I advocate feminism.

Towards the end of bell hooks essay she tells how she has changed the way she expresses her relationship to feminism. Instead of indentifying herself as a feminist, she says “I advocate feminism.” She explains that “I advocate vs. I am does not participate in the either/or dualistic thinking that is the centered ideological component of all systems of domination.” I think this addresses the discussion we had at the beginning of class about people’s aversion to the term feminist. While seemingly people simply wish to avoid the negative connotations that come with the word, hooks alludes to a deeper ideological component that has come to taint the word enough to drive people not only from its usage, but from the political dimension of the movement to end sexist oppression (as hooks defines the goal of feminism). I would be interested in looking more deeply into how the “either/or dualistic” thinking has come to color the language of the feminist movement, and concomitantly how that has affected how the movement has thus far transpired. Perhaps this might lead me to a better understanding of the importance of poetry as a medium for breaking free from a lexicon born of the: “white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal class structure,” that hooks points out as the forces that conspire to form the world the feminist movement currently engages.