Women need to know that they can reject the powerful’s definition of their reality.

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, by bell hooks, 1984 (essays)

Although many would say they want equality for women, it seems few would call themselves "feminists."

There is a general rigidness to the word that, I think, people don’t want to be associated with. Especially women. Which sort of makes sense. Some of the traits we celebrate the most as being “feminine” involve the opposite words – words like wielding, surrender, soft, passive. And though we want equality, we don’t want to be the same.

Right?

Around the time I was pondering this, and what my next book for What She Wrote would be, bell hooks passed away. I realized that I didn’t know that much about her, other than that she was a feminist and gifted and a writer.

I googled her and found this quote, from her book “Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center,” published in 1984.

“Most women’s liberationists were saying, ‘Women have nurtured, helped, and supported others for too long – now we must fend for ourselves.’ … In this way, women active in feminist movement were simply inverting the dominant ideology of the culture – they were not attacking it. They were not presenting practical alternatives to the status quo. In fact, even the statement ‘men are the enemy’ was basically an inversion of the male supremacist doctrine that ‘women are the enemy’ – the old Adam and Eve version of reality.”

I picked up her book from the library that same day.

In “Feminist Theory,” hooks highlights the significance of the theory that there is actually very little difference between feminism/feminist strategy and fighting against oppression in all its forms.

This was a subtlety that the early feminists missed – early feminists who tended to be bourgeois white women.

When these women fought for equality with men, in the early 1900s into the 1940s and ’50s, they wanted out of the home, out of the gilded cages they’d found themselves in. They wanted the opportunity to work anywhere men worked, in any job they chose. They wanted men to share in the responsibilities of homemaking and child rearing.

Not that this was wrong, but hooks says the approach widened the divide between these women and the rest of the women in America. At the time, most women belonged to the lower classes and/or the various minority races, and they had to work outside the home. Some literally remembered being slaves. They saw the opportunity to stay home with their children as a blessing.

Plus, equality with men didn’t ring true for most Black women, hooks notes, because they didn’t want equality with Black men. They knew Black men weren’t equal. This applied to women of other minority races and of the lower classes as well.

Although early feminists realized that they needed the support of all women, their overall message was simply too divisive. Why would Black women get behind a movement that didn’t consider their needs and perspectives?

“As a group, black women are in an unusual position in this society, for not only are we collectively at the bottom of the occupational ladder, but our overall social status is lower than that of any other group. Occupying such a position, we bear the brunt of sexist, racist, and classist oppression. … White women and black men have it both ways. They can act as oppressor or be oppressed.”

hooks argues that we can’t successfully fight against sexism without fighting against all systems of oppression. Systems that start in the home.

“Even as we are loved and cared for in families, we are simultaneously taught that this love is not as important as having power to dominate others. Power struggles, coercive authoritarian rule, and brutal assertion of domination shape family life so that it is often the setting of intense suffering and pain. … The movement to end sexist oppression is the only social-change movement that will strengthen and sustain family life in all households.”

The feminist movement isn’t just a movement for women’s benefit. If it fights oppression everywhere, then it benefits everyone.

The patriarchy and its sexism, after all, aren’t beneficial for men either.

“Sexist ideology brainwashes men to believe that their violent abuse of women is beneficial when it is not. Yet feminist activists affirm this logic when we should be constantly naming these acts as expressions of perverted power relations, general lack of control over one’s actions, emotional powerlessness, extreme irrationality, and, in many cases, outright insanity. Passive male absorption of sexist ideology enables them to interpret this disturbed behavior positively. As long as men are brainwashed to equate violent abuse of women with privilege, they will have no understanding of the damage done to themselves or the damage they do to others, and no motivation to change.”

hooks wants all groups of women to come together; those who have led in the past and those who have felt ostracized by the early feminist movement.

“Feminist movement, like other radical movements in our society, suffers when individual concerns and priorities are the only reason for participating. When we show our concern for the collective, we strengthen our solidarity.”

We must be united in our views, and be less concerned about equality and more concerned about overthrowing an oppressive system, the patriarchy. As women and as a society, we have made strides in this regard. But hooks' practical tips for acheiving this continue to right true, e.g., to "vote with your dollar" by making your purchases from minority- and women-run businesses.

And she gives words of hope and encouragement; she doesn't want women to lose the fire necessary to take the feminist movement from rebellion to revolution ...

• “If women always seek to avoid confrontation, to always be ‘safe,’ we may never experience any revolutionary change, any transformation, individually or collectively.”

• “Women need to know that they can reject the powerful’s definition of their reality – that they can do so even if they are poor, exploited, or trapped in oppressive circumstances. They need to know that the exercise of this basic personal power is an act of resistance and strength.”

• “Women do not need to eradicate difference to feel solidarity. We do not need to share common oppression to fight equally to end oppression. We do not need anti-male sentiments to bond us together, so great is the wealth of experience, culture, and ideas we have to share with one another. We can be sisters united by shared interests and beliefs, united in our appreciation for diversity, united in our struggle to end sexist oppression, united in political solidarity.”

  
  

There is so much value in "Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center." I hope you'll read it.

Learn more about bell hooks at her blog.