When Audre Lorde was born, being black under the one drop rule, being a woman, and being a homosexual were positions of relative disadvantage. The Second World War and the Cold War which succeeded it changed this- at least for the masters of new types of knowledge and the new technologies that knowledge gave rise to. The Hegelian Master-Slave dialectic- precisely because it was thymotic, not epistemic- was deader than the dodo. It no longer mattered who was more 'spirited' and readier to risk death. Work still mattered but it wouldn't be slaves who did the type of work which now mattered. Labor- as opposed to drudgery- had ceased to be labor because it could not be alienated, or rather- its alienation was but planned obsolescence or 'creative destruction'- i.e. it was a case of parents being displaced and rendered redundant by their own children who, so to speak, had stood on their shoulders and thus gained a lifted horizon. This type of progress warms the cockles of the heart of those who, ageing out of life to be reborn into Death's kingdom of ends, may hope that spiritual progress is still possible beyond the veil.
Lorde can't be blamed for not understanding this. For the first thirty years of her life, any amelioration experienced by members of her class seemed temporary and too easily reversible. Indeed, for some, such was the actual outcome. Addiction proved a more cruel master than Simon Legree. But the stupidity of identity politics, too, was an addiction. True, some might grow rich or gain influence because, in net terms, they were suppliers rather than consumers of that stripe of stupidity. But, it was an addiction nevertheless and all who partook of it, manacled their own minds and suffocated their spirit.
It is now 42 years since the publication of Lorde's famous essay titled- 'The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House'. It was foolish then and it is foolish now. Lorde's slave ancestors had known Masters some of whom had splendid houses. But those houses could be dismantled or demolished by tools similar to those which constructed them. Indeed 'slighting' (i.e. damaging or dismantling a prestigious building) was often accompanied by 'picking'- i.e. separating out a valuable part of the building and removing it and reinstalling it elsewhere. W.R Hearst was famous for having an ancient Spanish cloister dismantled and reassembled in California. This was a highly skilled process. I suppose one could say the new Master can 'slight' and pick over the old Master's house because he has better tools or can employ more productive people. What one can't say- unless one is as stupid as shit- is that tools of construction can't be used for destruction.
Lorde must have known that, during the Civil War, the industrial North, with its superior tools and technology, crushed the agrarian South and put an end to Slavery. The British had previously ended the Slave trade using the same tools- viz. the ships of the Royal Navy- which had previously profited from that trade. In the USSR and China- and many other countries in Africa and Asia and Latin America- there had been bloody revolutions. The tools of the Masters had been used to slit their own throats. But, in some cases, those tools were used with greater brutality or efficiency to extract larger surpluses so as to fund Scientific research and rapid technological advancement such that previously weak and poor countries became strong and rich. Knowledge was itself the tool which created more Knowledge such that mastery was gained relative to those who, ostrich like, stuck their heads in the quicksands of chauvinistic bigotry or special pleading. This is where Audre and her ilk failed the rising generation. What they were touting wasn't Knowledge, it was Ignorance, Stupidity and Malice towards all. They created what Obama would call the 'circular firing squad' which has proved fatal to a 'progressive politics' which actively seeks to prevent anybody from making any progress.
Speaking more than 40 years ago, Lorde said-
I agreed to take part in a New York University Institute for the Humanities conference a year ago,
Sell out! How come NYUIH has always been helmed by a White dude? No wonder the 'Humanities' are now considered to be fit only for sub-human imbeciles.
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.
None of which matter. What's good for women is good for men. But what is that 'good'? The answer is raising general purpose productivity or, for those unable to work, total factor productivity. This is directly linked to the search for useful knowledge rather than shrill screams of grievance.
The absence of these considerations weakens any feminist discussion of the personal and the political.
What weakens a discussion, is including stupid nutters.
It is a particular academic arrogance to assume
that people teaching shit to shitheads are 'academics'. They aren't. They may are, at best, glorified child-minders.
any discussion of feminist theory
which is shit
without examining our many differences, and without a significant input from poor women, Black and Third World women, and lesbians.
Examining those differences would show they are irrelevant. Raise general purpose productivity. What works for one group will work for another. It is a different matter that if there are only a limited number of tenured positions for teaching worthless shit, then it becomes very important that obese, hirsute, otherwise unemployable, lesbians get their fair share.
And yet, I stand here as a Black lesbian feminist,
not Black enough, darling. Also, you had two kids with a dude. It is totes triggering to me, a much darker complected Lesbian who has never let a penis penetrate me, that Lorde tried to 'pass' as a feminist of my sort.
having been invited to comment within the only panel at this conference where the input of Black feminists and lesbians is represented.
I suppose Lorde's appearance there served its purpose. Later that year, Reagan won the election. Why listen to tweed-jacketed, pipe smoking, Professors of Milton if they let darkies and dykes- not to mention dark skinned dykes- bully them?
What this says about the vision of this conference is sad, in a country where racism, sexism, and homophobia are inseparable.
Fuck off! They are wholly separable.
To read this program is to assume that lesbian and Black women have nothing to say about existentialism,
which is shit
the erotic,
stuff said about the erotic is shit unless it is itself erotic
women’s culture and silence,
which stupid dudes tend to gas on about
developing feminist theory,
which was and is just as shitty as the theory of shitting higher than your arsehole.
or heterosexuality and power.
not to mention Onanism and Truth.
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?
It means the both of you literally are, what Koestler called, call-girls. You may reply, 'we just happened to be home coz our prom date stood us up. But we had already ironed our frock and so when the call came, we jumped at it. ' But that isn't really true, is it? The invitation wasn't given at the last minute. You knew very well what you were signing up for- viz. being a token darkie/dyke, so deeply embittered by that twin circumstance as to rave in the manner of a Caliban or drunken helot, for the salutary purpose of establishing, for the Ivy League Jeunesse dorée, the irremediable brutishness, the fractal abjectness, of an entire class to whom, henceforth, noblesse oblige would entail no further obligation.
What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy?
It means fools who babble nonsense about racist patriarchy are examining their own faeces. They think it might be a tasty fruit. They then eat it and encourage others to do the same. In this way the contribute to Feminist Theory.
It means that only the most narrow parameters of change are possible and allowable.
No. If tools can examine fruits to some good purpose, it means those tools have achieved a high level of cognition. Spades can't examine the potatoes they dig up. Maybe a robotic spade with quantum computer based A.I will be able to do so at some time in the future. People working on developing such tools exhibit mastery. The 'parameters' of the changes they bring about are broad and 'disrupt' established industries and hierarchies and patterns of behaviour.
Slaves are welcome to grumble to each other about how the Master keeps beating and sodomizing them though, no doubt, they can do so more loudly if they aren't slaves but merely mad or mentally retarded.
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.
Lesbian consciousness consists in finding chicks fuckable. The consciousness of Third World women consists in wanting to get the fuck out of shithole countries or, at the very least, having more and more First World components in their life-style. As for the 'papers' presented at the Conference, they were smeared with the intellectual equivalent of shit. But the assholes who emitted that shit gained no greater degree of cleanliness thereby.
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.
I suppose vigorous fisting may be considered nurturing behaviour by those who like that sort of thing.
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.
The VCR revolution had begun by then. I suppose videos featuring stuff of that sort were available 'under the counter'.
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.
Why attempt to emancipate yourself when everybody over 18 had already been emancipated for a century?
For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive,
Men nurture each other. But so do cows.
and it is within that knowledge that our real power I rediscovered.
It was the real power to talk utter bollocks.
It is this real connection which is so feared by a patriarchal world.
Contempt is not fear. Nor, more sadly, is indifference.
Only within a patriarchal structure is maternity the only social power open to women.
In which case, no patriarchal structure has ever existed.
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.
I like chicks. Fisting chicks and getting fisted by them makes a lot of difference to me. Since I am the most important being in the universe, everything in Academia should be about me. Why are some cunts studying Physics instead of my pussy? Is it coz iz bleck?
Advocating the mere tolerance of difference between women is the grossest reformism.
Reform is a good thing. Revolution is a bad thing- at least for crazy lesbians.
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.
The Hegelian dialectic didn't 'spark'. It was either stupid or evil shit. The reality was Revolutionary regimes were tyrannical. Dialectically, however, tyranny was freedom and freedom was tyranny. Sadly, few Homosexual's wanted to emigrate to either Stalin's or Mao's Paradise. They'd have got short shrift if they did.
Only then does the necessity for interdependency become unthreatening.
There is no necessity to become interdependent or codependent on bitches who be kray kray.
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.
This is nonsense. The sane are not dependent on the crazy. Lorde did not need to acknowledge that she was equal to smart people. She needed to pretend she was smart. Just being a dyke isn't enough even if the cherry on top is that you iz bleck.
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.
Sadly, Lorde was wrong. There was only chaos, not security, in making stupidity and craziness interdependent.
Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged.
No it really isn't. Personal power is forged by general purpose productivity. If you can do a lot you can have power. If you are utterly useless, you may have nuisance value. You don't have power- you have a shitty personality.
As women, we have been taught either to ignore our differences,
No you haven't. You have been taught to register those differences which is why women are able to uniquely identify their Mummies or daughters or lesbian lovers.
or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change.
The change that was occurring as Lorde spoke these words was that voters were moving to the Right. Feminism was turning into a ghetto. The supremacist ideology of the disabled lesbian of color was replacing the Welfare Queen as the bogeyman driving blue collar workers to vote for Evangelical Republican.
Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression.
Imaginary oppression. But 'community' wasn't the solution. It was Rehab or a padded cell.
But community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.
It has never meant that.
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.
STEM subjects have survival value. Screaming your head off because you are an elderly darkie or dyke has none.
It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths.
By learning how to endow pigs with the capacity to sprout wings and take to the air.
For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.
Unless the house is worth dismantling and moving to a better location.
They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game,
Fuck off! The Master will shoot you if you try to saw his head off using one of his tools. Lorde knew very well that Black Lebsians hadn't beaten anybody at any game even temporarily.
but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.
Nobody wants crazy dykes to bring about any change whatsoever.
And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.
There are no such women. Lorde babbled paranoid nonsense about non-existent threats.
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.
And your sons who pimp for them. Prostitutes exploit working men taking both their money and their jizz. Disabled lesbian men of colour should be paid for our jizz.
If white American feminist theory need not deal with the differences between us,
and if Black Lesbian feminist theory does not have to deal with Transgender pedophiles who demand the right to shit on Audre's tits
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
in return for money
while you attend conferences on feminist theory
in return for money
are, for the most part, poor women and women of Color?
who want to attend Conferences in return for money because they really really like money.
What is the theory behind racist feminism?
What made Audre, who was shacked up at that time with a white lady, so bitter against White women? Was it that, being used to bullying her partner at home, she had got into a nasty habit?
In a world of possibility for us all, our personal visions help lay the groundwork for political action.
Only in the sense that Narcissus had a 'personal vision' or that what Echo was doing was 'political action'.
The failure of academic feminists to
achieve anything either for feminism or academia
recognize difference as a crucial strength is
odd because they normally recognize any old shite
a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson.
Which is that if you don't got a dick, you can't be a patriarch.
In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.
Defining stuff divides it from other stuff. What these cunts were defining was that which they claimed was utterly powerless. But that was disempowering.
Why weren’t other women of Color found to participate in this conference?
Why don't women of Colour hold their own Conferences and then pay stupid White dudes to turn up to complain about how Black dudes look down on them coz of their tiny penises?
Why were two phone calls to me considered a consultation?
As opposed to masturbation.
Am I the only possible source of names of Black feminists?
You are a call girl. They called you and you came. Arthur Koestler was a popular writer back then. His book 'The Call-Girls' was about 'academics' who, at the lift of a telephone, jet off to attend a Conference of some more or less bogus type.
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?
i.e. how come there aren't lots and lots of papers about how women who aren't fisting each other can 'co-operate'- possibly by fisting themselves while shrieking and shitting themselves in a synchronized manner.
In academic feminist circles, the answer to these questions is often, “We do not know who to ask.”
Why is there not a dude who specializes in this sort of thing? It's embarrassing having to ask some crazy dyke about crazy dykes who will show up for Conferences and shit themselves in public.
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.
Some White dude should take responsibility for forcing 'women's exhibitions' to incorporate shite produced by darkies.
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?
It was key to the destruction of second wave feminism. It's one thing to say you must give up dick and become a muff diver to be a true feminist. It is another to demand you give yourself quotas for darkies, the obese, the disabled, the mad, and the recently deceased. Otherwise you are just a tool of the Patriarchy.
Women of today are still being called upon
by voices in their head.
to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educated men as to our existence and our needs.
Men say 'fuck off, you daft bint.'
This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master’s concerns.
That tool is either money or the whip. You either pay people or beat people to do what you want them to do. Nothing else works.
Now we hear that it is the task of women of Color to educate white women
White women in America were richer, smarter and better educated than darkies. But they were still shit relative to white men. That's a gap which hasn't closed. Feminism is correlated with worse academic outcomes for women in STEM subjects. Being born in Iran or Ukraine is an advantage if you don't have a dick but still want a Fields Medal.
—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.
Why doesn't everybody understand that I am super special? It is a tragic repetition of racist patriarchal neo-liberal Nazism for peeps not to adore and obey me.
Simone de Beauvoir once said: “It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives
it is a genuine condition of my life that I is a super-duper dyke whom everybody should adore and obey
that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for acting.”
Fuck that. Let's just wait till the Brits and the Americans turn up to defeat the Nazis and liberate us. After that we can acknowledge the genuine condition of our life as a cheese-eating surrender monkey.
Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time.
No. Beat peeps who diss you and the only real condition in your life is the fact that your ass gets lots of kissing.
I urge each one of us here to reach down
with your fist
into that deep place of knowledge inside herself
i.e. frig yourselves silly, you stupid cunts but think of me when you do so.
and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there.
Alternatively, you could just eat your own shit.
See whose face it wears.
Fuck. She probably means 'womb'. Fist your foetus till its face is all mashed up. Don't depend on male doctors to get abortions. Sisters are doing it for themselves.
Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.
At the very least, it can throw light upon post-Second Wave Feminism's choice to eat only its own shit.
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