In her groundbreaking essay “Feminism: A Transformational Politic,” bell hooks boldly declares, “Embedded in the commitment to feminist revolution is the challenge to love” (hooks 1989, 26).  These words, and her recognition of love as the defining quality of feminism, resonated with me immediately and drew me deeply to her work. This was the message I had found so compelling in the work of other resistance writers and in my own deep desire for justice in the world. Popular misconceptions of feminism have miscast feminism as a hatred of men, a resentful complaint, and/or a desire for equal access to power and position in the patriarchal, capitalist hierarchy. But the feminism I know and love works toward the transformation of systems of domination and oppression to a world of justice, solidarity, and love. This is the feminism bell hooks articulated so well.

Hooks defined feminism as “a struggle to end sexist oppression . . . [that] is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture” (hooks 1984, 24). As such, it requires a commitment to restructure society to one that prioritizes people over profit. Feminism demands that we expand our concerns to the collective, recognizing that our commitment to fighting oppressions extends well beyond our own lives to any and all who are oppressed (hooks 1984). Thus, it requires a generous love toward the lives and well-being of all. Hooks knew love to be the foundation that sustains the work of creating a world without domination. She emphasized that every great movement for social justice has been grounded in love as a transformative force. “It was always love that created the motivation for profound inner and outer transformation. Love was the force that empowered folks to resist domination and create new ways of living and being in the world” (hooks 2013, 194-195).

With this work of ending domination as the centerpiece of feminist commitment comes the recognition that none of us is immune from acts of domination. As Audre Lorde reflected, “What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another woman’s face?” (Lorde 1984,132). Recognizing that we all have the capacity to oppress and dominate, hooks challenged each of us to examine our own participation in systems of domination. This “ongoing, critical self-examination and reflection about feminist practice, about how we live in the world” (hooks 1989,24) is one of the hallmarks of feminism. While essential, to be of use in the transformation of domination, it must be accompanied by incumbent action. Feminist solidarity requires that we each take responsibility for recognizing and rectifying those instances in which our actions contribute to the oppression and domination of others, as well as of ourselves, and that we continually make the effort to reduce our participation in all systems of domination—parent/child, racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, imperialism. For hooks, this is the very work of love. As she writes, “When women and men understand that working to eradicate patriarchal domination is a struggle rooted in the longing to make a world where everyone can live fully and freely, then we know our work to be a gesture of love” (hooks 1989,27). Conversely, as she reiterates so often in her work, “Anytime we do the work of love, we are doing the work of ending domination” (hooks 2009, 248).

The love that hooks invokes is demanding. As she says, it entails accepting “the fullness of our humanity, which then allows us to recognize the humanity of others” (hooks 2013, 198). That is not such an easy task. It requires us to recognize not only the goodness in those we cast as “the enemy,” but also our own shortcomings. As one of her inspirations, Sam Keen, writes, “When I know my shadow, I know that ‘they’ are like me. . . . [Those] I cast into the category of aliens are fellow humans who, like myself, are faulted, filled with contradictory impulses of love and hate, generosity, and the blind will to survive . . . ” (Keen 1983, 150). It is this recognition that galvanizes our refusal to engage in acts of domination, even against those who have oppressed and dominated us. It enables us instead, in hooks’s words, to “engage a practice of loving kindness, forgiveness, and compassion” (hooks 2013, 198). 

Much of hooks’s work centered around defining and refining the meaning and practice of love in action in the world, culminating in her book All About Love. In it she articulates a feminist vision of society shaped by this ethic of love, in which citizens and neighbors value and protect the common good—a notion that seems to have disappeared from our national consciousness and will as of late, but that we sorely need in this time. How very different our society could be if we as a nation, as a world, lived by this love ethic. As hooks writes, “If all public policy was created in the spirit of love”—which for her required care, respect, honesty, commitment—“we would not have to worry about unemployment, homelessness, schools failing to teach children, or addiction” (hooks 2000,98). And, I would add public health, health care for all, poverty, childcare, structural racism, the school to prison pipeline, gun violence, environmental destruction, and climate change. The list could go on and on. Imagine it: public policy created in the spirit of love. Hooks challenged us to do more than imagine; she inspires us to do the daily hard and rewarding work of creating this society and these relationships based in love.

This is the work of transformational love. This is the work of feminism. To that end, I conclude with hooks’s charge to us all: “Let us draw upon that love to heighten our awareness, deepen our compassion, intensify our courage, and strengthen our commitment” (hooks 1989,27).

References

hooks, bell. 1984. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Boston: South End Press.

___. 1989. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston: South End Press.

___.  2000. All About Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow & Co.

___.  2009. “Lorde: The Imagination of Justice.” In I Am Your Sister:

Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde, edited by Rudolph P. Byrd, Johnnetta Betsch Cole, and Beverly Guy-Sheftall, 242-248.New York: Oxford U. Press.

___. 2013. Writing Beyond Race: Living Theory and Practice. New York: Routledge.

Keen, Sam. 1983. The Passionate Life: Stages of Loving. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Lorde, Audre. 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Trumansburg, NY:

Crossing Press.