Summary, part 2

Chapter 6: Beauty Within and Without

”Rigid feminist dismissal of female longings for beauty has undermined feminist politics” (p. 36).

Before the women’s liberation movement, women were socialized in sexist thinking to focus on appearance, adherence to patriarchal beauty standards, and their attractiveness to men. Opposing this debilitating belief structure is at the heart of female liberation and it has to be done through, “critically examining how we feel and think about our bodies and offering constructive strategies for change” (p. 31).

The feminist movement helped women understand, for the first time in U.S. history, the worth of their consumer dollars and bring about active change. 

hooks cites two examples

1. The Medical Industry: The feminist revolution brought to the forefront women’s health issues like eating disorders born from a desire to become conventionally attractive under white heteronormative beauty standards. The industry realized they could lose their patronage to health care centers set up by feminists, which offered space for female-centered positive health care. 

2. The Cosmetic and Fashion Industry: The cosmetic and fashion industry feared that feminism would destroy its businesses and profit since many used and saw feminism as a reason to turn away from a focus on fashion and outward appearance. It invested heavily in propaganda which trivialized women’s liberation by suggesting that feminists were big, hypermasculine, and ugly. 

Feminist interventions sparked a clothing and body revolution which forced these industries to learn to cater to the needs of their buyers (e.g., designing comfortable shoes for women). It also gave women the space to appreciate their natural bodies.

It is in the interest of a white supremacist capitalist patriarchal cosmetic and fashion industry to re-glamorize sexist-defined notions of beauty which they achieve through mass media (e.g., movies, adverts). For example, conflicting messages of anorexia awareness and images of emaciated bodies as the ideal may be found in today’s fashion magazines.

Chapter 7: Feminist Class Struggle

The concerns of working-class white women, Black women, and other women of color were always passed over for concerns of class privileged white women. 

Betty Friedman's landmark book, The Feminine Mystique identifies “the problem that has no name” as a crisis for all women while in reality, was only a problem for well-educated white women. The conflict, then, is “reformist white women with class privilege were well aware that the power and freedom they wanted was the freedom they perceived men of their class enjoying. Working-class women already knew that the wages they received would not liberate them” (p. 38-9). Those who boldly confronted the class issue in the early 70s were the likes of Rita Mae Brown and classic anthologies such as Class and Feminism. 

Yet another result of bringing class into feminist discussions was that it opened up spaces to analyze the intersection of race and class. It was quickly apparent that black women were at the bottom of the economic and social ladder facing multiple layers of oppression. 

Hence, ‘white power feminism’ neatly coincided with the white supremacist capitalistic patriarchal agenda since it still resulted in the oppression of non-white people and radical feminism. 

This cooptation enraged radical thinkers who found space to critique this in the alternative press with books like Mary Barfoot’s Coming of Black Genocide.

All women were encouraged to see the financial gains of white women as a positive sign. This destabilized the movement and removed class from the discussion, causing detrimental assaults on the welfare system and single mothers by the U.S. government to go unchallenged and the feminization of poverty to be ignored. 

“In the ’90s collusion with the existing social structure was the price of “women’s liberation” (p. 41).

Yet, the existence of individual feminists like hooks is proof that women can gain economically without colluding with the existing system. Her discussion of class culminates in a vision of the movement that would base its work on the needs of poor and working-class women. She suggests the creation of housing co-ops (that women can own) with feminist principles by feminists with class power for education for critical consciousness.  

Chapter 8: Global Feminism

The neo-colonial thinking of white supremacist capitalist patriarchal Western culture has shaped contemporary feminist politics with privileged white women declaring their ‘ownership’ of the movement and becoming the “authentic representatives” of said movement (p. 45): “Their neo-colonial paternalism allowed them to posit themselves as liberated with the ability to liberate their less fortunate sisters, especially those in the ‘third world’” (ibid). 

While hooks reaffirms the work done by western women, especially by those in the U.S. for the movement, she points out the problems of the unenlightened individual feminist thinkers. They were right in calling attention to global issues, but their class status and power coupled with their unenlightenment led to a version of neo-colonialism. They were projecting imperialist fantasies onto women globally. 

She emphasizes this by citing radical white women in Night-Vision: Illuminating War and Class on the Neo-Colonial Terrain, stating, “to not understand neocolonialism is to not fully live in the present” (p. 46).

For example, consider the way many Western women (white and Black) have confronted the issue of female circumcision in Africa and the Middle East. Not only are these countries depicted as more “barbarous and uncivilized,” but the sexism there is portrayed as more brutal and dangerous to women than in the United States (p. 46).

A decolonized feminist perspective would examine how sexist practices in relation to women’s bodies globally are linked (e.g., linking circumcision with life-threatening eating disorders). 

It would operate in a way in which, “Western imperialism is not reinscribed and feminism cannot be appropriated by transnational capitalism as yet another luxury product from the West women in other cultures must fight to have the right to consume” (p. 47).

An example of such a positive intervention can be found in Hatreds: Racialised and Sexualised Conflicts in the 21st Century by Zillah Eisenstein.

The goal of  global feminism, then, would be, “to reach out and join global struggles to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.”

Chapter 9: Women at Work

Feminist scholarship has documented the benefits women gain by entering the workforce like increased self-esteem and positive community engagement. Yet, most women have not even been able to find satisfying work, and their workforce participation has diminished the quality of their domestic lives.

This disappointment has caused many women to blame feminism for their conditions when the needs of a depressed economy and consumer capitalism had already sanctioned this shift. It would have come about regardless of the presence of feminism which simply encouraged them to feel positively about working outside the home.

We also do not have many studies which tell us whether more women working has positively changed male domination. Many men blame women for unemployment and the loss of their ‘patriarchal provider’ identity. Hence, a future feminist agenda has to be to get men to see that working women are not the enemy.

Nonetheless, we do know that women can’t achieve liberation through economic self-sufficiency alone. Poverty has become a central women’s issue with white supremacist capitalist patriarchal attempts to dismantle the welfare system in the U.S. which will deprive poor and indigent women of even basic necessities.

The next step, then, is to decide what type of work liberates women (e.g., better-paying jobs with comfortable schedules). As of now, there is no feminist agenda in place offering women a way out by rethinking work. 

Yet, we know that “the path to greater economic self-sufficiency will necessarily lead to alternative lifestyles which will run counter to the image of the good life presented to us by white supremacist capitalist patriarchal mass media” (p. 52). 

Women should not only be able to earn more money, but also be able to use it to facilitate well-being. 

hooks suggestions to achieve this include:

• Job sharing programs

• Increased wages for teachers and service workers in general

• Subsidized state wages for those who want to stay home and raise children as well as home-schooling programs enabling them to finish high school and graduate degrees

• Sanctioning of welfare, not warfare (military spending) by the government

• Removing the stigma around welfare:

• Negative stigma: a year or two of their lives during which all citizens received state aid if they were unable to find a job

• Gender stigma: giving men equal access to welfare

hooks concludes by emphasizing the importance of addressing the economic plight of women since it may “ultimately be the feminist platform that draws a collective response” (p. 54).

Chapter 10: Race and Gender

All white women in the U.S. know that whiteness is a privileged category regardless of whether they are in denial (not ignorant) of the fact. No group of white women understood the difference better than those who were a part of the Civil Rights struggle. 

Yet, this awareness did not carry over to the ensuing feminist movement. Their participation in the anti-racist movement did not mean they had divested white supremacy. Additionally, race discourse was uncommon in the early days of feminism due to the reluctance of individual black feminists to introduce their awareness of race. Many Black people were learning how to interact with whites as peers for the first time and must have felt exhilarating to experience sisterhood in place of oppression.

As hooks recalls, “In those days white women who were unwilling to face the reality of racism and racial difference accused us of being traitors by introducing race” (p. 57).

Radicals such as hooks herself were seen as deflecting focus away from gender. In reality, they were demanding that the status of women be looked at realistically in order to develop a real feminist politic that was fundamentally anti-racist.

Critical interventions on race have profoundly changed American feminism, benefiting both overall feminist thinking and theory. hooks praises this growth saying, “It shows us that no matter how misguided feminist thinkers have been in the past, the will to change, the will to create the context for struggle and liberation, remains stronger than the need to hold on to wrong beliefs and assumptions” (p. 58).

The only problematic arena then has been that of translating advances of theory into practice. Anti-racist interactions between women are difficult in a society that remains racially segregated. hooks calls for an understanding of the triumphs of the movement and using them as models for the sound foundation for the building of a mass-based anti-racist feminist movement.

Source

Hooks, B. (2000). Feminism is for everybody: Passionate politics. Pluto Press.

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