“In the light of what Black women often willingly sacrifice for our children and our men, this is a much-needed exhortation, no matter what illegitimate use the white media makes of it. This call for self-value and self-love is quite different from narcissism. Narcissism comes not out of self-love but out of self-hatred.”
I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde
audre lorde
Whenever a conscious Black woman raises her voice on issues central to her existence, somebody is going to call her strident, because they don’t want to hear about it, nor us. I refuse to be silenced and I refuse to be trivialized, even if I do not say what I have to say perfectly.
Audre Lorde (via ablackwomansurvivingrape)
Thus Sayeth The Lorde
Audre Lorde knew. And also theorized what we now know as “intersectionality”–as coined and conceptualized by Kimberlé Crenshaw–before Crenshaw’s prominent paper Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color, and after earlier theorizations by Combahee River Collective and Sojourner Truth.
There is no generic social class of women who all experience the totality of gender in the same way, even as we all face misogyny and sexism, in general. There is no reason to deny the intersections of race (i.e White/WoC; non-Black/Black), gender (i.e. cis, trans, femme non-binary), sexual orientation (i.e. hetero, lesbian, bisexual, queer, pansexual, asexual), class, ability, complexion (i.e. Whiteness, light skinned privilege), weight, citizenship status etc. and their impact on our womanhood. To suggest women oppressed at multiple axes must ignore this lived reality to play “unity” (usually under the control of cis Whiteness) is erasure and oppression. Why does “unity” require White control? Why is this type of “unity” more important than equity, justice and freedom?
Audre Lorde knew. Her incredible writing, especially gathered in Sister Outsider, are critical. May her words live on.