Quotessence
Home / Authors / Bell Hooks
Bell Hooks

Bell Hooks Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllFeminismLoveThinkingMenPeopleWayBlackIfsFeministWorldDominationKnowsPatriarchyWhiteBell HooksClassSelfWantCultureStruggle

Famous Bell Hooks Quotes

“Self-proclaimed feminist thinkers have colluded with the patriarchal pornographic imagination's use of mass media to represent the sexual resubordination of women by men as cute, playful, and harmless ... we are bombarded with images suggesting that male sexual domination of women in no way threatens female autonomy or independence. In actuality, male domination of females in the sexual arena ... is a constant reminder that females are not free, that we have not attained full equal rights or equity.”

FeminismSexuality
Book:Communion: The Female Search for Love
Create image

“If feminists had continued to talk about love, then we would have needed to speak about the extreme lovelessness that is at the heart of domination. ... patriarchy, like any colonizing system, does not create the context for men and women to love each other ... genuine love between females and males could only emerge in a context where the sexes would come together to challenge and change patriarchal thought.”

LoveFeminism
Book:Communion: The Female Search for Love
Create image

“Every day on our television screens and in our nation's newspapers we are brought news of continued male violence at home and all around the world. When we hear that teenage boys are arming themselves and killing their parents, their peers, or strangers, a sense of alarm permeates our culture. Folks want to have answers. They want to know, Why is this happening? Why so much killing by boy children now, and in this historical moment? Yet no one talks about the role patriarchal notions of manhood play in teaching boys that it is their nature to kill, then teaching them that they can do nothing to change this nature -- nothing, that is, that will leave their masculinity intact.”

FeminismMasculinity
Author:Bell Hooks
Create image

“Masses of women feel angry because they were encouraged by feminist thinking to believe they would find liberation in the workforce. Mostly they have found that they work long hours at home and long hours at the job. Even before feminist movement encouraged women to feel positive about working outside the home, the needs of a depressed economy were already sanctioning this shift. If contemporary feminist movement had never taken place masses of women would still have entered the workforce, but it is unlikely that we would have the rights we have, had feminists not challenged gender discrimination. Women are wrong to “blame” feminism for making it so they have to work, which is what many women think. The truth remains that consumer capitalism was the force leading more women into the workforce. Given the depressed economy white middle-class families would be unable to sustain their class status and their lifestyles if women who had once dreamed solely of working as housewives had not chosen to work outside the home.”

FeminismWorking WomenHomemakerWomen In The Workplace
Book:Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics
Create image

“La resolución del conflicto entre mujeres blancas y negras no dará comienzo hasta que todas las mujeres acepten que un movimiento feminista racista y clasista es una farsa, una tapadera para el sometimiento continuado de las mujeres a los principios patriarcales y la aceptación pasiva del statu quo. La sororidad necesaria para librar la revolución feminista solo se conseguirá cuando todas las mujeres se zafen de la hostilidad, los celos y la competencia mutua que nos ha llevado a ser vulnerables, débiles e incapaces de imaginar nuevas realidades. Esa sororidad no puede forjarse solo con palabras. Es el resultado de un crecimiento y un cambio continuados. Es un objetivo que alcanzar, un proceso de transformación. Y ese proceso empieza por la acción, por el rechazo personal de cada mujer a aceptar ningún conjunto de mitos, estereotipos y falsas suposiciones que niegan los elementos comunes y compartidos de su experiencia humana, que la privan de la capacidad para experimentar la unidad de toda la vida, que le niegan la capacidad para cerrar las brechas creadas por el racismo, el sexismo o el clasismo y que le niegan la capacidad de cambiar. El proceso empieza por la aceptación personal de cada mujer de que a las mujeres estadounidenses, a todas sin excepción, se las socializa para que sean racistas, clasistas y sexistas, en diversos grados, y por entender que calificarnos de feministas no cambia el hecho de que debemos esforzarnos de manera consciente por desembarazarnos del legado de socialización negativa.”

FeminismRacism In AmericaClasismoAntirracismoFeminismo Interseccional
Book:Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism
Create image

“It is feminist thinking that empowers me to engage in a constructive critique of [Paulo] Freire’s work (which I needed so that as a young reader of his work I did not passively absorb the worldview presented) and yet there are many other standpoints from which I approach his work that enable me to experience its value, that make it possible for that work to touch me at the very core of my being. In talking with academic feminists (usually white women) who feel they must either dismiss or devalue the work of Freire because of sexism, I see clearly how our different responses are shaped by the standpoint that we bring to the work. I came to Freire thirsty, dying of thirst (in that way that the colonized, marginalized subject who is still unsure of how to break the hold of the status quo, who longs for change, is needy, is thirsty), and I found in his work (and the work of Malcolm X, Fanon, etc.) a way to quench that thirst. To have work that promotes one’s lib­eration is such a powerful gift that it does not matter so much if the gift is flawed. Think of the work as water that contains some dirt. Because you are thirsty you are not too proud to extract the dirt and be nourished by the water. For me this is an experience that corresponds very much to the way individuals of privilege respond to the use of water in the First World context. When you are privileged, living in one of the richest countries in the world, you can waste resources. And you can especially justify your dispos­al of something that you consider impure. Look at what most people do with water in this country. Many people purchase special water because they consider tap water unclean—and of course this purchasing is a luxury. Even our ability to see the water that come through the tap as unclean is itself informed by an imperialist consumer per­ spective. It is an expression of luxury and not just simply a response to the condition of water. If we approach the drinking of water that comes from the tap from a global perspective we would have to talk about it differently. We would have to consider what the vast majority of the peo­ ple in the world who are thirsty must do to obtain water. Paulo’s work has been living water for me.”

EducationFeminismLiberationAcademiaPedagogyTransformative Justice
Book:Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
Create image

“La marginalità è un luogo radicale di possibilità, uno spazio di resistenza. Questa marginalità, che ho definito come spazialmente strategica per la produzione di un discorso contro-egemonico, è presente non solo nelle parole, ma anche nei modi di essere e di vivere. Non mi riferivo, quindi, a una marginalità che si spera di perdere – lasciare o abbandonare – via via che ci si avvicina al centro, ma piuttosto a un luogo in cui abitare, a cui restare attaccati e fedeli, perché di esso si nutre la nostra capacità di resistenza. Un luogo capace di offrirci la possibilità di una prospettiva radicale da cui guardare, creare, immaginare alternative e nuovi mondi.”

FeminismFemminismoBell HooksBlack FeminismLottaFemminismo NeroElogio Del Margine
Book:Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
Create image

“There has been no other movement for social justice in our society that has been as self-critical as feminist movement. Feminist willingness to change direction when needed has been a major source of strength and vitality in feminist struggle. That internal critique is essential to any politics of transformation. Just as our lives are not fixed or static but always changing, our theory must remain fluid, open, responsive to new information.”

Feminism
Book:Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
Create image

“When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another's spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive. Love and abusive cannot coexist. Abuse and neglect are, by definition, the opposites of nurturance and care.... An overwhelming majority of us come from dysfunctional families in which we were taught that we were not okay, where we were shamed, verbally and/or physically abused, and emotionally neglected even as we were also taught to believe that we were loved. For most folks it is just too threatening to embrace a definition of love that would no longer enable us to see love as present in our families. Too many of us need to cling to a notion of love that either makes abuse acceptable or at least makes it seem that whatever happened was not that bad.”

LoveLove QuotesFeminismFeministSpiritual GrowthNurtureBell HooksAll About LoveAbusive FamilyAbuse Neglect
Book:All About Love: New Visions
Create image

“To me feminism is not simply a struggle to end male chauvinism or a movement to ensure that women will have equal rights with men; it is a commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels--sex, race, and class, to name a few--and a commitment to reorganizing U.S. society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.”

InspirationFeminismBell Hooks
Book:Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism
Create image

“Often emphasis on identity and lifestyle is appealing because it creates a false sense that one is engaged in praxis. However, praxis within any political movement that aims to have a radical transformative impact on society cannot be solely focused on creating spaces wherein would-be radicals experience safety and support. Feminist movement to end sexist oppression actively engages participants in revolutionary struggle. Struggle is rarely safe or pleasurable.”

FeminismIdentityPraxis
Book:Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
Create image

“In a world where positive expressions of sexual longing connect us we will all be free to choose those sexual practices which affirm and nurture our growth. Those practices may range from choosing promiscuity or celibacy, from embracing one specific sexual identity and preference or choosing a roaming uncharted desire that is kindled only by interaction and engagement with specific individuals with whom we feel the spark of erotic recognition no matter their sex, race, class, or even their sexual preference. Radical feminist dialogues about sexuality must surface so that the movement towards sexual freedom can begin again.”

FeminismSexualityIntersectional FeminismSexual Identity
Author:Bell Hooks
Create image

“Like many liberal men in the age of feminism, he believed women should have equal access to jobs and be given equal pay, but when it came to matters of home and heart he still believed caregiving was the female role. Like many men, he wanted a woman to be 'just like his mama' so that he did not have to do the work of growing up.”

FeminismFeministManhoodEmotional IntelligenceMasculinityLiberalMan Child
Book:All About Love: New Visions
Create image

“In the early years of contemporary feminist movement, solidarity between women was often equated with the formation of "safe" spaces where groups of presumably like-minded women could come together, sharing ideas and experiences without fear of silencing or rigorous challenges. Groups sometimes disintegrated when the speaking of diverse opinion lead to contestation, confrontation, and out-and-out conflict. It was common for individual dissenting voices to be silenced by the collective demand for harmony. Those voices were at times punished by exclusion and ostracization. Before it became politically acceptable to discuss issues of race and racism within feminist circles, I was one of those "undesirable" voices. Always a devout advocate of feminist politics, I was, and am, also constantly interrogating and, if need be, harsh in my critique. I learned powerful lessons from hanging in there, continuing to engage in feminist movement even when that involvement was not welcomed. Significantly, I learned that any progressive political movement grows and matures only to the degree that it passionately welcomes and encourages, in theory and in practice, diversity of opinion, new ideas, critical exchange, and dissent.”

FeminismDissentPolitical MovementsProgressive Politics
Book:Outlaw Culture
Create image

“These men suffer. Their anguish and despair has no limits or boundaries. They suffer in a society that does not want men to change, that does not want men to reconstruct masculinity so that the basis for the social formation of male identity is not rooted in an ethic of domination. Rather than acknowledge the intensity of their suffering, they dissimulate. They pretend. They act as though they have power and privilege when they feel powerless. Inability to acknowledge the depths of male pain makes it difficult for males to challenge and change patriarchal masculinity. Broken emotional bonds with mothers and fathers, the traumas of emotional neglect and abandonment that so many males have experienced and been unable to name, have damaged and wounded the spirits of men. Many men are unable to speak their suffering. Like women, those who suffer the most cling to the very agents of their suffering, refusing to resist sexism or sexist oppression. Their refusal is rooted in the fear that their weakness will be exposed. They fear acknowledging the depths of their pain. As their pain intensifies, so does their need to do violence, to coercively dominate and abuse others. Barbara Deming explains: “I think the reason that men are so very violent is that they know, deep in themselves, that they’re acting a lie, and so they’re furious. You can’t be happy living a lie, and so they’re furious at being caught in the lie. But they don’t know how to break out of it, so they just go further into it.” For many men the moment of violent connection may be the only intimacy, the only attainable closeness, the only space where the agony is released. When feminist women insist that all men are powerful oppressors who victimize from the location of power, they obscure the reality that many victimize from the location of victimization. The violence they do to others is usually a mirroring of the violence enacted upon and within the self.”

FeminismPatriarchal Masculinity
Book:The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love
Create image

“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.”

MenWaySeemsAbleDesireSpaceVisionFeminismSubjectsCapableEmbraceFeministFulfillmentRevolutionaryEncountersImaginaryLinkedRespondingSubjugation
Book:Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations
Create image

“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.”

PeopleBelieveMadeWholeIndividualBlackTermPowerfulLeaderCuttingWrittenFeminismMovementParticularColorTheoryEdgesFeministMade ItRadicalBlack PeopleBlack WomenMilitantCutting EdgeFeminist Theory
Author:Bell Hooks
Create image

“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.”

IfsMenWritingMayMeanDoeWarValuesFeminismMovementWillingMen And WomenCriticismResponseComplexesInspiredFeministCriticalAcknowledgeDimensionsSexismConstructsPremisesSexistBe InspiredLiterary CriticismFeminist MovementAppropriateness
Book:Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics
Create image

“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.”

HeartDoeSelfFormOrderUnderstandingBlackStruggleFeminismProjectsFemaleDeterminationRevolutionaryCollectivesSelf DeterminationVehicleDominationCritique
Author:Bell Hooks
Create image

“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.”

PeopleIfsThinkingKnowsMenProblemRealityFeminismMediaHugeEqualMassMajorityMalesFolksFeministSeekingSexismMisunderstandingMass Media
Author:Bell Hooks
Create image

“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.”

IfsThinkingRaceStrugglePathFeminismGenderRacistSeekersBlacknessStrippingAnti Racist
Author:Bell Hooks
Create image

“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.”

PeopleWantHas BeensEndsFactsTermWhiteRolesFocusFeminismMovementFemaleMalesPatternsFeministObviousOppressionLiberationAppropriateDominationSexistAppropriationResigningFemales And Males
Author:Bell Hooks
Create image

“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.”

DoeFactsIndividualProcessFeminismAcceptanceDegreesNegativeFeministLegacyExceptionRacistBad AssSexistAmerican WomanLabelingSocialization
Book:Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism
Create image

“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.”

ThinkingMenWorldWellsUseLife IsCultureGirlFunSocialChallengesJusticeCompassionBoysFeminismAchieveMovementFameMen And WomenResourcesAnd LoveExcitingWell BeingLive LifeProgressiveGreedySocial ChangeVisionariesBoy And GirlOptimalProgressivismJustice And LoveProgressive Movement
Author:Bell Hooks
Create image