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"Women will only be truly sexually liberated when we arrive at a place where we can see ourselves as having sexual value and agency irrespective of whether of not we are the objects of male desire."
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"To me it seems that too many young women of this time share the same creed. 'Live, laugh, love, be nothing but happy, experience everything, et cetera et cetera.' How monotonous, how useless this becomes. What about the honors of Joan of Arc, Beauvoir, Stowe, Xena, Princess Leia, or women that would truly fight for something other than just their own emotions?"
"The idea of "common oppression" was a false and corrupt platform disguising and mystifying the true nature of women's varied and complex social reality. Women are divided by sexist attitudes, racism, class privilege, and a host of other prejudices. Sustained woman bonding can occur only when these divisions are confronted and the necessary steps are taken to eliminate them."
"The mass depiction of the modern woman as a 'beauty' is a contradiction: Where modern women are growing, moving, and expressing their individuality, as the myth has it, 'beauty' is by definition inert, timeless, and generic. That this hallucination is necessary and deliberate is evident in the way 'beauty' so directly contradicts women's real situation."
"Now that I am drawing to the close of this work, in which I have spoken of so many important things done by the Americans, to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women."
"Women are mere 'beauties' in men's culture so that culture can be kept male. When women in culture show character, they are not desirable, as opposed to the desirable. A beautiful heroine is a contradiction in terms, since heroism is about individuality, interesting and ever changing, while 'beauty' is generic, boring, and inert. While culture works out moral dilemmas, 'beauty' is amoral: If a woman is born resembling an art object, it is an accident of nature, a fickle consensus of mass perception, a peculiar coincidence--but it is not a moral act. From the 'beauties' in male culture, women learn a bitter amoral lesson--that the moral lessons of their culture exclude them."
"The beauty myth of the present is more insidious than any mystique of femininity yet: A century ago, Nora slammed the door of the doll's house; a generation ago, women turned their backs on the consumer heaven of the isolated multiapplianced home; but where women are trapped today, there is no door to slam. The contemporary ravages of the beauty backlash are destroying women physically and depleting us psychologically. If we are to free ourselves from the dead weight that has once again been made out of femaleness, it is not ballots or lobbyists or placards that women will need first; it is a new way to see."
"How silly men were! Their part in procreation was so unimportant; it was the woman who carried the child through long months of uneasiness and bore it with pain, and yet a man because of his momentary connection made such preposterous claims. Why should that make any difference to him in his feelings towards the child?"
"Feminist politics is losing momentum because feminist movement has lost clear definitions. We have those definitions. Let's reclaim them. We can share the simple yet powerful message that feminism is a movement to end sexist oppression."
"Even though the advocates of feminism gladly use the term to refer to equality between man and woman, the common human brain is not capable of perceiving such equality beyond the gender bias of the very word. It'll be same as using Man to refer to both genders. Hence, the only words suitable in this scenario are Humanism and Human, rather than Feminism and Man."
"Single ladies, the only thing we need to be rescued from is the notion that we need to be rescued."
Explore more quotes by bell hooks
"The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech."
"Commitment to truth telling lays the groundwork for the openness and honesty that is the heartbeat of love. When we see ourselves as we truly are and accept ourselves, we build the necessary foundation for self-love."
"I'm such a girl for the living room. I really like to stay in my nest and not move. I travel in my mind, and that that's a rigorous state of journeying for me. My body isn't that interested in moving from place to place."
"Why is it that many contemporary male thinkers, especially men of color, repudiate the imperialist legacy of Columbus but affirm dimensions of that legacy by their refusal to repudiate patriarchy?"
"Death is with you all the time; you get deeper in it as you move towards it, but it's not unfamiliar to you. It's always been there, so what becomes unfamiliar to you when you pass away from the moment is really life."
"I thought about how we need to make children feel that there are times in their lives when they need to be alone and quiet and to be able to accept their aloneness."
"This fear of maleness that they inspire estranges men from every female in their lives to greater or lesser degrees, and men feel the loss. Ultimately, one of the emotional costs of allegiance to patriarchy is to be seen as unworthy of trust. If women and girls in patriarchal culture are taught to see every male, including the males with whom we are intimate, as potential rapists and murderers, then we cannot offer them our trust, and without trust there is no love."
"I mostly want to remind her of the recipes of healing, and give her my own made-on-the spot remedy for the easing of her pain. I tell her, "Get a pen. Stop crying so you can write this down and start working on it tonight. My remedy is long. But the last item on the list says: "When you wake up and find yourself living someplace where there is nobody you love and trust, no community, it is time to leave town " to pack up and go (you can even go tonight). And where you need to go is any place where there are arms that can hold you, that will not let you go."
"Individuals who speak languages other than English, who speak patois as well as standard English, find it a necessary aspect of self-affirmation not to feel compelled to chose one voice over another, not to claim one as more authentic but rather to construct social realities that celebrate, acknowledge and affirm differences, variety."
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