In this chapter, hooks explains to the reader that though an anti-male faction of feminists did exist at one point, “enlightened feminist activists saw that men were not the problem, that the problem was patriarchy, sexism, and male domination” (67). This chapter focuses on what hooks calls “the whole picture” (67), which includes the role of the mass media who represented feminists “as man-haters” (68) and gave a loud voice to the anti-male factions within feminism who felt negatively towards anti-sexist men because “their presence served to counter any insistence that all men are oppressors, or that all men hate women” (68). Thanks to these misrepresentations by the media, “[f]eminists who called for a recognition of men as comrades in struggle” (69) were never heard, which “led to the development of a men’s movement that was anti-female” (69). All of this tension between women’s groups and men’s groups led to a failure to “address the issue of not just what males might do to be anti-sexist but also what an alternative masculinity might look like” (70).

hooks presents “a vision of masculinity where self-esteem and self-love of one’s unique being forms the basis of identity” (70).