “the happy life game” not the “capitalisms successful life game”.