Background Image

...

What's Really Sad Is That So Many Young Women Between The Ages Of 16 And 25 Are Ignorant And They Already Believe That Women Get The Same Pay As Men. They Don't Even Really Understand That Equality Hasn't Happened With The Pay Force.

-Bell Hooks

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

What's Really Sad Is

Bell Hooks

...

What's Really Sad Is That So Many Young Women Between The Ages Of 16 And 25 Are Ignorant And They Already Believe That Women Get The Same Pay As Men. They Don't Even Really Understand That Equality Hasn't Happened With The Pay Force.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Bell Hooks

The Notion That Black Folks Have Nothing To Learn From Scholarship That May Reflect Racial Or Racist Biases Is Dangerous. It Promotes Closed-mindedness And A Narrow Understanding Of Knowledge To Hold That "race" Is Such An Overwhelming Concept That It Negates The Validity Of Any Insights Contained In A Work That May Have Some Racist Or Sexist Aspects.

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

[o]ne Of The Most Vital Ways We Sustain Ourselves Is By Building Communities Of Resistance, Places Where We Know We Are Not Alone.

There Is No Politically Neutral Art.

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.

Our Hearts Connect With Lots Of Folks In A Lifetime But Most Of Us Will Go To Our Graves With No Experience Of True Love.

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.

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

I Think The Women's Movement Has Had A Major Impact On Everybody's Lives In Our Nation And In The World As A Whole.

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.

Living Simply Makes Loving Simple.

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

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.

In 2014, When Hillary Clinton Was Not Yet Running For President, I Stated That I Was Not In Agreement With Her Politics. More Recently, When Asked My Thoughts About Hillary Clinton During A Public Conversation With Gloria Steinem, I Stated, "she Embodies The Very Best Of Imperialist White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy, But That Doesn't Mean That We Shouldn't Vote For Her."

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

...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.

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

If I Were Really Asked To Define Myself, I Wouldn’t Start With Race; I Wouldn’t Start With Blackness; I Wouldn’t Start With Gender; I Wouldn’t Start With Feminism. I Would Start With Stripping Down To What Fundamentally Informs My Life, Which Is That I’m A Seeker On The Path. I Think Of Feminism, And I Think Of Anti-racist Struggles As Part Of It. But Where I Stand Spiritually Is, Steadfastly, On A Path About Love.

Sadly, At A Time When So Much Sophisticated Cultural Criticism By Hip Intellectuals From Diverse Locations Extols A Vision Of Cultural Hybridity, Border Crossing, Subjectivity Constructed Out Of Plurality, The Vast Majority Of Folks In This Society Still Believe In A Notion Of Identity That Is Rooted In A Sense Of Essential Traits And Characteristics That Are Fixed And Static.

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.

Even When People Capitalize My Name, I Don't Freak Out, Even Though That Would Not Be My Choice.

Feminism As A Political Movement Has To Specifically Address The Needs Of Men In Their Struggle To Revolutionize Their Consciousness.

We Have To Look At The Substance Of Something Rather Than The Shadow.

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

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

I Think I Was Always Obsessed With Esthetics.

Individual Heterosexual Women Came To The Movement From Relationships Where Men Were Cruel, Unkind, Violent, Unfaithful. Many Of These Men Were Radical Thinkers Who Participated In Movements For Social Justice, Speaking Out On Behalf Of The Workers, The Poor, Speaking Out On Behalf Of Racial Justice. However When It Came To The Issue Of Gender They Were As Sexist As Their Conservative Cohorts.

The Transformative Power Of Love Is Not Fully Embraced In Our Society Because We Often Wrongly Believe That Torment And Anguish Are Our ‘natural’ Condition.

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.

The World Would Be A Paradise Of Peace And Justice If Global Citizens Shared A Common Definition Of Love Which Would Guide Our Thoughts And Action.

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

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

Changing The World

I Will Not Have My Life Narrowed Down. I Will Not Bow Down To Somebody Else's Whim Or To Someone Else's Ignorance.

Lying Has Become So Much The Accepted Norm That People Lie Even When It Would Be Simpler To Tell The Truth.

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.

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

The Greater Our Commitment, The More Likely Our Love Will Last.

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

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.

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.

Language Is Also A Place Of Struggle.

In Order For Me To Engage In A Revolutionary Struggle For Collective Black Self-determination, I Have To Engage Feminism Because That Becomes The Vehicle By Which I Project Myself As A Female Into The Heart Of The Struggle, But The Heart Of The Struggle Does Not Begin With Feminism. It Begins With An Understanding Of Domination And With A Critique Of Domination In All Its Forms.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Love Is An Action, Never Simply A Feeling.

Patriarchy Has No Gender.

I'm So Disturbed When My Women Students Behave As Though They Can Only Read Women, Or Black Students Behave As Though They Can Only Read Blacks, Or White Students Behave As Though They Can Only Identify With A White Writer.

I Can Be Critical Of Beyoncé And Yet Also Appreciate Aspects Of Her Power And Representation. I Can Especially Critique The Way White Supremacist Aesthetics More Often Than Not Informs Her Presentation Of Self And Yet Still Acknowledge Her Beauty.

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.

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 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.

Privilege Is Not In And Of Itself Bad; What Matters Is What We Do With Privilege. I Want To Live In A World Where All Women Have Access To Education, And All Women Can Earn Phd’s, If They So Desire. Privilege Does Not Have To Be Negative, But We Have To Share Our Resources And Take Direction About How To Use Our Privilege In Ways That Empower Those Who Lack It.

Justice Demands Integrity. It’s To Have A Moral Universe — Not Only Know What Is Right Or Wrong But To Put Things In Perspective, Weigh Things. Justice Is Different From Violence And Retribution; It Requires Complex Accounting.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Contrary To What Some Folks Would Have Us Believe, It Is Not Tragic, Even If Undesirable, For A Person To Leave A Liberal Arts Education Not Having Read Major Works From This Canon. Their Lives Are Not Ending. And The Exciting Dimension Of Knowledge Is That We Can Learn A Work Without Formally Studying It. If A Student Graduates Without Reading Shakespeare And Then Reads Or Studies This Work Later, It Does Not Delegitimize Whatever Formal Course Of Study That Was Completed.

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."

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.

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.

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?

Intersectionality Allow Us To Focus On What Is Most Important At A Given Point In Time.

Readers Forget That One Can Critique Yet Still Admire.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

One Of The Things I Find Most Exciting Is Talking With People Who Are Working With My Work. Who Are Using It In Some Way With Their Life To Address Everyday Politics Of Meaning.

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.

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.

The Struggle To End Sexist Oppression That Focuses On Destroying The Cultural Basis For Such Domination Strengthens Other Liberation Struggles. Individuals Who Fight For The Eradication Of Sexism Without Struggles To End Racism Or Classism Undermine Their Own Efforts. Individuals Who Fight For The Eradication Of Racism Or Classism While Supporting Sexist Oppression Are Helping To Maintain The Cultural Basis Of All Forms Of Group Oppression.

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

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.

The Political Core Of Any Movement For Freedom In The Society Has To Have The Political Imperative To Protect Free Speech.

I Thought About How We Need To Make Children Feel That There Are Times In Their Lives When They Need To Be Alone And Quiet And To Be Able To Accept Their Aloneness.

The Crisis Facing Men Is Not The Crisis Of Masculinity, It Is The Crisis Of Patriarchal Masculinity. Until We Make This Distinction Clear, Men Will Continue To Fear That Any Critique Of Patriarchy Represents A Threat.

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

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

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

People With Healthy Self-esteem Do Not Need To Create Pretend Identities.

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.

My Hope Emerges From Those Places Of Struggle Where I Witness Individuals Positively Transforming Their Lives And The World Around Them. Educating Is A Vocation Rooted In Hopefulness. As Teachers We Believe That Learning Is Possible, That Nothing Can Keep An Open Mind From Seeking After Knowledge And Finding A Way To Know.

Dare I Speak ,to Oppressed And Opressor In The Same Voice? Dare I Speak To You In A Language That Will Move Beyond The Boundaries Of Domination- A Language, That Will Not Bind You, Fence You In, Or Hold You? Language Is Also A Place Of Struggle. The Oppressed Struggle In Language To Recover Ourselves, To Reconcile, To Reunite, To Renew. Our Words Are Not Without Meaning, They Are An Action, A Resistance. Language Is Also A Place Of Struggle.

Being Oppressed Means The Absence Of Choices

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.

If We Give Our Children Sound Self-love, They Will Be Able To Deal With Whatever Life Puts Before Them.

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.

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 Feel That I Have Many Real Students Whom I Have Not Met. Many Are In Cloisters And They Never Get Out. Others Are In Prison. But In Many Cases They Practice The Teachings Much Better Than Those Who Meet Me Every Day.

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

The Academy Is Not Paradise. But Learning Is A Place Where Paradise Can Be Created.

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

Knowing How To Be Solitary Is Central To The Art Of Loving. When We Can Be Alone, We Can Be With Others Without Using Them As A Means Of Escape.

Fluidity Means That Our Black Identities Are Constantly Changing As We Respond To Circumstances In Our Families And Communities Of Origin, And As We Interact With A Wider World.

Choosing To Be Honest Is The First Step In The Process Of Love. There Is No Practitioner Of Love Who Deceives. Once The Choice Has Been Made To Be Honest, Then The Next Step On Love's Path Is Communication.

You Must Have Courage To Love, You Have To Have A Profound Will To Do What Is Right To Love, And It Does Not Come Easy.

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.

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

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

A Good Teacher Is Someone Who Can Help You To Get Back To A Teacher Within.

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

Telling The Truth

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.

I Grew Up In The Midst Of Poverty But Every Black Kid That I Knew Could Read And Write. We Have To Talk About The Fact That We Cannot Educate For Critical Consciousness If We Have A Group Of People Who Cannot Access Fanon, Cabral, Or Audre Lorde Because They Can’t Read Or Write. How Did Malcolm X Radicalize His Consciousness? He Did It Through Books. If You Deprive Working-class And Poor Black People Of Access To Reading And Writing, You Are Making Them That Much Farther Removed From Being A Class That Can Engage In Revolutionary Resistance.

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.

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?

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.

The World Demands That You Work For It, Make Families, Provide, Take No Time To Listen To Your Own Heart Beating.

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

Schools For Love Do Not Exist. Everyone Assumes That We Will Know How To Love Instinctively. Despite Overwhelming Evidence To The Contrary, We Still Accept That The Family Is The Primary School For Love. Those Of Us Who Do Not Learn How To Love Among Family Are Expected To Experience Love In Romantic Relationships. However This Love Often Eludes Us.

True Resistance Begins With People Confronting Pain... And Wanting To Do Something To Change It.

Hope Is Essential To Any Political Struggle For Radical Change When The Overall Social Climate Promotes Disillusionment And Despair.

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

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

Radical Militant Feminist Believes That Women Of Color And Black Women In Particular Have Written The Cutting Edge Theory And Really Were The Individuals Who Exploded Feminist Theory Into The Directions That Has Made It More Powerful. So I See Us As The Leaders Not Just Of Black People And Black Women In Terms Of Feminism But In Terms Of The Movement As A Whole.

No Black Woman Writer In This Culture Can Write "too Much". Indeed, No Woman Writer Can Write "too Much"...no Woman Has Ever Written Enough.

Our Freedom Is Sweet. It Will Be Sweeter When We Are All Free.

What Had Begun As A Movement To Free All Black People From Racist Oppression Became A Movement With Its Primary Goal The Establishment Of Black Male Patriarchy.

To Build Community Requires Vigilant Awareness Of The Work We Must Continually Do To Undermine All The Socialization That Leads Us To Behave In Ways That Perpetuate Domination.

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.

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.

What We Cannot Imagine Cannot Come Into Being.

Given The Way Universities Work To Reinforce And Perpetuate The Status Quo, The Way Knowledge Is Offered As Commodity, Women's Studies Can Easily Become The Place Where Revolutionary Feminist Thought And Feminist Activism Are Submerged Or Made Secondary To The Goals Of Academic Careerism

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.

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.

Most Gay Men Are As Sexist In Their Thinking As Are Heterosexuals. Their Patriarchal Thinking Leads Them To Construct Paradigms Of Desirable Sexual Behaviour That Is Similar To That Of Patriarchal Straight Men.

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

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

While It Has Become “cool” For White Folks To Hang Out With Black People And Express Pleasure In Black Culture, Most White People Do Not Feel That This Pleasure Should Be Linked To Unlearning Racism.

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

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.

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.

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.

When Liberal Whites Fail To Understand How They Can And/or Do Embody White Supremacist Values And Beliefs Even Though They May Not Embrace Racism As Prejudice Or Domination (especially Domination That Involves Coercive Control), They Cannot Recognize The Ways Their Actions Support And Affirm The Very Structure Of Racist Domination And Oppression That They Wish To See Eradicated.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

I Entered The Classroom With The Conviction That It Was Crucial For Me And Every Other Student To Be An Active Participant, Not A Passive Consumer...education As The Practice Of Freedom.... Education That Connects The Will To Know With The Will To Become. Learning Is A Place Where Paradise Can Be Created.

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.

For Most People, What Is So Painful About Reading Is That You Read Something And You Don't Have Anybody To Share It With. In Part What The Book Club Opens Up Is That People Can Read A Book And Then Have Someone Else To Talk About It With. Then They See That A Book Can Lead To The Pleasure Of Conversation, That The Solitary Act Of Reading Can Actually Be A Part Of The Path To Communion And Community.

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.

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.

It Is A Distortion Of The Notion Of Romantic Love To Want To See Obedience As The Quintessential Expression Of Respect.

To Truly Love We Must Learn To Mix Various Ingredients - Care, Affection, Recognition, Respect, Commitment, And Trust, As Well As Honest And Open Communication.

Only Grown-ups Think That The Things Children Say Come Out Of Nowhere. We Know They Come From The Deepest Parts Of Ourselves.

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.

All Too Often We Think Of Community In Terms Of Being With Folks Like Ourselves: The Same Class, Same Race, Same Ethnicity, Same Social Standing And The Like..i Think We Need To Be Wary: We Need To Work Against The Danger Of Evoking Something That We Don’t Challenge Ourselves To Actually Practice.

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.

..critically Intervene In A Way That Challenges And Changes.

Remember, Care Is A Dimension Of Love, But Simply Giving Care Does Not Mean We Are Loving.

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.

As Long As Women Are Using Class Or Race Power To Dominate Other Women, Feminist Sisterhood Cannot Be Fully Realized.

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

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

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 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.

It Is Poetry That Changes Everything.

Isolation And Loneliness Are Central Causes Of Depression And Despair.

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.

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

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.

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.

You Are Not Going To Destroy This Imperialist White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy By Creating Your Own Version Of It.

Why Is It So Difficult For Many White Folks To Understand That Racism Is Oppressive Not Because White Folks Have Prejudicial Feelings About Blacks (they Could Have Such Feelings And Leave Us Alone) But Because It Is A System That Promotes Domination And Subjugation?

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

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

When Women And Men Understand That Working To Eradicate Patriarchal Domination Is A Struggle Rooted In The Longing To Make A World Where Everyone Can Live Fully And Freely, Then We Know Our Work To Be A Gesture Of Love. Let Us Draw Upon That Love To Heighten Our Awareness, Deepen Our Compassion, Intensify Our Courage And Strengthen Our Commitment.

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.

It Was The World Of Southern, Rural, Black Growing Up, Of Folks Sitting On Porches Day And Night, Of Folks Calling Your Mama, 'cause You Walked By And Didn't Speak, And Of The Switch Waiting When You Got Home So That You Could Be Taught Some Manners. It Was A World Of Single Black Older Women Schoolteachers, Dedicated, Tough; They Had Taught Your Mama, Her Sisters, And Her Friends. They Knew Your People In Ways That You Never Would And Shared Their Insight, Keeping Us In Touch With Generations. It Was A World Where We Had A History.

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

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.

Part Of The Racialized Sexism Wants Everyone To Think That A 15-year Old Mexican Is Not A Girl, She’s A Woman. We Know She’s A Girl. We Can Never Emphasize This Enough, Because This Is The Fate Of Colored Girls Globally Right Now: The Denial Of Their Girlhood, The Denial Of Their Childhood, And The Constant State Of Risk And Danger They Are Living In.

War In Its Essence Is Another Form Of Capitalism. Wars Make People Rich - And They Make A Lot Of People Poor, And They Take A Lot Of People's Lives Away From Them. So Much Of The War That Is Happening Is The Attempt Of One Group To Snatch The Resources Of Another Group.

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

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.

The Significance Of Feminist Movement (when It Is Not Co-opted By Opportunistic, Reactionary Forces) Is That It Offers A New Ideological Meeting Ground For The Sexes, A Space For Criticism, Struggle, And Transformation.

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

... 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.

The Soul Of Our Politics Is The Commitment To Ending Domination.

I Believe That This Nation Can Only Heal From The Wounds Of Racism If We All Begin To Love Blackness. And By That I Don't Mean That We Love Only That Which Is Best Within Us, But That We're Also Able To Love That Which Is Faltering, Which Is Wounded, Which Is Contradictory, Incomplete.

Trending Author

James S. Coleman

Kenneth H. Cooper

Thomas Chandler Haliburton

Category