bell hooks on the Roots of Male Violence Against Women

In the wake of the Weinstein scandal, an ever-widening stream of accusations against powerful men has prompted a considerable amount of soul-searching. On Twitter and elsewhere, one book that has been mentioned is bell hooks’s "The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love," from 2004. The book was somewhat controversial among feminists because, rather than excoriating the worst behavior of men, hooks analyzes masculinity as a kind of regime that oppresses everybody, including men. She sees child abuse, sexual abuse, and shaming as rampant conditions that predispose psychologically damaged boys to violence. hooks tells David Remnick that if we don’t try to understand the male psyche we cannot solve the problem.