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Patriarchy, Like Any System Of Domination (for Example, Racism), Relies On Socializing Everyone To Believe That In All Human Relations There Is An Inferior And A Superior Party, One Person Is Strong, The Other Weak, And That It Is Therefore Natural For The Powerful To Rule Over The Powerless. To Those Who Support Patriarchal Thinking, Maintaining Power And Control Is Acceptable By Whatever Means.

-Bell Hooks

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Patriarchy, Like Any System

Bell Hooks

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Patriarchy, Like Any System Of Domination (for Example, Racism), Relies On Socializing Everyone To Believe That In All Human Relations There Is An Inferior And A Superior Party, One Person Is Strong, The Other Weak, And That It Is Therefore Natural For The Powerful To Rule Over The Powerless. To Those Who Support Patriarchal Thinking, Maintaining Power And Control Is Acceptable By Whatever Means.

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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.

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The Moment We Choose To Love We Begin To Move Towards Freedom.

Love Is First And Foremost Exemplified By Action - By Practice - Not Solely By Feeling.

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.

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

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.

Do Not Expect To Receive The Love From Someone Else You Do Not Give Yourself.

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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.

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Feminism Is A Struggle To End Sexist Oppression. Therefore, It Is Necessarily A Struggle To Eradicate The Ideology Of Domination That Permeates Western Culture On Various Levels.

Western Culture

Abuse And Neglect Negate Love. Care And Affirmation, The Opposite Of Abuse And Humiliation, Are The Foundation Of Love. No One Can Rightfully Claim To Be Loving When Behaving Abusively.

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Honesty And Openness Is Always The Foundation Of Insightful Dialogue.

Since We Live In A Society That Promotes Faddism And Temporary Superficial Adaptation Of Different Values, We Are Easily Convinced That Changes Have Occurred In Arenas Where There Has Been Little Or No Change.

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.

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

It Is No Accident That This Homeplace, As Fragile And As Transitional As It May Be, A Makeshift Shed, A Small Bit Of Earth Where One Rests, Is Always Subject To Violation And Destruction. For When A People No Longer Have The Space To Construct Homeplace, We Cannot Build A Meaningful Community Of Resistance.

I Think It's Crazy For Us To Think That People Don't Understand What's Being Foregrounded In Their Lives At A Given Point In Time.

Usually, When People Talk About The "strength" Of Black Women . . . . They Ignore The Reality That To Be Strong In The Face Of Oppression Is Not The Same As Overcoming Oppression, That Endurance Is Not To Be Confused With Transformation.

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.

Spirituality And Spiritual Life Give Us The Strength To Love.

If We Move Away From Either/or Thinking, And If We Think, Okay, Every Day Of My Life That I Walk Out Of My House I Am A Combination Of Race, Gender, Class, Sexual Preference And Religion Or What Have You, What Gets Foregrounded?

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

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.

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

Within A Capitalist Consumer Society, The Cult Of Personality Has The Power To Subsume Ideas, To Make The Person, The Personality Into The Product And Not The Work Itself.

Cult Of Personality

Couples Who Rarely Or Never Have Sex Can Know Lifelong Love.

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

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.

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

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

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.

We Don't Really Live In A Culture That Loves Boys Or Loves Children, And We Don't Encourage Boys To Be Whole.

Hip-hop Is Diverse. But The White, Capitalist Producers And Distributors Of Hip-hop Are Most Interested In The Hip-hip That Is Misogynist, That Is Black-hating, That Is Pugilistic, That Is To Say All About Fighting And War And Killing And Gangsterism.

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

Justice Is Possible Without Equality, I Believe, Because Of Compassion And Understanding. If I Have Compassion, Then If I Have More Than You, Which Is Unequal, I Will Still Do The Just Thing By You.

When We Are More Energized By The Practice Of Blaming Than We Are By Efforts To Create Transformation, We Not Only Cannot Find Relief From Suffering, We Are Creating The Conditions That Help Keep Us Stuck In The Status Quo

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.

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.

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.

When The Feminist Movement Was At Its Zenith In The Late 60's And Early 70's, There Was A Lot Of Moving Away From The Idea Of The Person. It Was: Let's Talk About The Ideas Behind The Work, And The People Matter Less. It Was Kind Of A Gimmicky Thing, But Lots Of Feminist Women Were Doing It. Many Of Us Took The Names Of Our Female Ancestors - Bell Hooks Is My Maternal Great Grandmother - To Honor Them And Debunk The Notion That We Were These Unique, Exceptional Women. We Wanted To Say, Actually, We Were The Products Of The Women Who'd Gone Before Us.

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.

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."

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

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.

I Don't Have Issues Around How I'm Identified.

...move From Emphasis On Personal Lifestyle Issues Toward Creating Political Paradigms And Radical Models Of Social Change That Emphasize Collective As Well As Individual Change.

Feminism Is For Everybody

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.

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.

Yearning Is The Word That Best Describes A Common Psychological State Shared By Many Of Us, Cutting Across Boundaries Of Race, Class, Gender, And Sexual Practice.

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

It Is Obvious That Many Women Have Appropriated Feminism To Serve Their Own Ends, Especially Those White Women Who Have Been At The Forefront Of The Movement; But Rather Than Resigning Myself To This Appropriation I Choose To Re-appropriate The Term “feminism,” To Focus On The Fact That To Be “feminist” In Any Authentic Sense Of The Term Is To Want For All People, Female And Male, Liberation From Sexist Role Patterns, Domination, And Oppression.

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

It Is Poetry That Changes Everything.

Right Now, For Many Americans, Class Is Being Foregrounded Like Never Before Because Of The Economic Situation. It Doesn't Mean That Race Doesn't Matter, Or Gender Doesn't Matter, But It Means That Right Now In Many People's Lives, In The Lives Of My Own Family Members, People Are Losing Jobs, Insurance.

There Must Exist A Paradigm, A Practical Model For Social Change That Includes An Understanding Of Ways To Transform Consciousness That Are Linked To Efforts To Transform Structures.

You Have To Trust That If You Are Calling My Name In A Way That Is Offensive To Me, I'm Going To Share It With You. But You Also Have To Know What Your Feelings Are Behind Calling Me "bell."

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.

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.

What We Do Is More Important Than What We Say Or What We Say We Believe.

Individuals Who Want To Believe That There Is No Fulfillment In Love, That True Love Does Not Exist, Cling To These Assumptions Because This Despair Is Actually Easier To Face Than The Reality That Love Is A Real Fact Of Life But Is Absent From Their Lives.

The Capacity To Love Is Tied To Being Able To Be Awake, To Being Able To Move Out Of Yourself And Be With Someone Else In A Manner That Is Not About Your Desire To Possess Them, But To Be With Them, To Be In Union And Communion.

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.

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