The Commodification of Feminism

In her chapter “Teaching to Transgress,” bell hooks laments the inaccessibility of feminist theory, not only in its complicated and esoteric language, but also in its inability to be applied to the everyday problems and concerns of people across gender, racial, and class lines. To hooks, contemporary feminist theory lacks “a political commitment to mass-based feminist movement,” speaking to only those educated and privileged enough to glean significance from its typically abstract language distanced from the realities of more underprivileged individuals. hooks envisions a feminist theory whose primary goal is to “[speak] to the widest audience of people” and which prioritizes the transformative and empowering abilities of theory. (71)