Bell Hooks Quotes

Controlling women as the means of reproduction is made even more necessary by any race or caste or class system. It just comes together, it's just like life. And therefore it's not even practical to be a feminist without being anti-racist or against classism. It just doesn't work.

What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heel print upon another woman's face?

We must reclaim and retake feminism from our fellow idiotic women.

As we women know, there are so many other hurdles that we have to cross that I would love it if we could stop having the race conversation so that we can get women further on. You know, a female president now that we have an African American president. Maybe we can get an Asian female, a gay person?

We don't think only men can be powerful and strong. Behind the heads of the Mafia, the leaders of culture, there are always very strong women. European culture is a matriarchy, especially in the south. The women have a lot of power.

Women born and raised on this fragile planet have more uniting us than dividing us - and it's the job of feminists to help us realise that.

Some of the biggest advocates for feminism seem to believe that in order to feel powerful you have to make another woman subservient, and that is not what feminism is about at all.

Being a woman and being gay is really a unique position in our society. I know in my experience of activism, oftentimes it makes a difference if something is women-focused. It's likely to get the attention of women much more easily.

Feminism is just an idea. It's a philosophy. It's about the equality of women in all realms. It's not about man-hating. It's not about being humorless. We have to let go of these misconceptions that have plagued feminism for 40, 50 years.

There are 3 billion women in the world, so there are 3 billion ways to be a feminist.

Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men.

It's because it was at a time when women didn't have any power. It was so unusual for a young woman in her 20s to have power that I seized the power but tried not to flaunt it.

Women are a sisterhood. They make common cause in behalf of the sex; and, indeed, this is natural enough, when we consider the vast power that the law gives us over them.

Feminism will never reach the next stage until women stop competing with each other on the level of looks.

Competition gives birth to a lot of success, and if no one ever challenged you, you wouldn't go anywhere. It makes sense to compete with others for a promotion at work. But so many women take it a step further and won't even support other women. They end up competing over things that don't make sense - like how we look.

The point of privilege and the notion of mansplaining is that sometimes I definitely feel like I should shut up. That's it functioning. That's the notion of privilege functioning.

As a woman thrust on to the political stage and baffled by the anger and depth of negative feeling I have been targeted with, Mary Beard's 'Women & Power: A Manifesto' brought me a sense of solidarity, power and determination.

I think a lot of divisions of perspective and experience that happen within feminism are very natural. Any movement that represents the interests of 51 percent of the population is covering such divergent experiences, perspectives, and priorities that, if you're doing it right, people are going to be arguing within it.

There's a tendency to locate the cliche of the 'strong woman' exclusively in the present day, as if those many women who endured such inconveniences as the Depression and the Second World War were porcelain compared to, say, Amy Schumer.

People feel feminists are aggressive, men-hating women with a little moustache. I think it's got a bad reputation because when feminism came into being, we were facing so much opposition that we had to be strident and aggressive.

Blogs with feminist content, from 'Feministing' and 'Jezebel' to 'Racialicious' and 'Shakesville' and 'Feministe,' have opened up and changed the scope of the feminist universe for women who might never have encountered contemporary feminism.

I personally feel like the conversation around feminism has advanced a lot. People are starting to realize privileged white feminism isn't cutting it. We have to look at the holistic experience of all women, or assigned women, on the planet.

The liberal wing of the feminist movement may have improved the lives of its middle- and upper-class constituency--indeed, 1992 was the Year of the White Middle Class Woman--but since the leadership of this faction of the feminist movement has singled out black men as the meta-enemy of women, these women represent one of the most serious threats to black male well-being since the Klan.

The same men who are blind and deaf to feminism are acutely sensitive to what threatens their dominance and privilege.

Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.