Feminism is for Everybody

When bell hooks tells people she's a feminist theorist, she doesn't get polite nods. She gets an earful. She hears about how feminists hate men, how they're all lesbians, how they're taking jobs from white men, how they want to destroy the family. She's heard these reactions so many times that she wrote this book specifically to have an answer to the question "what is feminism?" that comes from neither fear nor fantasy.

Here's the problem in a nutshell: most people learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media. And patriarchal mass media has a vested interest in making feminism look ridiculous, extreme, or anti-male. The media presents a version of feminism that focuses almost exclusively on things like equal pay and equal division of household labor. That's the version reformist feminists promote—the idea that women just want what men have within the existing system. But that's not the whole story, and it's not even the most important part.

So what is feminism, really? hooks gives us a definition in the very first sentence of Chapter 1, and it's worth memorizing: "Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression."

Notice what's not in that definition. There's no mention of men as enemies. There's no mention of women as victims. The target is sexism itself—a system of thought and action that assigns superior value and power to men while devaluing and controlling women. And here's the crucial point hooks makes: women can be just as sexist as men. A woman who believes her son should have more freedom than her daughter, a woman who judges other women based on their appearance, a woman who thinks men should be the breadwinners—she's perpetuating sexism just as surely as any man.

This is where hooks draws a clear line between sexism and anti-male sentiment. Early feminist activists responded to male domination with anger, and that anger helped fuel the women's liberation movement. But as feminism developed, anti-male sentiment stopped shaping the movement's consciousness. Why? Because if the problem is sexism, then the enemy isn't men—it's a system that harms everyone, including men, by forcing them into rigid roles.

The mass media, however, never got that memo. They kept showing us the angry, anti-male feminists because that made for better headlines. They ignored the nuanced conversations happening in consciousness-raising groups, in academic classrooms, in community meetings. They ignored the way feminism evolved to examine class and race alongside gender. They ignored the revolutionary feminists who wanted to transform the entire system, not just get a piece of it.

And this brings us to another critical distinction hooks makes: revolutionary feminism versus reformist feminism. Reformist feminists want equality with men within the existing capitalist patriarchal system. They want women to have equal pay, equal access to jobs, equal representation in government. These are worthy goals, but they don't challenge the system itself. Revolutionary feminists want to transform that system entirely. They want to bring an end to patriarchy and sexism, not just make them slightly more comfortable for women.

hooks identifies herself as a revolutionary feminist. And she points out that often it was Black women who were at the forefront of revolutionary feminist thinking. Why? Because Black women couldn't afford the illusion that simply joining the existing system would solve their problems. When you're dealing with both racism and sexism, you know firsthand that the system needs fundamental change, not just a seat at the table.

Let's pause for a moment and consider what this means in practice. If feminism is about ending sexism rather than fighting men, then the work of feminism includes examining our own internalized sexism. It means recognizing that we've all been socialized from birth to accept sexist thought and action. It means understanding that sexism isn't just about individual bad actors—it's embedded in our institutions, our media, our families, our relationships.

This is why hooks insists on clear definitions. When the feminist movement lost clear definitions, it lost momentum. "Lifestyle feminism" emerged, suggesting there could be as many versions of feminism as there were women. Suddenly, any woman who made choices for herself could call herself a feminist, regardless of whether she was challenging sexism or reinforcing it. You could be a feminist who loves high heels and makeup, a feminist who works on Wall Street, a feminist who stays home with her kids. But if none of these choices involves actively working to end sexist oppression, are they really feminist?

hooks says no. Feminism isn't a personal identity or a lifestyle choice. It's a political movement with a specific goal: ending sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. That goal requires collective action, not just individual preference. It requires confronting the ways women dominate and exploit other women through class, race, and sex. It requires recognizing that sexism is the problem—not men, not women, but the system that assigns value and power based on gender.

So here's what we have so far: a clear definition, a distinction between sexism and anti-male sentiment, and an identification of patriarchal mass media as the primary source of misinformation about feminism. The media taught us that feminism is about women hating men and wanting to be like them. hooks teaches us that feminism is about ending a system that harms everyone.

Here's a question to sit with as we move forward: If you've been taught your whole life that feminism is something other than what hooks describes—if you've absorbed the media's version of feminism as anti-male, as about women's rights at men's expense—what else have you been taught that might not be true? And more importantly, who benefits when you believe that version?