Reviews and Comments

There are elements of chapter ten that I can take seriously, but when she starts talking about having found/known true love ("I have had a taste of true love") because she had a dream and then went to a conference (because that dream told her she'd meet her true love), and then it ends like this:

As our conversation progressed he told me he was in a committed relationship. I was puzzled and disturbed. I could not believe divine forces in the universe would lead me to this man of my dreams when there was no real possibility of fully realizing those dreams. Of course, those dreams were all about being in a romantic relationship.

... My ability to take it seriously decreases.

I also find that again it lets men off the hook for their behaviours way more than it does women, especially when talking about how sexual pleasure takes precedence for some people; men simply don't know what love is because they've been taught to perceive sex as super important... not like they've ever been told otherwise anywhere else, right? (There's also a statement claiming that women don't put sex before feelings, which uh... I don't know, a lot of women have been trained to conflate sex with feelings of love.)

I also still think there is way too much conflation between love and romance happening here, despite the claim otherwise. Every time here is a comment about how it doesn't have to be romantic, there is a comment following it that reinforces romantic love as the focus. It's bizarre, and it's kind of infuriating.

Went back to this book to read the second story and ugh. It's all so boring, and I feel like that's its greatest crime. I don't mind the writing style, but it all feels so trite and convoluted... all the time.

I probably would've liked it more had I not read the introduction to this edition... which basically told me how to think about this woman author and her place in the world... rather than just giving me context for why her stories are just like that.

It's hard to take this chapter seriously when we get back-to-back Deepak Chopra and Marianne Williamson quotes. These are two people who I wouldn't ever seek out for advice on anything, let alone love. The quotes with Williamson keep referring to listening "to God," and Chopra's just a quack. Both of them have legitimised things that are more in line with conservative values, including hurting sick people.

Most of this chapter also focuses on the harm that has been done to men, but frequently seems to position it as women's responsibility to deal with (in whatever capacity). Women are often said to need to help bring them back onto the path of accepting love but simultaneously receive more blame for boys being socialised into not loving (rather than that finger being pointed squarely at society).

There's this weird line that comes up, and it's just so bizarre:

A woman who would never submit to a child calling her abusive names and humiliating her allows such behavior from a man. The respect woman demand and uphold in the maternal-child bond is deemed not important in adult bondings if demanding respect from a man interferes with their desire to get and keep a partner.

I find it peculiar to compare how women would interact with grown adult men who definitely have learned lessons about how to properly interact with people (and still frequently choose not to) and still-growing children who have yet to learn those lessons.

It's particularly strange in how it doesn't even engage with a previous chapter (children should have rights), considering the phrasing of "the respect women demand and uphold in the maternal-child bond." I don't expect children to hold the same kinds of respect for anyone that adults hold for each other (which also aren't at all the same for different adults); the ways we respect people is part of learning, part of growing, part of deciding if respecting them is worth our time, energy, and effort.

... There's more with the forgiveness stuff, which I don't entirely hate as a concept. I just find it very difficult to swallow considering all the references back to Christian tradition, and the act of forgiveness within Christian tradition often pushes more abuse and harm onto people who are not cis men. We are expected to forgive out of duty and deference, not because we truly want to. Our forgiveness is frequently coerced. This is not addressed.

I went into chapter eight hoping that it wouldn't bait and switch me with disappointment. It started off as one of the better chapters, but then it just... threw that out the window at the end. Anyway, I think these two claims would've done better earlier on in another chapter:

Replacing the family community with a more privatized small autocratic unit helped increase alienation and made abuses of power more possible.

and

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.

I also really like that this is a comment that has been made, as it's one that ties in with my frustrations with a world that is so forceful about us ignoring or undermining platonic intimacy for the sake of socially acceptable romantic intimacy:

Many of us learn as children that friendship should never be seen as just as important as family ties.

There's also this bit which I have... at least one issue with because there's a second side to it that I don't think is explored:

Committed love relationships are far more likely to become codependent when we cut off all our ties with friends to give these bonds we consider primary our exclusive attention. I have felt especially devastated when close friends who were single fell in love and simultaneously fell away from our friendship.

I have experienced this, so I do agree with it. I definitely hate when my friends have decided to put the majority of their energy and focus into a romantic pursuit, leaving a hole in the worlds of those they had spent time building platonic relationships with.

However, I have had this exact thing coerced upon me. When I've entered relationships, people stop asking me to come around. No matter how many times I say that I'd like to still join in and participate (even on my own and without my partner), they always make this assumption for me. This is particularly true when I've been in relationships with cis men; it's happened in overtly and visibly queer relationships, but the extent was less.

Maybe it's that my friends didn't like my partner... Or maybe they actually just didn't like me... Or I was there out of convenience. Whatever the case, the fact remains that there are external pressures that also coerce this relationship structure that people don't want to recognise.

Women who would no more tolerate a friendship in which they were emotionally and physically abused stay in romantic relationships where these violations occur regularly. Had they brought to these bonds the same standards they bring to friendship they would not accept victimization.

... This is absolute horse shit. It's victim-blaming and also entirely wrong, ignoring how social structures bind us to people and complicate the possibility of leaving.

There's a lot on forgiveness, but the undertones do not... inspire me with hope of what this forgiveness means and deals with. The fact that it's placed in a book with victim-blaming in it doesn't make me feel kindly towards its inclusion.

Also, pair it with the Mother Teresa bit, too... There's just a lot of stuff that makes me ask how closely any of this was examined.

Chapter seven is making me absolutely insane because it feels like everything is backwards. Though some elements aren't entirely wrong, it feels like there's a failure to actually engage with what she's talking about. A few examples:

The emergence of the “me” culture is a direct response to our nation’s failure to truly actualize the vision of democracy articulated in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

This fails to recognise the context in which the Constitution and Bill of Rights were developed. I don't know how a "me" culture was created after a handful of white cis men who were largely slavers outlined how the country would work for everyone else for years to come, when it feels like... that is the epitome of a "me" culture (along with anyone who chose to assimilate alongside them along the way).

Our nation fell into the trap of pathological narcissism in the wake of wars that brought economic bounty while undermining the vision of freedom and justice essential to sustaining democracy.

Which wars? The wars of the 20th century? But you're telling me that the self-centeredness of the leadership of the US wasn't a thing prior to the 20th century? There was no "trap" to fall into; that is literally the DNA of the structure of the US, among other colonial projects that now pretend to give a shit about democracy and human rights.

Whether poor or rich, in the mid-fifties most citizens in our nation felt it was the best place in the world to live because it was a democracy, a place where human rights mattered. This sense of our nation’s vision sustained its citizens and served as the catalyst empowering freedom struggles in our society.

This is entirely backwards! Most citizens were propagandised to by the government telling them that the US was, in fact, the best country for freedom and democracy. However, reading memoirs of a lot of people who refused to assimilate into the US settler-colonial (or have been imprisoned by or exiled from it)... You find that it wasn't believing that democracy was best here; you realise that they understood there was a dichotomy between who was allowed to be free and access democracy and who wasn't.

This is a constant issue, and it doesn't make any fucking sense the way it's being framed here.

By the late seventies, 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.

Right, because ostentatious displays of wealth obtained via corruption weren't done in the early 1900s at all. It's not like there were robber barons who paraded themselves as philanthropists (with their families still getting credit for projects that completely dismantled leftist politics in the wake of their union busting and hiring of Pinkertons, like the Carnegies and Rockefellers). It's really hard to read this and pretend that it's true when it's very much not.

Nixon wasn't the first dishonest president or even politician, and people (who benefited) often accepted a lot of dishonesty in those roles. You can't tell me that the KKK could keep existing in political spheres if people didn't tolerate their corruption.

The discussion of drug use in the under classes is appalling and absolutely unsympathetic. This does not make me like bell hooks at all; in fact, it makes me like her less.

Here's another fun note. Here's how she describes Bill Clinton (without using his name):

When our president exploits his power and consensually seduces a young woman in the government’s employ, he gives public expression to this greed. His actions reveal a willingness to place all he holds dear at risk for the satisfaction of hedonistic pleasure.

Compare to how she talks about Monica Lewinsky:

Concurrently, the young woman involved manipulates facts and details, and ultimately prostitutes herself by selling her story for material gain because she is greedy for fame and money, and society condones this get-rich-quick scheme. Her greed is even more intense because she also wants to be seen as a victim. With the boldness of any con artist working the capitalist addiction to fantasy, she attempts to rewrite the script of their consensual exchange of pleasure so that it can appear to be a love story.

Which is interesting considering how young she was then and how old he was, but she's the more greedy of the two. (I don't even care about Monica one way or another, but this is absurd framing of what happened. And she was a victim because she was used by people she trusted who literally recorded her without her knowledge.)

It's really hard to take the rest of this book seriously (the supposed sympathy for varying leftist politics) when she keeps pulling shit that's very much supporting the hierarchies she speaks against.

Chapter six is... largely better than previous chapters, though I still find it lacking in a lot of ways because it just... has a weird focus on a "love ethic." There's also the romanticisation of rural America (no qualifiers) for having communal lives that are being destroyed; I grew up in rural America, and the supposed love ethic that exists there (according to poet Wendell Berry, from Kentucky) is not one that I ever really experienced... because I grew up in a rural community that demanded conformity.

Overall, I don't disagree with a lot of what's written in this chapter, but I find that it... doesn't provide me with much beyond what I already know.

Side note, since I started reading this book as a result of references in some other book about how nonviolence protects the state... Weird to use bell hooks as a pivotal part of your work, when she doesn't seem to think any violence solves problems (at least according to this text).

A culture that is dead to love can only be resurrected by spiritual awakening.

This chapter and I are going to have a fight because it keeps doing this thing where it (like other parts of the book) claim that the culture we reside in has pushed "lovelessness" as part of it:

Despite overwhelming pressure to conform to the culture of lovelessness, we still seek to know love.

And I'm spending a good amount of time trying to figure out how I missed that culture of lovelessness because I cannot recall a time where I wasn't told (especially in some coercive way) that I needed to love someone. If anything, it was a culture that kept telling me to love too much and in the wrong ways... rather than a culture that told me that love was somehow negative and unwanted.

I also dislike a lot of the conversation around religion because it's a combination of being ahistorical and contemporarily wrong (e.g., the unifying message of religion is love), it neglects the ways in which religion weaponises love (e.g., God or Jesus loves you even if you're queer—this usually has implications saying that they love you, therefore you can change and be "normal" instead), and it doesn't even satisfactorily understand how organised religion operates (e.g., failing to understand why people who are attacked by religious structures find it to be harmful and leave it behind). Oh, and it also neglects the ways in which the "community" of church is often something people feel they are required to participate in because there are no other available communities in some places (like the US); this is a less common thing outside of the US, but the most "welcoming" communities outside of the US tend to be religious in nature, especially as you have to pay to participate in everything else.

There's also some weird conversation around New Age that makes no sense, like:

For example, consider New Age logic, which suggests that the poor have chosen to be poor, have chosen their suffering.

This is also a common Christian perspective, and this is a value that is routinely extolled by Christians all over the United States. And it's a pretty common idea across the world, sadly; I heard the same thing said by people in Australia, China, Italy, and Slovakia. In fact, I don't even think this attitude requires a religious perspective. I've heard atheists say this nonsense, too.

Not overwhelmingly a fan of this chapter and its weird implications. It does a lot to say that we all need 'divine love' and spirituality, but then the chapter tries to end with "but I can't say that it's the right way." But that rings hollow when everything prior to the last paragraph basically stated that this is what everyone needs to know love.

(Also, I find the subtle digs at New Agers a bit funny when, following this chapter, the next one opens with a quote from Marianne Williamson.)

... This book is really frustrating me for its focus on... men. Rather, this book is very situated in the gender binary... But it's also very focused on men, even when it doesn't need to be, and it also alters the reality of those examples (e.g., Bill Clinton creating a space to be publicly shamed and "unmasking" to show that he wasn't really the "good guy" we believed him to be—which is also a bizarre thought because, uh... lots of people knew who Bill Clinton was before he ran for president because he was also the governor of Arkansas, and his record wasn't spotless).

I don't agree with the maxim of "you can't be loved if you don't love yourself" or how we shouldn't expect people to love us in certain ways if we don't love ourselves... I find that troublesome because it doesn't even really engage with all the ways in which people are socialised to hate and disrespect themselves. (Sometimes it is seeing what your friends and loved ones love about you that helps you break out of negative patterns.)

I also don't think that the whole bit about how we should "find satisfaction" in work we don't like helps, and it's especially obtuse now in a time where far more people are being coerced into using tools that many of us absolutely and actively despise (e.g., genAI). I also find it ironic because the people who promote this kind of attitude have always been the ones who worked against me either when I was trying to push for the safety of my students because of an unsafe teacher (resulting in me getting fired and not him) or against everyone who was working to unionise a workplace or do whatever we could to push an actively and overtly hostile administration to reconsider their decisions.

Oh, and also the paragraph with this line? Interesting. I wonder why she's so constantly upheld in anticapitalist spaces:

When we intentionally strive to make our homes places where we are ready to give and receive love, every object we place there enhances our well-being. I create themes for my different homes. [Emphasis mine.]

This chapter is uh... wild. It plays into some major stereotypes and structures (women lie to manipulate, men lie for power—what is manipulation if not a form of power), and it leans very heavily on some wild assumptions. For example:

It is no accident that greater cultural acceptance of lying in this society coincided with women gaining greater social equality.

Sorry, what the hell do you mean by this? Are you seriously going to tell me that lying wasn't previously a culturally accepted practice in any other time period? Because I hate to break it to you, I've sat and read historical tabloids that did nothing but lie, and it wasn't because of "women gaining greater social equality."

Like, in small ways, she's not wrong... but wow does she lean on some interesting crutches that feel very... reactionary, to put it nicely.

The second chapter is a little bizarre because:

1. The Home Alone thing is going to live rent-free in my brain, as it doesn't even take a paragraph or two to elaborate on the kind of violence and disobedience it typifies (or to even engage with the overall theme of the movie). I also find it weird to not even highlight the oppressive nature of something like Leave It To Beaver (I cannot speak to My Three Sons because I've forgotten most of what that even felt like to watch), and all of those feel weird to juxtapose against each other to make a point?

2. I'm very much here for the pro-child thing about how children have no rights but should.

3. While hooks provides examples of non-nuclear family relationships (e.g., being a god-mother), I find it peculiar to not highlight that the coercive nature of the nuclear family enforced by society is part of the very problem that she's describing here.

Am reading this largely because "bell hooks" (no works) are among the first citations on a list. It is the only bell hooks book that I physically have.

I cannot say that I'm liking it, either.

I also don't necessarily agree with placing 'love' and 'abuse' on an oppositional scale, as it's hyper-common for people to rationalise their abuse through logic like "but they love me." Personally, I think it's harmful to force people to determine whether or not an abuser loves them; I think we'd be better off to recognise that there are different forms of love and that sometimes a person's "love" can be toxic to us. It also deflates abuser rhetoric ("but I love you"): It doesn't matter if they love us if they're actively harming us. It matters that we are able to leave it and can and have the support networks available to do so.

These support networks, at least in the first chapter, are not brought up. If she wanted people to recognise that abusers don't love (but they can be caring and affectionate...?), why aren't we talking about enabling victims to remove themselves freely and without barriers to doing so?

I need to waste some time going through the references in this one, which will probably take quite a while and maybe add more books to me while I'm at it.

Short chapter, barely says anything at all, and is interesting in that it also says that (unlike racism) getting rid of patriarchy should allow for (very specific kinds of) violence but will "probably be peaceful."

This is clearly the start of his views on transformative and restorative justice (things that have a lot of critique for their application, particularly within groups that "try" to deal with the abuse of members by other members), and it's interesting how much he says KYLR (kill your local rapist) is a bad concept and dogpiles anarchafeminists engaged in discussing theory related to this slogan (not a directive)... but the examples he gives here are how women should be able to fight back and bash rapists or abusive husbands.

... In a closer timeline than when this was written, I've watched him attack and dogpile many anarchafeminists when they say that therapy doesn't help abusers to not abuse (which is true—therapy is not designed to teach abusers to stop abusing; it is a practice that often supports the status quo and teaches abusers how to abuse differently).

This doesn't mean, btw, that therapy can't be helpful to abusers who want to stop abusing others and deal with their abusive behaviours, but there is a huge difference between people who intentionally seek that out (which means they are seeking to have someone challenge their values and ideologies—and they may not be able to find that in the current landscape) and what other abusers do and the care they receive.

From the beginning of a Twitter thread of Lee Cicuta's (that I screenshot, so I don't have a link): "Therapy can help with plenty of issues but what it does not do is change someone's values and ideology. You can give an abuser insights into their trauma, work on communication skills, etc. and what you'll have is a more insightful abuser with better communication skills." (Ironicially, Lee is one of the very anarchafeminists I've watched him dogpile... and for this very thread.)

This book is possibly one of the most beautiful things I've ever read, and it was one that I didn't want to end. Rarely is that ever a feeling that I have about a novel, but this one... It felt like an unfortunate thing for it to come to a close, despite its subject matter (which was quite heavy with a focus on colonisation and the love of two women and how those dynamics interconnect).

I love this book, and it's one with a message so rare that I can't think of another one like it. I would encourage everyone to seek it out.

The third actual chapter is better, but it's let down by the fact that Peter never once wanted to define what "nonviolence" meant before we got here (and, as a result, had two sources—an FBI memo about MLK Jr and Frantz Fanon—do it for him).

This is as close as he gets (in the introduction) to defining it:

Broadly, by using the term pacifism or nonviolence, they designate a way of life or a method of social activism that avoids, transforms, or excludes violence while attempting to change society to create a more peaceful and free world.

But because "transforms" is there, that also doesn't help clarify the intended meaning and does enable a lot of further conflation that he engages in throughout the book. And when you start contextualising some of the non-Churchill sources that can be engaged with, it becomes clear that they sometimes were talking about 'nonviolent work' (which includes opening clinics, creating food programs) rather than the enforcement of a code of nonviolence.

Anyway, thoughts on this chapter ("Nonviolence is Statist"—all chapters start with "Nonviolence is..."):

• It should've been first. It structures a lot of the arguments that would've then been solidified by chapters like "Ineffective" and "Racist," and it would've positioned the forms of nonviolence that he's focused on far better than the other two (which, I think, struggle to do that).
• Lots of Ward Churchill references again (this time to a co-authored work titled Agents of Repression), which does not make this feel less like Churchill's work. It feels like an outline of Churchill's work with random other things woven in.
• There's a short paragraph where he talks about integration of schools (pacifists helping to desegregate but then relying on National Guard for Black kids to go to school), but it feels like the weirdest throwaway section. It's one of the many examples of his being incurious because he doesn't even bother to engage with anything about it. It's useful to him purely because he points out that it did happen (and that they didn't call the Deacons of Defense). Lots of Black people have written numerous critiques of integration of schools, including people who discussed what they recognised would happen before it happened. For example, people talked about how a lot of Black teachers would be (and later were) pushed out of the system, with many forced to take on other jobs at the school instead of being teachers or forced to find other work and workplaces entirely.
• That same section is also frustrating because its structure implies "white pacifists helped and did nothing," but there were obviously Black pacifists who worked to desegregate schools (like Erna Prather Harris)... Is this also critiquing people like her? Does she and people like her fit into this discussion for Peter? I can't tell because this is a throwaway comment that does no work at looking at the intricacies of what different pacifists were doing and how that supports the state.

I'm not disagreeing with a lot of the general points in this chapter; he's not inherently wrong. His problem is that his curiosity while writing this book was incredibly limited (and often clung to a handful of resources that, while I don't like them, make his points better than he does).