Week Five
Lorde describes how she is situated in everyday life in very clear terms. Because of this, we are able to do a specific read of her publication. Lorde describes herself as a lesbian woman of color. Because of her position, we can understand race, class, and sexuality in terms of Johnson’s patriarchy. All of those characteristics locate a person in society, and essentially limit the ways that we can perform gender. Lorde’s specific situation, as a lesbian African-American woman, always indicates her position as an oppressed woman because those factors play heavily into everyday life.
This is an abstraction of Johnson’s patriarchy. Lorde does not think that patriarchy is the primary form of oppression—instead, she proposes that we think about oppression in terms of joint vulnerabilities. For example, we can look at the oppression of black people as such: oppression of black men, and oppression of black women. Then, from there, we can think of the oppression of black women as black lesbians, and black straight women. Even from there, we can express the oppression of black straight women in terms of heterosexist black straight women, and non-heterosexist black straight women. Lorde is suggesting, here, that oppression can occur even at the microscopic level, and that oppression is not necessarily monolithic, like Johnson’s patriarchy seems.
I learned a lot from Lorde’s piece. In learning the ways that specific people with specific situations, like Lorde, “do� their gender, I can understand my own “doing� of gender in more detailed terms.