Fighting Oppression Among Women
As I am a very visual learner, I attempted to visualize the arguments brought up in Lorde’s “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference.� For example, on the subject of “limits� to performing gender I pictured gender oppression as a large system. However, there are subsystems within these systems that limit certain people from fully performing their gender. Lorde says, “…white women focus upon their oppression as women and ignore differences of race, sexual preference, class, and age.� Race, sexual preference, class, and age are therefore the subsystems, and they are oppressed within the larger system.
According to the +5 system, one is advantaged if one is a white, heterosexual, Christian, middle class male. According to Lorde, this system seems to be prevalent within the women’s movement as well: young, heterosexual, white, middle class women are advantaged in their quest for gender equality. Women who do not fit these categories are more disadvantaged.
Based on the oppression of the subsystems within the larger system of gender oppression, Lorde understands that there are more forms of oppression than just patriarchy. There is oppression among women. White, heterosexual women are at more of an advantage than black lesbians. In order to see oppression beyond patriarchy one must observe oppression that occurs within patriarchy, i.e. oppression among women.
As an African American lesbian, Lorde is disadvantaged within the system of gender oppression. How can she fight against gender oppression when she is fighting oppression against her race and her sexuality? She states, “As women, we must root out internalized patterns of oppression within ourselves if we are to move beyond the most superficial aspects of social change.� In other words, in order to overcome patriarchy, women must first overcome divisions amongst themselves.