by bell hooks
This was identified as one of my coworker’s top reads in 2025. I listened to the audiobook in one day. I was underwhelmed. I appreciate a feminist author acknowledging where other feminists had presented an adversarial position between men and women. Instead, hooks describes patriarchal systems and thinking and causing harm to both men and women and proposes that both would benefit from evolution into a healthier form of masculinity. She insists on calling the preferred form “feminist masculinity” which is a horrible brand for concepts that are otherwise pretty agreeable. For someone so fixated on labeling things, it seems like it should be obvious why that label is a non-starter if you’re trying to convince society at large to move in a certain direction. She’s not actually here for solutions though. The book mostly complains about how everyone is doing it wrong, but is light on guidance for doing it better. I don’t think my views are too far apart from hooks, but I don’t feel like I gained much from consuming her expression of it.