(via youidiotkid)
“and yet, that said, it must be added that the way we treat a thing can sometimes change its nature.”
— lewis hyde, the gift: imagination and the erotic life of property (via karaj)
bell hooks
“In her first book, The Bluest Eye, novelist Toni Morrison identifies the idea of romantic love as one ‘of the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought.’ Its destructiveness resides in the notion that we come to love with no will and no capacity to choose. This illusion, perpetuated by so much romantic lore, stands in the way of our learning how to love. To sustain our fantasy we substitute romance for love.
When romance is depicted as a project, or so the mass media, especially movies, would have us believe, women are the architects and planners. Everyone likes to imagine that women are romantic, sentimental about love, that men follow where women lead. Even in non-heterosexual relationships, the paradigms of leader and follower often prevail, with one person assuming the role deemed feminine and another the designated masculine role. No doubt it was someone playing the role of leader who conjured up the notion that we ‘fall in love,’ that we lack choice and decision when choosing a partner because when the chemistry is present, when the click is there, it just happens—it overwhelms— it takes control. This way of thinking about love seems to be especially useful for men who are socialized via patriarchal notions of masculinity to be out of touch with what they feel. In the essay Love and Need, Thomas Merton contends: ‘The expression to fall in love reflects a peculiar attitude toward love and life itself— a mixture of fear, awe, fascination, and confusion. It implies suspicious, doubt, hesitation in the presence of something unavoidable, yet not fully reliable.’
If you do not know what you feel, then it is difficult to choose love; it is better to fall. Then you do not have to be responsible for your actions.”
(Source: hemiptera)
