Bell Hooks - Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

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Feminism Is for Everybody

What is feminism? In this short, accessible primer, bell hooks explores the nature of feminism and its positive promise to eliminate sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. With her characteristic clarity and directness, hooks encourages readers to see how feminism can touch and change their livesto see that feminism is for everybody.

A cultural critic, an intellectual, and a feminist writer, bell hooks is best known for classic books including Aint I a Woman, Bone Black, All About Love, Rock My Soul, Belonging, We Real Cool, Where We Stand, Teaching to Transgress, Teaching Community, Outlaw Culture, and Reel to Real. hooks is Distinguished Professor in Residence in Appalachian Studies at Berea College, and resides in her home state of Kentucky.

First published 2015
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2015 Gloria Watkins

The right of Gloria Watkins to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First edition published
by South End Press 2000

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

hooks, bell, 1952

Feminism is for everybody : passionate politics / bell hooks. [Second edition].

pages cm

Includes index.

1. Feminist theory. 2. FeminismPolitical aspects. 3. Sex discrimination

against women. I. Title.

HQ1190.H67 2014

305.4201dc23

2014023012

ISBN: 978-1-138-82159-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-82162-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-74318-9 (ebk)

Typeset in Galliard
by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

feminist politics
where we stand

consciousness-raising
a constant change of heart

our bodies, ourselves
reproductive rights

a feminist sexual politic
an ethics of mutual freedom

total bliss
lesbianism and feminism

to love again
the heart of feminism

Engaged with feminist theory and practice for more than forty years, I am proud to testify that each year of my life my commitment to feminist movement, to challenging and changing patriarchy has become more intense. More than ever before, I work to share the liberating joy feminist struggle brings to our lives as females and males who continue to work for change, who continue to hope for an end to sexism, to sexist exploitation and oppression.

From the very onset of my engagement with feminist practice, I was most excited about building a mass feminist movement. Believing at twenty years old that it was feminist movement for social justice that could change all our lives I worked to envision ways of bringing the meaning of feminist thinking and practice to a larger audience, to the masses. And while much of my work did reach folks who had not yet thought about feminism, especially black folks, the fact that almost all my work was written while I was a student or a professor meant that it did not always reach that larger audience. The primary way that the reading public knows that a book exists is either they see it displayed in bookstores and/or they read reviews of the work. When work is dissident and progressive it is unlikely to receive very many mainstream reviews.

I have been fortunate to have published books that although they were rarely reviewed, they found an audience. Definitely course adoptions became one of the ways books that received little mainstream attention found an audience. And of course when writing books that readers proclaim this book saved my life, word of mouth sharing about the work sells copies. As I look back at forty years of writing feminist theory I am awed that my work still finds readers, still educates for critical consciousness.

Through the years as more diverse female and male voices have come to the table writing awesome feminist theory and cultural criticism, academic settings became and have become the primary settings for the dissemination of feminist thought. This trend has had positive impact for college students as it provides greater opportunity for folks to learn the power and significance of feminist thinking and practice, but it has impacted negatively on the work of broadening the engagement of a large public in feminist movement.

I came to full feminist consciousness as an undergraduate, my mind changed and altered by womens studies classes, by the books we read. However born into a family with six girls and one boy, I wanted my mama, my siblings, everyone I knew to be as intoxicated with feminist thinking as I was. The picture on the cover of this book is of me and my best friend from our first year of college. Race did not stand in the way of our bonding as it was shared working class issues that brought us together. We are in our late teens, almost twenty, in this photo. When I became excited about feminism April came with me to feminist conferences to learn what it was all about. After more than forty years we are still attending feminist lectures together. We learned the truism that sister is powerful by learning and experiencing lifes journey together.

When thinking of what to write I have always worked from the space of concrete experience, writing about what was happening in my life and the lives of females and males around me. For years I would listen to folks within the academy and without share their sense that they did not understand the theory and practice of feminism. Often students taking womens studies classes who had developed critical consciousness would share the reality that it was difficult to explain their new ways of thinking to family and friends.

Listening to all of the complaints that feminist theory was just too academic or too full of words folks could not understand I just felt that somehow the movement had failed if we could not communicate feminist politics to everyone. I would often say that we needed to go door to door to share feminist thinking (that never happened.) Then it occurred to me that I should write an easy to read book that would explain feminist thinking and encourage folks to embrace feminist politics.

There has never been a time when I believed feminist movement should be and was a woman-only movement. In my heart of hearts I knew that we would never have a successful feminist movement if we could not encourage everyone, female and male, women and men, girls and boys to come closer to feminism. I would tell my students I intend to write a book that will explain feminist thinking, one that you can take home and share with relatives, with your parents, your grandparents, your church members.

The title Feminism is for Everybody was like a slogan proclaiming all that the book was about. Clear, concise, easy to read, for me it was a dream come true. For it does invite us all to come closer to feminism.

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