Feminist Theory Quotes

“There will be no mass-based feminist movement as long as feminist ideas are understood only by a well-educated few.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“Feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels, as well as a commitment to reorganizing society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.”
― Bell Hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“..the struggle to end sexist oppression that focuses on destroying the cultural basis for such domination strengthens other liberation struggles. Individuals who fight for the eradication of sexism without struggles to end racism or classism undermine their own efforts. Individuals who fight for the eradication of racism or classism while supporting sexist oppression are helping to maintain the cultural basis of all forms of group oppression.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“Since we live in a society that promotes faddism and temporary superficial adaptation of different values, we are easily convinced that changes have occurred in arenas where there has been little or no change.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“Feminist consciousness-raising has not significantly pushed women in the direction of revolutionary politics. For the most part, it has not helped women understand capitalism–how it works as a system that exploits female labor and its interconnections with sexist oppression. It has not urged women to learn about different political systems like socialism or encouraged women to invent and envision new political systems. It has not attacked materialism and our society’s addiction to overconsumption. It has not shown women how we benefit from the exploitation and oppression of women and men globally or shown us ways to oppose imperialism. Most importantly, it has not continually confronted women with the understanding that feminist movement to end sexist oppression can be successful only if we are committed to revolution, to the establishment of a new social order.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“Women, even the most oppressed among us, do exercise power. These powers can be used to advance feminist struggle. Forms of power held by exploited and oppressed groups are described in Elizabeth Janeway's important work Powers of the Weak. One of the most significant forms of power held by the weak is "the refusal to accept the definition of oneself that is put forward by the powerful". Janeway call this the "ordered use of the power to disbelieve". She explains:

It is true that one may not have a coherent self-definition to set against the status assigned by the established social mythology, and that is not necessary for dissent. By disbelieving, one will be led toward doubting prescribed codes of behaviour, and as one begins to act in ways that can deviate from the norm in any degree, it becomes clear that in fact there is not just one right way to handle or understand events.

Women need to know that they can reject the powerful's definition of their reality --- that they can do so even if they are poor, exploited, or trapped in oppressive circumstances. They need to know that the exercise of this basic personal power is an act of resistance and strength. Many poor and exploited women, especially non-white women, would have been unable to develop positive self-concepts if they had not exercised their power to reject the powerful's definition of their reality. Much feminist thought reflects women's acceptance of the definition of femaleness put forth by the powerful. Even though women organizing and participating in feminist movement were in no way passive, unassertive, or unable to make decisions, they perpetuated the idea that these characteristics were typical female traits, a perspective that mirrored male supremacist interpretation of women's reality. They did not distinguish between the passive role many women assume in relation to male peers and/or male authority figures, and the assertive, even domineering, roles they assume in relation to one another, to children, or to those individuals, female or male, who have lower social status, who they see as inferiors, This is only one example of the way in which feminist activists did not break with the simplistic view of women's reality s it was defined by powerful me. If they had exercised the power to disbelieve, they would have insisted upon pointing out the complex nature of women's experience, deconstructing the notion that women are necessarily passive or unassertive.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“Another response to racism has been the establishment of unlearning racism workshops, which are often led by white women. These workshops are important, yet they tend to focus primarily on cathartic individual psychological personal prejudice without stressing the need for corresponding change in political commitment and action. A woman who attends an unlearning racism workshop and learns to acknowledge that she is racist is no less a threat than one who does not. Acknowledgment of racism is significant when it leads to transformation.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“To be oppressed means to be deprived of your ability to choose.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“The significance of feminist movement (when it is not co-opted by opportunistic, reactionary forces) is that it offers a new ideological meeting ground for the sexes, a space for criticism, struggle, and transformation.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“As a black woman interested in feminist movement, I am often asked whether being black is more important than being a woman; whether feminist struggle to end sexist oppression is more important than the struggle to racism or vice versa. All such questions are rooted in competitive either/or thinking, the belief that the self is formed in opposition to an other...Most people are socialized to think in terms of opposition rather than compatibility. Rather than seeing anti-racist work as totally compatible with working to end sexist oppression, they often see them as two movements competing for first place.”
― Bell Hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“Naming oppressive realities, in and of itself, has not brought about the kinds of changes for oppressed groups that it can for more privileged groups, who command a different quality of attention.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“Often emphasis on identity and lifestyle is appealing because it creates a false sense that one is engaged in praxis. However, praxis within any political movement that aims to have a radical transformative impact on society cannot be solely focused on creating spaces wherein would-be radicals experience safety and support. Feminist movement to end sexist oppression actively engages participants in revolutionary struggle. Struggle is rarely safe or pleasurable.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“Unfortunately it is often easier to ignore, dismiss, reject, and even hurt one another rather than engage in constructive confrontation.”
― Bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“There has been no other movement for social justice in our society that has been as self-critical as feminist movement. Feminist willingness to change direction when needed has been a major source of strength and vitality in feminist struggle. That internal critique is essential to any politics of transformation. Just as our lives are not fixed or static but always changing, our theory must remain fluid, open, responsive to new information.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“Feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. Its aim is not to benefit solely any specific group of women, any particular race or class of women. It does not privilege women over men. It has the power to transform in a meaningful way all our lives. Most importantly, feminism is neither a lifestyle nor a ready-made identity or role one can step into.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“Support of sexist oppression in much political writing concerned with revolutionary struggle as well as in the actions of men who advocate revolutionary politics undermines all liberation struggle. In many countries wherein people are engaged in liberation struggle, subordination of women by men is abandoned as the crisis situation compels men to accept and acknowledge women as comrades in struggle, e.g., Cuba, Angola, and Nicaragua. Often when the crisis period has passed, old sexist patterns emerge, antagonism develops, and political solidarity is weakened. It would strengthen and affirm the praxis of any liberation struggle if a commitment to eradicating sexist oppression were a foundation principle shaping all political work.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“If one assumes, as I do, that battery is caused by the belief permeating this culture that hierarchical rule and coercive authority are natural, then all our relationships tend to be based on power and domination, and thus all forms of battery are linked.”
― Bell Hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“Unlike working women, working men are fed daily a fantasy diet of male supremacy and power. In actuality, they have very little power and they know it. Yet they do not rebel against the economic order nor make revolution.
They are socialized by ruling powers to accept their dehumanization and exploitation in the public world of work and they are taught to expect that the private world, the world of home and intimate relationships, will restore to them their sense of power which they equate with masculinity. They are taught that they will be able to rule in the home, to control and dominate, that this is the big pay-off for their acceptance of an exploitative”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“We have either been socialized to believe revolutions are always characterized by extreme violence between the oppressed and their oppressors or that revolutions happen quickly. We have also been taught to crave immediate gratification of our desires and swift responses to our demands. Like every other liberation movement in this society, feminism has suffered because these attitudes keep participants from forming the kind of commitment to protracted struggle that makes revolution possible. As a consequence, feminist movement has not sustained its revolutionary momentum. It has been a successful rebellion.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“Imperialism and not patriarchy is the core foundation of modern militarism (even though it serves the interest of imperialism to link notions of masculinity with the struggle to conquer nations and peoples). Many societies in the world that are ruled by males are not imperialistic; many women in the United States have made political decisions to support imperialism and militarism. Historically, white women in the United States, working for women's rights, have felt no contradiction between this effort and their support of the Western imperialist attempt to conquer the planet. Often they argued that equal rights would better enable white women to help in the building of this "great nation," i.e. in the cause of imperialism. Many white women in the early part of the twentieth century, who were strong advocates of women's liberation, were pro-imperialist.
Books like Helen Montgomery's Western Women in Eastern Lands, published in 1910, outlining fifty years of white women's work in foreign missions, document the link between the struggle for the emancipation of white women in the United States and the imperialist, hegemonic spread of Western values and Western domination of the globe. As missionaries, white women traveled to Eastern lands armed with psychological weapons that undermined the belief systems of Eastern women and replaced them with Western values. In the closing statement of her work, Helen Montgomery writes: "So many voices are calling us, so many goods demand our allegiance, that we are in danger of forgetting the best. To seek first to bring Christ's kingdom on the earth, to respond to the need that is sorest, to go out into the desert for that loved and bewildered sheep that the shepherd has missed from the fold, to share all of the privilege with the unprivileged and happiness with the unhappy, to see the possibility of one redeemed earth, undivided, unvexed, unperplexed resting in the light of the glorious Gospel of the blessed God, this is the mission of the women's missionary movement.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“There have been too few works written about the value of service work and of housework in particular...Yet there are few feminist studies that examine the extent to which well-done housework contributes to individual well-being, promotes the development of aesthetics, or aids in the reduction of stress. By learning housework, children and adults accept responsibility for ordering their material reality. They learn to appreciate and care for their surroundings. Since so many male children are not taught housework, they grow to maturity with no respect for their environment and often lack the know-how to take care of themselves and their households. They have been allowed to cultivate an unnecessary dependence on women in their domestic lives, and, as a result of this dependency, are sometimes unable to develop a healthy sense of autonomy. Girl children, though usually compelled to do housework, are usually taught to see it as demeaning and degrading.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“While it is evident that many women suffer from sexist tyranny, there is little indication that forges 'a common bond among all women.' There is much evidence substantiating the reality that race and class identity creates differences in quality of life, social status, and lifestyle that take precedence over the common experience women share - differences that are rarely transcended.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“Women need to know that they can reject the powerful’s definition of their reality… Many poor and exploited women, especially non-white women, would have been unable to develop positive self-concepts if they had not exercised their power to reject the powerful’s definition of their reality.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“La marginalità è un luogo radicale di possibilità, uno spazio di resistenza. Questa marginalità, che ho definito come spazialmente strategica per la produzione di un discorso contro-egemonico, è presente non solo nelle parole, ma anche nei modi di essere e di vivere. Non mi riferivo, quindi, a una marginalità che si spera di perdere – lasciare o abbandonare – via via che ci si avvicina al centro, ma piuttosto a un luogo in cui abitare, a cui restare attaccati e fedeli, perché di esso si nutre la nostra capacità di resistenza. Un luogo capace di offrirci la possibilità di una prospettiva radicale da cui guardare, creare, immaginare alternative e nuovi mondi.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“it is equally essential that we address without fear those who exploit, oppress, and dominate us. If women remain unable to speak to and about men in a feminist voice then our challenge to male domination on other fronts is seriously undermined.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“يعلّم العديد من الآباء أبناءَهم أن العنف هو الطريقة الأسهل (إن لم تكن الأكثر قبولاً) لإنهاء النزاع وتمكين القوة. وذلك مثلاً من خلال قول: "أنا أفعل هذا فقط لأنني أحبكم." عندما يستعمل الأهل العنف الجسدي للسيطرة على الأبناء فهم لا يساوون العنف بالحب فحسب، بل يُقدّمون أيضاً مفهوماً للحب يرادف القبول السلبي وغياب التفسير والنقاش. يجد الأطفال والمراهقون في الكثير من المنازل أن رغبتهم في مناقشة قضاياهم مع والديهم تُصوَّر في بعض الأحيان تحدياً للسلطة الأبوية، وفعلاً يفتقر للحب. (...)
لقد تمت توأمة الحب والعنف في هذا المجتمع حتى أصبح الكثير من الناس، خاصة النساء، يخافون من أن نبذ العنف سيؤدي إلى خسارة الحب.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“علِّمُ العديد من الآباء أبناءَهم أن العنف هو الطريقة الأسهل (إن لم تكن الأكثر قبولاً) لإنهاء النزاع وتمكين القوة. وذلك مثلاً من خلال قول: "أنا أفعل هذا فقط لأنني أحبكم." عندما يستعمل الأهل العنف الجسدي للسيطرة على الأبناء فهم لا يساوون العنف بالحب فحسب، بل يُقدّمون أيضاً مفهوماً للحب يرادف القبول السلبي وغياب التفسير والنقاش. يجد الأطفال والمراهقون في الكثير من المنازل أن رغبتهم في مناقشة قضاياهم مع والديهم تُصوَّر في بعض الأحيان تحدياً للسلطة الأبوية، وفعلاً يفتقر للحب. (...)
لقد تمت توأمة الحب والعنف في هذا المجتمع حتى أصبح الكثير من الناس، خاصة النساء، يخافون من أن نبذ العنف سيؤدي إلى خسارة الحب.”
― bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center