blog five
In our in class discussions of oppression we saw many points of view. Lorde expresses that patriarchy is not the main form of oppression in our society, but an overall system of power. Lorde’s views even relate to Johnson’s and the +5 system, a point system based on white, male, middle class, heterosexual, and Christian attributes, these specific attributes “limit� the ways in which power is held and gender is performed. In class we discussed that many ways in which a person could be oppressed, how they are oppressed and who they are oppressed by. In the +5 system it is seen that someone at a +5 status oppresses anyone below them, therefore a +4 oppresses anyone below them, and so on. Therefore, it is expressed that there are systems of power are the ways in which people are oppressed.
Lorde defines herself as a “forty-nine-year-old Black lesbian feminist socialist mother of two.� Lorde seems to identify first and formost as a woman of color and secondly a lesbian. She emphasizes certain aspects of herself, almost in order to, it seems, leave certain parts of herself to be known and yet others to be unknown. In order for us to understand Lorde’s point of view, I believe it is important that Lorde identifies with all aspects of herself, not just a select few.