Communion: The Female Search for Love: 2 (Love Song to the Nation, 2)

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Women are afraid to hear patriarchal men speak their thoughts and feelings when what they reveal expresses a reality vastly different from how we imagined them to be. While it became more acceptable to say no now and then, it was not acceptable to say no for any significant amount of time.

The Guardian A life in quotes: bell hooks | Books | The Guardian

Years ago, in the heyday of the contemporary feminist movement, I remember lesbian women joking all the time about how wrong the world was in casting them in the role of man haters, because everyone knew that if you gathered a bunch of women together in a room and started talking about men, the most vicious man-hating sentiments would be expressed by women who were with men and who were planning to stay with men for the rest of their lives.From girlhood on, we learn that conversations about love are a gendered narrative, a female subject.

Communion by bell hooks | Waterstones Communion by bell hooks | Waterstones

To this day I believe that feminist debate about love and sexuality ended precisely because straight women did not want to face the reality that it was highly unlikely in patriarchal society that a majority of men would wholeheartedly embrace women’s right to say no in the bedroom. When I looked inside, I found my thinking about men dominated by three images: my patriarchal father, whom I feared, at times hated, and wished was dead; my eccentric, antipatriarchal grandfather, whom I never feared, loved at all times, and wanted to live forever; and my playful older brother.

Many women feel despair about patriarchy’s ending and try to find ways to cope with male domination that will heighten their well-being. If the men in our lives—our fathers, uncles, grandfathers, brothers—stand idly by while elder women abuse us, then we lose respect for them. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others. Beloved author, professor and feminist bell hooks, known for titles like "Ain't I a Woman" and "All About Love," died Wednesday at 69, her family confirmed to USA TODAY.

Communion by bell hooks eBook | Perlego [PDF] Communion by bell hooks eBook | Perlego

We all know relationships in which couples remain together for more than fifty years but seem to be total strangers. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community.In those days we used the phrase “male-identified” to describe women who did not necessarily like men, though they usually pretended to, but who supported any standpoint men in their lives held, who let their own opinions go to please men. Kenneth was everything a boy was not supposed to be: sweet, tender, playful, and fearful of being hurt. This was a moment when the maxim 'You can never love anybody if you are unable to love yourself'made clear sense. To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination. It is silly, isn't it, that I would dream of someone else offering to me the acceptance and affirmation I was withholding from myself.

love and feminism bell hooks quotes: Her profound words on love and feminism

Nothing indicts female allegiance to patriarchy more than the willingness to behave as though the problems created by cultural investment in sexist thinking about the nature of male and female roles can be solved by women's working harder. I knew that lots of men were “macho” like my dad, but I also knew there were men like my granddad—calm, gentle, and kind.

As long as men continually get messages about avoiding commitment while women are taught to desperately seek it out, the sexes will always be at odds with each other and nothing will work. As all advocates of feminist politics know most people do not understand sexism or if they do they think it is not a problem.