bell hooks

Profound Writer, Theorist, Scholar and Architect of Modern Feminism

This week Sara brings us one of her personal heroes and feminist icons, the incomparable and prolific – bell hooks! Growing up a segregated Kentucky, Gloria Jean Watkins witnessed firsthand the wake of destruction wreaked by what she would later dub the Imperialist-White-Supremacist-Capitalist-Patriarchy. She spent the rest of her life in a fight against it as a writer, teacher, scholar, intellectual, cultural critic and author, and in Sara’s opinion, is the the architect of a modern feminism that is both transformative and accessible to all.

“Revolutionary ideology can be created only if the experiences of people on the margin who suffer sexist oppression and other forms of group oppression are understood, addressed, and incorporated”

bell hooks

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“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. We are often taught we have no control over our “feelings.” Yet most of us accept that we choose our actions, that intention and will inform what we do. We also accept that our actions have consequences. To think of actions shaping feelings is one way we rid ourselves of conventionally accepted assumptions such as that parents love their children, or that one simply “falls” in love without exercising will or choice, that there are such things as “crimes of passion,” i.e. he killed her because he loved her so much. If we were constantly remembering that love is as love does, we would not use the word in a manner that devalues and degrades its meaning.”

bell hooks

All About Love, 2000

“The first act of violence that the patriarchy demands of males is […] 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”

bell hooks

The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, 2004

“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.”

bell hooks

Talking Back, 1989

“Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give to yourself…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.”

bell hooks

All About Love, 2000

“If we do not work to create a mass-based movement which offers feminist education to everyone, females and males, feminist theory and practice will always be undermined by the negative information produced in most mainstream media.”

bell hooks

Feminism is for Everybody, 1996