also interesting; in chapter 8, they talk about a series of workshops held in Rojava on KuÅtina Zilam (killing the dominant man) and compare the responses of three different groups of men to various questions. when it came to men who had come to Rojava from Europe to support the revolution, they noted:
Many struggled to answer the question about a free man ["How would you describe the role and characteristics of a free man?"]. Others said they either could not or should not answer, that as male socialised people they carried too much emotional baggage and toxic mentalities to really imagine free relations. This idea appeared many times, preventing them from answering questions. The reflections were interesting, but the pattern that emerged also began to look like a defence or an excuse, afraid to take the step to imagine something positive, to try, to create, not just criticise their own identity. This is certainly, an imprint of patriarchy on men, and shows how deep it runs even into discussions about anti patriarchal struggle. Many had more to say about a free woman, or womenās oppression, struggling to acknowledge their own pain and oppression under patriarchy. Some even saw peopleās freedom as a competition, meaning as a result of men becoming more free, someone else would become more oppressed. They saw menās freedom as a danger that ought to be reigned in. We evaluate this as an acceptance of the patriarchal understanding of freedom itself.
I really appreciate their critique of how men approach the questions, particularly the idea that men shouldn't be theorizing about gender or patriarchy, that men's freedom is dangerous to women, etc. and pointing out that these ideas are themselves born from patriarchy. The core theme here is that (cis) men's reluctance to be personally engaged in feminism, to see it as a "women's thing" they are at best allies to, is a roadblock to patriarchal resistance that must be overcome.
Relatedly, in an earlier chapter, a man who attended educational programmes in Rojava, SƮnan Cudi, talked about being asked by a woman to think of the positives of men:
At the beginning of our personality analyses, we only focused on confessing our bad characteristics as men. We emptied our insides. It was cathartic, but it was not enough to change. Then, we started to ask: What are our good sides? When a woman comrade asked me this question, I thought for half an hour but nothing reasonable came out. If you put yourself in the position of a subject, at the centre of everything, it is very difficult to answer this question. But if you see yourself as one part of life, as a connected being it becomes possible to answer.
In general I think this is one of the best analyses of cis men, patriarchy, and feminism, not so much in depth or length but in striking at the heart of that relationship and what questions we need to ask of ourselves and each other to get where we need to go.
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