Last weekend, my partner and I traveled to Seattle and Vancouver, BC, for a five-day vacation (which would explain the hiatus on posting and the delay in responding to comments last weekend). The flights (boring) and train rides (gorgeous! I highly recommend Amtrak Cascades for the trip between Seattle and Vancouver) gave us both a chance to catch up on reading: he read some Stephen King while I finished Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks and Art & Lies by Jeannette Winterson. On the bumpy, sorta scary flight from Spokane to Seattle, I handed hooks’ book across the aisle to my partner for him to read some passages, leaving him without a lot of context to understand what hooks was saying. I was just so excited to read what hooks had to say about all of the struggles I experience and witness in the feminist movement that I wanted to share it with the whole plane. It was too loud for that with the engines and propellers running, so I just made my partner read.
I think everyone should read this book. So I will record a few of my favorite passages from the book, some of my own thoughts and questions, and hopefully encourage more people to read the book in its entirety.
From “Feminist Politics,” pg. 5-6:
While it was in the interest of mainstream white supremacist capitalist patriarchy to suppress visionary feminist thinking which was not anti-male or concerned with getting women the right to be like men, reformist feminists were also eager to silence these forces. Reformist feminism became their route to class mobility. they could break free of male domination in the workforce and be more self-determining in their lifestyles. While sexism did not end, they could maximize their freedom in the existing system. And they could count on there being a lower class of exploited subordinated women to do the dirty work they were refusing to do . . .
Lifestyle feminism ushered in the notion that there could be as many versions of feminism as there were women. Suddenly the politics was being slowly removed from feminism. And the assumption prevailed that no matter what a woman’s politics, be she conservative or liberal, she too could fit feminism into her existing lifestyle. Obviously this way of thinking has made feminism more acceptable because its underlying assumption is that women can be feminists without fundamentally challenging or changing themselves or the culture. . . .
Feminist politics is losing momentum because feminist movement has lost clear definitions. We have those definitions. Let’s reclaim them. Let’s share them. Let’s start over. Let’s have t-shirts and bumper stickers and postcards and hip-hop music, television and radio commercials, ads everywhere and billboards, and all manner of printed material that tells the world about feminism. We can share the simple yet powerful message that feminism is a movement to end sexist oppression. Let’s start there. Let the movement begin again.
Ah! So inspiring! I have goosebumps!
While I was in Seattle, I went to Left Bank Books in the Pike Street Market, a co-op bookstore known for its extreme liberalism and anarchist tendencies. Near the anarchist books upstairs, I saw the best bumper sticker ever posted on the wall: “Against abortions? Get a vasectomy.“ I almost cheered out loud when I saw it.
If only the whole US looked like the inside of Left Bank Books, I might be a happy person.
From “Consciousness-Raising,” pg. 11-12:
By the early ’80s the evocation of a politicized sisterhood, so crucial at the onset of the feminist movement, lost meaning as the terrain of radical feminist politics was overshadowed by a lifestyle-based feminism which suggested any woman could be a feminist no matter what her political beliefs. Needless to say such thinking has undermined feminist theory and practice, feminist politics. When the feminist movement renews itself, reinforcing again and again the strategies that will enable a mass movement to end sexism and sexist exploitation and oppression for everyone, consciousness-raising will once again attain its original importance. Effectively imitating the model of AA meetings, feminist consciousness-raising groups will take place in communities, offering the message of feminist thinking to everyone irrespective of class, race, or gender. While specific groups based on shared identities might emerge, at the end of every month, individuals would be in mixed groups.
I want to say that blogging is like CR, but I don’t really think it works out that way. I wonder whether CR that follows the model of AA meetings would work in the way hooks says it would. I have done some of my own CR with my wombster wombats — very small groups — and I think it’s done a lot of good for all of us. But it doesn’t seem to be as big or effective as how I imagine CR was in the ’70s. What do you all think? How do you do CR in your lives? Do you think it’s still important to participate in consciousness-raising activities? Do you think the form or medium of that CR matters?
Feminist consciousness-raising for males is as essential to revolutionary movement as female groups. Had there been an emphasis on groups for males that taught boys and men about what sexism is and how it can be transformed, it would have been impossible for mass media to portray the movement as anti-male. It would also have preempted the formation of an anti-feminist men’s movement. Often men’s groups were formed in the wake of contemporary feminism that in no way addressed the issues of sexism and male domination. Like the lifestyle-based feminism aimed at women these groups often became therapeutic settings for men to confront their wounds without a critique of patriarchy or a platform of resistance to male domination. Future feminist movement will not make this mistake. Males of all ages need settings where their resistance to sexism is affirmed and valued. Without males as allies in struggle feminist movement will not progress. As it is we have to do so much work to correct the assumption deeply embedded in the cultural psyche that feminism is anti-male. Feminism is anti-sexism. A male who has divested of male privilege, who has embraced feminist politics, is a worthy comrade in struggle, in no way a threat to feminism, whereas a female who remains wedded to sexist thinking and behavior infiltrating feminist movement is a dangerous threat. (”Consciousness-Raising,” 11-12)
I have been noticing that some of my feminist theory and practice is rooted in essentialist views of gender, despite the fact that I work hard not to act out of essentialist beliefs. It is difficult for me to understand how women can be just as misogynist as men, though I acknowledge that every single human being is different, regardless of gender. But reading this book has helped me work to confront some of that internalized essentialism without losing faith in feminist movement.
From “Sisterhood is Still Powerful,” pg. 14-16:
[The foundation for solidarity between women, or sisterhood] rested on our critique of what we then called “the enemy within,” referring to our internalized sexism. We all knew firsthand that we had been socialized as females by patriarchal thinking to see ourselves as inferior to men, to see ourselves as always and only in competition with on another for patriarchal approval, to look upon each other with jealousy, fear, and hatred. Sexist thinking made us judge each other without compassion and punish one another harshly. Feminist thinking helped us unlearn female self-hatred. It enabled us to break free of the hold patriarchal t hinking had on our consciousness.
Male bonding was an accepted and affirmed aspect of patriarchal culture. It was simply assumed that men in groups would stick together[.] Female bonding was not possible within patriarchy; it was an act of treason. Feminist movement created the context for female bonding. We did not bond against men, we bonded to protect our interests as women. . . .
Feminist sisterhood is rooted in shared commitment to struggle against patriarchal injustice, no matter the form that injustice takes. Political solidarity between women always undermines sexism and sets the stage for the overthrow of patriarchy. Significantly, sisterhood could never have been possible across boundaries of race and class if individual women had not been willing to divest of their power to dominate and exploit subordinated groups of women. As long as women are using class or race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realized.
I feel a lack of sisterhood with other feminists. Probably a big part of that is that much of my feminism is deeply rooted in online communities rather than face-to-face interactions, making my feminism slightly less personal than it might otherwise be. But I think, at least when it comes to online feminism, that we lack sisterhood overall, regardless of how well we know other bloggers or how often we write. This is part of why the consciousness-raising chapter seemed so profound to me: CR seems like a way to engage with other women who are interested in anti-sexist activism and to promote bonds that unite while still recognizing the differences among us.
From “Feminist Class Struggle,” pg. 43:
Indeed, many more feminist women found and find it easier to consider divesting of white supremacist thinking than of their class elitism. (”Feminist Class Struggle,” 41)
The only genuine hope of feminist liberation lies with a vision of social change which challenges class elitism. Western women have gained class power and greater gender inequality because a global white supremacist patriarchy enslaves and/or subordinates masses of third-world women. In this country the combined forces of a booming prison industry and workfare-oriented welfare in conjunction with conservative immigration policy create and condone the conditions for indentured slavery. Ending welfare will create a new underclass of women and children to be abused and exploited by the existing structures of domination. . . .
[A] visionary movement would ground its work in the concrete conditions of working-class and poor women. That means creating a movement that begins education for critical consciousness where women, feminist women with class power, need to put in place low-income housing women can own. The creation of housing co-ops with feminist principles would show the ways feminist struggle is relevant to all women’s lives.
I don’t know anything about this stuff, but I like the idea of a a women-managed low-income-housing builder, like Habitat for Humanity but less Christian and more feminist/woman-centered. In any case, hooks has inspired me to remember to put my money where my mouth is when it comes to my socialist leanings.
From “Race and Gender,” pg. 55-58:
No group of white women understood the differences in their status and that of black women more than the group of politically conscious white females who were active in civil rights struggle. Diaries and memoirs of this period in American history written by white women ducoment this knowledge. Yet many of these individuals moved from civil rights into women’s liberation and spearheaded a feminist movement where they suppressed and denied the awareness of difference they had seen and heard articulated firsthand in civil rights struggle. Just because they participated in anti-racist struggle did not mean that they had divested of white supremacy, of notion that they were superior to black females, more informed, better educated, more suited to “lead” a movement.
In many ways they were following in the footsteps of their abolitionist ancestors who had demanded that everyone (white women and black people) be given the right to vote, but, when faced with the possibility that black males might gain the right to vote while they were denied it on the basis of gender, they chose to ally themselves with men, uniting under the rubric of white supremacy. . . .
[White women] entered the movement erasing and denying difference, not playing race alongside gender, but eliminating race from the picture. Foregrounding gender meant that white women could take center stage, could claim the movement as theirs, even as they called on all women to join. . . .
In those days [the 1970s] white women who were unwilling to face the reality of racism and racial difference accused us of being traitors by introducing race. Wrongly they saw us as deflecting focus away from gender. In reality, we were demanding that we look at the status of females realistically, and that realistic understanding serve as the foundation for a real feminist politic. Our intent was not to diminish the vision of sisterhood. We sought to put in place a concrete politics of solidarity that would make genuine sisterhood possible. We knew that there could [be] no real sisterhood between white women and women of color if white women were not able to divest of white supremacy, if feminist movement were not fundamentally anti-racist.
I suppose this is one of the problems with coming to feminism from an academic point of view — it’s very, very easy to overlook and mitigate difference, real, important difference, for the sake of “the movement.”
I love this book. Everything has been turned on its head and illuminated with hooks’ calm, bright light. How did I ever become a feminist without this book?
From “Ending Violence,” pg. 61-63:
By far one of the most widespread positive interventions of contemporary feminist movement remains the effort to create and sustain greater cultural awareness of domestice violence as well as the changes that must happen in our thinking and action if we are to see its end. Nowadays the problem of domestic violence is talked about in so many circles, from mass media to grade schools, that it is often forgotten that contemporary feminist movement was the force that dramatically uncovered and exposed the ongoing reality of domestic violence. Initially feminist focus on domestic violence highlighted male violence against women, but as the movement progressed evidence showed that there was also domestic violence present in same-sex relations, that women in relationships with women were and are oftentimes the victims of abuse, that children were also victims of adult patriarchal violence enacted by women and men.
Patriarchal violence in the home is based on the belief that it is acceptable for a more powerful individual to control others through various forms of coercive force. This expanded definition of domestic violence includes male violence against women, same-sex violence, and adult violence against children. The term “patriarchal violence” is useful because unlike the more accepted phrase “domestic violence” it continually reminds the listener that violence in the home is connected to sexism and sexist thinking, to male domination. For too long the term domestic violence has been used as a “soft” term which suggests it emerges in an intimate context that is private and somehow less threatening, less brutal, than the violence that takes place outside the home. This is not so, since more women are beaten and murdered in the home than on the outside. Also most people tend to see domestic violence between adults as separate and distinct from violence against children when it is not. Often children suffer abuse as they attempt to protect a mother who is being attacked by a male companion or husband, or they are emotionally damaged by witnessing violence and abuse. . . .
In a zealous effort to call attention to male violence against women reformist thinkers still choose often to portray females as always and only victims. The fact that many violent attacks on children are perpetrated by women is not equally highlighted and seen as another expression of patriarchal violence. . . . Had all feminist thinkers expressed outrage at patriarchal violence perpetrated by women, placing it on an equal footing with male violence against women, it would have been and will be harder for the public to dismiss attention given patriarchal violence by seeing it as an anti-male agenda.
If I had the time, I would copy the entire “Ending Violence” chapter here. The rest of the chapter discusses how women are not inherently non-violent and if it weren’t for medical records showing children’s injuries as a result of female-generated patriarchal violence, we wouldn’t have much of a record of female patriarchal violence at all. Also, while not a lot of women use violence against men in order to dominate them, many women buy into the myth of patriarchal violence: that it’s okay for a powerful person to use physical force to maintain that powerful position. Many mothers teach violence to their sons not necessarily by using violence against them but by encouraging them to use violence with their peers. hooks ends the chapter by reminding us that violence is linked with male domination and patriarchal thinking — it is not separate.
Again, hooks has blasted me out of my cocoon of gender essentialism. I should probably read this book every six months just so that I don’t get stuck in a rut of stupid, lazy thinking.
From “Feminist Masculinity,” pg. 70-71:
What is and was needed is a vision of masculinity where self-esteem and self-love of one’s unique being forms the basis of identity. Cultures of domination attack self-esteem, replacing it with a notion that we derive our sense of being from dominion over another. Patriarchal masculinity teaches men that their sense of self and identity, their reason for being, resides in their capacity to dominate others. To change this males must critique and challenge male domination of the planet, of less powerful men, of women and children. But they must also have a clear vision of what feminist masculinity looks like. How can you become what you cannot imagine? And that vision has yet to be made fully clear by feminist thinkers male or female.
As is often the case in revolutionary movements for social justice we are better at naming the problem than we are at envisioning the solution. We do know that patriarchal masculinity encourages men to be pathologically narcissistic, infantile, and psychologically dependent on the privileges (however relative) that they receive simply for having been born male. Many men feel that their lives are being threatened if these privileges are taken away, as they have structured no meaningful core identity. That is why the men’s movement positively attempted to teach men how to reconnect with their feelings, to reclaim the lost boy within and nurture his soul, his spiritual growth.
No significant body of feminist literature has appeared that addresses boys, that lets them know how they can construct an identity that is not rooted in sexism. Anti-sexist men have done little education for critical consciousness which include a focus on boyhood, especially the development of adolescent males. As a consequence of this gap, now that discussions about raising boys are receiving national attention, feminist perspectives are rarely if ever part of the discussion. Tragically, we are witnessing a resurgence of harmful misogynist assumptions that mothers cannot raise healthy sons, that boys “benefit” from patriarchal militaristic notions of masculinity which emphasize discipline and obedience to authority. Boys need healthy self-esteem. They need love. And a wise and loving feminist politics and provide the only foundation to save the lives of male children. Patriarchy will not heal them. If that were so they would all be well.
This is revolutionary stuff. Wow.
The next chapter, “Feminist Parenting,” is also excellent — so perfect, in fact, that I cannot choose one passage to include here. It builds on the two previous chapters to talk specifically about how parents often work to relay anti-feminist, patriarchal thinking to their children through abuse (”discipline”) and verbal shaming with its roots in sexism. Her main point is that children “need to be raised in loving environments,” no matter what shape those take, and that ending sexism will positively change families’ lives.
From “To Love Again: The Heart of Feminism,” pg. 100-103:
If women and men want to know love, we have to yearn for feminism. For without feminist thinking and practice we lack the foundation to create loving bonds. . . .
Romantic love as most people understand it in patriarchal culture makes one unaware, renders one powerless and out of control. Feminist thinkers called attention to the way this notion of love served the interests of patriarchal men and women. It supported the notion that one could do anything in the name of love: beat people, restrict their movements, even kill them and call it a “crime of passion,” plead, “I loved her so much I had to kill her.” Love in patriarchal culture was linked to notions of possession, to paradigms of domination and submission wherein it was assumed one person would give love and another person would receive it. . . .
In retrospect it is evident that by not creating a positive feminist discourse on love, especially in relation to heterosexuality, we allowed patriarchal mass media to represent the entire movement as a politic grounded in hatred rather than love. Many females who wanted to bond with men felt that they could not nurture these ties and be committed to feminist movement. In actuality, we should have been spreading the word that feminism would make it possible for women and men to know love. We know that now.
And one final passage from the book, from the last chapter called “Visionary Feminism,” pg. 117-118:
We are told again and again by patriarchal mass media, by sexist leaders, that feminism is dead, that it no longer has meaning. In actuality, females and males of all ages, everywhere, continue to grapple with the issue of gender equality, continue to seek roles for themselves that will liberate rather than restrict and confine; and they continue to turn towards feminism for answers. Visionary feminism offers us hope for the future. By emphasizing an ethics of mutuality and interdependency feminist thinking offers us a way to end domination while simultaneously changing the impact of inequality. In a universe where mutuality is the norm, there may be times when all is not equal, but the consequence of that inequality will not be subordination, colonization and dehumanization.
Feminism as a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression is alive and well. While we do not have a mass-based movement, the renewal of such a movement is our primary goal. To ensure the continued relevance of feminist movement in our lives visionary feminist theory must be constantly made and re-made so that it addresses us where we live, in our present. Women and men have made great strides in the direction of gender equality. And those strides towards freedom must give us strength to go further. We must courageously learn from the past and work for a future where feminist principles will undergird every aspect of our public and private lives. 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.
I have thought on my own many of the same things, in the above passage and in other sections of the book, that hooks has written extensively about. But this book is short, concise, and even-keeled — it’s not full of theory or jargon, just full of common sense and inspiring ideas for directions that individual feminists can take for activism. And hooks really justifies many of the thoughts I’ve had about gender relations in this country while simultaneously making it truly feel like everyone can be a feminist (not just that everyone should be a feminist).
Just, seriously, read this book. Read it to yourself, read it aloud to your children, read it aloud to your partner. Read it every month. I cannot recommend this book strongly enough.
