Seneca Falls and Bell Hooks

 During Eddie’s presentation, we talked about feminism. We talked a little bit about the Seneca Falls Convention. The Seneca Falls Convention was the first women's rights convention in the United States. There were two days of this, where the first day was strictly women and the second day was men and women. This convention did not include women of color. This then led to us talking specifically about Bell Hooks and her definition of feminism and how we feel about her statement. Her explanation of feminism is that it only privileges white bourgeois women. This means that white middle and upper-class women are included in these conversations, the Seneca Falls Convention was a perfect example of this. As a woman feminism to me means equality among sexes, regardless of race or class. To learn that a movement that wants women to have equality among the other sex, but not have equality among each other is a lot to unpack. I find this is a difficult situation because as women I feel we are supposed to support each other and come together to fight for a common cause, but leaving people who have vital views and can add to our cause out of these conversations leaves us at a bigger disadvantage than what we started with. Every person goes through many different experiences in their life, and all people can be separated by race or class. Women of different races can bring more to these conversations cause they have experienced things that other women of other races have not experienced. Because what works for one woman, does not work for all women. We should take into consideration the different struggles and issues other women face because a feminist conversation should include all women. If the Seneca Falls Convention had been more inclusive I believe the feminist movement would have been more progressive. This is because we were only seeing feminism from the white middle-class point of view instead of different class views or racial views. I understand including men in the conversation about feminism but having men instead of women of color at this convention did not help fight the cause because the men only understood the white women’s point of view on feminism and in this country Black women and other women of color deal with the most violence against them. In my opinion, all people who identify as women should be included in these conversations if we want to grow the feminist movement and continue to move it in the right direction.