‘Feminism Is for Everybody’ by bell hooks | Book Discourse

Hello and welcome to the program; this is The Black Ponder. I’m Neil Trotter, and today we’re discussing feminism. That’s right. I would like to ask you a question. Do you know what feminism is? Like, do you know what feminism is? Maybe you might have an idea about what feminism is, but is that idea actually what feminism is? Because a lot of people get feminism wrong. They do. They do.

Now, I’m not trying to mansplain here. I’m going to go to one of the sources. This is from a text from the famous prolific black feminist bell hooks. We’re going to examine this text right here, and it’s called “Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics,” We’re going to dive deep into what feminism is. We’re going to add a philosophical perspective to that discussion.

So, in case you don’t know what feminism is, there’s a great book to give to somebody. Like, “Here, here’s a book,” it’ll break down what feminism is. And it’s essential to have a text like this because mainstream media and many loud people on the internet often give a false impression of what feminism is. So you get a misconstrued misunderstanding, and people tend to run with that. And it often does give feminism a bad rap.

So let’s check out some quotes from the book, which is what we do here at The Black Ponder. First, we read quotes from the book and text, then I add supplementary commentary, and we continue the discussion online via the comments.

So let’s talk about misconceptions about feminism. I begin with the first quote I picked. This is on page Roman numeral number nine, in case you want to follow along and you got this text. This is the beginning of the second-to-last paragraph.

“There has never been a time when I believed, I being bell hooks, the author, feminist movement should be and was a woman-only movement. But, in my heart, 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.”

A common misconception is that feminism is a movement only for women. That’s it. And men should be left out of feminism. That’s a misconception. But you often see that in mainstream media, and then you get feminists that are highlighted, right, that believe this, and they’re put up into the forefront. But bell hooks is telling you, “Nope, that’s not what the original conception of feminism was all about.”

So, what was feminism initially conceived to be? Let’s go ahead and continue with some quotes, and we can talk about that. So, this is the Roman numeral number 12. We’re writing the book’s introduction, which begins on the fourth line of the third paragraph.

“Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. Okay, let that sink in. I’ll read that one more time. ‘Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.'”

Okay, I love this definition by bell hooks. She loves that definition. She put that there because it clearly states that the movement is not about being anti-male. Instead, it makes it clear that the problem is sexism, and that clarity helps us remember that all of us, female and male, have been socialized from birth to accept sexism, thought, and action. As a consequence, females can be just as sexist as men. While that does not excuse or justify male domination (that’s true, too), it does mean that it would be naive and wrong-minded for feminist thinkers to see the movement as simplistically being for women against men to end patriarchy, another way of naming institutionalized sexism.

Let’s use some definitions here. Patriarchy, what is that? Institutionalized sexism. Okay, that’s what we’re talking about here. So, to end that, we must be clear that we are all participants in perpetuating sexism until we change our minds and hearts to let go of sexist thoughts and actions and replace them with feminist thoughts and actions.

Some key things to remember here: institutionalized sexism and bell hooks talks about being socialized by this institutionalized sexism from birth. From birth, we’re socialized to accept sexist thoughts and actions. This is what patriarchy is. So let that settle in a little bit. This is the truth that feminism is trying to reveal. It’s trying to let out that we’re being socialized to be sexist individuals, both men, and women, and that’s messing us up. It’s hurting us as a species. This socialization is negatively impacting the human species.

How so? Well, I’ll continue right where I left off. As a group, males have and benefit the most from patriarchy, from the assumption that they are superior to females and should rule over us. But those benefits have come with a price. What is that price? In return for all the goodies men receive from patriarchy, they must dominate women, exploit and oppress us, use violence if necessary, and keep patriarchy intact. Most men find it challenging to be patriarchs. Most men are disturbed by hatred and fear of women, male violence against women, and even by the men who perpetuate this violence.

But they fear letting go of the benefits. They are unsure what will happen to the world they know most intimately if patriarchy changes. So, they find it easier to support male domination passively, even when they know in their minds and hearts that it is wrong. That is a search for truth. You know something’s off. You know something’s wrong, but by revealing that negativity, you risk losing something. You risk losing the status quo. You know you’ve got to shake things up. There are certain things you’re going to have to give up. But isn’t that always the case with the search for truth? We’re getting philosophical here.

I turn to page one. All right. This is at the end of the first sentence of the second paragraph.

“Most people do not understand sexism, or, if they do, they think it is not a problem. Masses of people think that feminism is always and only about women seeking to be equal to men, and a huge majority of these folks think feminism is anti-male. Their misunderstanding of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media.”

So, it’s this common notion of feminism, right? That angry, furious, loud-mouthed lady says, “Down with men! Men are the problem! We don’t need men to succeed. We need to put men in their place.” And this is the perception of what feminism is. And it’s a perception of what feminism is because that is the popular portrayal of what feminism is. You might argue, like, “Well, that’s all I see.” That’s all you see because mass media is patriarchal. The vast majority of feminists who are not like that are not portrayed in the mass media to represent the true nature of feminism.

“But the feminism they hear about the most is portrayed by women primarily committed to gender equality, equal pay for equal work, and sometimes women and men sharing household chores and parenting. They see that these women are usually white and materially privileged.” So, you’re seeing only one specific kind of flavor of feminism, which is not accurately portraying the truth behind what this movement is.

So, now we’re on page two. This is the second paragraph. I’m beginning at the end of the eighth line.

“The wrong-minded notion of the feminist movement, which implied it was anti-male, carried with it the wrong-minded assumption that all female space would necessarily be an environment where patriarchy and sexist thinking would be absent. Many women, even those involved in feminist politics, also chose to believe this.”

So, now I will start reading from page three, beginning at the eighth line.

“The focus shifted to an all-out effort to create gender justice. (I skipped down three lines.) Utopian visions of sisterhood based solely on the awareness that all women were somehow victimized by male domination were disrupted by discussions of class and race. (I skipped down four more lines.) These discussions did not trivialize the feminist insistence that sisterhood is powerful. Instead, they emphasized that we could only become sisters and struggle by confronting the ways women, through sex classes and race, dominated and exploited other women and created a political platform that would address these differences.”

So now we’re getting more into what feminism is. You know, it’s a critique of the way oppression works. It’s not just through gender. It’s not just about gender equality. We also have to examine things like sex. We have to examine things like class, and we have to examine things like race because social qualifiers like those are used together to support this patriarchal structure, this institutionalized sexism. Feminism isn’t one-dimensional. Feminism’s critique is multi-dimensional.

But I’ll continue right where I left off. Even though individual black women were active in the contemporary feminist movement from its inception, they were not the individuals who became the stars of the movement but who attracted the attention of mass media. Often, individual black women active in the feminist movement were revolutionary feminists. But, like many white lesbians, they were already at odds with reformist feminists who resolutely wanted to project a vision of the movement solely about women gaining equality with men in the existing system.

Even before race became a talked about issue in feminist circles, it was clear to black women and their revolutionary allies. It struggled that they would never have equality within the existing white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Let me repeat that: existing white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Multi-dimensional. From its earliest inception, the feminist movement was polarized. Performance thinkers chose to emphasize gender equality. Revolutionary thinkers did not want to alter the existing systems so women would have more rights. We wanted to transform that system to bring an end to patriarchy and sexism.

Since patriarchal mass media was not interested in the more revolutionary vision and never received attention in the mainstream press, okay, we’re on page four. This is the third paragraph.

“Given the reality of racism, it made sense that white men were more willing to consider women’s rights when granting them could serve the interests of maintaining white supremacy.”

I skipped down four lines. First, reformist feminists’ thinking, focusing primarily on an equality with men in the workforce, overshadowed the original radical foundations of contemporary feminism, which called for reform and overall restructuring of society so that our nation would be fundamentally anti-sexist. Most incredibly privileged white women ceased even to consider revolutionary feminist visions once they began to gain economic power within an existing social structure.

So what bell hooks is breaking down is this divergence of feminist practice between certain groups of people who identify as feminists with other groups of people who identify as feminists. Some of these feminist women benefited from the patriarchal structure because they got financial and economic benefits because of their class. So these are the reformist feminists, saying, look, we need gender equality. That’s all we need. We don’t; there are, and it’s all good. We can work with all the other things that are put in place.

But those feminists who were not benefiting from the patriarchal structure, radical revolutionary feminists, were saying, “No, the whole system is jacked up, and it’s jacked up because not everybody’s benefiting. Certain people are exploited for the benefit of others. There’s a fiction put in place, a fiction of domination, whereas one group of people gets dominated so that a few others can benefit, but they benefit from the domination. So the whole system is jacked. We need to tear down the entire system.”

But tearing down the entire system would take away the economic, financial, and class benefit that these reformist feminists, these white women of privilege, were receiving. So there’s this conflict going on. So bell hooks are breaking down; why are we getting this false perception of feminists from people identifying as feminists? What’s going on here? She’s breaking it down. I just wanted to let you continue reading.

“Ironically, revolutionary feminist thinking was most accepted and embraced in academic circles. In those circles, the production of revolutionary feminist theory progressed. But more often than not, that theory was kept from the public. It became and remained a privileged discourse available to those among us who are highly literate, well-educated, and usually materially privileged. So revolutionary radical feminists became this discipline as an academic discipline known as feminist theory, and it got all steeped into academia.”

This had the negative effect of restricting the people who could benefit from revolutionary feminism because to be involved in academia at a high level; one has to attend higher-up universities, which requires a lot of money and privilege. So again, we see that the truth of feminism is being restricted, limited, and not exposed to the masses.

We’re on page five now. This is the second paragraph. While it was in the interest of mainstream white supremacist capitalist patriarchy to suppress visionary feminist thinking, which was not anti-male or concerned with getting women the right to be like men, reformist feminists were also eager to silence these forces. Reformist feminism became their route to class mobility. They could break free of male domination in the workforce and be more self-determining in their lifestyles. While sexism did not end, they could maximize their freedom within the existing system and count on a lower class of exploited, subordinated women to do the dirty work they refused. And we were talking about that, right? These reformist feminists, women who were privileged based on their class and race, were benefiting from these patriarchal structures. They didn’t want to give that up, so they did this half-hearted version of feminism. They pushed that forward and played down revolutionary, radical feminism, the more authentic version of feminism, when contemporary feminism was conceptualized. This radical, revolutionary version was originally the goal. But as bell hooks is naming, reformist feminists realized that if they started being revolutionary and radical about it, they would have to give up some of their class/race privileges. They only wanted to do that.

So, I’m skipping to the end of page five’s second to last line. “Suddenly, the politics were being slowly removed from feminism, and the assumption prevailed that no matter what a woman’s politics were, whether conservative or liberal, she too could fit feminism into her lifestyle. This way of thinking has made feminism more acceptable because its underlying assumption is that women can be feminists without fundamentally challenging or changing themselves or the culture. And the issue is that true feminism is challenging culture. It’s changing the institutional system that we were all socialized in.”

Let me continue. For example, let’s take the issue of abortion. Suppose feminism is a movement to end sexist oppression, and depriving females of reproductive rights is a form of sexist oppression. In that case, one cannot be anti-choice and be a feminist.

“Ironically, revolutionary feminist thinking was most accepted and embraced in academic circles. In those circles, the production of revolutionary feminist theory progressed. But more often than not, that theory was kept from the public. It became and remained a privileged discourse available to those among us who are highly literate, well-educated, and usually materially privileged. So revolutionary radical feminists became this discipline as an academic discipline known as feminist theory, and it got all steeped into academia.”

This had the negative effect of restricting people who could be feminists and benefit from revolutionary feminism because to be involved in academia at a high level; you must attend higher-end universities, which takes a lot of money and privilege. So, again, what we’re seeing is that the truth of feminism is being restricted and limited. It needs to be exposed to the masses.

We are on page five now. This is the second paragraph. While it was in the interest of mainstream white supremacist capitalist patriarchy to suppress visionary feminist thinking, which was not anti-male or concerned with getting women the right to be like men, reformist feminists were also eager to silence these forces. Reformist feminism became their route to class mobility. They could break free of male domination in the workforce and be more self-determining in their lifestyles. While sexism did not end, they could maximize their freedom within the existing system and count on a lower class of exploited, subordinated women to do the dirty work they refused. And we were talking about that, right? These reformist feminists, women who were privileged based on their class and race, were benefiting from these patriarchal structures. They didn’t want to give that up, so they had this half-hearted version of feminism. They pushed that for it, and they, you know, played down revolutionary, radical feminism, which is the more authentic version of feminism. In terms of when contemporary feminism was conceptualized, this radical, revolutionary version was originally the goal. But as bell hooks named reformist feminists, these feminists realized, “Oh, if we start being revolutionary and radical about it, we’ll have to give up some of our class/race privileges. We only do that.”

So, I’m skipping to the end of the second-to-last line of page five. “Suddenly, the politics were being slowly removed from feminism, and the assumption prevailed that no matter what a woman’s politics were, whether conservative or liberal, she too could fit feminism into her lifestyle. This way of thinking has made feminism more acceptable because its underlying assumption is that women can be feminists without fundamentally challenging or changing themselves or the culture.” The issue is that true feminism is challenging culture. It is changing the institutional system that we were all socialized in. For example, let’s take the issue of abortion. Suppose feminism is a movement to end sexist oppression, and depriving females of reproductive rights is a form of sexist oppression. In that case, one cannot be anti-choice and be a feminist.

A woman can insist she would never choose to have an abortion while affirming her support of the right of women to choose and still be an advocate for feminist politics. She cannot be anti-abortion and an advocate of feminism concurrently. There can be no such thing as power feminism if the vision of power evoked is power gained through the exploitation and oppression of others. So, there are clear lines drawn in the sand when it comes to being a feminist. Depriving females of reproductive rights is not feminist. If you support any form of sexist oppression, you’re not a feminist. If you support power gained through the exploitation and oppression of others, then you’re not a feminist because feminism is about ending sexist oppression.

If you think about it, it sounds like the way philosophy works. Well, how a lot of fruitful philosophy works. The philosophy brings about actual positive results that are constructive and progressive. I put in my notes here in the margins that philosophical dialogue within groups is essential to feminism, and I’ve always said this. I’ve said in previous videos that philosophy needs to go toward where feminism is going, you know? That’s the next step, and we need to take this consciousness-raising group session therapy. That is how feminism started; we need to do that with philosophy. I put in my notes the personal discovery of truth by questioning social systems with others and talking it out.

We’re on page 10. This is the end of the second line: “Women with revolutionary feminist consciousness, many of them lesbian and from working-class backgrounds, often lost visibility as the movement received mainstream attention. Their displacement became complete once women’s studies became entrenched in colleges and universities, which are conservative corporate structures. Once the women’s studies classroom replaced the consciousness-raising group as a primary site for transmitting feminist thinking and strategies for social change, the movement lost its mass-based potential.” So, once feminism, radical feminism, became like the feminist theory that was only talked about in academic circles, it became restricted. Because only people of specific financial means can access that world of academia, right? The university is a conservative corporate structure. We need to take feminism outside academia and bring it back to the masses, and I would argue it’s the same thing with philosophy. We must take philosophy outside academia and bring it home to the masses. Fortunately, we got YouTube that can do that for both, and we can join the two together. We can add a philosophical perspective to this feminist framework to help benefit society. We’re still on page 10. This is the third paragraph: “Without the consciousness-raising group as a site where women confronted their sexism towards other women, the direction of feminist movement could shift to a focus on equality in the workforce in confronting male domination.” I skipped six lines: “Females of all ages acted as though concern for or rage at male domination or gender equality was all needed to make one a feminist without confronting internalized sexism. Women who picked up the feminist banner often portrayed the cause in their interactions with other women.” So, feminism is about figuring out how to dismantle institutionalized sexism.

“It’s not about just raging against men; we’re good. Now we’re on page 11. This is the end of the second line of the second paragraph: the terrain of radical feminist politics was overshadowed by lifestyle-based feminism, which suggested any woman could be a feminist no matter what her political beliefs were. Such thinking has undermined feminist theory and practice. Feminist politics, when the feminist movement renews itself, reinforcing it repeatedly, the strategies that will enable a mass movement to end sexism and sexist exploitation and oppression for everyone. Consciousness-raising will once again attain its original importance. Effectively imitating the model of AA meetings, feminist consciousness-raising groups will take place in communities, offering the message of feminist thinking to everyone, irrespective of class, race, or gender. While specific groups based on shared identities might emerge, individuals will be in mixed groups at the end of every month. Check out what I put in my notes: men must do this too. We need to talk about how institutionalized sexism is messing us up. I try doing that in the comments below with many of my videos, particularly the feminist videos. However, feminist consciousness-raising for males is as essential to the revolutionary movement as for female groups. Had there been an emphasis on groups for males that taught boys and men about sexism and how it can be transformed, it would have been impossible for mass media to portray the movement as anti-male. It would also have preempted the formation of an anti-feminist men’s movement. Often men’s groups were formed in the wake of contemporary feminism that in no way addressed the issues of sexism and male domination. Like the lifestyle-based feminism aimed at women, these groups often became therapeutic sessions for men to confront their wounds without criticizing patriarchy or a platform of resistance to male domination. And you know, bell hooks is referring to groups like these men’s rights groups that have been popping up, or incels, you hear that type of stuff. That kind of reaction is a result of the destruction of patriarchy. Patriarchy is putting these standards on men that are hard to live up to. And so, you see these kinds of male groups come out. The problem is these male groups are just complaining about the expectations and why they’re not getting it and why they should get it. Instead, they need to be focusing on why these expectations even exist. Like, are these expectations even real? Why are we concerned with even meeting these expectations, and when we meet these expectations, who are we hurting? With these expectations of domination and oppression, not only are we hurting women when we do this, we hurt ourselves. We’re on page 12. This is the middle of the first line: Without males as allies in the struggle, the feminist movement would not progress. Alright, a black feminist right here saying breaking it down. Let me read that again: without males as allies in the struggle, the feminist movement will not progress. Okay, feminism needs men to achieve its objective. Feminism is not anti-male, right? Feminism is pro-male; it’s pro-everybody. Let me skip down seven lines: the most powerful intervention made by consciousness-raising groups was the demand that all females confront their internalized sexism, allegiance to patriarchal thinking in action, and commitment to feminist conversion. That intervention is still needed. It remains a necessary step for anyone choosing feminist politics. The enemy within must be transformed before confronting the enemy outside the threat. The enemy is sexist thought and behavior. Okay, the enemy is not men. That’s not what feminism is saying. Okay, the enemy we need to overcome is sexist thought and sexist behavior.”

That’s the problem, so we need to examine what sexism is and how it’s institutionalized philosophically. Once we understand that, we can start separating it and throwing it away. Let me read you this quote; on page 19, it’s the end of the fifth line: “Everything we do in life is rooted in theory. Whether we consciously explore why we have a particular perspective or take a particular action, an underlying system shapes thought and practice. Now it’s time to get philosophical. Whether we realize it or not, everything is rooted in theory. Whether we realize it or not, an underlying system shapes our thoughts and practice. This is how reality works.” So what is this system shaping our thoughts and practices? It’s patriarchy. bell hooks quotes “The Coming of Black Genocide” by a radical white activist Mary Barfoot. The quote reads, and I’ll take part in that quote and tell you: “Patriarchy and true supporters of national and class oppression. Patriarchy in its highest form is Euro-imperialism on a world scale.” Euro-imperialism is what patriarchy is when we look at it from a world perspective. We’re not just talking about America; we’re talking globally. Patriarchy is Euro-imperialism.

So what is Euro-imperialism? Well, let me read you this other quote. This is from page 55, and I start on the third line: “All white women in this nation (America) know that their status is different from that of black women and women of color. They know this from when they are little girls, watching television and seeing only their images and looking at magazines and seeing only their images. They know that the only reason non-whites are absent/invisible is that they are not white. All white women in this nation know that whiteness is a privileged category. The fact that white females may choose to repress or deny this knowledge does not mean they are ignorant; it means they are in denial.”

That’s a significant quote. The white woman is seen on television shows, in magazines, and the media. The black woman or the woman of color is not, or if they’re there, they’re in the background. And for a moment, let’s take the woman out of it and say white in the forefront, black in the background. Why? And you might say, “That’s not true; that’s not happening.” It’s happening; you choose to repress or deny it. You’re in denial. Feminism is trying to wake you up. It’s trying to get you, not just to wake you up because you’re already awake. You’re already awake. You just got to get past the denial. That’s why it’s so difficult to accept this feminist argument because you have to break through that denial phase.

When we talk about white in the forefront always in our media and black in the background, and I’m talking about race here, this is what we’re talking about when we talk about Euro-imperialism. It’s an old thing to put the white image in the forefront, and a black image in the background, along with other people of color; the Eurocentric empire or the power structure is supported, and this is patriarchy.

So what about men? How are men involved in this? Well, bell hooks breaks it down. This is page 64.

We’re on the third to last line: “Men are socialized by ruling class groups of men to accept domination in the public world of work and to believe that the private world of home and intimate relationships will restore to them the sense of power they equate with masculinity. As more men have entered the ranks of the unemployed or received low wages, and more women have entered the world of work, some men feel that using violence is the only way they can establish and maintain power and dominance within the sexist sex role hierarchy. Until they unlearn the sexist thinking that tells them they have a right to rule over women by any means, male violence against women will continue to be a norm. Violence is a tool used to propagate and perpetuate patriarchy, this Eurocentric imperialism. Male violence is the domination of men over women being suppressed. This is encouraged by our social structures when men feel powerless; the way society tells men to gain power is to dominate. The only way to express yourself as a man, to assert your manhood, is to dominate. You dominate women; you dominate feminine people. This is the false perception that patriarchy socializes all of us. But let me continue.”

“Early in feminist thinking, activists often failed to liken male violence against women to imperialist materialism. This linkage was often not made because those against male violence often accepted and supported militarism. So why are we supporting militarism? Because the military is what is used to carry forth imperialism, that’s how empires dominate and control. They use their military. So by supporting this notion that the military is what should be, that militarism is what is the norm, this is how things should be, it allows imperialism, this Eurocentrism. It allows that to happen. It’s okay to dominate, right? It’s fine; do that because they’re doing it. The most powerful people, the world’s empires, are doing it to propagate their power. So when they’re using their military powers to maintain their power and they’re using their military powers in horrible ways – the stealing of land, the death of innocent people, the exploitation of other people – they want you, the empire wants you, to know that this is okay, this is how society works. Normalization must happen for the imperial power structure to maintain its dominance. So this socialization serves a purpose.”

“But we’re on page 66, and this is the last paragraph. In our nation, the masses are concerned about violence but resolutely refuse to link that violence to patriarchal thinking or male domination. Feminist thinking offers a solution, and we must make that solution available to everyone. Trying to break it down, trying to take it out of academia and put it here on YouTube and just to the common person, feminist thinking offers a solution to this problem – the problem of violence. But now we’re on page 67.”

This is the 12th line: “It was difficult to face the reality that the problem did not just lie with men. Facing that reality required more complex theorizing. It all required acknowledging the role women play in maintaining and perpetuating sexism. As more women moved away from destructive relationships with men, it was easier to see the whole picture. It became evident that even if individual men divested a patriarchal privilege, patriarchy, sexism, and male domination would remain intact, and women would still be exploited and oppressed. Saying the problem is systemic, it’s not just individually based. Take out a few individuals, and you end the problem? No. It’s the whole system that’s messed up.”

We’re on page 68, and the sixth line: “Before the contemporary feminist movement was less than ten years old, feminist thinkers began to talk about how patriarchy was harmful to men. Without changing our fierce critique of male domination, feminist politics expanded to include the recognition that patriarchy stripped men of certain rights, imposing a sexist masculine identity on them. Okay, a false identity. All men are not natural dominators, and this role of being a dominator is tough on the spirit. It’s harmful to the spirit and the mind, emotionally and psychologically. It can mess you up being the constant dominator, even if it does give you certain societal privileges. One of the main problems is that you become something you’re innately not. You’re lying and told, ‘Oh, this is who you are,’ when this is not who you are. It’s just what society tells you about who you are. So you can never really self-actualize. You can never really become the true person that you innately are.”

We’re going to go to page 69, and we’re going to begin on the second paragraph: “Feminists who called for a recognition of men as comrades in struggle never received mass media attention. They’re the ones that don’t receive attention. They’re like, ‘What? Is feminism not anti-male? I’ve never heard that before.’ Yet, because mass media is patriarchal.”

But we’re going to go to the last paragraph, and I’m going to begin at the end of the third line: “Of course, by characterizing feminism as being man-hating, males could deflect attention away from the accountability for male domination. If feminist theory had offered more libertarian visions of masculinity, it would have been impossible for anyone to dismiss the movement as anti-male. To a grave extent, the feminist movement failed to attract a large body of females and males because our theory did not effectively address the issues of what males might do to be anti-sexist and what alternative masculinity might look like. Masculinity is when men can be the true beings they are instead of just being these dominators.”

We’re on page 70.

This is the second paragraph: “What is and what was needed is a vision of masculinity where self-esteem, self-love, and one’s unique being form the basis of identity. Cultures of domination attack self-esteem, replacing it with a notion that we derive our sense of being from dominion over another. Patriarchal masculinity teaches men their sense of self and identity and reason for residing in their capacity to dominate others. To change this, males must critique and challenge male domination of the planet, of less powerful men, of women, and children.”

I’m just going to keep going. Let’s go. We’re on page 71. This is the second paragraph: “Most men in this nation feel troubled about the nature of their identity. Even though they cling to patriarchy, they are beginning to intuit that it is part of the problem.” I skip down four lines: “Many men are tragic because they do not engage the liberating critiques that could enable them to face that these promises were rooted in injustice and domination and, even when fulfilled, have never led men to glory. Bashing liberation while reinscribing the white supremacist capitalist patriarchal ways of thinking that have murdered their souls in the first place, they are just as lost as many boys.”

It’s true, you know. This whole patriarchal thing is hurting men, and it’s hurting women. And this is the message of feminism. You’re getting hurt, men, because you can’t even be who you are. Instead, you’re imposed upon an identity of dominator that is this existence of violence, which is soul-crushing. Should we be living like this? No. This is the message of feminism. This is page 74. I begin in the middle of the sixth line: “We have all been socialized to embrace patriarchal thinking, to embrace ethics of domination which says the powerful have the right to rule over the powerless and can use any means to subordinate them. Is that true? You live in a dog-eat-dog world, you know? There, this world is filled with winners, and it’s filled with losers.”

Are you going to be a winner, or are you going to be a loser? You know, that’s patriarchal thinking. Everybody should be a winner; we don’t live in a dog-eat-dog world. Dogs can play with each other; we can eat together and not eat each other. Let me read you this: bell hooks quotes another text, “Original Blessing” by Matthew Fox. This is page 107, and this is the second paragraph: “Political justice movements are part of the fuller development of the cosmos, and nature is a matrix in which humans come to their self-awareness, in their awareness of their power to transform. Liberation movements fully develop the cosmos’ sense of harmony, balance, justice, and celebration. This is why true spiritual liberation demands rituals of cosmic celebration and healing, which will, in turn, culminate in personal transformation and liberation.” Here’s bell hooks: “Liberation theologies see the liberation of exploited and oppressed groups as essential acts of faith, reflecting devotion to the divine will. Struggles to end patriarchy are divinely ordained.” Okay, I believe that. I believe that feminism is a liberation theology. What’s portrayed in mass media as feminism is not, and there are a lot of feminists with quotes, you know, spouting a version of feminism that is not centered around liberation but on ending exploitation and oppression. This is not authentic feminism. Feminism is about allowing all people to be free, liberating all people, and allowing everybody to realize their true selves so they can reach self-actualization. That’s what feminism is. But it’s also clear, too. It’s straightforward, and there are a lot of specifics to it. Feminism knows the problem. Okay, feminism is a movement to end sexism. That’s the problem: sexism, exploitation, and oppression.

And what are all this sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression? This is patriarchy. What is patriarchy? Patriarchy is just another way of saying institutionalized sexism, right? That’s what it is. And patriarchy, at its highest form, we’re talking about globally; what we’re talking about is imperialism. Understanding that empires control power in this world and we need to end that, okay? Empires with militaries, and these empires gain power through domination. They try to justify that by brainwashing us and socializing us to think that domination is typical and this is the way of life. Certain people need to be dominated, and then certain people are the dominators, and it’s just not true, and it’s hurting all of us. That is the message of feminism.

So next time you see a misconception of feminism, right, when you see a lady just raging and saying, “Ah, I hate men, I hate men, I hate,” that’s not what feminism is. You don’t see that much, right? Men often say, “Oh, I saw this woman doing that and doing that,” it does happen, but it’s rare. Most feminists are talking about this. Feminists like bell hooks and other black feminists like Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, or Patricia Hill Collins, and we’ll be covering all those and more here under Black Ponder because you all need to understand what feminism is. It is a route to end this world’s violence, oppression, and exploitation. It deserves to be treated like a philosophy because it can be and is a philosophy that’s constructive, progressive, and beneficial to humanity.

Anyway, before you talk any smack about feminism, read this book first, “Feminism is for Everybody” by bell hooks. Could you check it out, check it out? Well, you’ve been watching the Black Ponder. Could you tune in next time for more philosophical thoughts?