Aside: I'm happy to do my best to call people what they want, but if they come up with backwards reasoning (which bell hooks seems to have done: the lowercase emphasizes her individuality and focuses our attention on her over her work--which you just did in correcting her name here!), should I follow their reasoning, or what they say to call themselves?

In the case of names, I generally go with "call them what they want". Still, it's pretty weird.