Men did care enough to struggle with our demands. And some cared enough to convert to feminist thinking and to change. But only a very, very few loved us — loved us all the way. And that meant respecting our sexual rights. To this day I believe that feminist debate about love and sexuality ended precisely because straight women did not want to face the reality that it was highly unlikely in patriarchal society that a majority of men would wholeheartedly embrace women’s right to say no in the bedroom. Since the vast majority of heterosexual women, even those involved in radical feminist movement, were not willing to say no when they did not want to perform sexually for the fear of upsetting or alienating their mate, no significant group of men ever had to rise to the occasion. While it became more acceptable to say no now and then, it was not acceptable to say no for any significant amount of time. An individual woman in a primary relationship with a man could not say no, because she feared there was always another woman in the background who could take her place, a woman who would never say no. Bell Hooks
Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise." (p. 248)
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Simone De Beauvoir
Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you..it means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our...
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Adrienne Rich
One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.
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Jeanne DArc
I'm not going to limit myself just because people won't accept the fact that I can do something else.
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Dolly Parton
By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought...
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Virginia Woolf
More Quotes By Bell Hooks
Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they choose to be intimate with are frozen in time, unable to allow themselves to love for fear that the loved one will abandon them. If the first woman they passionately loved,...
Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified. To know love we have to invest time and commitment..'dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in...
Living simply makes loving simple.
Often men who have been emotionally neglected and abused as children by dominating mothers bond with assertive women, only to have their childhood feelings of being engulfed surface. While they could not 'smash their mommy' and still receive love, they find that they can engage...
Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust.
