bell hooks 1952-Present

Early Life

young bell hooks

• Born to a working class family in Hopkinsville, Kentucky
• Attended first racially segregated schools and later integrated. Wrote about difficulties to adapt to integrated schools: a “white” environment

Adult Life

• 1976 English professor and senior lecturer in Ethnic Studies at the University of Southern California
• Writes her name in lower keys to honor her grandmother (Bell Hooks) and emphasize importance of what is written, not the writer
• Taught at Yale, Oberlin, Berea and other universities
• PhD in 1983

What is Feminism?

• Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression

What is Sexism?

• Sexism is both discrimination based on gender and the attitudes, stereotypes, and cultural elements that promote this discrimination
• “…all sexist thinking and action is the problem, whether those who perpetuate it are female or male, child or adult.” bell hooks

What is Patriarchy?

• Patriarchy is one form of social stratification via a power/dominance hierarchy- an ancient and ongoing social system based on traditions of elitism (a ranking of inferiorities) and its privileges 
• Women-only households are not necessarily free of patriarchal values

Feminism is Not Against… 

Men. It is against male-dominated processes.

A World of Equals

• A feminist revolution alone will not create such a world; we need to end racism, class elitism, and imperialism
• (also ableism, transphobia, body shaming, ageism, and other instances of oppression)

“Christian Values” Keep Women at Home, Consciousness- Raising Groups Did the Opposite

• Even as women are part of the working population, they are still envisioned as mothers and house-wives
  
  

  People at the 2017 Women’s March demanding respect for paid and unpaid care work disproportionately done by femme people.
• Consciousness Raising Groups (CRG) served as spaces for reflection, mobilization, and coordination of feminist actions
• Anti-hierarchal spaces: all women’s voices needed to be heard, and planted the seeds for Women Studies programs
• As CRGs disappeared, feminism became increasingly liberal and white. Corporate feminism.

Power is a Relation That Traverses All Human Relations

• Hooks calls to overcome master/slave relations even within groups that live in a situation of brutal oppression

Evolution of Feminism

• From anger at men, feminism moved to understand that male dominated process can be upheld by women as well. Focus on “gender justice”
• “Sisterhood” had to acknowledge that there were class and racial differences amongst women, and that some women oppressed other women
• White liberal women (almost) won gender equality in the workforce in a white supremacist environment: many women of color and revolutionary women think that women will not achieve equality under present white supremacist capitalist patriarchy
• Gradually, feminism lost its revolutionary edge: conservative and liberal feminists were content with their acquired freedoms, as their higher income allowed them to exploit other women to do “women’s” jobs

A Call for Alliances

• Sisterhood, acknowledging differences
• Intersectionality (not mentioned by name, but presented as implicit methodology)
• Men, White Women, everybody needs to be involved in raising all women’s status
• Move away from victimization to struggle with all and for all (Nietzsche)
• Against binary identity politics