"In the one truly violent episode between my mother and father, he accused her of lying to him. Then there was the night an older sister lied and said she was babysitting when she was actually out on a date. As he hit her, our father kept yelling, 'Don't you lie to me!' While the violence of his response created in us a terror of the consequences of lying, it did not alter the reality that we knew he did not always tell the truth. His favorite way of lying was withholding. His model was 'just remain silent' when asked questions, then you will not get 'caught in a lie.'
The men I have loved have always lied to avoid confrontation or take responsibility for inappropriate behavior. And Dorothy Dinnerstein's groundbreaking book The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise, she shares the insight that when a little boy learns that his powerful mother, who controls his life, really has no power within a patriarchy, it confuses him and causes his rage. Lying becomes one of the strategic ways he can 'act out' and render his mother powerless. Lying enables him to manipulate the mother even as he exposes her lack of power. This makes him feel more powerful.
Males learn to lie as a way of obtaining power and females not only do the same but they also lie to pretend powerlessness. In her work Harriet Lerner talks about the way in which patriarchy upholds deception, encouraging women to present a false self to men and vice versa. In Dory Hollander's 101 Lies Men Tell Women, she confirms that while both women and men lie her data and the finding of other researchers indicate that 'men tend to lie more and with more devastating consequences.'"
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bell hooks
All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks | Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/218042.All_About_Love
