Micah

“Many women cannot hear male pain about love because it sounds like an indictment of female failure. Since sexist norms have taught us that loving is our task whether in our role as mothers or lovers or friends, if men say they are not loved, then we are at fault; we are to blame.”
― bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

“I believe that the only way we can get where we have to go is by never refusing to face the truth of our feelings as they rise up in us—even when we wish it were not the truth. So we have to admit to the truth that we sometimes wish our own fathers, sons, brothers, lovers were not there. But, this truth exists alongside another truth: the truth that this wish causes us anguish.”
― bell hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

“In patriarchal culture males are not allowed simply to be who they are and to glory in their unique identity. Their value is always determined by what they do. In an antipatriarchal culture males do not have to prove their value and worth. They know from birth that simply being gives them value, the right to be cherished and loved.”
― 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