bell hooks' "Feminism is for Everybody" (Part 2/2)
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- Опубліковано 15 гру 2023
- In this episode, I cover the second half of bell hooks' "Feminism is for Everybody" (chs 9-19).
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Been following your channel for about a year. I drop in every few weeks to binge couple vids. Appreciate all the time and effort you put in to breakdown theories/concepts
Wait what the heck I just finished reading this a couple weeks ago along with
Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson! Synchronicity?
Thank you so much for these 2 episodes! I find bell hooks to be an accessible thinker for people who know little to nothing about feminism, but on the other hand, I find her works to be critiquable. Her view of hip-hop/gansta rap lacks so much nuance and sadly she never changed her mind on this. About the slut shaming thing, she has also been criticized for her remarks on Oprah (she said Oprah Winfrey was too busy sucking the dicks of white culture to get on with anything interesting) and later, in a book form interview with Stuart Hall, she said she didn't see it outrageous at all. I would need a bit context to see if I agree with her or not but bottom line is: it doesn't seem like she looks at... uhm, people who suck dick for profit (?), with the kindest eyes. And just a word of caution for people who want to read more bell hooks: I find that there's a pretty clear difference in academic rigour between her early works (before around 1999) and her later works, which are more sloppy in my opinion. So, choose wisely if you decide to read her.
If only the red pill community would try to consume some of this.
you mean the red pill community dont believe in the matrix?????
they emerged from the pick up scene and thus their view is as such, consider Tomassi the Godfather of red pill, his analysis of intersexual dynamic comes from his observations in bars.
It’s weird, and I’ll stop posting so much, but I’m someone who, while benefiting from their masculinity, is disenfranchised. I’m a man of color who’s probably neurodivergent and more than likely suffer from some kind of PTSD due to growing up in a religious cult, being bullied at school and abused by my parents, and getting sexually assaulted. I’m someone who was teased for his looks and has never felt desired, so imagine being like this and constantly being overwhelmed by and inundated with white supremacist media that constantly portrays the lives of conventionally attractive white people living in excess and divulging and avarice. You never get to see yourself in media. The songs that constantly play around you are love songs and sex songs that you can’t relate to, surrounding you and almost mocking you like the kids in school. Though I know I should overcome these insecurities and prevent myself from falling down certain rabbit holes and pipelines in order to be a much healthier “man”, it’s not like the world itself or people in general make it easy for make to take those steps. Though comphet has definitely influenced the way I see relationships and has probably created within me a desire to long for a heterosexual relationship in order to cure this hole within my heart, I also believe that I genuinely want a life-partner, to be with someone, to be loved, adored, and desired sexually. I believe that that’s something a lot of us feel and which isn’t a byproduct of patriarchy. The desire to be loved isn’t toxic, but I do feel like in certain spaces, that gets read as selfish or being entitled. I’m just venting, but I can’t help but feel like a lot of people in certain progressive circles are, while having good points to make, functioning off hatred and resentment and sometimes forget to aim those energies at systems. Instead, what I see on the internet is a lot of malice towards individuals, even if they deserve it. It makes me so angry. I don’t want to take up space or accidentally silence women. I’m just saying that using insults and body-shaming lingo to highlight how damaging someone’s ideology is will not only fail to help get your point across but will actually embolden that person to believe those ideas even harder. For both sides of the spectrum, on the digital space, it’s like a game for a lot of influencers. Whoever says the most polarizing and anger-inducing, upsetting, demoralizing, hurtful thing gets the most attention, even if what’s being said lacks substance.
You moved to Commiefornia from Canadistan to be able to work and you have a PhD in TDS and you get peer reviewed on TikTok. Your introduction was almost remedial level demsplaining. Do you always talk to your students like that?
The main chapter is 14, Liberating Marriage and Partnership. I do not think you grasp the gravity of gender relations regarding marriage and parenting, and subsequently, divorce and custody arrangements. hooks mentions, but does not probe or exhume, the division between married couples without children, and those with children. One such probe would examine household incomes, another would address domestic labor which extends to childcare in some households. Although issues like these are connected to divorce, it is questionable whether they are ultimate causes of domestic violence, disaffectionate sex or divorce. hooks argument is that feminism criticized marriage for several reasons. Whether feminism is a main cause of the decline in marriage today, or the increase in single head of household families qua illegitimate births or the long duree of divorce, must be compared to new technologies for birth control and the stark inequality gap. hooks reinforces instead of exhumes the intuition of the double standard despite divorce and custody arrangements. But, the essence here which is not articulated but allowed to distort the reader’s identity, is that feminists are women.
I remain unconvinced that feminism is for everybody, if it was why not call it egalitarianism or something along those lines that would indicate some kind of universality. Feminism comes from the word femininity which implies that it's for women and feminine men, indeed this is the criticism often levelled at sincerely feminist men that they have failed at masculinity. And also consider that the system that it considers problematic is called patriarchy which implies a problem with male power, it seems to be rooted in a fear, understandable, of male power as that is automatically equated with tyranny, which is an unfair judgement to make.
And certain strand of feminism believe in the possibility for men and women to be equal, despite the idea of the patriarchy implying an inextricable gender inequality either of male power/female incapability or of female virtue/male depravity. the fact that men are being asked to join the fight is an implicit confession of the enduring inequality of the sexes.
And onto bell hooks aim of ending domination is patently absurd, considering domination is an inseparable part of God's Order and if she is against hierarchy as they inevitably lead to domination then she has devoted herself to an impossible aim as hierarchies are unavoidable part of perception, why do we choose to pay attention to one thing over the other ?