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729e464
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Overall women in our society are forgetting the value and power of sisterhood. Renewed feminist movement must once again raise the banner high to proclaim anew "Sistehood is powerful."
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bell hooks |
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96ece0d
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Even though some individual scholars try to tell us there is no direct connection between images of violence and the violence confronting us in our lives, the commonsense truth remains- we are affected by the images we consume and by the states of mind we are in when watching them. If consumers want to be entertained, and the images shown us as entertaining are images of violent dehumanization, it makes sense that these acts become more acc..
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violence
television
mass-media
pop-culture
violent
movies
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bell hooks |
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feff4cb
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Redeemed and restored, love returns us to the promise of everlasting life. When we love we can let our hearts speak.
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bell hooks |
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740a7d8
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all 'people of one blood' who made homeplace in isolated landscapes where they could invent themselves, where they could savor a taste of freedom.
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bell hooks |
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d611957
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Watching Paris is Burning, I began to think that the many yuppie-looking, straight -acting, pushy, predominantly white folks in the audience were there because the film in no way interrogates "whiteness." These folks left the film saying it was "amazing," "marvellous," incredibly funny," worthy of statements like, "Didn't you just love it?" And no, I didn't love it. For in many ways the film was a graphic documentary portrait of the way in ..
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gender-identity
representation
image
race
propaganda
sexuality
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bell hooks |
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e0db677
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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. School
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bell hooks |
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b000e0a
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By naming sexism as the problem it went directly to the heart of the matter. Practically, it is a definition which implies that all sexist thinking and action is the problem, whether those who perpetuate it are female or male, child or adult.
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bell hooks |
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d425fcf
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Few of us enter romantic relationships able to receive love. We fall into romantic attachments doomed to replay familiar family dramas. Usually we do not know this will happen precisely because we have grown up in a culture that has told us that no matter what we experience in our childhoods, no matter the pain, sorrow, alienation, emptiness, no matter the extent of our dehumanization, romantic love will be ours. We believe we will meet the..
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love-quotes
love
love-transforms
one-day-my-prince-will-come
open-your-heart
someday-my-prince-will-come
first-love
love-at-first-sight
vulnerability
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bell hooks |
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d9e7085
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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 emph..
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bell hooks |
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907aa5f
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it is the most militant, most radical intervention anyone can make to not only speak of love, but to engage in the practice of love. For love as the foundation of all social movements for self-determination is the only way we create a world that domination and dominator thinking cannot destroy. Anytime we do the work of love we are doing the work of ending domination.
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social-justice
self-determination
love
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bell hooks |
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5f35775
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The mutual practice of giving and receiving is an everyday ritual when we know true love.
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love
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bell hooks |
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52b9e63
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At the center of the way black male selfhood is constructed in white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy is the image of the brute--untamed, uncivilized, unthinking, and unfeeling.
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Bell Hooks |
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1353bcb
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Paul and Elder remind us: Critical thinkers are clear as to the purpose at hand and the question at issue. They question information, conclusions and point of view. They strive to be clear, accurate, precise, and relevant. They seek to think beneath the surface, to be logical and fair. They apply these skills to their reading and writing as well as to their speaking and listening. Critical thinking
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Bell Hooks |
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f0c5821
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Until we are willing to question many of the specifics of the male sex role, including most of the seven norms and stereotypes that psychologist Robert Levant names in a listing of its chief constituents--'avoiding femininity, restrictive emotionality, seeking achievement and status, self-reliance, aggression, homophobia, and nonrelational attitudes toward sexuality'--we are going to deny men their full humanity. Feminist masculinity would ..
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bell hooks |
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d480481
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In patriarchal culture males are not allowed simply to be who they are and to glory in their unique identity. Their value is always determined by what they do. In an antipatriarchal culture males do not have to prove their value and worth. They know from birth that simply being gives them value, the right to be cherished and loved. I
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bell hooks |
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94367c6
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When we work with love we renew the spirit; that renewal is an act of self-love, it nurtures our growth. It's not what you do but how you do it.
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spirit
work
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bell hooks |
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390479a
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To fulfill that mission, my teachers made sure they "knew" us. They knew our parents, our economic status, where we worshipped, what our homes were like, and how we were treated in the family."
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bell hooks |
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f37131c
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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; mosr folks do not believe that a couple can have love in a relationship if there is no sex.
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sex
relationships
love
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Bell Hooks |
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e3fee99
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Learning to wear a mask (that word already embedded in the term "masculinity") is the first lesson in patriarchal masculinity 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. Therapist John Bradshaw..
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bell hooks |
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7ce5364
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Working with students and families from diverse class backgrounds, I am constantly amazed at how difficult it is to cross boundaries in this white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal society. And it is obviously most difficult for individuals who lack material privilege or higher levels of education to make the elaborate shifts in location, thought, and life experience cultural critics talk and write about as though it is only a matter of ..
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Bell Hooks |
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a5459c9
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Male fantasy is seen as something that can create reality, whereas female fantasy is regarded as pure escape.
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bell hooks |
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b074158
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As a black woman interested in feminist movement, I am often asked whether being black is more important than being a woman; whether feminist struggle to end sexist oppression is more important than the struggle to racism or vice versa. All such questions are rooted in competitive either/or thinking, the belief that the self is formed in opposition to an other...Most people are socialized to think in terms of opposition rather than compatib..
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racism
woman
feminism
opposition
compatibility
movement
oppression
sexism
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Bell Hooks |
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cbdff7f
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We use the word love in such a sloppy way that it can mean almost nothing or absolutely everything.
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bell hooks |
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d69f314
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The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth... Love is as love does. Love is an act of will-namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.
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bell hooks |
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770d558
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Love and abuse cannot co-exist.
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bell hooks |
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6967997
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All over the world people live in intimate daily contact with one another. They wash together, eat and sleep together, face challenges together, share joy and sorrow. The rugged individual who relies on no one else is a figure who can only exist in a culture of domination where a privileged few use more of the world's resources than the many who must daily do without. Worship of individualism has in part led us to the unhealthy culture of n..
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bell hooks |
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08e7462
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Love allows us to confront these negative realities in a manner that is life-affirming and life enhancing.
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bell hooks |
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72dc5e6
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I learned then that it is more fulfilling to live one's life within a circle of love, interacting with loved ones to whole we are committed.
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bell hooks |
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e233109
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I learned then that it is more fulfilling to live one's life within a circle of love, interacting with loved ones to whom we are committed.
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bell hooks |
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01dccdf
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In the Mars-and-Venus-gendered universe, men want power and women want emotional attachment and connection. On this planet nobody really has the opportunity to know love since it is power and not love that is the order of the day. The privilege of power is at the heart of patriarchal thinking. Girls and boys, men and women who have been taught this way almost always believe love is not important, or if it is, it is never as important as bei..
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love-quotes
feminism
romance
feminist
love
affection
women-are-from-venus
bell-hooks
men-are-from-mars
venus
manipulation
control
mars
gender
power
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bell hooks |
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7bed4d8
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When men and women are loyal to ourselves and others, when we love justice, we understand fully the myriad ways in which lying diminishes and erodes the possibility of meaningful, caring connection, that it stands in the way of love.
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Bell Hooks |
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47220ec
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Her love of words is a private passion - one she would rather not share. In the house of her childhood though everything had to be shared. If she tried to hold anything back, they would search and find the hidden places. Her written words, discovered, read were just the source of more pain and punishment. This was why she loved poetry. They did not always understand it so they left it alone.
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poetry
writing
memoir
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Bell Hooks |
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7704511
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Nowadays we live in a world where poor teenagers are willing to maim and murder for a pair of tennis shoes or a designer coat; this is not a consequence of poverty. In dire situations of poverty at earlier times in our nation's history, it would have been unthinkable to the poor to murder someone for a luxury item. While it was common for individuals to steal or attack in the interests of acquiring resources - money, food or something as si..
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bell hooks |
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500bcdc
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threads of power and domination a palimpsest of greed
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bell hooks |
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a4c879f
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making soil soup deep
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bell hooks |
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34f40f0
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Initially when feminist leaders in the United States proclaimed the need for gender equality here they did not seek to find out if corresponding movements were taking place among women around the world. Instead they declared themselves liberated and therefore in the position to liberate their less fortunate sisters, especially those in the "third world." This neocolonial paternalism had already been enacted to keep women of color in the bac..
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bell hooks |
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250c272
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Unfortunately, our over-emphasis on the male as oppressor often obscures the fact that men too are victimized. To be an oppressor is dehumanizing and anti-human in nature, as it is to be a victim. Patriarchy forces fathers to act as monsters, encourages husbands and lovers to be rapists in disguise; it teaches our blood brothers to feel ashamed that they care for us, and denies all men the emotional life that would act as a humanizing, self..
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bell hooks |
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c0c0505
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Imagine living in a world where there is no domination, where females and males are not alike or even always equal, but where a vision of mutuality is the ethos shaping our interaction. Imagine living in a world where we can all be who we are, a world of peace and possibility. Feminist revolution alone will not create such a world; we need to end racism, class elitism, imperialism. But it will make it possible for us to be fully self-actual..
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bell hooks |
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bd1b0b4
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Most men and women born in the fifties or earlier were socialized to believe that marriages and/or committed romantic bonds of any kind should take precedence over all other relationships. Had I been evaluating my relationships from a standpoint that emphasized growth rather than duty and obligation, I would have understood that abuse irreparably undermines bonds. All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love..
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love-quotes
feminism
feminist
love
bell-hooks
friendships-and-love
respect
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bell hooks |
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cd736a5
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If we were constantly remembering that love is as love does, we would not use the word in a manner that devalues and degrades it's meaning.
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bell hooks |
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e387735
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Refusal to stand up for what you believe in weakens individual morality and ethics as well as those of the culture.
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bell hooks |
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31bd603
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White people who want people of color to do the work for them, who want us to draw the map and then carry them on our back down the road that ends racism are still playing out the servant/served paradigm.
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bell hooks |
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83e1154
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Global women's issues like forced female circumcision, sex clubs in Thailand, the veiling of women in Africa, India, the Middle East, and Europe, the killing of female children in China, remain important concerns. However feminist women in the West are still struggling to decolonize feminist thinking and practice so that these issues can be addressed in a manner that does not reinscribe Western imperialism... A decolonized feminist perspect..
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bell hooks |
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659a54f
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Significantly, romantic friendships can coexist with the fact of partners' marrying because their reason for being is not to replace marriage but to open the possibility of sustained, committed true love existing among friends, and not just same-sex friends. No matter that our chosen relationship commitments change. Those of us who have long-term romantic friendships, some that have lasted longer than any of our marriages or partnerships, d..
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feminism
relationships
friendship
communion
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bell hooks |