Frases de bell hooks

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“O amor é uma combinação de cuidado, compromisso, conhecimento, responsabilidade, respeito e confiança.”

“Ao contrário do que fomos ensinados a pensar, o sofrimento desnecessário e não escolhido nos machuca, mas não precisa nos ferir por toda a vida. Isso nos marca, mas o que permitimos que a marca do nosso sofrimento se torne está em nossas próprias mãos.”

“A luta de classes está intrinsecamente ligada à luta pelo fim do racismo.”

“Se uma mulher sente que precisa de algo além de si mesma para legitimar e validar sua existência, ela já está dando seu poder de ser autodefinida, sua agência.”

“People with healthy self-esteem do not need to create pretend identities.”

“As more and more women acquired prestige, fame, or money from by the ruling capitalist patriarchy.”

“A central tenet of modern feminist thought has been the assertion that "all women are oppressed." This assertion implies that women share a common lot, that factors like class, race, religion,, and it is both appropriate and necessary that we speak against such oppression.”

“Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, Amiri Baraka and other black male leaders have righteously supported patriarchy. They have all argued that it is absolutely necessary for black men to relegate black women to a subordinate position both in the political sphere and in home life.”

“The more Lil' Kim distorted her natural beauty to become a cartoonlike caricature of whiteness, the larger her success.”

“Racism has always been a divisive force separating black men and white men, and sexism has been a force that unites the two groups.”

“As we search as a nation for constructive ways to challenge racism and white supremacy, it is absolutely essential that progressive female voices gain a hearing.”

“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.”

“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.”

“To be in touch with senses and emotions beyond conquest is to enter the realm of the mysterious.”

“Revolutionary feminism embraces men who are able to change, who are capable of responding mutually in a subject-to-subject encounter where desire and fulfillment are in no way linked to coercive subjugation. This feminist vision of the sexual imaginary is the space few men seem able to enter.”

“To counter the fixation on a rhetoric of victimhood, black folks must engage in a discourse of self-determination.”

“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.”

“The fierce willingness to repudiate domination in a holistic manner is the starting point for progressive cultural revolution.”

“Feminist emphasis on "common oppression" in the United States was less a strategy for politicization than an appropriation by conservative and liberal women of a radical political white women were able to make their interests the primary focus of feminist movement and employ a rhetoric of commonality that made their condition synonymous with "oppression." Who was there to demand a change in vocabulary? What other group of women in the United States had the same access to universities, publishing houses, mass media, money? Had middle class black women begun a movement in which they had labeled themselves "oppressed," no one would have taken them seriously. Had they established public forums and given speeches about their "oppression," they would have been criticized and attacked from all sides. This was not the case with white bourgeois feminists for they could appeal to a large audience of women, like themselves, who were eager to change their lot in life. Their isolation from women of other class and race groups provided no immediate comparative base by which to test their assumptions of common oppression.”

“The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.”

“Feminism in the United States has never emerged from the women who are most victimized by sexist oppression; women who are daily beaten down, mentally, physically, and spiritually-women who are powerless to change their condition in life. They are a silent majority. A mark of their victimization is that they accept their lot in life without visible question, without organized protest, without collective anger or rage.”

“The process begins with the individual woman’s acceptance that American women, without exception, are socialized to be racist, classist and sexist, in varying degrees, and that labeling ourselves feminists does not change the fact that we must consciously work to rid ourselves of the legacy of negative socialization.”

“I have wanted them to have this simple definition to read again and again so they know: Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.”

“Creation spirituality replaced a patriarchal spirituality rooted in notions of fall and redemption.”

“Today’s fashion magazines may carry an article about the dangers of anorexia while bombarding its readers with images of emaciated young bodies representing the height of beauty and desirability.”