Week Five
Throughout Lorde’s essay we can see that she feels that patriarchy is not the only form of oppression. She really focuses on how women oppress each other, through race and sexual orientation. “Black women in the political, social and cultural fields, heterosexual Black women often tend to ignore or discount the existence and work of Black lesbians� (Lorde, 121). She shows that even within the circles of black women, lesbians are being oppressed by the very women they should be bonding with. She seems to be saying if we don’t stick together even within our race how are we supposed to come together as women as a whole, and until we learn to do that we can’t make any progress.
When Lorde analyzes gender and power its obvious she’s writing from the point of view of being a black lesbian. “As a group, women of Color are the lowest paid wage earners in America. We are the primary targets of abortion and sterilization abuse� (Lorde, 120). She definitely includes herself in this group and isn’t afraid to say the facts, whether we want to hear them or not. She brings up the fact that when white women talk about oppression they only talk about being oppressed as women. They never talk about how races are oppressed or how they themselves oppress women of color.