Useful Quotes

bell hooks: “I see a part of Beyoncé that is in fact, anti-feminist — that is a terrorist, especially in terms of the impact on young girls.” 

Montéz Jennings: “To call Beyoncé a terrorist is, in my opinion, an extreme comparison in the literal sense of the word. To critique her feminist stance is fair because after all she is a billionaire who’s married to a billionaire who endorses the very foundations of capitalism. We cannot have capitalism without capital, even if that means we make ourselves the capital—which most of us do in some way. I am not going to say that Beyoncé is without reproach, but neither is bell hooks.”

Roxane Gay: “Beyoncé is not above critique. As a feminist herself, I hope Beyoncé would welcome it. Unfortunately, hooks's statements provoke, without creating space for difference or substantive debate. She assumes the worst of people and the best of the oppressive patriarchy. In referring to how Beyoncé looks on the cover of Time, hooks also says, ‘it's fantasy that we can recoup the violating image and use it....’ It's a shame to see how an intellectual as illustrious as bell hooks has allowed the limits of the patriarchy's imagination of women – virgin or whore – to limit her own imagination of us.”

Karen Attiah: “I contend that silence in the face of oppression is not neutral. Beyoncé does stand for something: for a particular strain of racial capitalism that is concerned mostly with selling the aesthetics of Black liberation for mass consumption. There’s a lot of money to be made in satisfying White mainstream fantasies of “safe” liberation, even if — perhaps especially if — those fantasies defang movements for actual freedom and justice and preserve the status quo.”  

Karen Attiah : “But Bey has amassed enough power and money to break the template, right? She has broken the internet with surprise visual albums and broken records with tours big enough to move local economies. Is it too much to ask for a simple statement about state brutality against Palestinians? If liberation is her brand, could such a stance really cause her empire to fall? In the absence of words from Beyoncé herself, that’s what we’re left to assume. Perhaps it’s this specter of Black powerlessness that has made the discourse over Bey’s silence on Palestinians and the decision to screen her movie in Israel so fierce. Her lack of real-life action exposes the superficiality of the Black liberation aesthetic she has profited from — a hard pill to swallow when other artists and writers around the world are being canceled for speaking out.”