bell hooks Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics
Who is this book for?
it's for everbody.
we have a bad perception of feminism (angry women who are anti-male and it's single issue and that women want to be like men)
part of the problem of anti-maleness is we cut of half the population and lose our potential allies!
"Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression." (1) - this sentence breaks the stigma and refocuses us on the project of feminism; she wants readers to know her definition of feminism and how it's different from what people think it is;
What tools do we get towards liberation and the end of sexist exploitation?
Consciousness raising sessions: "Women took turn speaking" "non-hierarchical form of discussion" (8-9); "CR for males: "Had there been an emphasis on groups for males that taught boys and men about what sexism is and how it can be transformed, it would have been impossible for mass media to portray the movement as anti-male" (11).
Sisterhood is still power: "As long as women are using class and race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realized"
we see this in the debate around domestic help (16) and it reminds us of Lorde's "racist feminism" claim in "Master's Tools"
"Feminist Education for Critical Consciousness"
the press embodies and materializes the transmission of radical;
"Children's literature is one of the most crucial sites for feminist education for critical consciousness precisely because beliefs and identities are still being formed" (23)
public education for children (23)
what is "reproductive justice" for bell hooks? What does it entail?
certainly the abortion issue. "The anti-choice movement is fundamentally anti-feminist" (27)
but we miss the larger network: "basic sex education, prenatal care, preventative healthcare, forced sterilizations, forced hysterectomies, and complications in the wake" (26)
"If sex education, preventative healthcare, and easy access to contraceptives are offered to every female, fewer of us would have unwanted pregnancies" (29).
Beauty Within, Beauty Without
Tools and strategies for ending sexism (2/8/23): Class to Visionary Fem; what are the tools for resistance/what are the strategies for equitable world making that hooks gives us in each chapter?
Class, Work, and Global nations
When we think about the future that we want, what does it look like?
less hate! treating everyone with kindness and undoing the socialized perspectives of what are "flaws"; this is about blowing up social formations understood as in hierarchies and deviant and wrong; machismo and Hispanic heritages of sexism; uh oh money is a bad and let's think about alternate economies; ending violence; less hypersexualization of women in the media (and everywhere);
"we need to close the gap between the rich and the poor" (43)
"decolonizing our perspectives" and not reifying "the east" as uncivilized; not reproducing
"Rethinking the meaning of work" 53); and women are not happy at work or finding meaningful work for the American dream good life
What material/economic/tangible strategies does bell hooks give us to work towards equity?
subsidized wages, paid homecare and profesisonal
Feminist home spaces
creating peer-relationships in marriage that is built on non-hierarchical/non-patriarchal structures (84)
she revises "domestic abuse" to "patriarchal violence"
what about feminist approaches to pleasure and sex?: early feminist calls for not faking pleasure or fulfillment (79);