Martha Juhl

“Learning to wear a mask (that word already embedded in the term “masculinity”) is the first lesson in patriarchal masculinity that a boy learns. He learns that his core feelings cannot be expressed if they do not conform to the acceptable behaviors sexism defines as male. Asked to give up the true self in order to realize the patriarchal ideal, boys learn self-betrayal early and are rewarded for these acts of soul murder.”
― Bell Hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

“Many women cannot hear male pain about love because it sounds like an indictment of female failure.”
― bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

“Men come to sex hoping that it will provide them with all of the emotional satisfaction that would have come from love. Most men think that sex will provide them with a sense of being alive, connected, that sex will offer closeness, intimacy, pleasure. And more often than not sex simply does not deliver the goods. This fact does not lead men to cease obsessing about sex; it intensifies their lust and their longing.”
― bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

“To indoctrinate boys into the rules of patriarchy, we force them to feel pain and to deny their feelings.”
― bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love