Feminism is for Everybody Summary of Introduction and Chapter One

Feminism is for Everybody Chapter Summary​ ​compiled by Briauna Mckizzie Introduction: Bell hooks sets the stage by stating that feminist ideas need to be made more accessible. She comments and critiques the fact that most feminist texts are only accessible and therefore often only read by academics. Unlike the original radical, community-based, movement, feminism has been transported to the classrooms.

She also mentions some of the stereotypes of feminism, which I’m sure we’re all well aware of. Contrary to popular belief, feminism is not about tipping the power scale to femmes.

Rather: “Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression” and that clarity “helps us all to remember that all of us, female and male, have been socialized form birth on to accept sexist thought and action…” Basically, most of us are all complicit.

Traditionally, cis-males have been the most resistant to the movement, and hooks believes men respond that way because they’re afraid of letting go of the benefits that patriarchal oppression has given them (sounds a little like people with white privilege who also resist movements lead by and focused on people of color).

Circling back to how we’re all complicit in upholding the patriarchy in someway, hooks recalls that the most patriarchal voice in her life was in her mother’s voice. By doing so, she foreshadows some of the unlearning she has to do later in her life.

To conclude the introduction, she says she writes the following texts because ​“feminism is for everybody,”​ and everyone deserves to learn about it.

Chapter One: Feminist Politics (Where We Stand) In this chapter, hooks analyzes how the movement shifted from concentrating on the issues of all femmes to focusing on femmes who wanted to work or move up the corporate ladder.

That means, essentially, femmes of color were erased from the movement. Why? Because the women who had access to these “career” jobs were mainly white due to centuries of oppression and segregation that made acquiring an education virtually impossible for anyone who wasn’t of European descent.

The working class femmes, the femmes working long hours cleaning hotel rooms, those femmes -- they were forgotten.

Consequently, feminism became something that appeared to mean women/femmes merely wanted the the things that men had - a pension, corner office, and a whole lotta social capital.

On the other hand, hooks and her homies were more interested in altering ​“the existing system so that women would have more rights. We wanted to transform that system, to bring an end to the patriarchy and sexism.”

They didn't want what men had. ​They wanted to burn the whole fucking system to the ground and start afresh.

But since feminism came to mean something that looked like climbing up the corporate ladder in the same way men do, many people who identified as feminist put down their picket signs once they began to gain ​“economic power within the existing social structure.”

In the words of Manfred Mann, they were ​“blinded by the light”​ of capitalism.

In part, this was the start of why feminism, as a theory, became something mostly discussed and considered only by femmes with educational and economic privilege.

Unfortunately, this means that abuse of power would occur within the feminist structure too.

Picture middle class white femmes standing on the shoulders of both their poor cousins in the Appalachian mountains, and on top of the broad shoulders of femmes of color.

To be continued….du du DUNNNNN