Overview
A online Reading Group open to all therapeutic practitioners at any stage of training or practice.
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**
This online Reading Group will closely and whole heartedly engage with bell hook’s seminal feminist text The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity and Love (2004) **over three monthly** meetings from **May** to **July 2025**. As conversations about masculinity/ies – albeit conversations that are not new to feminism – resurface in the public media in response to Netflix’s Adolescence, hooks’ work continues to be an urgent and challenging call for us to engage with the ways patriarchy impacts all genders. The Will To Change invites us to look at patriarchy’s specific impact upon boys and men, and by extension to reevaluate our therapeutic response-abilities towards dismantling the limiting boundaries of normative masculinity/ies in favour of broader, more expansive possibilities of what it means to live as a man.
This Reading Group is specific to therapeutic practitioners at any stage of training or practice.
**Practicalities:**
Starting in **May 2025**, we will meet together on Zoom on the **last Friday of the month** from **3.30pm – 5pm GMT**. Numbers will be limited to enable our shared discussion. We ask for a joining fee of £21.00 that **covers all three meetings** to support the ongoing work and commitments of the Feminist Therapy Network. A CPD certificate of completion can be provided upon request.
Through reading and discussing a cluster of chapters together each month over three meetings, we will undertake age-old practices of communal learning, cultivating collective wisdom, building solidarities and engaging the feminist imagination. To do so requires a commitment to each other. To support our community of inquiry and to share the labour of learning together, the request is for Zoom screens to be on during our time together, whenever possible. Please ensure you will be able to join and participate from a stable physical place (not in transit).
Please familiarise yourself with the FTN’s Ethos and Ali Phipps’ Principles for a Feminist Classroom before joining this Reading Group as these will inform how our time together is held and interacted with. If it your first time joining a reading group, we recommend visiting the FTN’s suggested Reading Group guidelines here.
**Dates:**
The dates we will be gathering together are between 3.30pm – 5pm on:
Friday May 30th (Chapters 1 – 3)
Friday June 27th (Chapters 4 – 7)
Friday July 25th (Chapters 8 – 11)
The Zoom link to join will be sent to you via email the day prior.
**Please read all the information, including the FAQ’s before signing up to join.** If you have any further questions, email: feministtherapynetwork@protonmail.com .