Men and women who want to know love will find us, and we will find them" (p. 158) (TIMING OF ABSURD LIFE EVENTS) The vast majority of us have flesh on our bones. I wish I could report that we all love that flesh. Some of us do. Most of us do not. A great many of us simply give up, engaging in a process of negative acceptance. By that I mean that an individual woman may not like her looks, her weight, but ceases trying to change herself so that she no longer confroms to conventional sexist aesthetic standards, because to do so lessens her anxiety and stress. But she is still not self-loving. We cannot negate our bodies and love them. Ouch. If this isn't me to a T. A lot of people react to the statements in this book, and others like it, by yelling things like, "Not all men!" or "We live in a post-feminist world!" or "Don't disrespect people who are into kink!" or "Sex workers are good for society!" and so on and so forth. Lost is the fact that bell hooks, and writers like her, are discussing a power structure, not individual people. Maybe include more women, though, I get she's writing for women over 30, mainly women who love men, and stuff. That's cool. . .I probably feel a bit more "sad" afterward reading this to be honest. It didn't give me the same feeling of power/energy to love like All About Love did—what were my illusions? is it ok to be guarded? is it time for me to leave the office and go home? (20 more minutes)

In "Outliers," Malcolm Gladwell argues that it takes about 10,000 hours of practice become an expert at something. hooks says that most women only start to really excel at the art of love in midlife, and this has been my experience; only now am I really learning to love myself, and to approach all relationships with an open heart and a deep commitment to acting at all times with care, respect, and responsibility. I am only now beginning to love myself and others with deep knowledge of what it means to be human. COMMITMENT IS THE GROUND OF OUR BEING THAT LETS US MAKE MISTAKES, BE FORGIVEN, AND TRY AGAIN (p. 216) A passion for love had to be kept secret—unstated. To speak one's longing was to risk shame. Those who knew love enjoyed its delights in private, and those who did not suffered in silence" (p. 59). They, of course, are women, and the girls who will one day become women. Girls and women who are all, truly, whores. Whores who must be policed by the violence that men dish out to them, to keep them in line.It takes courage for women to challenge the seduction of domination, the making of Love synonymous with erotic conflict between the powerful and the powerless." i82534925 |b1130003244989 |dpc |g- |m |h12 |x3 |t2 |i2 |j2 |k140216 |n06-01-2023 19:09 |o- |a305.409 |rH784 bell hooks'un okuduğum ikinci kitabı. ilki "feminizm herkes içindir" idi. ilkinde gözlemlediğim meseleyi basit anlatma tavrı bunda da geçerli.

Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community. this book was written almost 25 years ago and although there were a few times where i was like hmmmm ya okay this book is as old as i am, so much of it was still so relevant. The highlight of this book for me was hooks’ chapter on romantic friendships. This chapter spoke to me as someone who values my closest friendships way more than any man I’ve been into romantically or any man I will be into romantically. Here’s a passage from that chapter that I resonated with a lot: Some of these "truths" had me physically wincing at how cliched they are. "Daddy issues" and "you can't love anyone else until you love yourself" are all ugly concepts that rear their heads throughout the course of this book. And personally, yeah: for me, true love didn't come until I stopped compulsively seeking it. I admit that only once I started focusing on prioritizing and improving myself did I attract the right person into my life. But maybe that's just coincidence, because correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation. Maybe it wasn't actually anything I did; maybe it was just timing. Bell hooks shares that the original work of love is the cultivation of care, knowledge, respect, and responsibility in relation to the self.If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency. Published in 2002, "Communion: The Female Search for Love," by bell hooks/Gloria Watkins, is an excellent nonfiction title by this prolific and deeply insightful author. I'm still going to give this a decent rating, though, because I feel like hooks made a lot of good points. She challenged the widely-accepted cultural idea that women are innately more loving than men, and highlighted how toxic gender roles are often still performed even within queer relationships. I felt particularly called out by her indictment of "negative body acceptance": Book Genre: Essays, Feminism, Gender, Love, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Relationships, Self Help, Social Justice, Social Movements, Womens, Writing