Week Five
Lorde’s text carries the same theme as Johnson does within his text—the plus five system. Johnson’s “plus fives� are (1) white, (2) male, (3) heterosexual, (4) middle class and (5) Christian. Lorde added her own category to Johnson’s five: age. Lorde wrote this article from the perspective of a non-plus-fiver—not white, not male and not heterosexual. She observes that black women's experiences are different from those of white women, and that, because the experience of the white woman is considered normative, the black woman's experiences are marginalized; similarly, the experiences of the lesbian (and, in particular, the black lesbian) are considered aberrational, not in keeping with the true heart of the feminist movement. Although they are not considered normative, Lorde argues that these experiences are nevertheless valid and feminine. Patriarchy renders women silent, invisible, and absent among men, the exclusion of poor women, Black and Third World women, and lesbians from the conference silenced, rendered invisible, and absent from those women who embodied difference among women. The theory behind racist feminism, we might say, is the same theory that excluded the experience and writing of white women for so long. Anyone who finds a comfortable place in that theory and refuses to cross over into the space of the margin runs the risk of closing off theoretical discourse once again to others. Viewing relations of domination for Black women in any given society and historical context as structured through a system of interlocking race, class, and gender oppression expands analysis beyond merely describing the similarities and differences between these systems of oppression to focus greater attention on how they interconnect. Assuming that each system needs the others in order to function creates a distinct theoretical stance that stimulates the rethinking of basic concepts in social science. These concepts are definitely not the "tools" of the classical or systematic theological "master." To rephrase Lorde, these are tools that will help to dismantle the house of bondage that insists on norm of Eurocentric patriarchal categories and experiences.