Intimacy and the pursuit of external power — the ability to manipulate and control — are incompatible.
Gary Zukav & Linda Francis ,The Heart of the Soul (2001)
A system that divides us into winners and losers, produces ultimately only losers.“
Unknown, often attributed to Mohandas Ghandi
There is little feminist discussion of maternal sadism in relation to boys because it has been difficult for feminist thinkers to find a language to name the power mothers wield over their children in a patriarchal culture, where in the larger social context mothers are so powerless. Yet it may be that very powerlessness — in relation to grown men in patriarchy — that leads so many women to exert emotional power over boys in a damaging manner.
bell hooks, The Will to Change (2004)
If you can’t feel it, you can’t heal it…
Twelve Step recovery slogan
In December 2003, bell hooks completed the manuscript of a book which has recently made a major impact on how I view my upbringing and my experience (and — hopefully — behaviour) in the world today.
In „The Will to Change“ she defines patriarchy as a system of „domination and subjugation“ in which we all lose, and women come off all the worse. Her focus in not merely on the relations between the sexes but expands to cover the economic model we have adopted (capitalism), the way we deal with the natural world which nurtures us, and crucial role of the emotional biodiversity of every human being.
I highly recommend reading this book to everyone who cares about the welfare of humanity and the planet on which we live, especially men who fear feminists are blaming them for all the wrongs and therefore resist getting to know what the feminist „fuss“ is about.
This eye-opening and prejudice-shredding book is a true gift. It can become a ticket to liberation if we can muster the courage to open our hearts and take it all in.
It contains many insights for my own personal life, past and present. And the best thing is that it is so life-affirming, suggesting compassion and inter-being as an alternative to the prevailing rule of force. bell hooks is not against anyone — she stands up for all, both women and men, and love.
I have this week returned to the place where I first heard mention of this book exactly six months ago. I had been attending some dance workshops held in celebration of the Spring Equinox at the Christaland Community in Southern Portugal when, in a conversation afterwards, the male facilitator told me that this book was for me.
Having noted the title, I was intrigued about a month later to discover it among the twenty or so English language books in a German bookshop in Cologne. That was the hint from the Universe. It has taken me five months to read this slim volume, often having to put it down after a single page to digest what I had just read.
Back and forth, it went — reading, digesting, reflecting, pause, reading, digesting, reflecting, pause — until now, back at the beautiful south coast of the West Algarve, I have been reading the final pages this week.
bell hooks presents a scathing critique of patriarchy. She outlines the ways it harms men, from emotional repression to higher rates of suicide and depression and „soul death“. Some passages that resonated most strongly with me are as follows:
„There is only one emotion that patriarchy values when expressed by men; that emotion is anger.“ (pg. 7)
„No male successfully measures up to patriarchal standards without engaging in an ongoing practice of self-betrayal.“ (pg. 12)
„Boys learn to cover up grief with anger, the more troubled the boy, the more intense the mask of indifference. Shutting down emotionally is the best defense when the longing for connection must be denied.“ (pg. 50)
“Workaholism is the most common addiction in men because it is usually rewarded and not taken seriously as detrimental to their emotional well-being.” (pg. 158)
This topic of male recovery —by means of re-connecting with our True Self, and therefore through our feelings — is by no means new to me. However, the clarity with which the observations are formulated is.
Having entered long-term addiction recovery over twenty years ago and been increasingly engaged in the cultivation of „Emotional Sobriety“ over the last ten years, this topic has been central to both my inner work and professional activities.
From the beginnings of the highly moral 1930’s approach of AA to the more compassionate, trauma-informed 1970’s style of ACA, I have been learning the importance of re-connecting with my emotional make-up and have begun to recognise how my family of origin seduced me into living predominately in my head for several of my initial adult decades.
As a programme of compassion, it is important to note that there in no blame here, simply discernment. Emotionally illiterate parents cannot teach their children emotional literacy. In fact, worse still, they often end up increasingly leaning on their children emotionally as time passes by.
bell hooks writes: „Being vulnerable is an emotional state many men seek to avoid. Some men spend a lifetime in a state of avoidance and therefore never experience intimacy. Sadly, we have all colluded with the patriarchy by faking it with men, pretending levels of intimacy and closeness we do not feel. We tell men we love them when we feel we have absolutely no clue as to who they really are.
„We tell fathers we love them when we are terrified to share our perceptions of them, our fear that if we disagree, we will be cast out, excommunicated. In this way we all collude with patriarchal culture to make men feel they can have it all, that they can embrace patriarchal manhood and still hold their loved ones dear.
„In reality, the more patriarchal a man is, the more disconnected he must be from feeling. If he cannot feel, he cannot connect. If he cannot connect, he cannot be intimate.“
She concludes: „The reality is that men are hurting and that the whole culture responds to them by saying, ‚Please do not tell us what you feel‘. If it is true that we cannot heal what we cannot feel,“by supporting patriarchal culture that socializes men to deny feelings, we doom them to live in states of emotional numbness. We construct a culture where male pain can have no voice, where male hurt cannot be named or healed.“
The following words had a major impact on me earlier this week: „maternal sadism in relation to boys…„
Up to now, I had always associated the word sadism with the men in my life. Thanks to these new insights, I reviewed how my mother — in my view herself an overwhelmed untreated Adult Child — dampened, to say the least, my tenderness, my sensitivity, and my natural joy of creativity, by harnessing my being, at a very early age, in the service of her own needs, both emotional and practical.
In a household of ten children, much had to be managed, many operations executed. My father was generally at work, and my mother was hopelessly out of her depth at organising even the most mundane tasks.
In addition, she was often — as is clear to me in hindsight — severely depressed and inclined to oscillate between dissociation and emotional meltdown. In this febrile cauldron I spent the first sixteen years of my life, until, — upon discovering weed and alcohol in my teens — I found my own solutions….
When I see the innate tenderness of a neonate today, I shudder to think how, through abuse — whether intended or not — such a beautiful soul can be twisted into an emotional zombie within the space of a few short years.
A related element touched upon by bell hooks is the preponderance of some mothers to allow their partner and the older male siblings inculcate the niceties of patriarchal principles (boys don’t cry, winner takes all, violence is legitimate, etc.) upon their more tender, vulnerable younger brothers, engaging in both emotional and physical abuse (They’re only playing…).
I am not leaving my dad — another untreated Adult Child — out of the equation by any means. Along with his warmth, love of nature, social activism, and sheer moral decency, his propensity to occasional bouts of sadism, his unpredictability, how he manifested his moral fundamentalism, and his failure to protect his children from the emotional excesses of his wife and partner — all of these contributed to the chaos and dysfunction I experienced in my formative years.
What mum and dad had in common was an inability to grieve, especially the premature loss of childhood in their own respective families of origin.
Had they engaged in a regular practice of Mental Fitness or had they been shown how to cultivate Emotional Sobriety, they would have known that the war raging inside the human mind — the on-going conflict between the Saboteurs and Sage — is ultimately a war between the two primal forces that facilitate and maintain life on this planet.
These two primal forces are fear and love. All Saboteurs are rooted in fear; fear of damnation, fear of failure, fear of poverty, fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, fear of harm, fear of not mattering, and, ultimately, our deep-seated fear of death.
Sage, on the other hand, is fuelled entirely by love. The Sage Perspective — everything can be turned into a gift and opportunity — is based on love for the unfolding mystery of life and a dedication to finding the gift in whatever happens.
Of the five Sage Powers, Empathize (Compassion) is love for yourself and others, Explore is love for discovery, Innovate is love for possibilities and creativity, Navigate is love for meaning and purpose, and Activate is love for making things happen. (For more on PQ Mental Fitness, see the PQ Tab on this website.)
Finally, bell hooks makes the following pertinent point: „The work of male relational recovery, of reconnection, of forming intimacy and making community can never be done alone. In a world where boys and men are daily losing their way we must create guides, signposts, new paths.
„A culture of healing that empowers males to change is in the making. Healing does not take place in isolation. Men who love, and men who long to love, know this. We need to stand by them, with open hearts and open arms. We need to stand ready to hold them, offering a love that can shelter their wounded spirits as they seek to find their way home, as they exercise the will to change.“
For precisely this reason I have begun facilitating Men’s Emotional Sobriety Retreats.
The shared healing space where men meet to go within, to engage in the deep inner work of re-connecting with their entire being — especially the wide array of feelings hitherto supressed — is a powerful energy field. Over an entire week spent living, laughing, and working together, we experience the salubrious effects and joy of the Sage male energy which had alluded us for so long.
Further retreats are planned in October 2026, and every two months during 2027. At some point we will shift to opening such gatherings to both women and men, so that we can continue this fertile deep exploration together.
