Though the current project started as a series of posts charting my grief journey after the death of my mother, I am no longer actively grieving. Now, the blog charts a conversation in living, mainly whatever I want it to be. This is an activity that goes well with the theme of this blog (updated 2018). The Sense of Doubt blog is dedicated to my motto: EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY. I promote questioning everything because just when I think I know something is concrete, I find out that it’s not.
Hey, Mom! The Explanation.
Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.
Once again, I had another entry scheduled, which I bumped to feature the loss of this great writer, thinker, activist, feminist, and human being. I am so grateful to have shared the planet with someone as amazing as bell hooks.
WOW.
It's the modern world. Technology is going to be the means by which I learn of news like this.
I am happy to report that I learned bell hooks had died not by a push notification but from a good friend who texted me the instant she found out and added a weeping emoji. Weeping emoji indeed.
Anne Rice 80-years-old; bell hooks was only 69. I turn 60 in a month. This shit is too real.
Our nation lost a prolific author, activist, and trailblazer. bell hooks’ profound and positive influence will be with us for generations to come. May she rest in power. pic.twitter.com/6yklT75Qqw
bell hooks is one of the reasons I became a feminist.
I first encountered feminism as a sophomore in college. I attended the campus feminist organization -- know as the Women's Interest Group -- with a woman in which I was interested. Sure, that sounds a little sexist (maybe more than a little), but I think I have a good heart, good intentions, and a tendency to respect instead of objectify. I got the impression I was not welcome. Some -- just some not all -- of the faculty and staff in the room, the older women, seemed less than welcoming of my presence. Fine. I "get" the anger now, even though I don't think it's often justified. I didn't "get" the anger then.
Later on, about 15 years later on, I am hired by the WMU Women's Studies to teach a course in media criticism of popular culture more so for how steeped I was in pop culture and less for my extensive knowledge of feminism. Sure, I had used feminist criticism in both my undergraduate and graduate school to analyze texts, usually in classes led by chauvinist and misogynistic men as much to stick it to them as to advocate for ideology I believed in, by which I mean, it was first about sticking it to these assholes and secondarily about promoting an ideology that I did believe in very passionately.
I received a dose of disapproval when meeting one of the older profs in women's studies much the same as the disapproval in that room fifteen years before. Can a man even be a feminist? Aren't men all inherently chauvinists because of the power structure of the patriarchy? And what the Hell does this guy know about feminism anyway? Hey, it's not like I knew nothing about feminism, but I did know lots more about popular culture, including soap operas, one of the arenas MOST in need of criticism.
But the prof nailed a "gotcha" on me for not even knowing Susan Faludi's book Backlash, which would be central to my teaching of one of the most egregious examples of feminist-hating in cinema: Fatal Attraction.
And so I set out to educate myself better. First stop, the library and about thirty books of feminist criticism and ideology. Second stop, dinner with a woman in whom I was interested (this theme again, I know!) who had taken the Feminist Theory class and was prepared to both lend me her books and talk to me about them. Among these books was Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centerby bell hooks, who like me, did not capitalize her name. AND there was a chapter on the role of men in the feminist struggle!! hooks saw men as comrades in struggle not as unwitting sexist dupes. She saw that some of us could rise above sexism and fight against the invisible ways unearned male privilege shape our lives and experiences.
"Anti-male sentiments have alienated many poor and working-class women, particularly non-white women, from feminist movement" (hooks 69).
ah.... yes.
"Bourgeois white women cannot conceptualize the bonds that develop between women and men in liberation struggle and have not has as many positive experiences working with men politically" (hooks 70).
I am an ally in feminism. I call myself a feminist to make a point, especially for my young male students. But I never argue that sexism has ever affected me or done anything but privilege me.
The difference in how I am treated compared to my colleagues who are women is even worse than at any other time in my career. It is outrageous, and all the proof we need that we live in a sexist society in which sexism is systemic but also in which its manifestations are just as often (or even more often) perpetuated by women as men.
The conclusion of the chapter:
(hooks 82).
FUCK YEAH!
I have tried and I continue to try to "expose, confront, oppose, and transform the sexism of [my] male peers." It is just as difficult as confronting the racism or homophobia of my peers.
Thank you bell hooks for fueling my resolve to be the change.
And I owe a debt of gratitude to these women in my life who helped me along the way.
We were richer for you bell hooks and are poorer without you.
"When we are taught that safety always lies in sameness, then difference, of any kind, will appear as a threat. When we choose to love we choose to move against fear — against alienation and separation. The choice to love is the choice to connect — to find ourselves in the other."
Widely influential feminist thinker and writer bell hooks, given name Gloria Jean Watkins, died today at her home in Berea, Kentucky surrounded by family and friends. She was 69.
“The family is honored that Gloria received numerous awards, honors, and international fame for her works as poet, author, feminist, professor, cultural critic, and social activist,” read a statement from her family released by Ebony Motley, her niece. “We are proud to just call her sister, friend, confidant, and influencer.”
hooks’s first published work of theory, Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism, was published when she was 29 but written when she was an undergraduate, launching a four-decade-long career of writing and teaching, with a focus on classroom accessibility. hooks’s extensive body of scholarship and poetry—that remains and will continue to remain relevant—was consistent in its generosity, emphasizing the importance of loving communities to challenging systemic inequalities. Hooks believed a “militant commitment to feminism” was not at all at odds with joy and humor; in fact, that love “is the necessary foundation enabling us to survive the wars, the hardships, the sickness, and the dying with our spirits intact.” As she told The New York Times in 2015,
We cannot have a meaningful revolution without humor. Every time we see the left or any group trying to move forward politically in a radical way, when they’re humorless, they fail. Humor is essential to the integrative balance that we need to deal with diversity and difference and the building of community. For example, I love to be in conversation with Cornel West. We always go high and we go low, and we always bring the joyful humor in. The last talk he and I gave together, many people were upset because we were silly together. But I consider it a high holy calling that we can be humorous together. How many times do we see an African-American man and an African-American woman talking together, critiquing one another, and yet having delicious, humorous delight? It’s a miracle.
Whenever great people depart this world, it can feel as if they’ve never left. Their impact is too large and deeply felt. This is the case for bell hooks, who was born Gloria Jean Watkins 69 years ago in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. (Her pen name, which she kept in lowercase, is a tribute to her grandmother.) She passed away Wednesday surrounded by friends and family, which is worth noting especially after the pandemic made us realize how precious a gift that is.
bell hooks wrote about the intersection of race, gender, and capitalism and how this resulted in systems that oppressed and dominated the marginalized. Her definition of feminism was simple but potent — the struggle to end sexist oppression. It was a call to action, not a bumper sticker.
As a child, she originally attended racially segregated schools, which she recalled positively compared to her experience at integrated schools where her teachers and classmates were predominately white. She graduated from Stanford with a BA in English and earned her master’s at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. At 19, she started writing her first book, Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Published in 1981, the book takes its title from activist Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech. It’s brilliant, scathing, and confrontational. hooks calls out the racism and misogyny Black women endure, while not sparing white feminist leaders throughout history. She strongly critiques Democrat (and former New York senator) Patrick Moynihan’s offensive theories about Black women, as well as patriarchal misogyny within the Black nationalist movement.
It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement; but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation I choose to re-appropriate the term ‘feminism’, to focus on the fact that to be ‘feminist’ in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression.
hooks would address masculinity directly in her 2004 book We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity. She discussed how American society — specifically what she called the “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” — criminalized and dehumanized Black men, starting at an early age. It’s especially relevant work within the context of police violence and how Black bodies are considered an inherent threat.
She challenged the impulse to connect material wealth with success or “true” manhood. It concerned her that so much of modern hip hop fell into that trap, and she condemned the misogyny in a lot of hip hop music. hooks often explored the connection between art, culture, and politics. (She was not a fan of The Help nor did she care much for Beyonce’s “Lemonade.”) Her work had an astonishing diversity and breadth, ranging from sociopolitical theory, literary criticism, memoir, and poetry.
As black people in a white-supremacist culture we have had a psychohistory of learning to utterly hide or repress our vulnerability in order to survive. When this survival strategy links with the overall cultural devaluation of vulnerability it makes sense that so many black folks have wrongly interpreted invulnerability as a sign of emotional strength. Maintaining this survival strategy when we no longer have to fear extreme violence at the hands of racist whites has damaged our emotional and intimate bonds. The inability to be vulnerable means that we are unable to feel. If we cannot feel we cannot truly emotionally connect with one another. We cannot know love. No wonder then that the lovelessness that abounds in our culture is even more intense among African-Americans.
Years before Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump, hooks had presciently warned: "When we are taught that safety always lies in sameness, then difference, of any kind, will appear as a threat. When we choose to love we choose to move against fear — against alienation and separation. The choice to love is the choice to connect — to find ourselves in the other."
It’s impossible to overstate her influence on today’s activists for social justice. One of the original Black Lives Matter organizers, Melina Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African Studies at California State Los Angeles, said Wednesday that hooks “changed my life. Shaped me into who I am in so many ways. Thank you, Sister, for your beautiful, powerful, life work and Spirit."
hooks wrote 40 books over her lifetime. She taught at Yale, Oberlin, and the City College of New York before returning to Kentucky in 2004 to teach at Berea College, where she eventually founded the bell hooks Institute.
Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power — not because they don’t see it, but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist.
hooks appeared frequently on banned book lists. Shipments of her 1995 book Black Looks: Race and Representation were turned away at the Canadian border as possible hate literature. bell hooks is the “critical race theorist” suburban white parents want banned from schools. So let’s stand up against those who either attack “wokeness” directly or as a liability. Let’s fight to keep bell hooks’ voice alive.
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2112.16 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2358 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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