Summary
Here, Lorde turns her sights on a dilemma of great personal relevance: how to raise a son in a feminist way within a sexist society. Since Lorde has a son of her own, Jonathan—and since Jonathan, at the time of the writing, is approaching puberty—she cannot, she says, speak about the topic in a theoretical or impersonal way. She admits she has no secret to offer other lesbian mothers of sons, but can only speak honestly about her own experience raising Jonathan and his sister Beth. However, in her experience, the best policy is honesty about one's own feelings and choices. Lorde knows that her son is developing a sexuality and that he will, inevitably, become a man—whatever being a man means to him. She cannot prevent this, but she can try to help him listen to himself instead of his society. This is difficult for the sons of lesbians, because they cannot look within their own immediate families for images and models of adult manhood. However, Lorde says, she's recently gotten to know many young Black men, some gay and some straight, who make her feel hopeful for her own son's future.
It is always difficult to raise Black children, writes Lorde, because they must learn to both "love and resist." Moreover, Lorde wants her son to remain open to his own feelings, to avoid buying into white assumptions about power and dominance, and to resist thinking that women are his enemies when he has many real and dangerous enemies to overcome. The best way to do this is to teach her son that she does not "exist in order to do his feeling for him." Many men repress their feelings and expect women to do the work of processing their emotions; in doing so, they deprive themselves and underappreciate women. Lorde recalls Jonathan's younger years, when he was bullied, not for his mother's sexual orientation but for her race. She once almost lost her temper at him when he cried about this bullying, then caught herself blaming him for his own victimization and reinforcing the power structures she learned in order to survive as a bullied child. Rather than doing that, she remembers, she stopped herself and told him about her own feelings of fear at his age. This was a revelatory moment for her son, who had always considered women invulnerable because of the strong, unusual women in his own family. And indeed, Jonathan has learned to stand up for himself, calmly correcting classmates who refer to Lorde's longtime lover Frances as "the maid."
Lorde closes with two anecdotes. She recalls her and Frances' intended trip to a lesbian/feminist conference which banned males over age ten, and remembers her complex feelings of indignation, leading her and Frances to pen a letter explaining their refusal to abandon Jonathan and attend. While she understands the value of women's spaces, Lorde writes, she believes that she is responsible for loving and educating her son long past the age of ten. She also remembers asking Jonathan to tell her the best and worst parts of having a lesbian parent. Jonathan replied that his mother's sexuality had allowed him to learn a great deal about other people, but had led him to be bullied. When Lorde inquired whether his peers were responsible for this bullying, Jonathan replied, "My peers know better. I mean other kids."
Analysis
Lorde never professes to have any easy answers for lesbian mothers, feminist mothers, or black mothers trying to raise emotionally healthy sons in a ruthless society. In fact, she writes, having a son has made it impossible for her to fall into easy answers. For instance, while the logic of separatism might sound good in theory, it becomes much more complicated in practice, when, for instance, a conference's rules insist upon her leaving her own child alone in New York. Instead, Lorde offers readers quite a difficult answer: their best solution is emotional honesty and vulnerability. This advice will ring a bell for readers who have read Lorde's "The Transformation of Silence Into Language and Action." One recurring theme in this book is the utility of openness and emotional clarity. While white, male-dominated society insists that people repress their feelings and keep silent much of the time, parents (especially lesbian parents of Black children) owe it to their kids to show that they are not invulnerable, and that they are capable of both toughness and softness.
Just before she decides to be completely open with her son about her own experiences with fear, Lorde experiences a frightening moment of uncontrolled anger in which she almost scolds her son for showing emotion. This is an act of love, however misguided: Lorde wants her son to survive, which for many people involves ignoring one's own feelings, even at a cost to enjoying life and treating others with kindness. Lorde explains that her impulse to scold Jonathan came from her own experiences of conflict with her peers. In this anecdote, Lorde highlights the way that bullying and abuse can easily become cyclical if not addressed thoughtfully. Moreover, she shows how easily even well-meaning people can blame victims for their own victimization. This is a recurring concern within these pages. Lorde notes, for instance, that Black men tend to feel anger at Black feminists and that white women dismiss Black ones, blaming fellow victims rather than addressing the root causes of inequality or cruelty. Victim-blaming, Lorde emphasizes, is a potent distraction from worthy targets of anger. Here, she shows how this dynamic can take root even within families, but also how it can be eradicated through emotional openness. Most important of all, she writes, is teaching her children to observe, honor, and express their own feelings as they grow and become independent. And, as a matter of fact, Lorde concludes the essay with a quote in her son's own ironic, wise voice. This is an instance of form echoing content: after stressing her belief that boys must learn to feel and speak for themselves rather than rely on women to do so, she gives her son the space to do so within her writing.
