Bell Hooks Quotes About Patriarchy

Quotes about: Patriarchy

• Shaming is one of the deepest tools of imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy because shame produces trauma and trauma often produces paralysis.

  Bell Hooks

  White, Tools, Shame

• The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.

  Bell Hooks

  Self Esteem, Successful, Men

  bell hooks (2004). “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love”, p.66, Simon and Schuster

• Often in my lectures when I use the phrase “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” to describe our nation’s political system, audiences laugh. No one has ever explained why accurately naming this system is funny. The laughter is itself a weapon of patriarchal terrorism.

  Bell Hooks

  Laughter, White, Laughing

  bell hooks (2004). “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love”, p.29, Simon and Schuster

• In 2014, when Hillary Clinton was not yet running for president, I stated that I was not in agreement with her politics. More recently, when asked my thoughts about Hillary Clinton during a public conversation with Gloria Steinem, I stated, "she embodies the very best of imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't vote for her."

  Bell Hooks

  Running, Mean, Agreement

• You are not going to destroy this imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy by creating your own version of it.

  Bell Hooks

  White, Creating, Capitalist

  "bell hooks on Beyoncé: She Is a ‘Terrorist’ Because of Her ‘Impact On Young Girls’" by Britni Danielle, clutchmagonline.com. May 8, 2014.

• Patriarchy has no gender.

  Bell Hooks

  Gender, Patriarchy

  bell hooks (2013). “Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom”, p.142, Routledge

• The power of patriarchy has been to make maleness feared and to make men feel that it is better to be feared that to be loved. Whether they can confess this or not, men know that just is not true.

  Bell Hooks

  Men, Feels, Maleness

  Bell Hooks (2004). “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love”, Washington Square Pr

• Patriarchy, like any system of domination (for example, racism), relies on socializing everyone to believe that in all human relations there is an inferior and a superior party, one person is strong, the other weak, and that it is therefore natural for the powerful to rule over the powerless. To those who support patriarchal thinking, maintaining power and control is acceptable by whatever means.

  Bell Hooks

  Strong, Powerful, Party

• Feminist pedagogy can only be liberatory if it is truly revolutionary because the mechanisms of appropriation within white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy are able to co-opt with tremendous ease that which merely appears radical or subversive

  Bell Hooks

  White, Feminist, Ease

  bell hooks (2014). “Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black”, p.63, Routledge

• Reviewing the literature on love I noticed how few writers, male or female, talk about the impact of patriarchy, the way in which male domination of women and children stands in the ways of love.

  Bell Hooks

  Children, Impact, Males

  bell hooks (2018). “All About Love: New Visions”, p.22, HarperCollins

• This fear of maleness that they inspire estranges men from every female in their lives to greater or lesser degrees, and men feel the loss. Ultimately, one of the emotional costs of allegiance to patriarchy is to be seen as unworthy of trust. If women and girls in patriarchal culture are taught to see every male, including the males with whom we are intimate, as potential rapists and murderers, then we cannot offer them our trust, and without trust there is no love.

  Bell Hooks

  Girl, Loss, Men

  bell hooks (2004). “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love”

• Why is it that many contemporary male thinkers, especially men of color, repudiate the imperialist legacy of Columbus but affirm dimensions of that legacy by their refusal to repudiate patriarchy?

  Bell Hooks

  Men, Color, Males

  bell hooks (2012). “Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations”, p.239, Routledge

• To indoctrinate boys into the rules of patriarchy, we force them to feel pain and to
  deny their feelings.

  Bell Hooks

  Pain, Boys, Feelings

  bell hooks (2004). “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

• What had begun as a movement to free all black people from racist oppression became a movement with its primary goal the establishment of black male patriarchy.

  Bell Hooks

  People, Goal, Black

  bell hooks (2014). “Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism”, p.5, Routledge

• This rule of silence is upheld when the culture refuses everyone easy access even to the word “patriarchy.” Most children do not learn what to call this system of institutionaliz ed gender roles, so rarely do we name it in everyday speech. This silence promotes denial. And how can we organize to challenge and change a system that cannot be named?

  Bell Hooks

  Children, Names, Silence

  bell hooks (2004). “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love”, p.25, Simon and Schuster

• The crisis facing men is not the crisis of masculinity, it is the crisis of patriarchal masculinity. Until we make this distinction clear, men will continue to fear that any critique of patriarchy represents a threat.

  Bell Hooks

  Men, Distinction, Threat

  bell hooks (2004). “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love”, p.32, Simon and Schuster

• If you're in a domestic situation where the man is violent, patriarchy and male domination - even though you understand it intersectionally - you focus, you highlight that dimension of it, if that's what is needed to change the situation.

  Bell Hooks

  Men, Focus, Males

  "How Do You Practice Intersectionalism? An Interview with bell hooks". Interview with Randy Lowens, nefac.net. March 15, 2012.

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