Bell Hooks didn't use the phrase toxic masculinity very often. Her writings largely predate the adoption of that phrase. But she did write a lot about the different ways she thought men and masculinity were defective, and she echoed the message that men need to change and redefine what masculinity is.

Some of her biggest examples though focused on black men in particular. According to her, black men are bad fathers, bad husbands, and can't keep themselves out of jail long enough to establish functional families.

If you didn't know, many of these points have roots with white supremacy, and go all the way back to the era of slavery in the United States.

She blames all of this on black masculinity, which she says comes from black men trying to emulate the white ideal of masculinity (because their "maleness" is attracted to the "white patriarchy"). She goes into great detail about how rap music, pornography, pimping, and hustling, are the reasons that black men are unstable and unsuccessful in society. But then she also says that black men have always been this way, even in Africa (seemingly contradicting herself in the process, and repeating another tried white supremacist myth).

Bonus points go to her views about interracial dating. According to her, black men are too weak to handle black women, so that's why they try to date white women. But those relationships never work because she says that white women are also weak. Her solution? White men (who are strong) should date black women (who are also strong).

Bell Hooks is largely credited with laying the groundwork for 4th wave intersectional feminism. She is the icon that feminists point to when they talk about intersectional feminism and why they believe it to be better than the 3rd wave.

But to me, this doesn't look intersectional. It looks like a black woman (with a fetish for white men) desperately trying to be accepted by white people, and by white feminism in particular. And in doing so she adopted all of the traditional white prejudices against black men. Effectively using black men as a punching bag to gain white social acceptance for black women.

Her books We Real Cool and Ain't I A Woman are riddled with these prejudices. Wherein she also says, without irony, that it's black women whom people are the most prejudiced against in society. And I think we really ought to be asking why this message struck such a large chord with feminists that they had to invent a brand new term, and start a new "wave", for it.

If you want to see some excerpts from her books, look no further than these threads on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/RezistansM/status/1149181945206792192

https://twitter.com/RezistansM/status/1471505895725010944

https://twitter.com/RezistansM/status/1204434280937656320

https://twitter.com/AfriThinka/status/1471541672253210630

And don't get me started on her views about male sexuality, and in particular gay male and black male sexuality. She argued that gay men prove that sexual depravity is caused by masculinity because gay men are also sexually depraved. And her views on black male sexuality are even worse.

Following with her theme of repurposing white supremacist rhetoric, she paints black men as being uniquely predatorial. She describes how black men rape so many black women that they run out of victims and have to move on to raping white women, and other black men, to satisfy their desires. Implying that white fears over black rapists are justified because black men engage in a violent "black patriarchy" which is responsible for "gangsta culture".

Bell Hooks was not an icon for tolerance and acceptance. She was a racist bigot, a misandrist, and a homophobe. Her ideas have created division and hatred across modern society, and they need to be dismantled if we want to make any progress towards equality.