Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

by bell hooks

one of the first issues which served as a catalyst for the formation of the movement was sexuality — the issue being the rights of women to choose when and with whom they would be sexual.

sexual exploitation of women’s bodies

And we were clear that there could be no genuine sexual liberation for women and men without better, safer contraceptives — without the right to a safe, legal abortion.

abortion

reproductive...

whole reflected the class biases of the women who were at the foref...

basic sex education, prenatal care, preventive health care that would help females understand how their bodies worked, to forced sterilization, unnecessary cesareans and/or hysterectomies, and the medical complications they left in their wake.

Of all these issues individual white women with class privilege identified most intimately with the pain of unwanted pregnancy.

The long-range medical problems from cesareans and hysterectomies were not juicy subjects for mass media; they actually called attention to a capitalist patriarchal male-dominated medical system

Depending on a woman’s age and circumstance of life the aspect of reproductive rights that matters most will change. A sexually active woman in her 20s or 30s who finds birth control pills unsafe may one day face an unwanted pregnancy and the right to have a legal, safe, inexpensive abortion may be the reproductive issue that is most relevant. But when she is menopausal and doctors are urging her to have a hysterectomy that may be the most relevant reproductive rights issue.

If sex education, preventive health care, and easy access to contraceptives are offered to every female, fewer of us will have unwanted pregnancies. As a consequence the need for abortions would diminish.

The anti-choice movement is fundamentally anti-feminist.

While it is possible for women to individually choose never to have an abortion, allegiance to feminist politics means that they still are pro-choice, that they support the right of females who need abortions to choose whether or not to have them.

Before women’s liberation all females young and old were socialized by sexist thinking to believe that our value rested solely on appearance and whether or not we were perceived to be good looking, especially by men.

For the first time in our nation’s history women were compelled to acknowledge the strength of our consumer dollars, using that power to create positive change.

Certainly it was in the interest of a white supremacist capitalist patriarchal fashion and cosmetic industry to re-glamorize sexist-defined notions of beauty.

To critique sexist images without offering alternatives is an incomplete intervention.

Critique in and of itself does not lead to change.

I want to work at shedding pounds without deploying sexist body self-hatred to do so.

if we abandon the struggle to eliminate sexist defined notions of beauty

we risk undermining all the marvelous feminist interventions which allowed us to embrace our bodies and ourselves and love them.

From the onset of the movement women from privileged classes were able to make their concerns “the” issues that should be focused on in part because they were the group of women who received public attention.

Betty Friedan’s The Feminist Mystique identified “the problem that has no name” as the dissatisfaction females felt about being confined and subordinated in the home as housewives.

And many of these working women, who put in long hours for low wages while still doing all the work in the domestic household would have seen the right to stay home as “freedom.”

From the outset, reformist white women with class privilege were well aware that the power and freedom they wanted was the freedom they perceived men of their

But only privileged women had the luxury to imagine working outside the home would actually provide them with an income which would enable them to be economically self-sufficient.

Working-class women already knew that the wages they received would not liberate them.

Yet the fact that the privileged gained in class power while masses of women still do not receive wage equity with men is an indication of the way in which class interests superceded feminist efforts to change the workforce so that women would receive equal pay for equal work.

Initially, well-educated white women from working-class backgrounds were more visible than black females of all classes in feminist movement.

Within feminist movement women from privileged-class backgrounds who

had never before been involved in leftist freedom fighting learned the concrete politics of class struggle, confronting challenges made by less privileged women, and also learning in the process assertiveness skills and constructive ways to cope with conflict.

Privileged women wanted equality with men of their class.

Feminist efforts to grant women social equality with men of their class neatly coincided with white supremacist capitalist patriarchal fears that white power would diminish if nonwhite people gained equal access to economic power and privilege.

white power reformist feminism enabled the mainstream white supremacist patriarchy to bolster its power while simultaneously undermining the radical politics of feminism.

The Coming of Black Genocide,

Mary Barfoot

If we’re Dick’s sister and want what he has gotten, then in the end we support that system that he got it all from.

Instead, all women were encouraged to see the economic gains of affluent females as a positive sign for all women.

And since privileged men did not become equal caretakers in the domestic household,

the freedom of privileged-class women of all races has required the sustained subordination of w...

When women acquired greater class status and power without conducting themselves differently from males feminist politics were undermined.

Middle- and lower-middle-class women

who were suddenly compelled by the ethos of feminism to e...

did not feel liberated once they faced the hard truth that working outside the home did not mean work in the home would be...

it simply reaffirmed their fear that feminism was really about increasing white power.

government’s assault on single mothers and the dismantling of the welfare system.

“feminization of poverty.

The only genuine hope of feminist liberation lies with a vision of social change which challenges class elitism.

Western women have gained class power and greater gender inequality because a global white supremacist patriarchy enslaves and/or subordinates masses of third-world women.

the combined forces of a booming prison industry and workfare-oriented welfare in conjunction with conservative immigration policy create and condo...