Week Five Blog
In Lorde's essay, she describes ways in which limits and oppressions, and the different ways in which they effect us everyday. There are certain norms in society and as you get further and further away from a norm the more limited and the more of an outcast you will be. It's like the point 5 system, where everyone has a different make up but it's the ones that have more of the norms that have more points. Therefore they are less oppressed then those who find themselves with less points. This works with race, religion, sexuality, age, and class, where then it is more difficult to perform your gender when you do not fit into the limits that are usually accepted. For example, Lorde is saying she is more oppressed because she loses points because she is an African American lesbian woman.
Lorde thinks that these differences among us make us distant and create limits within our society. She proposes that we think about oppression by recognizing those differences between each and every person and look at what they might mean and how they affect us in order to move past them. Without accepting these differences we won't be able to get past them to create less limits and more community.
Lorde explains how everyone has differences but she uses herself to show how one person, like herself, who is African American, a lesbian, and a woman is oppressed. She has three things that could seperate her from the society, but she says that we cannot get rid of the system that we are in, because what we've learned in our lives, we learned inside this system. We need to think outside and learn to start appreciating and accepting the differences around us.