There are seldom books you come across that change your perspective. Sifting through lots of reading material you may every once in a while happen upon a gem of a book that alters your perspective in a seemingly permanent and life changing way. For me, this book found it’s way on the list of books that have changed my outlook in particular on the effects of patriarchy on men.
The relationships that grow within patriarchy are often filled with distance, domination, emotionless love, and restricted self-expression. Men become typecasted in a sense and forced into a role of emotionless dominator of the ones closest to them they should express the most to. Men become indoctrinated even through familial relationships that to be a man is to be violent and disconnected from family life and society and there are appropriate circumstances that rage and violence can be expressed and should be expressed as definitive of what it is to be a Man.
It is put forth that men tend to buy into these patriarchal modes of expression out of despair, their own emotional deprivation and that the rewards of domination and power are not enough to make up for the disconnect. In the long run the consequences outweigh the rewards and the rewards aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. In the end the author espouses the need for both men and women to allow for and create spaces where men can express themselves emotionally and in different ways to allow the shedding of the old patriarchal way of thinking and defining oneself as a man. This not only aides in manifesting the environment to nurture change but encourages men’s acceptance and willingness to change.
