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8/31 Audre Lorde - selections from Sister Outsider - Coggle Diagram
8/31
Audre Lorde - selections from Sister Outsider
How do we name oppression, especially from multiple sites?
we have this vision of "survival of the fittest", but how does this worldview work? The idea of survival of the fittest erases how there are "harsh realities" that are stacked against women, women of color, women with disabilities, etc
"the machine will grind you to dust anyway" (42). -- the system is not going to teach folks it jeopardizes how to survive
"What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy?" (110-11) -- we aren't listening to the issues from the folks living in the most vulnerable positions
recognizing differences and understanding
"how come you haven't educate yourself about Black women and the differences between us--white and Black,--when it is key to our sirvival as a movement" (113)
What tools or strategies does Lorde offer us for rethinking feminism, feminist spaces, and feminist problem solving?
"the women who sustained me through that period were Black and white, old and young, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual, and we all shared a war against the tyriannies of silence" (41).
"we are taight to ignore differences" -- if we are taight, we can unteach; it's
"Your silence will not protect you" (40)
"Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressor to keep the oppressed occupied with the master's concerns" (113)-- it's erasure, it's labor, it keeps folks disjointed and distracted
Lorde's "A Litany for Survival"
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147275/a-litany-for-survival
"we" were not meant to survive in the sense that the system does not set it up equally for everyone
"we" meaning women: "like bread in our children's mouths" seems to gender this as "woman"
"“Our words are not meant to be heard” society doesn’t listen to women
maybe it has a developmental tone, the ideo of "becoming" --"those of us imprinted with fear" and "mother's milk"
Learning to live in a world that is built on oppressing women
"The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House"
"those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in crucibles of difference--those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older--know that
survival is not an academic skill
"--one is absolutely forced to learn this in life (if you want to stay alive)
"It is a particular form of academic arrogance to assume any discussion of feminist theory without examining our many differences, and without a significant input from poor women, Black and Thurs World women, and lesbians" (110)--speak on the issue but only after you have educated yourself with the multipe perspectives
"It is learning how to take out difference and make them strengths.
For the master's tools will never dismantle the masters' house
. They may allows us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support" (112) -- so these systems are designed for certainly privileges, and if your version of liberation is still tied to that thing, it's not liberation
Transo