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31a78f3 I write these words to bear witness to the primacy of resistance struggle in any situation of domination (even within family life); to the strength and power that emerges from sustained resistance and the profound conviction that these forces can be healing, can protect us from dehumanization and despair. bell hooks
276517f One of the major differences I see in the political climate today is that there is less collective support for coming to critical consciousness - in communities, in institutions, among friends. critical-thinking bell hooks
568024a We keep coming back to the question of representation because identity is always about representation. People forget that when they wanted white women to get into the workforce because of the world war, what did they start doing? They started having a lot of commercials, a lot of movies, a lot of things that were redoing the female image, saying, "Hey, you can work for the war, but you can still be feminine." So what we see is that the mass.. bell hooks
253486e There are writers who write for fame. And there are writers who write because we need to make sense of the world we live in; writing is a way to clarify, to interpret, to reinvent. We may want our work to be recognized, but that is not the reason we write. We do not write because we must; we always have a choice. We write because language is the way we keep a hold on life. With words we experience our deepest understandings of what it means.. writing-life bell hooks
eb0629a 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. Bell Hooks
770f88d Understanding knowledge as an essential element of love is vital because we are bombarded daily with messages that tell us love is about mystery, about that which cannot be known. We see movies in which people are represented as being in love who never talk with one another, who fall into bed without ever discussing their bodies, their sexual needs, their likes and dislikes. Indeed, the message is received from the mass media is that knowle.. love-quotes romantic television romance love truth mass-media tv pop-culture love-at-first-sight knowledge bell hooks
2dd111a Knowing love or the hope of knowing love is the anchor that keeps us from falling into that sea of despair. Bell Hooks
4c74fea While it is in no way racist for any author to write a book exclusively about white women, it is fundamentally racist for books to be published that focus solely on the American white woman's experience in which that experience is assumed to be American woman's experience. Bell Hooks
a3c0b3b All the romantic lore of our culture has told us when we find true love with a partner it will continue. Yet this partnership lasts only if both parties remain committed to being loving. Not everyone can bear the weight of true love. Wounded hearts turn away from love because they do not want to do the work of healing necessary to sustain and nurture love. Many men, especially, often turn away from true love and choose relationships in whic.. love-quotes true-love romantic wounded-heart romantic-partner partnership vulnerability power bell hooks
578b4ce 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. bell hooks
5af6f79 Women have endeavored to guide men to love because patriarchal thinking has sanctioned this work even as it has undermined it by teaching men to refuse guidance...A useful gift all love's practitioners can give is the offering of forgiveness. It not only allows us to move away from blame, from seeing others as the cause of our sustained lovelessness, but it enables us to experience agency, to know we can be responsible for giving and findin.. love bell hooks
10c2bce 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. Bell Hooks
5040118 Patriarchy demands of men that they become and remain emotional cripples. Since it is a system that denies men full access to their freedom of will, it is difficult for any man of any class to rebel against patriarchy, to be disloyal to the patriarchal parent, be that parent female or male. Bell Hooks
3d18734 Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammed, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, Amiri Baraka and other black male leaders have righteously supported patriarchy. They have all argued that it is absolutely necessary for black men to relegate black women to a subordinate position both in the political sphere and in home life. Bell Hooks
f842eb9 Getting in touch with the lovelessness within and letting that lovelessness speak its pain is one way to begin again on love's journey. In relationships, whether heterosexual or homosexual, the partner who is hurting often finds that their mate is unwilling to 'hear' the pain. Women often tell me that they feel emotionally beaten down when their partners refuse to listen or talk. When women communicate from a place of pain, it is often char.. pain love-quotes relationships love listening-to-others vulnerability-quotes listening-skills emotional-abuse communication listening vulnerable vulnerability bell hooks
37665f2 To be loving we willingly hear each other's truth and, most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love. Bell Hooks
f7be1b7 All efforts at self-transformation challenge us to engage in on-going, critical self-examination and reflection about feminist practice, and about how we live in the world. This individual commitment, when coupled with engagement in collective discussion, provides a space for critical feedback which strengthens our efforts to change and make ourselves anew. bell hooks
587934b Individual members of certain churches in black communities should protest when worship services become a platform for teaching anti-gay sentiments. Often individuals sit and listen to preachers raging against gay people and think the views expressed are amusing and outmoded, and dismiss them without challenge. But if homophobia is to be eradicated in black communities, such attitudes must be challenged. homophobia bell hooks
ee287ce there is not a day of my life that I am not critiquing myself to see if my politics are borne out in the way that I live and the way that I talk and present myself. politics bell hooks
417a28e Women have greater freedom than ever before, and yet it is not clear whether that freedom has given us greater access to true love. It is not clear how that freedom has changed the nature of romance and partnerships. Bell Hooks
0b0abc2 Learning to wear a mask (that word already embedded in the term "masculinity") is the first lesson in patriarchal masculinity that a boy learns. He learns that his core feelings cannot be expressed if they do not conform to the acceptable behaviors sexism defines as male. Asked to give up the true self in order to realize the patriarchal ideal, boys learn self-betrayal early and are rewarded for these acts of soul murder." Bell Hooks
5956591 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. patriarchy bell hooks
d833a27 Many of us choose relationships of affection and care that will never become loving because they feel safer. The demands are not as intense as loving requires. The risk is not as great. So many of us long for love but lack the courage to take risks. Even tough we are obsessed with the idea of love the truth is that most of us live relatively decent, somewhat satisfying lives even if we often feel that love is lacking. Bell Hooks
748b33a Widespread cultural acceptance of lying is a primary reason many of us will never know love. Bell Hooks
1103c2a Writing is my passion. Words are the way to know ecstasy. Without them life is barren. The poet insists, language is a body of suffering and when you take up language you take up the suffering too. All my life I have been suffering for words. Words have been the source of the pain and the way to heal. Struck as a child for talking, for speaking out of turn, for being out of my place. Struck as a grown woman for not knowing when to shut up, .. poetry writing memoir Bell Hooks
39bf738 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. bell hooks
041df2d 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 threa.. bell hooks
a7f14c0 There can be no love without justice. Until we live in a culture that no only respects but also upholds basic civil rights for children, most children will not know love. love justice children bell hooks
22646c6 Young girls often feel strong, courageous, highly creative, and powerful until they begin to receive undermining sexist messages that encourage them to conform to conventional notions of femininity. To conform they have to give up power. literature feminism relationships love patriarchy bell hooks
65d6d6a To indoctrinate boys into the rules of patriarchy, we force them to feel pain and to deny their feelings. bell hooks
2d9c75b When everyone in the classroom, teacher and students, recognizes that they are responsible for creating a learning community together, learning is at its most meaningful and useful. Bell Hooks
0d85993 By the end of the seventies the feared yet desired black male body had become as objectified as it was during slavery, only a seemingly positive twist had been added to the racist sexist objectification: the black male body had become the site for the personification of everyone's desire. objectification masculinity bell hooks
4875050 This is a patriarchal truism that most people in our society want to deny. Whenever women thinkers, especially advocates of feminism, speak about the widespread problem of male violence, folks are eager to stand up and make the point that most men are not violent. They refuse to acknowledge that masses of boys and men have been programmed from birth on to believe that at some point they must be violent, whether psychologically or physically.. Bell Hooks
d444f0a Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they chose to be intimate with are frozen in time, unable to allow themselves to love for fear that the loved one will abandon them. motherhood men feminism feminist love fear-of-love masculinity manhood intimacy bell hooks
5a3c5cd Most folks believe we are hardwired biologically to long for sex but they do not believe we are hardwired to long for love. Almost everyone believes that we can have sex without love; most folks do not believe that a couple can have love in a relationship if there is no sex. men relationships love Bell Hooks
f431fad 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. Bell Hooks
667bd57 Often, men who would never think of lying in the workplace lie constantly in intimate relationships. This seems to be especially the case for heterosexual men who see women as gullible. Bell Hooks
98adf09 All the myths and stereotypes used to characterize black womanhood have their roots in negative anti-woman mythology. Yet they form the basis of most critical inquiry into the nature of black female experience. Many people have difficulty appreciating black women as we are because of eagerness to impose an identity upon us based on any number of negative stereotypes. Widespread efforts to continue devaluation of black womanhoodmake it extre.. Bell Hooks
4f25376 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." bell hooks
5045db7 Whether or not any of us become racists is a choice we make. And we are called to choose again and again where we stand on the issue of racism at different moments in our life. bell hooks
4e5160f Acts of appropriation are part of the process by which we make ourselves. Appropriating - taking something for one's own use - need not be synonymous with exploitation. This is especially true of cultural appropriation. The "use" one makes of what is appropriated is the crucial factor." bell hooks
ec1d19a I have no fear here, in this world of trees, weeds, and growing things. bell hooks
e7cb1d3 Our] struggle for liberation has significance only if it takes place within a feminist movement that has as its fundamental goal the liberation of all people. feminism Bell Hooks
9790e52 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. love-quotes men feminism women feminist spiritual love nurturance quotes-about-love bell-hooks nurturing spiritual-growth bell hooks
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