But loving relationships among Black women do pose a tremendous threat to systems of intersecting oppressions. How dare these women love one another in a context that deems Black women as a collectivity so unlovable and devalued? The treatment of Black lesbians reveals how the sexual expression of all Black women becomes regulated within intersecting systems of oppression. As a specific site of intersectionality, Black lesbian relationships constitute relationships among the ultimate Other. Black lesbians are not [w]hite, male, or heterosexual and generally are not affluent. As such they represent the antithesis of Audre Lorde’s “mythical norm” and become the standard by which other groups measure their own so-called normality and self-worth. Sexual politics functions smoothly only if sexual nonconformity is kept invisible or is punished if it becomes visible. “By being sexually independent of men, lesbians, by their very existence, call into question society’s definition of woman at its deepest level,” observes Barbara Christian (1985, 199). Visible Black lesbians challenge the mythical norm that the best people are White, male, rich, and heterosexual. In doing so lesbians generate anxiety, discomfort, and a challenge to the dominant group’s control of power and sexuality on the interpersonal level (Vance 1984).
— Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins
