Visionary Feminism

portrayed thought the short stories:

“Chocolate” and “Created He
Them”
Visionary Feminism
• “Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the
love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the
other. The soul of feminist politics is the commitment to ending
patriarchal domination of women and men, girls and boys. Love
cannot exist in any relationship that is based on domination and
coercion. Males cannot love themselves in patriarchal culture if their
very self-definition relies on submission to patriarchal rules. When
men embrace feminist thinking and preactice, which emphasizes the
value of mutual growth and self-actualization in all relationships, their
emotional well-being will be enhanced. A genuine feminist politics
always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to
loving.” (Hooks, 2015)

Hooks, B. (2015). Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (2nd ed.). Abingdon, United Kingdom:
Routledge.
Visionary Feminists
• Betty Friedan (1921-2006)
• Launched social revolution with her provocative
1963 book, “The Feminine Mystique”
• identified "the problem that has no name“
• the unhappiness of post-World War II American
women unfulfilled by traditional notions of
female domesticity
• unleashing the first full flowering of American
feminism since the 1800s
Orleck, A., & Horowitz, D. (2000). Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique: The
American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism. The American Historical Review, 105(2), 574.
doi: 10.2307/1571538
Visionary Feminists
• Bell Hooks (1952- )
• “Feminism is for Everybody” (2000) is the antidote to every
“when’s international men’s day?!”
• “To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our
concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities
beyond that reality.”
• A fundamental goal of visionary feminism was to create
strategies to change the lot of all women and enhance their
personal power.
• “Imagine living in a world where there is no domination,
where females and males are not alike or even always equal,
but where a vision of mutuality is the ethos shaping our
interaction. Imagine living in a world where we can all be
who we are, a world of peace and possibility.”

Hooks, B. (2015). Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (2nd ed.). Abingdon, United Kingdom:
Routledge.