week six blog
In Lorde’s essay “Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,� she describes how she is situated within a system that does not recognize her complete self. She breaks down what she defines as her pieces of identity; her age, her race, her sexuality, her political views, and how they often conflict within her daily life. This conflict creates a space that she dubs “intersectional,� meaning she is in between the limits society places on being a woman, or being black, or being lesbian. This intersectionality informs the way she interacts with people. She is highly aware of her “performances� because she never feels like she is fully recognized as her whole identity, she has to bring out one aspect and subvert the others in different situations.
Lorde politicizes her situation by saying she is always oppressed by the limits within which she has to work. She is oppressed because she is a woman, she is oppressed because she is black, and she is oppressed because she is lesbian. But she is also oppressed because she is all these things at once. I believe that she is not just saying oppression stems from a system of patriarchy, or a system of heterosexism. One definition of oppression for Lorde is by not fitting within the limits of one or another social category, and therefore shunned.
Lorde says oppression is a lot more complicated than just being female and not male. It is informed by one’s entire being and place within a system that categorizes and limits people according to single pieces of their lives, never willing to look at a bigger picture.
I also wanted to bring my classmate’s attention to a very interesting show on HBO (I think?, but you can watch it on surfthechannel.com) called Big Love. Its about a polygamist family living kind of undercover in Utah, where polygamy is illegal. It’s a husband and three wives and seven kids, with three houses all sharing a backyard. Yeah, I know its just a tv show, but I think within the context of this class, the idea of gender roles within a polygamist family is very interesting, and maybe something that we can learn from. It’s a situation few of us are familiar with, and could possibly shed some light, if not on polygamy, then just on how we all come from different situations, and each situation informs how we look at others, and how we “do� our own identity within the culture that we live. Check it out.