Hello comrades, it’s time for our FINAL discussion thread for The Will to Change, covering Chapters 10 (Reclaiming Male Integrity), 11 (Loving Men) and the book as a whole. Thanks to everyone who’s participated over the last couple months, I’m looking forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts again. And if you haven’t started the book yet but would like to, this thread will stay pinned for a while so you can share your thoughts as you read!

As we reflect on the book as a whole, there are a few questions I’m curious to hear everyone’s answers for:

  1. What was your biggest takeaway from reading The Will to Change?

  2. How has the book’s material and hooks’ insights affected your everyday life?

  3. How can we apply hooks’ lessons on healthy, non-patriarchal masculinity to improve the site culture of Hexbear?

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)

After this I would like to host another book club, probably here on /c/menby but it depends on what exactly we read. Please share any suggestions you have for books below!

  • MiraculousMM [he/him, any]@hexbear.netOPMEnglish
    3·
    11 days ago

    Thanks for your thoughts comrade, the kind of space you’re describing is exactly what I want /c/menby to be. The main worry I have is that the messiness of working through mutual patriarchal brainworms doesn’t interfere with making the site a safe and welcoming environment for marginalized comrades. I’ve been thinking about how to strike a good balance and I feel the simplest thing we can do is just relentlessly interrogate and rebuke patriarchal attitudes anywhere and everywhere we see them on the site, no matter how small they might seem. If people can be helped to listen and change in a genuinely constructive way that leaves everyone the better off for it, that’s ideal. If they won’t listen or self-crit at all then out the door they go