Blog Week 5
I think what Lorde is trying to argue is that a person’s position in the realms of age, race class, gender, and sexuality cannot be considered individually. A person is made up of all of these things, and it is not enough to say that they are oppressed from one direction. Women all experience the oppression of a patriarchal society, as argued by Frye and Johnson. What Lorde contributes to the discussion is that women may also be subcategorized and experience oppression differently because of these other underlying factors.
Lorde does not necessarily view patriarchy as the primary form of oppression, but rather one of the most recognizable ones. Gender is one of the most basic ways of identifying a person, and so it is understandable why it has manifested itself as a social system. Any construction that allows one to view themself as “self� or “other� (in which self is inherently better than other) will create a system of oppression. Lorde sees this creation in ageism, sexism, racism, etc. For example, she points out that lesbianism was not only “other� to the heterosexual world, but also another degree of “other� for her as an African American. Being a black lesbian is looked down upon other black people, and somewhat negates the fact that she is still a black person sharing the same oppression. It does not suffice to say that she feels some sort of homogeneity with all black people, because there is yet more prejudice within this blanket term.