#feminist classics

[whilereadingandwalking]

“Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.”—Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

[ariesification]

The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House by Audre Lorde (1979)

(PDF available here. Bolding/emphasis my own)

I agreed to take part in a New York University Institute for the Humanities conference a year ago, with the understanding that I would be commenting upon papers dealing with the role of difference within the lives of American women: difference of race, sexuality, class, and age. The absence of these considerations weakens any feminist discussion of the personal and the political. 

It is a particular academic arrogance to assume any discussion of feminist theory without examining our many differences, and without a significant input from poor women, Black and Third World women, and lesbians. And yet, I stand here as a Black lesbian feminist, having been invited to comment within the only panel at this conference where the input of Black feminists and lesbians is represented. What this says about the vision of this conference is sad, in a country where racism, sexism, and homophobia are inseparable. To read this program is to assume that lesbian and Black women have nothing to say about existentialism, the erotic, women's culture and silence, developing feminist theory, or heterosexuality and power. And what does it mean in personal and political terms when even the two Black women who did present here were literally found at the last hour? What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy? It means that only the most narrow parameters of change are possible and allowable. 

The absence of any consideration of lesbian consciousness or the consciousness of Third World women leaves a serious gap within this conference and within the papers presented here. For example, in a paper on material relationships between women, I was conscious of an either/or model of nurturing which totally dismissed my knowledge as a Black lesbian. In this paper there was no examination of mutuality between women, no systems of shared support, no interdependence as exists between lesbians and women identified women. Yet it is only in the patriarchal model of nurturance that women "who attempt to emancipate themselves pay perhaps too high a price for the results," as this paper states. 

For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power I rediscovered. It is this real connection which is so feared by a patriarchal world. Only within a patriarchal structure is maternity the only social power open to women. 

Interdependency between women is the way to a freedom which allows the I to be, not in order to be used, but in order to be creative. This is a difference between the passive be and the active being. 

Advocating the mere tolerance of difference between women is the grossest reformism. It is a total denial of the creative function of difference in our lives. Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic. Only then does the necessity for interdependency become unthreatening. Only within that interdependency of difference strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters. 

Within the interdependence of mutual (nondominant) differences lies that security which enables us to descend into the chaos of knowledge and return with true visions of our future, along with the concomitant power to effect those changes which can bring that future into being. Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged. 

As women, we have been taught either to ignore our differences, or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change. Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist. 

Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference -- those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older -- know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support. 

Poor women and women of Color know there is a difference between the daily manifestations of marital slavery and prostitution because it is our daughters who line 42nd Street. If white American feminist theory need not deal with the differences between us, and the resulting difference in our oppressions, then how do you deal with the fact that the women who clean your houses and tend your children while you attend conferences on feminist theory are, for the most part, poor women and women of Color? What is the theory behind racist feminism? 

In a world of possibility for us all, our personal visions help lay the groundwork for political action. The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower. 

Why weren't other women of Color found to participate in this conference? Why were two phone calls to me considered a consultation? Am I the only possible source of names of Black feminists? And although the Black panelist's paper ends on an important and powerful connection of love between women, what about interracial cooperation between feminists who don't love each other? 

In academic feminist circles, the answer to these questions is often, "We do not know who to ask." But that is the same evasion of responsibility, the same cop-out, that keeps Black women's art our of women's exhibitions, Black women's work our of most feminist publications except for the occasional "Special Third World Women's Issue," and Black women's texts off your reading lists. But as Adrienne Rich pointed out in a recent talk, which feminists have educated themselves about such an enormous amount over the past ten years, how come you haven't also educated yourselves about Black women and the differences between us -- white and Black -- when it is key to our survival as a movement? 

Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educated men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master's concerns. Now we hear that it is the task of women of Color to educate white women -- in the face of tremendous resistance -- as to our existence, our differences, our relative roles in our joint survival. This is a diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of racist patriarchal thought. 

Simone de Beauvoir once said: "It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for acting." 

Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices 

Prospero, you are the master of illusion.  Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (Lied about the world, lied about me) That you have ended by imposing on me An image of myself. Underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That is the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie!  But now I know you, you old cancer, And I know myself as well.  ~ Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's A Tempest --- 

Lorde, Audre. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Ed. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. 110- 114. 2007. Print.

http://s18.middlebury.edu/AMST0325A/Lorde_The_Masters_Tools.pdf

[uponthepages]

Feminist Friday ↠ Feminist Classics

As some of you may now, feminism is literature is one of my favorite things. I still often read books on feminism or that have a feminist theme. But, have books always been feminist? Clearly, there…

[shihlun]

“Feminist Classics” series from Verso

Cover Design: Jessica Svendsen

[whilereadingandwalking]

On Audre Lorde's birthday, I finished reading Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, her incredible work of feminist essays and speeches. It was incredible and moving, her writing clear and poetic and full of the anger she writes about so brilliantly.

Lorde unpacks intersectionality—the impossibility of attempting to be only a feminist and not a black feminist or a black lesbian feminist, the impossibility of breaking up those aspects of an identity as if they don't influence each other or make one whole. She emphasizes a solidarity that recognizes rather than ignores class, race, gender, and sexuality differences. She writes about white feminism, and the racism embedded in its ranks; she talks about raising a son, a reflection on lesbian parenthood, on racism, on toxic masculinity. She touches on socialism and imperialism; touches on colorism and homophobia within the black community. And in "Eye to Eye," she discusses the division between anger and hatred, and talks about why it's so difficult for black women to support one another, and how they can do this better—partially through mothering, self-acceptance, self-care, and honesty.

Lorde's essay collection is gorgeous, necessary, and brilliant. I'm glad to have finally read it, and look forward to rereading it in the near future.

[whilereadingandwalking]

Six Underrated Feminist Books

These are books that I adore. And don’t get me wrong—I know you’re sitting there going, Virginia Woolf? Toni Morrison? Underrated? But these are four classics that I feel don’t get as much attention as they should plus two newer releases that I plug whenever I have the opportunity. Hooray for excellent female authors! 

(Note: Many of these books, although not all, grapple with the dystopian experience of being a woman, and have content warnings for things including but not limited to sexual assault, a mass shooting, and violence against women. Please message me if you would like to know the full content warnings of a text, and I can accommodate the best I can.)

Orlando by Virginia Woolf Remember when Woolf wrote a book about non-binary, gender rebellion that was also a satire revealing how gender roles were rooted in society’s treatment of women rather than any inherent biology all the way back in 1928? Remember when during the surrealist moment that Orlando transitions into a woman in her sleep, Woolf consciously and explicitly transitions in the text from ‘he’ to ‘they’ to ‘she’ pronouns? Not enough people do...but they should.

The Female Man by Joanna Russ Back in the 1970s, feminist science fiction was its own genre, later pushed out or rebranded to accommodate the white male takeover of sci fi. Joanna Russ was one of feminist sci fi’s goddesses. I read this book in my 1970s Feminist Sci Fi class in college (which was exactly as cool as it sounds like it was). It’s a strange book that asks more questions than it answers, but it investigates the myriad versions of sexist dystopia and tries to think about what a feminist utopia could look like.

Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy This was my favorite read from my 1970s Feminist Sci Fi class. Piercy was not playing around with this one. It pictures a future utopia through the mind of a older, mentally ill woman of color, contrasting it first with her present (cast as a dystopia) as well as with a possible parallel future that is a dystopia extending from her present circumstances. This dystopia is immensely readable while somehow tackling everything. 

Paradise by Toni Morrison This is my favorite Morrison, and the one I had her sign in November. A group of women have formed their own, matriarchal society in a house just out of town. But their freedom and the way they live ‘threatens’ the structure of the patriarchal town down the road. It’s a twisting and turning tale that I never wanted to end. (TW: It begins and ends with violence against women.)

Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories by Mariana Enríquez  This short story collection left me sleepless for a week, but it was worth it. Enríquez’s stories are gothic horror surrealist tales that are truly scary, but the true root of their power is that they all pull from real-life horrors such as poverty, homelessness, verbal abuse, gaslighting, and more. The stories are translated from the Spanish. 

The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne Valente When a woman in a comic has her career pushed aside, suffers a violent death or assault, or has her story put on the back burner, in order to privilege the story of a male hero, that character is “refrigerated.” Here, Valente tells the stories of the women who have been weakened, assaulted, killed, or left behind in order to give a male hero his glory or tragic backstory. This one will be especially poignant for people familiar with DC and Marvel storylines. 

[whilereadingandwalking]

I'm currently reading and walking with Women, Race, & Class by Angela Davis, and it is life-changing. Required reading for all intersectional feminists (aka all actual feminists) to better understand the history of how the women's rights movement has intersected with blackness and class issues in the past. ✨✨✨

[whilereadingandwalking]

Loving Excerpts from THE SECOND SEX by Simone de Beauvoir this sleepy Sunday morning. Nothing like waking up to good old feminism.