All too often we think of community in terms of being with folks like ourselves: the same class, same race, same ethnicity, same social standing and the like..I think we need to be wary: we need to work against the danger of evoking something that we don’t challenge ourselves to actually practice.
Interpretation
Community should include diverse perspectives and backgrounds, challenging us to grow.
In this quote, Bell Hooks emphasizes the importance of a truly inclusive community that goes beyond superficial similarities such as class, race, or ethnicity. She warns against the complacency that can arise when we only engage with people who share our backgrounds, urging us to actively seek diversity and practice understanding in order to foster genuine connections and personal growth.
In practice
During a meeting about community outreach, I referenced Bell Hooks' quote to emphasize the importance of including diverse voices in our initiatives.
Privilege is not in and of itself bad; what matters is what we do with privilege. I want to live in a world where all women have access to education, and all women can earn PhD’s, if they so desire. Privilege does not have to be negative, but we have to share our resources and take direction about how to use our privilege in ways that empower those who lack it.
Self-love is the foundation of our loving practice. Without it our other efforts to love fail. Giving ourselves love we provide our inner being with the opportunity to have the unconditional love we may have always longed to receive from someone else.
While privacy strengthens all our bonds, secrecy weakens and damages connection. Lerner points out that we do not usually "know the emotional costs of keeping a secret" until the truth is disclosed. Usually, secrecy involves lying. And lying is always the setting for potential betrayal and violation of trust.
When we only name the problem, when we state complaint without a constructive focus or resolution, we take hope away. In this way critique can become merely an expression of profound cynicism, which then works to sustain dominator culture.
Once you do away with the idea of people as fixed, static entities, then you see that people can change, and there is hope.
I still think it's important for people to have a sharp, ongoing critique of marriage in patriarchal society — because once you marry within a society that remains patriarchal, no matter how alternative you want to be within your unit, there is still a culture outside you that will impose many, many values on you whether you want them to or not.
The first couple of times, he simply stayed - a stranger to kill the aloneness. A few nights after that, he whispered “Shhh, I’m here, its alright.” After three weeks, he held her. Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man’s gentleness, his thereness.
The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.
We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
Women have been driven mad, “gaslighted”, for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience. The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have primary obligation to each other: not to undermine each other’s sense of reality for the sake of expediency; not to gaslight each other.
Woman is the dominant sex. Men have to do all sorts of stuff to prove that they are worthy of woman's attention.
There were many times when I had to emotionally come to terms with the fact that maybe I wasn't ever going to get married. And I started getting comfortable with that.
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