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

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Men and women who want to know love will find us, and we will find them" (p. 158) (TIMING OF ABSURD LIFE EVENTS) In All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks calls upon us to reimagine the rules of grammar surrounding love; from an oft-used noun to a rarely understood verb. This movement from one part of speech to another is not just a semantic move, but rather a shift away from lovelessness towards an ethic of love. For hooks, the transformative power of loving, which is a brew of “care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, trust, as well as open and honest communication” (p. 12), can only begin from a certain kind of truth-telling that entails admission of our collective inability to define love and the resultant cynicism that follows from such definitional obscurity.

I realized that every time I quoted this book during the reading of it, every friend would be like — yo, can I read that after you? All the conversations I’ve had with women and my female friends, so many insights were given into those conversations at a much higher level here. I’ve officially become the friend on some: ~well, bell hooks says..~ LOL! I liked this book even though I don’t think it was as groundbreaking or tightly argued as her books The Will to Change or All About Love. For the first 70% of Communion, I felt that bell hooks made several strong and interesting points about women, gender, and relationships: that women are taught to search for love in romantic relationships, that women are also capable of perpetuating sexism and patriarchy, and that men who may advocate for racial justice or even gender equality may still enact sexism in contexts such as sexual relationships. I agree with other reviewers who state that hooks generalizes her points a bit much at times. While I didn’t mind that rhetorical technique when she used it either more accurately or more sparingly in her other books, in Communion it stood out to me more in a negative way, perhaps because I also found that her points blurred together and were a little discursive within chapters at times. When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.' Book Genre: Essays, Feminism, Gender, Love, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Relationships, Self Help, Social Justice, Social Movements, Womens, Writing 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)she did bash on patriarchal men a lot (love) but she never blamed men or suggested that women were the victim. she empowered women to take accountability and to put in the work to find and create meaningful, mutual love. i love how she wrapped the book up by talking about the importance of all love - self love, romantic friendships, and romantic love and how we need all of them to live a fulfilled life, and that giving and receiving love from yourself and close friends is what enriches romantic relationships. hooks talks about how hard it can be for powerful, self-actualized women to find powerful, self-actualized men who are deeply committed to equality and freedom for women, and that this means that women need to learn to thrive regardless of whether they have a partner, rather than counting on a partner to meet their emotional needs. We need intimacy, but we don't need partnership; we need community, and a circle of love, and friendship. Like hooks, I've learned to find all the love I need in spiritual practice and community, and while I long for an intimate romantic partnership, I know I will be OK without it. She also recommends what she calls "romantic friendship" as a healthy way to establish intimacy, friendships that are not sexual but energized by Eros. This has been my experience the last few years, as I've learned to have nonsexual friendships with extraordinary men that are emotionally intimate, safe, and inspiring. Dieses Buch handelt von der Stellung der Frau in einer patriarchalisch geprägten Gesellschaft. Es handelt von Gleichberechtigung und Vorstellungen, die längst überholt sind und ganz wichtig, von Selbstliebe. Die Texte lassen sich leicht und flüssig lesen. Aber leider, leider konnte mich das Buch nicht überzeugen. Affirming our natural beauty before we adorn it in other ways keeps us from developing a dependency on artifice" (p. 119), even though I have this same feeling, I could see where it'd be disagreed with (thinking of Imogen Binnie's chapter on clothes/fashion)

I also liked the way she tore into our culture's devaluation of platonic and queer relationships: In heterosexist, patriarchal culture, the only commitments that are deemed truly acceptable and worthy are those between straight women and men who marry.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 Um, but anyway, so it’s, uh, even though it’s very feminist and rooted in a kind of critiquing patriarchy, the whole sense of this book really is that people are just people; men and women aren’t that different. It’s not men are from Mars. Women are from Venus. We all just wanna have a kind of connection and feel love. Um, and the kind of how we’re all, um, limited and being able to do that by our culture and society and, um, kind of some suggestions for overcoming that. So I highly recommend this just for general reading. I mean, especially like my best friend who is reading this, if you’re someone who’s really been struggling with your romantic life, um, this is a really fantastic book. Um, just five stars recommend everyone. I think everyone should read this. Um, and I will be continuing with, um, bell hooks, his other books about love, so she wrote a kind of a love trilogy. This is the third book. Um, I mentioned in my November TBR video that I will be continuing with the other two books in the trilogy. 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.'

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. According to the author, a woman’s search for love, not equality, is at the helm of all things. Freedom only comes when she realizes her value and appreciates herself instead of waiting for substantiation from a man. Years later, when I was ready to leave this relationship, I planned my exit much as one might plan leaving a job" (p. 62) (a lot of work and love themes linked together in this book) The "romantic friendships" chapter near the end was my favorite part of this whole book. (the chapter on women and aging is good, too, though)Most resonating for me. But it's about "romantic friendships" with other women, but it'd be really interesting to read about having this with men. A bit more complicated, jealousies from the guy friend's partners, women in competition, etc. How to deal? Forty-plus books in 40-plus years and so many lives and minds and souls touched by her words, even those who may have disagreed. I will miss her voice, smile, the way she always kept me on my toes, the way she always said both my names. But bell did what she came to do, and as Nikki Giovanni recently said about life, we go on. Sleep well, bell, you have earned it. Mahogany Browne

To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.We continue to put in place the anti-sexist thinking and practice which affirms the reality that females can achieve self-actualization and success without dominating one another.” COMMITMENT IS THE GROUND OF OUR BEING THAT LETS US MAKE MISTAKES, BE FORGIVEN, AND TRY AGAIN (p. 216) really really enjoyed this one. i realized i have read basically zero books about feminism???? fail! 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. She was a teacher and I imagine she recognized early that it is through empathetic connection that students really learn, especially when the subject matter is dealing with the really tough stuff within ourselves and our society. May more like her carry on. Evangeline Lawson