homework

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The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master's House Comments at 'The Personal and the Political" Panel (Second Sex Conference, October 29, 1979/.

Audre Larde 4

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. For 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 in this time and in this place 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 con- ference is sad, in a country where racism, sexism and homophobia are inseparable. To read this progam is to assume that lesbian and black women have nothing to say of 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 perimeters 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 knowl- edge as a black lesbian. In this paper there was no examination of mutuality between women, no systems of shared support, no interde- pendence 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. -"t For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not patho- logicaCbutredemptiVe~ and_ff.iswith1n that knowledge that our real

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power is rediscovered. It is this real connection, which is so feared by a patriarchal world. For it is only under a patriarchal structure that maternity is the only social power open to women.

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

Advocating the mere tolerance of diff erenc~ between women is the grossest reforrriisin. His a total denial of the creative function of differ- ence in our lives. For_~~ff~_r~1.1c:~_m.ust b~_!)Ot n.1e~ely tolerated, but ~~n as a_fllE_d._ ()i !W9~S§i:IQ'. QC>l~1rities b~!""._e~n ,yvhic~ our creativity can spark like a dia_l~~!Lc. Only then does the necessity for interdepend- ency become unthreatening. Only within that interdependency of dif- ferent strengths, acknowleged and equal, can the power to seek new ways to actively "be" in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters.

Within the interdirpendence of mutual (non-dominant) differences lies that security which enables us to descend into the chaos of knowl- edge and return with true visions of our future, along with the con- comitant power to effect those changes which can brin$ that future into being. Difference is th~ raw and powerful conriection from which our personal power is forged.

-~~- A~ women, we have been _taught_~? eith~~-i_g!'lore_ our differences or }f--10 view t!]_em as causes for separation and suspicion rather thaq as '1 forcesTor change. Without comrriu-n1ty;·t11eie is no liberation, only the

mostvulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But community must not mean a shedding of our dif- ferences, 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 oC: difference; those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black,\

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who are older, know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning\ how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to \ make common cause with those other identified as outside the struc- tures, in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the : masters tools will never dismantle the masters 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 and third world women know there is a difference between the daily manifestations and dehumanizations of marital slavery and prostitution, because it is our daughters who line 42nd Street. The

100 Audrelorde

Black panelists' observation about the effects of relative powerless- ness and the differences of relationship between black women and men from white women and men illustrate some of our unique prob- lems as black feminists. If white american feminist theory.need not deal with the differences between us, and the resulting difference in aspects of our oppressions, then what do you do with the fact that the women who clean your houses and tend your children while you at- tend conferences on feminist theory are, for the most part, poor and third world women? 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 the academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. Divide and conquer, in our world, must become define and eropawet..

Why weren't other black women and third world women found to participate in this conference? Why were two phone calls to me con- sidered a consultation? Am I the only possible source of names of black feminists? And although the black panelist's paper ends on a important and powerful connection of love between women, what about inter- racial co-operation between feminists who don't love each other?

In academic feminist circles, the answer to these questions is often "We did not know who to ask." But that is the same evasion of responsi- bility, the same cop-out, that keeps black women's art out of women's exhibitions, black women's work out of most feminist publications ex• cept for the occasional "Special Third World Women's Issue,'"" and black women's texts off of your reading lists. But as Adrienne Rich pointed out in a recent talk, white 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 dif• .ferences between us - white and black- when it is key to our survival

/ as a movement? W~en of today are still being called upon to str~h across the.gap

of male ignorance, and to educate men as to our existence and our neec:ts. This IS an old and primary tool ofalfoppressors fo keep the oppressed occupied with the master's concerns. Now we hear that it is the task of black and third world women 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.

•Conditions of Brooklyn. NY is a major exception. It has fairly consistently published the work of women of color before it was "fashionable" to do so. (editor's footnotel

Audre Lonie IOI

Simone DeBeauvoir once said: "It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that ~Y' must draw our strength to live and our reasons for acting." V

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