Top Quotes: “All About Love” — bell hooks
Background: hooks walks the reader through her perspective on love — what it even is, how to foster it, and how to separate it from the distorted lens of patriarchy. I especially enjoyed her long speeches against dishonesty and the love of material things, as well as her tips on how to be loving with one’s kids and friends.
Introduction
“As I pored over nonfiction books on the subject of love, I was surprised to find that the vast majority of the ‘revered’ books, ones used as reference works and even those popular as self-help books, have been written by men. All my life I’ve thought of love as primarily a topic women contemplate with greater intensity and vigor than anybody else on the planet. I still hold this belief even though visionary female thinking on the subject has yet to be taken as seriously as the thoughts and writings of men.”
“Men theorize about love, but women are more often love’s practitioners. Most men feel that they receive love and therefore know what it feels like to be loved; women often feel we are in a constant state of yearning, wanting love but not receiving it.”
“Love is as important as work, as crucial to our survival as a nation as our drive to succeed. Awesomely, our nation, like no other in the world, is a culture driven by the quest to love (it’s the theme of our movies, music, literature) even as it offers so little opportunity for us to understand love’s meaning or to know how to realize love in word and deed.”
“Our nation is equally driven by sexual obsession. There’s no aspect of sexuality that’s not studied, talked about, or demonstrated. How-to classes exist for every dimension of sexuality, even masturbation. Yet schools for love do not exist. Everyone assumes that we’ll be able to love instinctively. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we still accept that the family is the primary school for love. Those of us who do not learn how to love among family are expected to experience love in romantic relationships. However, this love often eludes us. And we spend a lifetime undoing the damage caused by cruelty, neglect, and all matter of lovelessness experienced in our families of origin and in relationships where we simply don’t know what to do.”
“Most recent books on love suggest love should mean something different to men than it does to women — that the sexes should respect and adapt to our inability to communicate since we don’t share the same language. This type of literature is popular because it doesn’t demand a change in fixed ways of thinking about gender roles, culture, or love. Rather than sharing strategies that would help us become more loving it actually encourages everyone to adapt to circumstances where love is lacking.”
“Women, more so than men, rush out to purchase this literature. We do so because collectively we are concerned about lovelessness. Since many women believe they will never know fulfilling love, they are willing to settle for strategies that help ease the pain and increase the peace, pleasure, and playfulness in existing relationships.”
“To begin by always thinking of love as an action rather than a feeling is one way in which anyone using the word in this manner automatically assumes accountability and responsibility. We’re often taught that we have no control over our ‘feelings.’ Yet most of us accept that we choose our actions, that intention and will inform what we do. We also accept that our actions have consequences. To think of actions shaping feelings is one way we rid ourselves of conventionally accepted assumptions such as that parents love their children, or that one simply ‘falls’ in love without exercising will or choice, that there are such things as ‘crimes of passion’ i.e. he killed her because he loved her so much. If we were constantly remembering that love is as love does, we wouldn’t use the word in a manner that devalues and degrades its meaning. When we are loving, we openly and honestly express care, affection, responsibility, respect, commitment, and trust.”
Loving Children
“As one man bragged about the aggressive beatings he’d received from his mother, sharing that they ‘had been good for him,’ I interrupted and suggested that the might not be the misogynist woman-hater he is today if he had not been brutally beaten by a woman as a child. Although it’s too simplistic to suggest that just because we’re hit as kids we’ll grow up to be people who hit, I wanted the group to acknowledge that being physically hurt or abused by grown-ups when we’re children has harmful consequences in our adult life.”
“In a society like ours, where children are denied full civil rights, it’s absolutely critical that parenting adults learn how to offer loving discipline. Setting boundaries and teaching children how to set boundaries for themselves prior to misbehavior is an essential part of loving parenting. Loving parents work hard to discipline without punishment. This doesn’t mean that they never punish; only that when they do punish, they choose punishments like time-outs or the taking away of privileges. They focus on teaching children how to be self-disciplining and how to take responsibility for their actions. One of the simplest ways children learn discipline is by learning how to be orderly in daily life, to clean up any messes they make — they can learn from this practical act how to cope with emotional mess.”
“Love is as love does, and it is our responsibility to give children love. When we love children, we acknowledge by our every action that they are not property, that they have rights — that we respect and uphold their rights. Without justice there can be no love.”
Lies
“Lies are told about the most insignificant aspects of daily life. When many of us are asked basic questions, like How are you today? a lie is substituted for the truth. Much of the lying people do in everyday life is done either to avoid conflict or to spare someone’s feelings. Hence, if you are asked to come to dinner with someone whom you do not particularly like, you do not tell the truth or simply decline, you make up a story. You tell a lie. In such a situation it should be appropriate to simply decline if stating one’s reasons for declining might unnecessarily hurt someone.”
“Lots of people learn how to lie in childhood. Usually they begin to lie to avoid punishment or to avoid disappointing or hurting an adult. How many of us vividly recall childhood moments where we courageously practiced the honesty we had been taught to value by our parents, only to find that they did not really mean for us to tell the truth all the time. In far too many cases children are punished in circumstances where they respond with honesty to a question posed by an adult. It’s impressed on their consciousness early on, then, that telling the truth will cause pain. And so they learn that lying is a way to avoid being hurt and hurting others.”
“Males learn to lie as a way of obtaining power, and females not only do the same, but they also lie to pretend powerlessness. Patriarchy upholds deception, encouraging women to present a false self to men and vice versa.”
“While both women and men lie, research indicates that ‘men tend to lie more and with more devastating consequences.’ For many young males the earliest experience of power over others comes from the thrill of lying to more powerful adults and getting away with it. Lots of men shared with me that it was difficult for them to tell the truth if they saw that it would hurt a loved one. Significantly, the lying many boys learn to do to avoid hurting Mom or whomever becomes so habitual that it becomes hard for them to distinguish a lie from the truth. This behavior carries over into adulthood.”
“Often, men who would never think of lying in the workplace lie constantly in intimate relationships. This seems to be especially the case for heterosexual men who see women as gullible. Many men confess that they lie because they can get away with it; their lies are forgiven. To understand why male lying is more accepted in our lives, we have to understand the way in which power and privilege are accorded men simply because they’re males within a patriarchal culture. The very concept of ‘being a man’ and a ‘real man’ has always implied that when necessary men can take action that breaks the rules, that’s above the law. Patriarchy tells us daily through movies, TV, and magazines that men of power can do whatever they want, that it’s that freedom that makes them men. The message given males is that to be honest is to be ‘soft.’ The ability to be dishonest and indifferent to the consequences makes a male hard, separates the men from the boys.”
“Men can return to love only by repudiating the will to dominate. Men can honor their own selfhood only through loving justice. Justice between two people is perhaps the most important connection people can have. Loving justice for themselves and others enables men to break the chokehold of patriarchal masculinity. Loving justice between a man and a woman doesn’t stand a chance when other men’s manhood matters more. When a man has decided to love manhood more than justice, there are predictable consequences in all his relationships with women…Learning to live as a man of conscience means deciding that your loyalty to the people whom you love is always more important than whatever lingering loyalty you may sometimes feel to other men’s judgement on your manhood. When men and women are loyal to ourselves and others, when we love justice, we understand fully the myriad ways in which lying diminishes and erodes the possibility of meaningful, caring connection, that it stands in the way of love.”
“It’s impossible to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth when the core of one’s being and identity is shrouded in secrecy and lies. Trusting that another person always intends your good, having a core foundation of loving practice, cannot exist within a context of deception. It is this truism that makes all acts of judicious withholding major moral dilemmas. More than ever before we, as a society, need to renew a commitment to truth telling. Such a commitment is difficult when lying is deemed more acceptable than telling the truth. Lying has become so much the accepted norm that people lie even when it would be simpler to tell the truth.”
“As someone committed to being honest in daily life, I experience the constant drag of being seen as a ‘freak’ for telling the truth, even when I speak truthfully about simple matters. If a friend gives me a gift and asks me to tell them whether I like it, I’ll respond honestly and judiciously; that is to say, I’ll speak the truth in a positive, caring manner. Yet even in this situation, the person who asks for honesty will often express annoyance when given a truthful response.”
“In today’s world we’re taught to fear the truth, to believe it always hurts. We’re encouraged to see honest people as naive, as potential losers. Bombarded with cultural propaganda ready to instill in all of us the notion that lies are more important than truth does not matter, we are all potential victims.”
Gossip
“Sexist socialization teaches females that self-assertiveness is a threat to femininity. Accepting this faulty logic lays the groundwork for low self-esteem. In our childhood home my brother was never punished for talking back. When my sisters and I voiced our opinions we were told by our parents that this was negative and undesirable behavior. We didn’t listen to these warnings.”
“One reason women have traditionally gossiped more than men is because gossip has been a social interaction wherein women have felt more comfortable stating what they really think and feel. Often, rather than asserting what they think at the appropriate moment, women say what they think will please the listener. Later, they gossip, stating at that moment their true thoughts. The division between a false self invented to please others and a more authentic self need not exist when we cultivate positive self-esteem.”
Work
“Work occupies much of our time. Doing work we hate assaults our self-esteem and self-confidence. Yet most workers cannot do the work they love. But we can all enhance our capability to live purposely by learning how to experience satisfaction in whatever work we do. We find that satisfaction by giving any job total commitment. When I had a teaching job I hated, the only way I could ease the severity of my pain was to give my absolute best. Doing a job well, even if we don’t enjoy what we’re doing, means that we leave it with a feeling of well-being, our self-esteem intact. This self-esteem aids us when we go in search of a job that can be more fulfilling.”
Material Culture
“A commitment to the spiritual life requires us to do more than read a good book or go on a restful retreat. It requires conscious practice, a willingness to unite the way we think with the way we act.”
“Intense spiritual and emotional lack in our lives is the perfect breeding ground for material greed and overconsumption. In a world without love the passion to connect can be replaced with the passion to possess. While emotional needs are difficult, and often are impossible to satisfy, material desires are easier to fulfill.”
“Nowadays we live in a world where poor teenagers are willing to murder for a pair of tennis shoes or a designer coat; this is not a consequence of poverty. In dire situations of poverty at earlier times in our history, it would’ve been unthinkable for the poor to murder someone for a luxury item. While it was common for individuals to steal or attack someone in the interest of acquiring resources — money, food, or a coat — there was no value system in place that made a life less than important than the material desire for an inessential object.”
“A vision articulates a future that someone deeply wants, and does it so clearly and compellingly that it summons up the energy, agreement, sympathy, political will, creativity, resources, or whatever to make that vision happen.”
“Our nation’s active participation in global warfare, particularly the Vietnam War, called into question its mid-50s vision of ourselves as a place where human rights mattered, the best place to live in the world, our commitment to democracy both home and abroad. The loss of lives created economic plenty while leaving in its wake devastation and loss. Americans were asked to sacrifice the vision of freedom, love, and justice, and put in its place the worship of materialism and money. This vision of society upheld the need for imperialistic war and justice.”
“Confronted with a seemingly unmanageable emotional universe, some people embraced a new Protestant work ethic, convinced that a successful life would be measured by how much money one made and the goods one could buy with this money. The good life was no longer to be found in community and connection, it was to be found in accumulation and the fulfillment or hedonistic, materialistic desire. The rich and famous began to be seen as the only relevant cultural icons; gone were the visionary political leaders and activists. Suddenly it was no longer important to bring an ethical dimension to work, making money was the goal, and by whatever means. By the late 70s, among privileged people the worship of money was expressed by making corruption acceptable and the ostentatious parading of material luxury the norm. To many people, our nation’s acceptance of corruption as the new order of the day began with the unprecedented exposure of presidential dishonesty and the lack of ethical and moral behavior in the White House. This lack of ethics was explained away by government officials linking support of big business to further imperialism with national security and dominance globally. This coincided neatly with the decline in the influence of institutionalized religion, which had previously provided moral guidance. The church and temple became places where a materialistic ethic was supported and rationalized.”
“Among the poor, the worship of money became most evident by the unprecedented increase in the street drug industry, one of the rare locations where capitalism worked well for a few individuals. Quick money allowed the poor to satisfy the same material longing as the rich. Mirroring the dominant capitalist culture, a few individuals in poor communities prospered while the vast majority suffered endless unsatisfied cravings.”
“Imagine a mother living in poverty who has always taught her children the difference between right and wrong, who has taught them to be honest because she wants to provide them with a moral and ethical universe, who suddenly accepts a child selling drugs because it brings into the home financial resources for both necessary and unnecessary expenses. Her ethical values are eroded by the intensity of longing and lack. But she no longer sees herself as living at odds with the consumer culture she lives in; she has become connected, one with the culture of consumption and driven by its demands. Love is not a topic she thinks about. Her life has been characterized by a lack of love. She has found it makes life easier when she hardens her heart and turns her attention toward more attainable goals — acquiring shelter and food, making ends meet, and findings ways to satisfy desires for small material luxuries. Thinking about love may simply cause her pain. She may even turn to addiction to experience the pleasure and satisfaction she never found when seeking love.”
“Widespread addiction is linked to our psychotic lust for material consumption. It keeps us unable to love. Fixating on needs and wants, which consumerism encourages us to do promotes a psychological state of endless craving.”
“Most prisoners he encountered, incarcerated for stealing as they attempted to ‘get rick quick,’ were smart, industrious individuals who could have worked and attained material wealth. Working daily to earn money would have taken time. Significantly, the combination of the lust for material wealth and the desire for immediate satisfaction are the signs that this materialism has become addictive. The need for instant gratification is a component of greed.”
“The worship of money leads to a hardening of the heart. And it can lead any of us to condone, either actively or passively, the exploitation and dehumanization of ourselves and others.”
“Much has been made of the fact that so many sixties radicals went on to become hardcore capitalists, profiting by the system they once critiqued and wanted to destroy. But no one assumed responsibility for the shift in values that made the peace and love culture turn toward the politics of profit and power. The shift came about because the free love that flourished in utopian communal hippie enclaves, where everyone was young and carefree, did not take root in the daily lives of ordinary working and retired people. Young progressives committed to social justice who had found it easy to maintain radical politics when they were living on the edge, on the outside, did not want to do the hard work of changing and reorganizing our existing system in ways that would affirm the values of peace and love, of democracy and justice. They fell into despair. And that despair made capitulation to the existing social order the only place of discomfort.”
“It did not take long for this generation to find out that they loved material comfort more than justice. It was one thing to spend a few years doing without comfort to fight for justice, for civil rights for non-white people and women of all races, but it was quite another to consider a lifetime where one might have material lack or be compelled to share resources. When many of the radicals and/or hippies who had rebelled against excess privilege began to raise children, they wanted them to have the same access to material privilege they had known — as well as the luxury of rebelling against it; they wanted them to be materially secure. Concurrently, many of the radicals and/or hippies who had come from backgrounds of material lack were also eager to find a world of material plenty that would sustain them. Everyone feared that if they continued to support a vision of communism, of sharing resources, that they would have to do make with less.”
“We are among the richest nations on earth, yet we spend a trivial amount on our poor compared to that spent by every other Western industrialized nation. ⅕ of America’s children live in poverty. Half our black children live in poverty. We’re the only industrialized nation that doesn’t have universal healthcare. These are the truths no one wants to face. Many of our nation’s citizens are afraid to embrace an ethics of compassion because it threatens their security. Brainwashed to believe that they can only be secure if they have more than the next person, they accumulate and still feel insecure because there’s always someone who has accumulated more.”
Family
“Community is the coming together of a group of individuals who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to ‘rejoice together, mourn together,’ and to ‘delight in each other, and make other’s conditions our own.’”
“Even individuals who are raised in nuclear families usually experience it as merely a small unit within a larger unit of extended kin. Capitalism and patriarchy together, as structures of domination, have worked overtime to undermine and destroy this larger unit of extended kin. Replacing the family community with a more privatized small autocratic unit helped increase alienation and made abuses of power more possible. It gave absolute rule to the father, and secondary rule over children to the mother. By encouraging the segregation of nuclear families from the extended family, women were forced to become more dependent on an individual man, and children more dependent on an individual woman. It is this dependency that became, and is, the breeding ground for abuses of power.”
“The failure of the patriarchal nuclear family has been utterly documented. Exposed as dysfunctional more often than not, as a place of emotional chaos, neglect, and abuse, only those in denial continue to insist that this is the best environment for raising children. While I do not want to suggest that extended families are not as likely to be dysfunctional, simply by virtue of their size and their inclusion of nonblood kin (i.e. individuals who marry into the family), they are diverse and so are likely to include the presence of some individuals who are both sane and loving.”
Friendship
“Most of us are raised to believe we will either find love in our family of origin or, if not there, in the second family we are expected to form through committed romantic couplings. Many of us learn as children that friendship should never be seen as just as important as family ties. However, friendship is the place where the great majority of us have our first glimpse of redemptive love and caring community. Learning to love in friendships empowers us in ways that enable us to bring this love to other interactions with family or with romantic bonds. In friendships, we are able to hear honest, critical feedback. We trust that a good friend desires our good.”
“Often we take friendships for granted even when they are the interactions where we experience mutual pleasure. We place them in a secondary position, especially in relation to romantic bonds. This devaluation of our friendships creates an emptiness we may not see when we are devoting all of our attention to finding romance.”
“When we see love as the will to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth, revealed through acts of care, respect, knowledge, and assuming responsibility, the foundation of all love in our life is the same. There’s no special love exclusively reserved for romantic partners. Genuine love is the foundation of our engagement with ourselves, with family, with friends, with partners with everyone we choose to love. While we will necessarily behave differently depending on the nature of a relationship, or have varying degrees of commitment, the values that inform our behavior, when rooted in a love ethic, are always the same for any interaction.”
“In one romantic relationship, I found myself accepting behavior (verbal and physical abuse) that I would not tolerate in a friendship. I had been raised conventionally to believe that this relationship was ‘special’ and should be revered above all, take precedence over all other relationships. Had I been evaluating my relationship from a standpoint that emphasized growth rather than duty and obligation, I would have understood that abuse irreparably undermines bonds. All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm’s way. Even though I was a committed feminist as a young woman, all that I knew and believed in politically about equality was, for a time, overshadowed by a religious and familial upbringing that had socialized me to believe everything must be done to save ‘the relationship.’”
“In retrospect, I see how ignorance about the art of loving placed the relationship at risk from the start. In the more than 14 years we were together, we were too busy repeating old patterns learned in childhood, acting on misguided information about the nature of love, to appreciate the changes we needed to make in ourselves to be able to love someone else. Importantly, like many other women and men who are in relationships where they are the objects of intimate terrorism, I would have been able to leave this relationship sooner or recover myself within it had I brought to this bond the level of respect, care, knowledge, and responsibility I brought to friendships.”
“I am able to see her as a member of my community still, one who has a place in my heart should she wish to claim it.”
Solitude
“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape. In solitude, we find the place where we can truly look at ourselves and shed the false self. Loneliness is painful; solitude is peaceful. Loneliness makes us cling to others in desperation; solitude allows us to respect others in their uniqueness and create community.”
“When children are taught to enjoy quiet time, to be alone with their thoughts and reveries, they carry this skill into adulthood.”
Community
“The willingness to sacrifice is a necessary dimension of loving practice and living in community. None of us can have things one way all the time. Giving up something is one way we sustain a commitment to the collective well-being. Our willingness to make sacrifices reflects our awareness of interdependency.”
“Enjoying the benefits of living and loving in a community empowers us to meet strangers without fear and extend to them the gift of openness and recognition. Just by speaking to a stranger, acknowledging their presence on the planet, we make a connection. We can begin the process of making community by sharing a smile, a warm greeting, a bit of conversation, by doing a kind deed, or by acknowledging kindness offered us.”
Gender Roles
“Like many liberal men in the age of feminism, he believed women should have equal access to jobs and be given equal pay, but when it came to matters of the home and the heart he still believed caregiving was the female role. Like many men, he wanted a woman to be ‘just like his mama’ so that he did not have to do the work of growing up.”
“Many adult men, out of touch with their true emotions, afraid to depend even on those closest to them, self-centered and narcissistic, hide behind masks of normalcy while feeling empty and lonely inside. They were more than happy when feminist thinkers told them they did not need to be macho men. But the only alternative to not turning into a conventional macho man was to not become a man at all, to remain a boy.”
“Initially, I was attracted to this partner because his ‘masculinity’ represented an alternative to the patriarchal norm. Ultimately, however, he did not feel that masculinity affirmed in the larger world and began to rely more on conventional thinking about masculine and feminine roles, allowing sexist socialization to shape his actions. Observing his struggle, I saw how little support men received when they chose to be disloyal to patriarchy. And to him, a relationship was about finding someone to take care of all of his needs.”
“Love will not prevail in any situation where one party wants to maintain control.”
“When someone has not known love it is difficult for him to trust that mutual satisfaction and growth can be the primary foundation in a coupling relationship. He may only understand and believe in the dynamics of power, of one-up and one-down, of a sadomasochistic struggle for domination, and, ironically, he may feel ‘safer’ when he’s operating within these paradigms. At least when you hold to the dynamics of power, you never have to fear the unknown; you know the rules of the power game. The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside of our control.”
“Most popular self-help literature normalizes sexism. Rather than linking habits of being, usually considered innate, to learned behavior that helps maintain and support male dominance, they act as though these differences are not value laden or political but are rather inherent and mystical. In these books male inability and/or refusal to honestly express feelings is often talked about as a positive masculine virtue women should learn to accept rather than a learned habit of behavior that creates emotional isolation and alienation. Many fancy footwork takes place to make it seem that New Age mystical evocations of yin and yang, masculine and feminine androgyny, and so on, are not just the same old sexist stereotypes wrapped in more alluring and seductive packaging.”
“To know love we must surrender our attachment to sexist thinking in whatever form it takes in our lives. That attachment will always return us to gender conflict, a way of thinking about sex roles that diminishes females and males.”
“Women have endeavored to guide men to love because patriarchal thinking has sanctioned this work even as it has undermined it by teaching men to refuse guidance. It sets up a gendered arrangement in which men are more likely to get their emotional needs met while women will be deprived. Men are given an advantage that neatly coincides with the patriarchal insistence that they are superior and therefore better suited to rule others. Were women’s emotional needs met, were mutuality the norm, male domination might lose its allure.”
“Toni Morrison identifies the idea of romantic love as ‘one of the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought.’ Its destructiveness resides in the notion that we come to love with no will and no capacity to choose. This illusion, perpetuated by so much romantic love, stands in the way of our learning how to love. To sustain our fantasy we substitute romance for love.”
“When romance is depicted as a project, women are the architects and the planners. Everyone likes to imagine that women are romantics, sentimental about love, that men follow where women lead. Even in non-heterosexual relationships, the paradigms of leader and follower often prevail, with one person assuming the role deemed feminine and another the designated masculine role. No doubt it was someone playing the role of leader who conjured up the notion that we ‘fall in love,’ that we lack choice and decision when choosing a partner because when the chemistry is present, when the click is there, it just happens — it overwhelms — it takes control. This way of thinking about love seems to be especially useful for men who are socialized via patriarchal notions of masculinity to be out of touch with what they feel.”
“To love somebody is not just a strong feeling — it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love was only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go.”
“It is more genuine, more real, to think of choosing to love rather than falling in love.”
“To be capable of critically evaluating a partner we would need to be able to stand back and look critically at ourselves, at our needs, desires, and longings. We fear that evaluating our needs and then carefully choosing partners will reveal that there is no one for us to love. Most of us prefer to have a partner who is lacking than no partner at all. What becomes apparent is that we may be more interested in finding a partner than in knowing love.”
“Approaching romantic love from a foundation of care, knowledge, and respect actually intensifies romance. By taking the time to communicate with a potential mate we are no longer trapped by the fear and anxiety underlying romantic interactions that take place without discussion or the sharing of intent and desire.”
“She had lunch with her new partner with a set agenda of talking to him about sexual pleasure, their likes and dislikes, their hopes and fears. She reported back that the lunch was incredibly erotic; it laid the groundwork for them to be at ease with each other sexually when they finally reached that stage in their relationship.”
“The vast majority of males in our society are convinced that their erotic longing indicates who they should, and can, love. Led by their penis, seduced by erotic desire, they often end up in relationships with partners with whom they share no common interests or values. The pressure on men in a patriarchal society to ‘perform’ sexually is so great that men are often so gratified to be with someone else with whom they find sexual pleasure that they ignore everything else. They cover up these mistakes by working too much, or finding playmates they like outside their partnership. It usually takes them a long time to name the lovelessness they may feel. And this recognition usually has to be covered up to protect the sexist insistence that men never admit failure.”
“The more we watch spectacles of meaningless death, of random violence and cruelty, the more afraid we become in our daily lives. We cannot embrace the stranger for we fear the stranger. This irrational fear is an expression of madness if we think of madness as meaning that we are out of touch with reality. Even though we’re more likely to be hurt by someone we know than a stranger, our fear is directed toward the unknown and the unfamiliar. That fear brings with it intense paranoia and a constant obsession with safety. The growing number of gated communities is but one example of our obsession with safety. With guards at the gate, individuals still have bars and elaborate internal security systems. Americans spend more than $30 billion a year on security. When I’ve stayed with friends in these communities and inquired as to whether the security is in response to an actual danger I am not told ‘not really,’ that it is the fear of threat rather than a real threat that is the catalyst for safety that borders on madness.”
