At a well-attended lecture tonight at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, author and feminist bell hooks lectured on the “Positive Power of Feminism” at an event sponsored by the West Michigan Women’s Studies Council. During the lecture hooks emphasized the positive impacts that feminism has had and described how her own experiences growing up in the south in the 1950s and in the movements of the 1960s shaped her understanding of patriarchy and the radical feminist movement. hooks emphasized that feminism had touched everyone in the room and that everyone had benefited from the positive impacts of feminism. She explained that in coming out of the university she was excited to take feminism into her post-graduate life but quickly found that in working at a telephone company in the 1970s that patriarchy was alive and well despite the existence of a radical movement on campus. Feminism is still facing this issue according to hooks, who argued that there are still questions about the relationship between feminism in academia and in the work world and that the movement remains under siege via the “complete glorification of the white supremacist imperialist capitalist patriarchy” in our culture, which hooks stated should be viewed as a direct attack on feminism. Despite the widespread familiarity with some forms of feminism, “people are not sitting around talking about patriarchy” and that the challenge of feminism is—in light of its power to transform lives—to “reignite the power of feminism” in order to challenge patriarchy.

hooks spent a considerable amount of time explaining how feminism relates to men and specifically boys whom she argued are—more than any other group—fed the lies and fantasies of patriarchy, with hooks stating that “socialization into patriarchy is socialization into war.” She described how in her work in elementary schools she has seen violent gender roles drawn at early age at the same time that the feminist movement has largely abandoned its early focus on children. hooks described that the children’s books that she has written are the result of direct requests from other feminists who have also identified the need for de-colonizing materials outside of the halls of academia and within the terrain of everyday life. Black males of color have been particularly affected by this shift in focus away from children, with hooks describing the fact that black males are becoming largely illiterate as a problem for the feminist movement to address. She asserted that this is so because the white supremacist capitalist patriarchal culture does not respect the critical intelligence of black males. Instead black males are often taught to be misogynists or consumers and that they do not need to read. For hooks, black men have been brainwashed and socialized by the dominant media to believe that they can only be “laborers in plantation culture” and not thinkers. To overcome this, feminism must work to spread a life-affirming vision of black masculinity while caregivers and educators must at the same time work to provide relevant materials that will encourage black male children to read. Even among men who have accepted and embraced feminism, hooks argued that men are often unsure of how to use it—a failure, she argued that the feminist movement must address. hooks argued that men—even those who have not embraced feminism—have benefited from it and that we need to work on finding ways in which we can help the dominator culture heal as they are suffering from racism, classism, and sexism. hooks also reminded the audience that critical thinking can enable men and women suffering under patriarchy to carve out a space in which one can create a wholeness of self until patriarchy is dismantled.

One of the aspects of hooks’ writing that has made her so influential is her willingness to turn a critical eye both on herself and on the feminist movement in order to bring to it a greater clarity and more insightful analysis. To this end, throughout the lecture hooks shared a number of critiques of feminism and praised the movement as one of the few that has been willing to address its mistakes and failings. hooks argued that no other social justice movement has been as willing to self-critique itself as feminism, a fact that has contributed to the movement’s successes. Despite these successes, there have been some failures—specifically when failing to deal with race early on, in ignoring males and not completely understanding the ways in which patriarchy harms people of all genders, and in ignoring the question of love. Her book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center was written out of the desire to improve feminism and it remains a project in which she is engaged in order to help feminism grow and create a culture where sexism can end. hooks explained that she frequently has students who fear that if they align themselves with feminism that they will not be able to love or be loved, a common myth perpetuated in rightwing attacks on feminism. However, hooks pointed out that feminism is the only movement talking about love as it relates to radical politics and the asserted that without love there can be no justice and that the work of ending domination is doing the work of love. hooks also explained that the question of love also must involve self-love and the idea that women must come to love themselves despite the fact that masses of women feel that feminism and patriarchy demand that they become “superwomen.” These demands often have a crushing and paralyzing affect on women if they do not ground their work in self-love. In order to respond to failings within feminism such as this failure to rethink love, hooks argued that it is important to view feminism as a constant process in which one must remain critically vigilant. hooks also asserted that the primary place of struggle is where you are and that the point of power is in the present.