Communion: The Female Search for Love

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender discrimination, emotional abuse, and disordered eating.

hooks states that feminist women stopped talking about love because it was easier to find power than love. Patriarchists were more likely to give women jobs, power, and money than love. Women needed money, including hooks when she planned to leave her relationship. She and her partner split their finances equitably after years of arguments, because regardless of how hard she worked, hooks’s partner earned more than her. When she got a job at an Ivy League university, he refused to take a year of leave and go with her, so hooks left. It took years for her to recover emotionally, which she could not have done without financial resources. Women in midlife were more concerned about financial resources than love when deciding on relationships, as they often lacked the language to articulate their dissatisfaction with men and the emotional dynamics of love. Men are unwilling to give up the privileges granted under patriarchy—especially the expectation that women must fulfill their sexual desires. This made women realize that men were not able to offer loving relationships. 

Sexual inequality in heterosexual relationships created problems even as sexual liberation became a key part of the feminist movement.