Why I Chose Criminal Justice As My Major: The Path To Healing

4. Analysis

A prolific writer, hooks has written extensively on women, feminism, mass media, race

class and gender in education, art, history, and sexuality in her book. She has to her credit over thirty books and various scholarly and mainstream articles and has delivered a few public lectures on this issue. But most importantly, she always offered an open-hearted and welcoming vision of gender, sexuality, and society in most of her inspiring volumes. The language Hooks use is not very metaphoric or hard to decode. She has a provocative style of writing and an easy way to make people understand the very core meaning of the term ‘feminism.’

A large part of our global populace looks at feminism as a movement of misguided missiles hell-bent on destroying gender relations. Much like the public discrediting the term secularism in India in recent years, feminism has become a dirty word over the years. A major reason for this negative perception of the movement, perhaps, stems from the fact that the true message of feminism has failed to reach the general populace. In the absence of simplified messaging, anti-feminist who had an interest in discrediting the movement managed to achieve their purpose.

Therefore, I have chosen her book ‘Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics’ which is telling commentary on why feminism is important, not just for women. In this book, hooks have not only emphasized her points of view and opinions but also made people understand her version of feminism, which she has used in various examples from her life.

The way this book is written and presented shows how in reality, feminism is around everyone and, hence, it is for everybody.

Feminism is a human rights movement. It is about proclaiming equal rights for every human being, man or woman. And Hooks said, ‘I want to be holding in my hand a concise, fairly easy to read and understand book; not long book, not a book thick with hard to understand the jargon and academic language, but a straightforward, clear book- easy to read without being simplistic.’

One of the distinct arguments of the book is that feminism can be applied to men, also. And this aspect is what she has spread in her book throughout because, in her opinion, ‘Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression.’

Hooks has always focused her writings on the need for solidarity between races, classes, and, more importantly, gender. She believed that a change in society could be brought up by not just the struggle of one gender or one race but by a uniform effort by everyone in society irrespective of gender, caste, race, or class. She wanted men to promote feminism as much as she wanted women to stop oppression.

Language is the face of any civilization. The evolution of a civilization can be tracked by examining the evolution of its language. According to Mark N. Brock and Yoshie Nagasaka, ‘Within our own social group, we normally find it quite easy to use language appropriate to a variety of communicative settings. This is because language is used in regular ways. One source of this regularity is that member of the social group follows the general pattern of behavior expected by the group.

According to Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, ‘language is a fundamental site of struggle for post-colonial discourse because the colonial process itself begins in language. The control over language by the empirical center, whether achieved by displacing native languages by installing itself as the standard against another variant which is constituted as impurities or by planning the language of an empire in a new place — remains the most potent instrument of cultural control’.

Language also often becomes a rhetorical device in an environment that champions cultural nationalism. The renewed focus on Hindi as the source of cultural pride after the accession of a right-wing government in India is a case in point. However, when it comes to the English language, it is undoubtedly seen that the feminist movement has influenced the language in a way. The demolition of patriarchy in a language heralds a new mindset. The emergence of the feminist movement was a result of the subjugation of women over centuries. By demanding equal rights for one-half of the world’s population, the first feminist shook the world with great force. It was inevitable for the movement to have an impact on the language.

English is a very liberal language, and it can easily mold itself according to the situation and period. The UNO has declared English as an international language along with Russian, Chinese, German, and French. Hence, English is a lingua franca and an official language for all diplomats around the world.

There have been cultural nuances in the same language used by different people. The same happens in English. The feminist ideologies vehemently questioned the gender-specific usage of language in terms like ‘spokesman,’ ‘chairman, ‘etc. The push for gender-neutral terminology in language came from the feminist movement. Feminists advocated the use of person, nurse, and server in places of man/women, male nurse, and waitress. The language was altered once again according to a new ideology.

For instance, for an unmarried or married man, we use ‘Mr.’ [mister] but for an unmarried woman, we use ‘Miss’s while ‘Mrs. Short for mistress used to mean ‘ wife’] for a married woman. The feminist writers popularized a parallel usage of ‘ Ms. ‘ For both married and unmarried women. Hence, feminists propagated a more non-sexist language by using humanity instead of mankind, chairperson instead of chairman, handmade or artificial instead of manmade, and artisan instead of craftsman.

Bell Hooks used very simple and easily understandable language in her book. It is very important used to simple language when dealing with a subject that most people think is irrelevant to a major section of society.

Hook always puts emphasis on the elimination of racism, elitism, and imperialism. She dreamt of freedom and justice and wanted people to realize that we are ‘created equal.’ Through his book, she wanted people to be aware of the true meaning of feminism and how it can touch and change a person’s life. Her book’s introduction end with a sentence

‘COME CLOSER, AND YOU WILL SEE: feminism is for everybody.’

Hooks clearly believes that feminists are not born; they are made. She often emphasized the fact that being born a woman does not make someone a feminist. One has to believe in feminist politics and through choice and action. Feminism is a movement to end sexist oppression, and not only women but also there are many men who believe in the movement.

Hooks once said, ‘ My hope emerges from those places of struggle where I witness individuals positively transforming their lives and the world around them. Educating is always a vocation rooted in hopefulness. As a teacher, we believe that learning is possible and that nothing can keep an open mind from seeking after knowledge and finding a way to know.

5. conclusion

Taking feminist thoughts and ideas to the lowest common denominator, democracies the movement and makes it more representative.

6. Citation

l. hooks, bell; Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, Pluto Press London, 2000

2. Narang, Harish; Semiotics of Language, Literature, and Cinema, Books Plus, 2000

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell hooks.

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