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I Feel Sad That We Have Allowed These Knee-jerk Feminists Who Want To Act Like It's A Struggle Against Men...but Again That's The Least Politically Developed Strand Of Feminism.

-Bell Hooks

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I Feel Sad That

Bell Hooks

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I Feel Sad That We Have Allowed These Knee-jerk Feminists Who Want To Act Like It's A Struggle Against Men...but Again That's The Least Politically Developed Strand Of Feminism.

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... Feminist Solidarity Rooted In A Commitment To Progressive Politics Must Include A Space For Rigorous Critique, For Dissent, Orwe Are Doomed To Reproduce In Progressive Communities The Very Forms Of Domination We Seek To Oppose.

Often In My Lectures When I Use The Phrase “imperialist White-supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy” To Describe Our Nation’s Political System, Audiences Laugh. No One Has Ever Explained Why Accurately Naming This System Is Funny. The Laughter Is Itself A Weapon Of Patriarchal Terrorism.

Giving Generously In Romantic Relationships, And In All Other Bonds, Means Recognizing When The Other Person Needs Our Attention. Attention Is An Important Resource.

If You Do Not Know What You Feel, Then It Is Difficult To Choose Love; It Is Better To Fall. Then You Do Not Have To Be Responsible For Your Actions.

Like Many White Liberals, Ken Sees The Whiteness Of His Social Life As More An Accident Of Circumstance Than A Choice. He Would Welcome Greater Diversity In The Neighbourhood. However, He Does Not Consciously Do Enough Work Either In His Social Life Or In The Larger Community To Make That Diversity Possible.

The Wounded Child Inside Many Females Is A Girl Who Was Taught From Early Childhood On That She Must Become Something Other Than Herself, Deny Her True Feelings, In Order To Attract And Please Others.

As More People Of Color Raise Our Consciousness And Refuse To Be Pitted Against One Another, The Forces Of Neo-colonial White Supremacist Domination Must Work Harder To Divide And Conquer.

I Began Writing A Book On Love Because I Felt That The United States Is Moving Away From Love.

I Still Think It's Important For People To Have A Sharp, Ongoing Critique Of Marriage In Patriarchal Society — Because Once You Marry Within A Society That Remains Patriarchal, No Matter How Alternative You Want To Be Within Your Unit, There Is Still A Culture Outside You That Will Impose Many, Many Values On You Whether You Want Them To Or Not.

Is It More Important That You, As A White Male, Read My Work And Learn From It, Or What You Call Me? I Think It's More Important That You Read My Work, Reflect On It, And Allow It To Transform Your Life And Your Thinking In Some Way.

All Too Often Women Believe It Is A Sign Of Commitment, An Expression Of Love, To Endure Unkindness Or Cruelty, To Forgive And Forget. In Actuality, When We Love Rightly We Know That The Healthy, Loving Response To Cruelty And Abuse Is Putting Ourselves Out Of Harm's Way.

My Students Tell Me, We Don't Want To Love! We're Tired Of Being Loving! And I Say To Them, If You're Tired Of Being Loving, Then You Haven't Really Been Loving, Because When You Are Loving You Have More Strength.

Another Response To Racism Has Been The Establishment Of Unlearning Racism Workshops, Which Are Often Led By White Women. These Workshops Are Important, Yet They Tend To Focus Primarily On Cathartic Individual Psychological Personal Prejudice Without Stressing The Need For Corresponding Change In Political Commitment And Action. A Woman Who Attends An Unlearning Racism Workshop And Learns To Acknowledge That She Is Racist Is No Less A Threat Than One Who Does Not. Acknowledgment Of Racism Is Significant When It Leads To Transformation.

Part Of Why I Have Started Writing About Love Is Feeling That Our Culture Is Forgetting What Martin Luther King Taught. We Name More And More Streets And Schools After Him But That's Almost Irrelevant, Because What Is To Be Remembered Is That Strength To Love.

I Think We Have To Choose, What Are The Issues That Really Matter? We Have To Trust That.

In Our Culture Privacy Is Often Confused With Secrecy. Open, Honest, Truth-telling Individuals Value Privacy. We All Need Spaces Where We Can Be Alone With Thoughts And Feelings - Where We Can Experience Healthy Psychological Autonomy And Can Choose To Share When We Want To. Keeping Secrets Is Usually About Power, About Hiding And Concealing Information.

Keeping Secrets

I Think Black People Need To Take Self-esteem Seriously.

I Have Been Contemplating The Place And Meaning Of Love In Our Lives And Culture For Years. When A Subject Attracts My Intellectual And Emotional Imagination, I Am Long To Observe It From All Angles, To Know It Inside And Out.

I See Myself, In Terms Of The Question Of Capitalism, As I Would Support Democratic Socialism Over A Capitalist System, Because Any Approach... Or Participatory Economics, Which Is Another Great Model That People Like Michael Albert Are Putting Out There... Any System That Encourages Us To Think About Interdependency, And To Be Able To Use The World's Resources In A Wiser Way, For The Good Of The Whole, Would Be Better For The World Than Capitalism.

Democratic Socialism

I Mostly Want To Remind Her Of The Recipes Of Healing, And Give Her My Own Made-on-the Spot Remedy For The Easing Of Her Pain. I Tell Her, “get A Pen. Stop Crying So You Can Write This Down And Start Working On It Tonight.” My Remedy Is Long. But The Last Item On The List Says: “when You Wake Up And Find Yourself Living Someplace Where There Is Nobody You Love And Trust, No Community, It Is Time To Leave Town – To Pack Up And Go (you Can Even Go Tonight). And Where You Need To Go Is Any Place Where There Are Arms That Can Hold You, That Will Not Let You Go.

Shaming Is One Of The Deepest Tools Of Imperialist, White Supremacist, Capitalist Patriarchy Because Shame Produces Trauma And Trauma Often Produces Paralysis.

If Any Female Feels She Need Anything Beyond Herself To Legitimate And Validate Her Existence, She Is Already Giving Away Her Power To Be Self-defining, Her Agency.

My Grief Was A Heavy, Despairing Sadness Caused By Parting From A Companion Of Many Years But, More Important, It Was A Despair Rooted In The Fear That Love Did Not Exist, Could Not Be Found. And Even If It Were Lurking Somewhere, I Might Never Know It In My Lifetime. It Had Become Hard For Me To Continue To Believe In Love's Promise When Everywhere I Turned The Enchantment Of Power Of The Terror Of Fear Overshadowed The Will To Love.

If We Want A Beloved Community, We Must Stand For Justice.

Beloved Community

Since The Notion That We Should All Forsake Attachment To Race And/or Cultural Identity And Be “just Humans” Within The Framework Of White Supremacy Has Usually Meant That Subordinate Groups Must Surrender Their Identities, Beliefs, Values, And Assimilate By Adopting The Values And Beliefs Of Privileged-class Whites, Rather Than Promoting Racial Harmony This Thinking Has Created A Fierce Cultural Protectionism.

Sometimes People Try To Destroy You, Precisely Because They Recognize Your Power - Not Because They Don't See It, But Because They See It And They Don't Want It To Exist.

The Challenge These Days, Is To Be Somewhere, To Belong To Some Particular Place, Invest Oneself In It, Draw Strength And Courage From It, To Dwell In A Community.

It's Really Important To Have Life Strategies And Part Of That Is Sort Of Knowing Where You Want To Go So You Can Have A Map That Helps You To Get There. And The Traditional Way Tells Us Oh We Get Into School And Someone Else Advises Us, Helps Us, But That Often Does Not Work For African Americans Female And Male. Because What Works For The Dominant Culture Often Does Not Work For Us.

African American

Loving Friendships Provide Us With A Space To Experience The Joy Of Community In A Relationship Where We Learn To Process All Our Issues, To Cope With Differences And Conflict While Staying Connected.

I'm Lucky. I Think It's Good That I Have A Body Of Work That Addresses Different Things In Different Ways.

The Intellectual Tradition Of The West Is Very Individualistic. It's Not Community-based. The Intellectual Is Often Thought Of As A Person Who Is Alone And Cut Off From The World. So I Have Had To Practice Being Willing To Leave The Space Of My Study To Be In Community, To Work In Community, And To Be Changed By Community.

I Was Teasing My Brother That He Was Penniless, Homeless, Jobless. Right Now In His Life, Racism Isn't The Central Highlighting Force: It's The World Of Work And Economics. It Doesn't Mean That He Isn't Influenced By Racism, But When He Wakes Up In The Morning The Thing That's Driving His World Is Really Issues Of Class, Economics And Power As They Articulate Themselves.

The Word "love" Is Most Often Defined As A Noun, Yet Al The More Astute Theorists Of Love Acknowledge That We Would All Love Better If We Used It As A Verb.

Writing And Performing Should Deepen The Meaning Of Words, Should Illuminate, Transfix And Transform.

I Think Our Culture Doesn't Recognize Passion, Because Real Passion Has The Power To Disrupt Boundaries.

The Rage Of The Oppressed Is Never The Same As The Rage Of The Privileged.

I'm Tired Of The Naked, Raped, Beaten Black Woman Body. I Want To See An Image Of Black Femaleness That Alters Our Universe In Some Way.

All Of Us In The Academy And In The Culture As A Whole Are Called To Renew Our Minds If We Are To Transform Educational Institutions-and Society-so That The Way We Live, Teach, And Work Can Reflect Our Joy In Cultural Diversity, Our Passion For Justice, And Our Love Of Freedom.

Had Middle Class Black Women Begun A Movement In Which They Had Labeled Themselves "oppressed," No One Would Have Taken Them Seriously.

African American

Sexism Has Always Been A Political Stance Mediating Social Domination, Enabling White Men And Black Men To Share A Common Sensibility About Sex Roles And The Importance Of Male Domination.

Writing And The Hope Of Writing Pulls Me Back From The Edges Of Despair. I Believe Insanity And Despair Are At Times One And The Same.

I Think Inequality Is In Our Minds. I Think This Is What We Learn Through Practice... The Bridge Of Illusion Must Be Shattered In Order For A Real Bridge To Be Constructed. One Of The Things We Learn Is That Inequality Is An Illusion.

The Power Of Patriarchy Has Been To Make Maleness Feared And To Make Men Feel That It Is Better To Be Feared That To Be Loved. Whether They Can Confess This Or Not, Men Know That Just Is Not True.

The Practice Of Love Offers No Place Of Safety. We Risk Loss, Hurt, Pain. We Risk Being Acted Upon By Forces Outside Our Control.

Wars Make People Rich - And They Make A Lot Of People Poor, And They Take A Lot Of People's Lives Away From Them.

I Feel Sad That We Have Allowed These Knee-jerk Feminists Who Want To Act Like It's A Struggle Against Men...but Again That's The Least Politically Developed Strand Of Feminism.

It Is Crucial For The Future Of The Black Liberation Struggle That We Remain Ever Mindful That Ours Is A Shared Struggle, That We Are Each Other's Fate.

Readers Forget That One Can Critique Yet Still Admire.

Women Have Endeavored To Guide Men To Love Because Patriarchal Thinking Has Sanctioned This Work Even As It Has Undermined It By Teaching Men To Refuse Guidance...a Useful Gift All Love's Practitioners Can Give Is The Offering Of Forgiveness. It Not Only Allows Us To Move Away From Blame, From Seeing Others As The Cause Of Our Sustained Lovelessness, But It Enables Us To Experience Agency, To Know We Can Be Responsible For Giving And Finding Love.

Shame Produces Trauma. Trauma Produces Paralysis.

Love Does Have The Power To Redeem But Only If We Are Ready For Redemption. Love Saves Us Only If We Want To Be Saved.

To Be Changed By Ideas Was Pure Pleasure. But To Learn Ideas That Ran Counter To Values And Beliefs Learned At Home Was To Place Oneself At Risk, To Enter The Danger Zone. Home Was The Place Where I Was Forced To Conform To Someone Else’s Image Of Who And What I Should Be. School Was The Place Where I Could Forget That Self And, Through Ideas, Reinvent Myself.

Love Is An Action, Never Simply A Feeling.

Power Feminism Is Just Another Scam In Which Women Get To Play Patriarchs And Pretend That The Power We Seek And Gain Liberates Us.

A Distinction Must Be Made Between That Writing Which Enables Us To Hold On To Life Even As We Are Clinging To Old Hurts And Wounds And That Writing Which Offers To Us A Space Where We Are Able To Confront Reality In Such A Way That We Live More Fully. Such Writing Is Not An Anchor That We Mistakenly Cling To So As Not To Drown. It Is Writing That Truly Rescues, That Enables Us To Reach The Shore, To Recover.

Any Woman Who Wishes To Be An Intellectual, To Write Non-fiction, To Deal With Theory, Faces A Lot Of Discrimination Coming Her Way And Perhaps Even Self-doubt Because There Aren't That Many Who've Gone Before You. And I Think That The Most Powerful Tool We Can Have Is To Be Clear About Our Intent. To Know What It Is We Want To Do Rather Than Going Into Institutions Thinking That The Institution Is Going To Frame For Us.

I Celebrate Teaching That Enables Transgressions - A Movement Against And Beyond Boundaries. It Is That Movement Which Makes Education The Practice Of Freedom.

We Often Cause Ourselves Suffering By Wanting Only To Live In A World Of Valleys, A World Without Struggle And Difficulty, A World That Is Flat, Plain, Consistent.

All The Work I Do Is Built On A Foundation Of Loving-kindness. Love Illuminates Matters.

Only Love Can Heal The Wounds Of The Past. However, The Intensity Of Our Woundedness Often Leads To A Closing Of The Heart, Making It Impossible For Us To Give Or Receive The Love That Is Given To Us.

Like Desire, Language Disrupts, Refuses To Be Contained Within Boundaries.

Knowledge Rooted In Experience Shapes What We Value And As A Consequence How We Know What We Know As Well As How We Use What We Know.

Once You Do Away With The Idea Of People As Fixed, Static Entities, Then You See That People Can Change, And There Is Hope.

Even The Most Subjected Person Has Moments Of Rage And Resentment So Intense That They Respond, They Act Against. There Is An Inner Uprising That Leads To Rebellion, However Short- Lived. It May Be Only Momentary But It Takes Place. That Space Within Oneself Where Resistance Is Possible Remains.

We All May Have Prejudices, But We're Not All Part Of A System That Reinforces, Reinvents And Reaffirms Itself Every Day Of Our Lives, Systemically.

In An Ideal World We Would All Learn In Childhood To Love Ourselves. We Would Grow, Being Secure In Our Worth And Value, Spreading Love Wherever We Went, Letting Our Light Shine. If We Did Not Learn Self-love In Our Youth, There Is Still Hope. The Light Of Love Is Always In Us, No Matter How Cold The Flame. It Is Always Present, Waiting For The Spark To Ignite, Waiting For The Heart To Awaken And Call Us Back To The First Memory Of Being The Life Force Inside A Dark Place Waiting To Be Born - Waiting To See The Light.

Some People Act As Though Art That Is For A Mass Audience Is Not Good Art, And I Think This Has Been A Very Negative Thing. I Know That I Have Wanted Very Much To Write Books That Are Accessible To The Widest Audience Possible.

... We Need To Interrogate "reverence," For Idolization Can Be Another Way One Is Objectified And Not Really Taken Seriously.

Honesty And Openness Is Always The Foundation Of Insightful Dialogue.

Few People Who Are Hit Once By Someone They Love Respond In The Way They Might To A Singular Physical Assault By A Stranger.

Fame Is Fun, Money Is Useful, Celebrity Can Be Exciting, But Finally Life Is About Optimal Well-being And How We Achieve That In Dominator Culture, In A Greedy Culture, In A Culture That Uses So Much Of The World’s Resources. How Do Men And Women, Boys And Girls, Live Lives Of Compassion, Justice And Love? And I Think That’s The Visionary Challenge For Feminism And All Other Progressive Movements For Social Change.

My Work Is Mostly Influenced By The Concrete Circumstances Of Our Daily Lives.

Solidarity Is Not The Same As Support. To Experience Solidarity, We Must Have A Community Of Interests, Shared Beliefs And Goals Around Which To Unite, To Build Sisterhood. Support Can Be Occasional. It Can Be Given And Just As Easily Withdrawn. Solidarity Requires Sustained, Ongoing Commitment.

Even The Wealthiest Professional Woman Can Be "brought Down" By Being In A Relationship Where She Longs To Be Loved And Is Consistently Lied To. To The Degree That She Trusts Her Male Companion, Lying And Other Forms Of Betrayal Will Most Likely Shatter Her Self-confidence And Self-esteem.

I'm Such A Girl For The Living Room. I Really Like To Stay In My Nest And Not Move. I Travel In My Mind, And That That's A Rigorous State Of Journeying For Me. My Body Isn't That Interested In Moving From Place To Place.

I Believe That It Is Impossible For Two Individuals Not Committed To Their Own And Each Other’s Well Being To Sustain A Healthy And Enduring Relationship.

I Would Also Say That, In Practice, Many More Americans Are Anarchists Than Would Ever Use That Term.

The First Act Of Violence That Patriarchy Demands Of Males Is Not Violence Toward Women. Instead Patriarchy Demands Of All Males That They Engage In Acts Of Psychic Self-mutilation, That They Kill Off The Emotional Parts Of Themselves. If An Individual Is Not Successful In Emotionally Crippling Himself, He Can Count On Patriarchal Men To Enact Rituals Of Power That Will Assault His Self-esteem.

When We Choose To Love, We Choose To Move Against Fear, Against Alienation And Separation. The Choice To Love Is A Choice To Connect, To Find Ourselves In The Other.

Of All The Definitions Of Love That Abound In Our Universe, A Special Favorite Of Mine Is... “the Will To Extend One's Self For The Purpose Of Nurturing One's Own Or Another's Spiritual Growth.”

Whether We Learn How To Love Ourselves And Others Will Depend On The Presence Of A Loving Environment. Self-love Cannot Flourish In Isolation.

Imagine How Much Easier It Would Be For Us To Learn How To Love If We Began With A Shared Definition.

The Practice Of Love Is The Most Powerful Antidote To The Politics Of Domination.

Why Is It That Many Contemporary Male Thinkers, Especially Men Of Color, Repudiate The Imperialist Legacy Of Columbus But Affirm Dimensions Of That Legacy By Their Refusal To Repudiate Patriarchy?

I Write These Words To Bear Witness To The Primacy Of Resistance Struggle In Any Situation Of Domination (even Within Family Life); To The Strength And Power That Emerges From Sustained Resistance And The Profound Conviction That These Forces Can Be Healing, Can Protect Us From Dehumanization And Despair.

Secrets Find A Way Out In Sleep . . . It Is The Place Where There Is No Pretense.

One Difference With The Political Writings, Whether About Feminism Or Class, Is That The Intent Is To Change How People Think Of A Certain Political Reality; Whereas With Cultural Criticism, The Goal Is To Illuminate Something That Is Already There.

There Are Times When Personal Experience Keeps Us From Reaching The Mountain Top And So We Let It Go Because The Weight Of It Is Too Heavy. And Sometimes The Mountain Top Is Difficult To Reach With All Our Resources, Factual And Confessional, So We Are Just There, Collectively Grasping, Feeling The Limitations Of Knowledge, Longing Together, Yearning For A Way To Reach That Highest Point. Even This Yearning Is A Way To Know.

When We Work With Love We Renew The Spirit; That Renewal Is An Act Of Self-love, It Nurtures Our Growth.

Often Girls Feel Deeply Cared About As Small Children But Then Find As We Develop Willpower And Independent Thought That The World Stops Affirming Us, That We Are Seen As Unlovable.

The Time Has Come To Tell The Truth. Again. There Is No Love Without Justice. Men And Women Who Cannot Be Just Deny Themselves And Everyone They Choose To Be Intimate With The Freedom To Know Mutual Love. If We Remain Unable To Imagine A World Where Love Can Be Recognized As A Unifying Principle That Can Lead Us To Seek And Use Power Wisely, Then We Will Remain Wedded To A Culture Of Domination That Requires Us To Choose Power Over Love.

I Think The Invitation Offered The Non-black Reader Is To Join Us In This Expression Of Our Familiarity And Via That Joining, Come To Understand That When Black People Come Together To Celebrate And Rejoice In Black Critical Thinking, We Do So Not To Exclude Or To Separate, But To Participate More Fully In World Community. However, We Must First Be Able To Dialogue With One Another, To Give One Another Subject-to-subject Recognition That Is An Act Of Resistance That Is Part Of The Decolonizing, Anti-racist Process.

All Our Silences In The Face Of Racist Assault Are Acts Of Complicity.

Young People Are Cynical About Love. Ultimately, Cynicism Is The Great Mask Of The Disappointed And Betrayed Heart.

I Am Passionate About Everything In My Life--first And Foremost, Passionate About Ideas. And That's A Dangerous Person To Be In This Society, Not Just Because I'm A Woman, But Because It's Such A Fundamentally Anti-intellectual, Anti-critical Thinking Society. --bell Hooks

I Think Part Of Western Metaphysical Dualism Is, We're Always Being Asked To Choose One Over The Other.

Contrary To What We May Have Been Taught To Think, Unnecessary And Unchosen Suffering Wounds Us But Need Not Scar Us For Life. It Does Mark Us. What We Allow The Mark Of Our Suffering To Become Is In Our Own Hands.

I Think This Is Often Misunderstood In The West, Where People Feel That There Can Be No Justice Unless Everything Is The Same. This Is Part Of Why I Feel We Have To Relearn How We Think About Love, Because We Think About Love So Much In Terms Of The Self.

In A Culture Of Domination, Preoccupation With Victimage Is Inevitable.

Yesterday I Was Thinking About The Whole Idea Of Genius And Creative People, And The Notion That If You Create Some Magical Art, Somehow That Exempts You From Having To Pay Attention To The Small Things.

As Females In A Patriarchal Culture, We Were Not Slaves Of Love; Most Of Us Were And Are Slaves Of Longing-- Yearning For A Master Who Will Set Us Free And Claim Us Because We Cannot Claim Ourselves

Writing Is My Passion. It Is A Way To Experience The Ecstatic. The Root Understanding Of The Word Ecstasy—“to Stand Outside”—comes To Me In Those Moments When I Am Immersed So Deeply In The Act Of Thinking And Writing That Everything Else, Even Flesh, Falls Away.

We Judge On The Basis Of What Somebody Looks Like, Skin Color, Whether We Think They're Beautiful Or Not. That Space On The Internet Allows You To Converse With Somebody With None Of Those Things Involved.

Let's Face It, War In Its Essence Is Another Form Of Capitalism.

The Wounded Heart Learns Self-love By First Overcoming Low Self-esteem.

Feminist Pedagogy Can Only Be Liberatory If It Is Truly Revolutionary Because The Mechanisms Of Appropriation Within White Supremacist, Capitalist Patriarchy Are Able To Co-opt With Tremendous Ease That Which Merely Appears Radical Or Subversive

The Function Of Art Is To Do More Than Tell It Like It Is-it’s To Imagine What Is Possible.

They Wanted Black Women To Conform To The Gender Norms Set By White Society. They Wanted To Be Recognized As 'men,' As Patriarchs, By Other Men, Including White Men. Yet They Could Not Assume This Position If Black Women Were Not Willing To Conform To Prevailing Sexist Gender Norms. Many Black Women Who Has Endured White-supremacist Patriarchal Domination During Slavery Did Not Want To Be Dominated By Black Men After Manumission.

Dominator Culture Has Tried To Keep Us All Afraid, To Make Us Choose Safety Instead Of Risk, Sameness Instead Of Diversity. Moving Through That Fear, Finding Out What Connects Us, Revelling In Our Differences; This Is The Process That Brings Us Closer, That Gives Us A World Of Shared Values, Of Meaningful Community.

. . . No Black Woman Can Become An Intellectual Without Decolonizing Her Mind.

As We Search As A Nation For Constructive Ways To Challenge Racism And White Supremacy, It Is Absolutely Essential That Progressive Female Voices Gain A Hearing.

Both Men And Women Remain In Dysfunctional, Loveless Relationships When It Is Materially Opportune.

... Privacy Is ... Connected To A Politics Of Domination.

Sadly, Children's Passion For Thinking Often Ends When They Encounter A World That Seeks To Educate Them For Conformity And Obedience Only.

Since Loving Is About Knowing, We Have More Meaningful Love Relationships When We Know Each Other And It Takes Time To Know Each Other.

Love Relationship

To Indoctrinate Boys Into The Rules Of Patriarchy, We Force Them To Feel Pain And To Deny Their Feelings.

Stereotypes Abound When There Is Distance. They Are An Invention, A Pretense That One Knows When The Steps That Would Make Real Knowing Possible Cannot Be Taken Or Are Not Allowed.

There Is Light In Darkness, You Just Have To Find It.

No Other Group In America Has So Had Their Identity Socialized Out Of Existence As Have Black Women... When Black People Are Talked About The Focus Tends To Be On Black Men; And When Women Are Talked About The Focus Tends To Be On White Women.

Popular Escapist Fiction Enchants Adult Readers Without Challenging Them To Be Educated For Critical Consciousness.

None Of Us, Irrespective Of Our Sexual Preference And/or Practice, Imagine That We Can Have An Intimate Relationship With A Partner And Always Have Seamless Harmony. Indeed, Most Of Us Assume That Once The “honeymoon” Period Is Over Differences Will Emerge And Conflicts Will Happen. Positively, We Also Assume That We Will Be “safe“ In Those Moments; That Even If Voices Are Raised And Emotions Expressed Are Intense, There Will Not Be And Should Not Be Any Abuse Or Any Reason To Be Unsafe, And That The Will To Connect And Communicate Will Prevail.

Intimate Relationships

All Efforts At Self-transformation Challenge Us To Engage In On-going, Critical Self-examination And Reflection About Feminist Practice, And About How We Live In The World. This Individual Commitment, When Coupled With Engagement In Collective Discussion, Provides A Space For Critical Feedback Which Strengthens Our Efforts To Change And Make Ourselves Anew.

A Very Hurting Thing For Black Americans - To Feel That We Can't Love Our Enemies. People Forget What A Great Tradition We Have As African-americans In The Practice Of Forgiveness And Compassion. And If We Neglect That Tradition, We Suffer.

I Think We Have To Talk About Educating The People For Critical Consciousness About What Anarchy Is.

I Get So Tired Of People Acting Like, You Know, Black Men And Women Never Help Each Other, Never Support Each Other.

Within The New Self-help Books For Women, Patriarachy And Male Domination Are Rarely Identified As Forces That Lead To The Oppression, Exploitation, And Domination Of Women. Instead, These Books Suggest That Individual Relationships Between Men And Women Can Be Changed Solely By Women Making The Right Choices.

Isolation And Loneliness Are Central Causes Of Depression And Despair.

If I Do Not Speak In A Language That Can Be Understood There Is Little Chance For A Dialogue.

Beloved Community Is Formed Not By The Eradication Of Difference But By Its Affirmation, By Each Of Us Claiming The Identities And Cultural Legacies That Shape Who We Are And How We Live In The World.

Beloved Community

It Is Necessary To Remember, As We Think Critically About Domination, That We All Have The Capacity To Act In Ways That Oppress, Dominate, Wound (whether Or Not That Power Is Institutionalized). It Is Necessary To Remember That It Is First The Potential Oppressor Within That We Must Resist – The Potential Victim Within That We Must Rescue – Otherwise We Cannot Hope For An End To Domination, For Liberation.

I Feel That My Environment Reflects My Belief In The Grace And Art And Elegance Of Living Simply.

We Don't Hear Much From Revolutionary Feminists Who Are White Because They're Not Serving The Bourgeois Agenda Of The Status Quo.

Sadly, Anarchy Has Gotten Such A Bad Name. We Don't Really See Much Evidence Of It Because People Associate It With Reckless Abandon.

If We Are Ever To Construct A Feminist Movement That Is Not Based On The Premise That Men And Women Are Always At War With One Another, Then We Must Be Willing To Acknowledge The Appropriateness Of Complex Critical Responses To Writing By Men Even If It Is Sexist. Clearly Women Can Learn From Writers Whose Work Is Sexist, Even Be Inspired By It, Because Sexism May Be Simply One Dimension Of That Work. Concurrently Fiercely Critiquing The Sexism Does Not Mean That One Does Not Value The Work.

Dare To Look At The Intersectionalities.

Intersectionality

Representation Is A Crucial Location Of Struggle For Any Exploited And Oppressed People Asserting Subjectivity And Decolonization Of The Mind.

Since Anti-racist Individuals Did Not Control Mass Media, The Media Became The Primary Tool That Would Be Used And Is Still Used To Convince Black Viewers, And Everyone Else, Of Black Inferiority.

Black Males Who Refuse Categorization Are Rare, For The Price Of Visibility In The Contemporary World Of White Supremacy Is That Black Identity Be Defined In Relation To The Stereotype Whether By Embodying It Or Seeking To Be Other Than It…negative Stereotypes About The Nature Of Black Masculinity Continue To Overdetermine The Identities Black Males Are Allowed To Fashion For Themselves.

Language Is Also A Place Of Struggle.

Feminist Politics Aims To End Domination, To Free Us To Be Who We Are - To Live Lives Where We Love Justice, Where We Can Live In Peace. Feminism Is For Everybody.

Commitment To Truth Telling Lays The Groundwork For The Openness And Honesty That Is The Heartbeat Of Love.

It Is Important For This Country To Make Its People So Obsessed With Their Own Liberal Individualism That They Do Not Have Time To Think About A World Larger Than Self.

A Generous Heart Is Always Open, Always Ready To Receive Our Going And Coming. In The Midst Of Such Love We Need Never Fear Abandonment. This Is The Most Precious Gift True Love Offers - The Experience Of Knowing We Always Belong.

To Be Truly Visionary We Have To Root Our Imagination In Our Concrete Reality While Simultaneously Imagining Possibilities Beyond That Reality.

When I Write Provocative Social And Cultural Criticism That Causes Readers To Stretch Their Minds, To Think Beyond Set Paradigms, I Think Of That Work As Love In Action. While It May Challenge, Disturb And At Times Even Frighten Or Enrage Readers, Love Is Always The Place Where I Begin And End.

To The Extent That We Live In A Postmodern World And It Shapes The Concrete Circumstances Of Our Daily Lives, I Would Say Postmodernism Affects My Work Or Influences My Work.

A Central Tenet Of Modern Feminist Thought Has Been The Assertion That "all Women Are Oppressed." This Assertion Implies That Women Share A Common Lot, That Factors Like Class, Race, Religion, Sexual Preference, Etc. Do Not Create A Diversity Of Experience That Determines The Extent To Which Sexism Will Be An Oppressive Force In The Lives Of Individual Women.

To Return To Love, To Get The Love We Always Wanted But Never Had, To Have The Love We Want But Are Not Prepared To Give, We Seek Romantic Relationships. We Believe These Relationships, More Than Any Other, Will Rescue And Redeem Us. True Love Does Have The Power To Redeem But Only If We Are Ready For Redemption. Love Saves Us Only If We Want To Be Saved.

It Is Poetry That Changes Everything.

Most Of Us Find It Difficult To Accept A Definition Of Love That Says We Are Never Loved In A Context Where There Is Abuse.

Definition Of Love

Feminist Education — The Feminist Classroom — Is And Should Be A Place Where There Is A Sense Of Struggle, Where There Is Visible Acknowledgment Of The Union Of Theory And Practice, Where We Work Together As Teachers And Students To Overcome The Estrangement And Alienation That Have Become So Much The Norm In The Contemporary University.

This Fear Of Maleness That They Inspire Estranges Men From Every Female In Their Lives To Greater Or Lesser Degrees, And Men Feel The Loss. Ultimately, One Of The Emotional Costs Of Allegiance To Patriarchy Is To Be Seen As Unworthy Of Trust. If Women And Girls In Patriarchal Culture Are Taught To See Every Male, Including The Males With Whom We Are Intimate, As Potential Rapists And Murderers, Then We Cannot Offer Them Our Trust, And Without Trust There Is No Love.

One Of The Major Differences I See In The Political Climate Today Is That There Is Less Collective Support For Coming To Critical Consciousness – In Communities, In Institutions, Among Friends.

Living Simply Makes Loving Simple.

Changing How We See Images Is Clearly One Way To Change The World.

Changing The World

The True Teacher Is Within Us. A Good Teacher Is Someone Who Can Help You To Go Back And Touch The True Teacher Within, Because You Already Have The Insight Within You.

But Love Is Really More Of An Interactive Process. It's About What We Do Not Just What We Feel. It's A Verb, Not A Noun.

The Fact Is That It Was Bourgeois White Feminism That I Was Reacting Against When I Stood In My First Women's Studies Classes And Said, "black Women Have Always Worked."

The One Person Who Will Never Leave Us, Whom We Will Never Lose, Is Ourself. Learning To Love Our Female Selves Is Where Our Search For Love Must Begin.

Searching For Love

We Have To Constantly Critique Imperialist White Supremacist Patriarchal Culture Because It Is Normalized By Mass Media And Rendered Unproblematic.

The Process Begins With The Individual Woman’s Acceptance That American Women, Without Exception, Are Socialized To Be Racist, Classist And Sexist, In Varying Degrees, And That Labeling Ourselves Feminists Does Not Change The Fact That We Must Consciously Work To Rid Ourselves Of The Legacy Of Negative Socialization.

If We Want A Beloved Community, We Must Stand For Justice, Have Recognition For Difference Without Attaching Difference To Privilege.

Beloved Community

Feminism Is The Struggle To End Sexist Oppression. Its Aim Is Not To Benefit Solely Any Specific Group Of Women, Any Particular Race Or Class Of Women. It Does Not Privilege Women Over Men. It Has The Power To Transform Meaningfully All Our Lives

Women Are Often Belittled For Trying To Resurrect These Men And Bring Them Back To Life And To Love. They Are In A World That Would Be Even More Alienated And Violent If Caring Women Did Not Do The Work Of Teaching Men Who Have Lost Touch With Themselves How To Love Again. This Labor Of Love Is Futile Only When The Men In Question Refuse To Awaken, Refuse Growth. At This Point It Is A Gesture Of Self-love For Women To Break Their Commitment And Move On.

To Begin By Always Thinking Of Love As An Action Rather Than A Feeling Is One Way In Which Anyone Using The Word In This Manner Automatically Assumes Accountability And Responsibility.

One Of The Things That We Must Do As Teachers Is Twirl Around And Around, And Find Out What Works With The Situation That We're In. Our Models Might Not Work. And That Twirling, Changing, Is Part Of The Empowerment.

When Men And Women Punish Each Other For Truth Telling, We Reinforce The Notion That Lies Are Better.

Telling The Truth

Teaching Black Studies, I Find That Students Are Quick To Label A Black Person Who Has Grown Up In A Predominantly White Setting And Attended Similar Schools As "not Black Enough." ...our Concept Of Black Experience Has Been Too Narrow And Constricting.

I Do Get A Little Pissed At People Who Write Me And Want Me To Do Things, And Spell My Name Wrong.

Self-love Is The Foundation Of Our Loving Practice. Without It Our Other Efforts To Love Fail. Giving Ourselves Love We Provide Our Inner Being With The Opportunity To Have The Unconditional Love We May Have Always Longed To Receive From Someone Else.

Feminist Effort To End Patriarchal Domination Should Be Of Primary Concern Precisely Because It Insists On The Eradication Of Exploitation And Oppression In The Family Context And In All Other Intimate Relationships. It Is That Political Movement Which Most Radically Addresses The Person – The Personal – Citing The Need For The Transformation Of Self, Of Relationships, So That We Might Be Better Able To Act In A Revolutionary Manner, Challenging And Resisting Domination, Transforming The World Outside The Self.

Intimate Relationships

We Are Rarely Able To Interact Only With Folks Like Ourselves, Who Think As We Do. No Matter How Much Some Of Us Deny This Reality And Long For The Safety And Familiarity Of Sameness, Inclusive Ways Of Knowing And Living Offer Us The Only True Way To Emancipate Ourselves From The Divisions That Limit Our Minds And Imaginations.

Anarchists Have Always Gone Against The Grain, And That's Been A Place Of Hope.

Genuine Love Is Rarely An Emotional Space Where Needs Are Instantly Gratified. To Know Love We Have To Invest Time And Commitment...'dreaming That Love Will Save Us, Solve All Our Problems Or Provide A Steady State Of Bliss Or Security Only Keeps Us Stuck In Wishful Fantasy, Undermining The Real Power Of The Love -- Which Is To Transform Us.' Many People Want Love To Function Like A Drug, Giving Them An Immediate And Sustained High. They Want To Do Nothing, Just Passively Receive The Good Feeling.

When Angels Speak Of Love They Tell Us It Is Only By Loving That We Enter An Earthly Paradise. They Tell Us Paradise Is Our Home And Love Our True Destiny.

It's Interesting--the Way In Which One Has To Balance Life--because You Have To Know When To Let Go And When To Pull Back.... There's Always Some Liminal (as Opposed To Subliminal) Space In Between Which Is Harder To Inhabit Because It Never Feels As Safe As Moving From One Extreme To Another.

I Feel Like There Is Always Something Trying To Pull Us Back Into Sleep, That There Is This Sort Of Seductive Quality In All The Hedonistic Pleasures That Pull On Us.

There Will Be No Mass-based Feminist Movement As Long As Feminist Ideas Are Understood Only By A Well-educated Few.

I Guess I Wish We Could Talk About: What Does It Mean To Have A Politics Of Intersectionality That Also Privileges What Form Of Domination Is Most Oppressing Us At A Given Moment In Time.

If Only One Party In The Relationship Is Working To Create Love, To Create The Space Of Emotional Connection, The Dominator Model Remains In Place And The Relationship Just Becomes A Site For Continuous Power Struggle.

As All Advocates Of Feminist Politics Know Most People Do Not Understand Sexism Or If They Do They Think It Is Not A Problem. Masses Of People Think That Feminism Is Always And Only About Women Seeking To Be Equal To Men. And A Huge Majority Of These Folks Think Feminism Is Anti-male. Their Misunderstanding Of Feminist Politics Reflects The Reality That Most Folks Learn About Feminism From Patriarchal Mass Media.

Love Is A Combination Of Care, Commitment, Knowledge, Responsibility, Respect And Trust.

Life-transforming Ideas Have Always Come To Me Through Books.

Professors Rarely Speak Of The Place Of Eros Or The Erotic In Our Classrooms. Trained In The Philosophical Context Of Western Metaphysical Dualism, Many Of Us Have Accepted The Notion That There Is A Split Between The Body And The Mind. Believing This, Individuals Enter The Classroom To Teach As Though Only The Mind Is Present, And Not The Body.

We Must Continually Remind Students In The Classroom That Expression Of Different Opinions And Dissenting Ideas Affirms The Intellectual Process. We Should Forcefully Explain That Our Role Is Not To Teach Them To Think As We Do But Rather To Teach Them, By Example, The Importance Of Taking A Stance That Is Rooted In Rigorous Engagement With The Full Range Of Ideas About A Topic.

I Think This Is What People Misunderstand About Martin Luther King Saying To Love Your Enemies. They Think He Was Just Using This Silly Little Phrase, But What He Meant Was That As Black Americans We Need To Let Our Anger Go, Because Holding On To It We Hold Ourselves Down. We Oppress Ourselves By Holding On To Anger.

We Know That So Much Of The War That Is Happening Is The Attempt Of One Group To Snatch The Resources Of Another Group.

I Gather Together The Dreams, Fantasies, Experiences That Preoccupied Me As A Girl, That Stay With Me And Appear And Reappear In Different Shapes And Forms In All My Work. Without Telling Everything That Happened, They Document All That Remains Most Vivid.

Revolutionary Feminism Embraces Men Who Are Able To Change, Who Are Capable Of Responding Mutually In A Subject-to-subject Encounter Where Desire And Fulfillment Are In No Way Linked To Coercive Subjugation. This Feminist Vision Of The Sexual Imaginary Is The Space Few Men Seem Able To Enter.

When We Drop Fear, We Can Draw Nearer To People, We Can Draw Nearer To The Earth, We Can Draw Nearer To All The Heavenly Creatures That Surround Us.

The Greatest Movement For Social Justice Our Country Has Ever Known Is The Civil Rights Movement And It Was Totally Rooted In A Love Ethic.

I Often Find It Easier To Be Teaching Or Giving To Others, And Often Struggle With The Place Of My Own Pleasure And Joy.

None Of Us Should Be Ashamed To Speak Of Our Class Power Or Lack Of It. Overcoming Fear, Even The Fear Of Being Immodest, And Acting Courageously To Bring Issues Of Class- Especially Radical Standpoints – Into The Discourse Of Blackness Is A Gesture Of Militant Defiance, One That Runs Counter To Bourgeois Insistence That We Think Of “money” In Particular And Class In General As Private Matters.

Class Is Rarely Talked About In The United States; Nowhere Is There A More Intense Silence About The Reality Of Class Differences Than In Educational Settings.

If Anything I Think Postmodernism Has The Least Impact On My Work.

I Think Stress Is Anything Going On In Our Lives That Impinges On Our Capacity To Have Optimum Well Being.

Because We Have Learned To Believe Negativity Is More Realistic, It Appears More Real Than Any Positive Voice.

... The Outcome Of The Clarence Thomas Hearings And His Subsequent Appointment To The Supreme Court Shows How Misguided, Narrow Notions Of Racial Solidarity That Suppress Dissent And Critique Can Lead Black Folks To Support Individuals Who Will Not Protect Their Rights.

In Patriarchal Culture Men Are Especially Inclined To See Love As Something They Should Receive Without Expending Effort. More Often Than Not They Do Not Want To Do The Work That Love Demands. When The Practice Of Love Invites Us To Enter A Place Of Potential Bliss That Is At The Same Time A Place Of Critical Awakening And Pain, Many Of Us Turn Our Backs On Love.

What's So Amazing About This Historical Moment Is That It Is Bringing Class To The Fore And We Have To Think About The Nature Of Work And Hierarchy.

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Norman Vincent Peale

Ernest Hemingway

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