01/31/2026
bell hooks named a dynamic so normalized it often goes unnoticed.
From early childhood, men are taught that care will arrive automatically. Emotional support, patience, forgiveness, reassurance. It is framed as natural, deserved, and unconditional. Women, meanwhile, are trained in the opposite direction. They are taught to provide care and to feel guilty when they stop.
This is not personality. It is conditioning.
hooks argued that patriarchy does not only dominate through force. It operates through expectation. Men are rarely taught to ask whether care is being freely given or quietly extracted. Women are taught that withholding care makes them selfish, cold, or unloving, even when giving it costs them autonomy.
The result is imbalance disguised as intimacy.
Care becomes an obligation instead of a choice. Emotional labor becomes invisible work. Boundaries are treated as betrayal. When women finally say no, the reaction is often shock or anger, not reflection. The system depends on women feeling responsible for men’s emotional stability.
hooks reframed guilt as a control mechanism. If women feel morally wrong for protecting their energy, the system never has to change. Men are spared accountability. Women absorb the cost.
This is why refusal feels radical. Choosing not to provide care on demand disrupts a structure that assumes endless access to women’s labor. It forces a reckoning with responsibility, reciprocity, and consent.
bell hooks did not argue against care. She argued for care rooted in choice, not coercion. Love that is mutual, not mandatory. Support that does not erase the self providing it.
If guilt keeps women giving past their limits, who benefits from calling that sacrifice love?
