Communion: The Female Search for Love: 2 (Love Song to the Nation, 2)

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The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin.' Finally, she raises this idea that feminists aren't truly ready for "the new men": We demand that men change, and when they do, we are often not ready to affirm and embrace the liberation we claimed to desire.

Intimacy and the notion of love are discovered in Bell Hooks’ third sequel in her love series. “Communion: The Female Search for Love” challenges everything that we thought we knew about feminism. Have women indeed championed all things concerning equally? Are they really on the road to total wellness, or are we all just living in the delusion of gender equality being on the horizon? Bell Hooks has answers to some of the most challenging questions. i just loved how she talk about the importance of mutual love built on respect, responsibility, accountability, etc. because care alone is not enough. also one of my fav quotes “Making a relationship “work” is not the same as “creating love.” PLACEHOLDER ANXIETY between women who are "romantic friends", when possibly, eventually, one of them finds a partner and leaves the other "behind" OR both find partners and leave each other a little bit When I first began exploring what it means to be a white man, and an aspiring feminist ally, I believed that feminism was just about the liberation of women. But bell hooks’ work challenged me to think about pain I had experienced in my life and how this pain was the byproduct of patriarchal thinking and living. Her work was not about centering men’s experiences, but rather illustrating the damage that patriarchy also enacts on men.NEW YORK - DECEMBER 16: Author and cultural critic bell hooks poses for a portrait on December 16, ... [+] 1996 in New York City, New York. (Photo by Karjean Levine/Getty Images) Getty Images Intimate, revealing, provocative, Communion challenges every woman to courageously claim the search for love as the heroic journey we must all choose to be truly free. In her trademark commanding and lucid language, hooks explores the ways ideas about women and love were changed by the feminist movement, by women's full participation in the workforce, and by the culture of self-help, and reveals how women of all ages can bring love into every aspect of their lives, for all the years of their lives. In this case, the power structure being scrutinized is patriarchy, a power structure that degrades, dehumanizes, mutilates, maims, and destroys the bodies of women, and does so through sexualized violence. Sexualized violence renders violence invisible (a quote from Gail Dines). Which is also to say: sexualized violence renders dehumanization invisible. As Andrea Dworkin consistently points out, regarding rape culture and the patriarchy, the message of sexualized violence, no matter what horrifying thing is being done to any individual woman, is always crystal clear: "She wants it. They all do." The victim is always to blame. "She wants it. They all do."

Born Gloria Jean Watkins, the author and feminist cultural critic published an insightful, inspiring and emotive collection of writing, with her death sparking grief across the globe. Romantic friendships are a threat to patriarchy and heterosexism because they fundamentally challenge the assumption that being sexual with someone is essential to all meaningful, lasting, intimate bonds. In reality, many people in marriages and longtime partnerships are not sexual; behind closed doors their relationships may be similar to, if not the same as, romantic friendships. Many single heterosexual women spend their time in relationships with men in which they feel unloved and unfulfilled, only to experience a moment of critical awakening in midlife, when they begin to do the work of self-love. And the outcome of that work is often the recognition that they would rather be alone than remain in unsatisfying partnerships. Or many of us are not able to meet men with whom we want to make committed partnerships. Finding a man to be with is a lot easier than finding a man who can be a loving partner.” bell’s reminder, in Teaching to Transgress, that “no education is politically neutral” have been my anchor and guiding light as a teacher, mentor and scholar. So much of my professional identity, which bleeds into my whole self, I owe to the work, ideas and writings of bell hooks. I envision her now, IN GLORY, on the ancestral plane wondering over the beloved community she helped to create and inspire. Gloria SteinemBut many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.

Um, But then it also talks about friendship. So females, women finding, um, intense, lasting connecting friendship, um, and also kind of cross-generational relationships. So kind of every aspect of, um, of finding love and connection. And the title really says it all: communion it’s about, um, she could have equally as well, I think said connection, but that doesn’t imply the sort of deep level of connection that she really means kind of really knowing a whole person and feel known and seen as a whole person. And so she’s talking about how women find that. And, of course, the whole thing is colored by patriarchy. So her whole message is how women find communion with other people or fail to find communion with other people in our patriarchal culture. So these are, think of them as essays, I guess, although they do flow together, they’re not standalone, but they do kind of feel like essays. In memoriam, I share below just three of her groundbreaking ideas that expanded readers’ consciousness around race, sex, class, and their intersections, and reflect on her compassion and genuineness. I would have abandoned Communion at the first chapter if it weren't for a book club I wanted to attend. I'm glad I finished it even though I didn't really enjoy it. A lot of generalizing statements in here. I'm not interested in her use of "most women" and "we." bell hooks will be like, "MOST WOMEN had fathers who left them which is why WE seek out men who are emotionally unavailable." This happens throughout the book. Here's another one: "Lesbians, like all women, come from families where dysfunctional behavior. . .were the norm" (p. 203). Lol, whenever she mentions lesbians, it feels like a polite afterthought. D/c.Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power — not because they don’t see it, but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist.' According to the author, feminism stops at the bedroom door because of the innate teachings that label men as more patriarchal when they conceal their emotions. Women, as Hooks claims, are left to grapple with a corporate job that pays the bills and a second shift of satisfying a man who is sometimes impossible to read.