Summary
Lorde starts this essay by arguing that the forces of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and homophobia are rooted in the inability to recognize differences between individuals as a strength rather than a weakness within communities. She then contends that sexism within Black communities—expressed in the 1960s as a belief that women should be subservient to male partners, and as a fear of matriarchal communal structures—is dangerous for men and women alike. After all, self-actualized people, with goals, skills, and aspirations outside the realm of sex and romance, are able to collaborate and create positive change in a way that subservient people are not. Furthermore, by thinking of people with minor differences from oneself as threat, one ignores the truly powerful and dangerous threats from outside the community. Black women, says Lorde, are at long last speaking up about the specific oppressions they alone face. If Black men are threatened by this, it is only because they are themselves oppressing women. For instance, Black men who express fear or dislike for Black lesbians are misguidedly convinced that women's close relationships to one another are a threat to men. Moreover, they are implying to Black heterosexual women that they should not form relationships with women or develop friendships outside of their heterosexual partnerships. At times, Lorde says, these men's fears that women will develop feminist coalitions with other women have led them to threaten or even enact violence upon them, as occurred on a college campus in New York in the 1970s. Furthermore, Lorde sympathizes with Black women who express hostility toward white women who date Black men. After all, she says, threats such as war and the prison system have killed or taken Black men out of society, creating unequal numbers of men and women. Still, hostility towards white women in this situation is a misdirection of energy, and avoids addressing the gender-based power structures that truly threaten Black women. This attitude causes Black women to remain docile for fear of losing allegiances with men, and makes it harder for women to form multiracial feminist coalitions. This problem or misdirected animosity isn't only a threat to gender-based solidarity: it's used to drive wedges between Black men and Black women within white-dominated institutions like universities, forcing them to compete for scraps rather than come together to demand resources.
Just as Black men's opposition to Black feminists speaks to personal issues with women and relationships, those within the Black community who stoke fears of Black lesbians—both heterosexual men and women—are basically expressing their own unresolved issues. For men, these issues might be a desire to dominate women; for women, the issues might be an internalized view of other Black women as natural competitors and enemies. Yet Black women who live without male companionship have long been sources of refuge and strength within their communities. Lorde looks to relationships between women in Africa for examples of solidarity between Black women, describing same-sex marriage traditions and relationships between co-wives in polygamous marriages. Same-sex relationships are natural, Lorde asserts, and are in fact generally accepted between men in the African-American community, but not between women. Thus anti-lesbian feeling is an expression of the desire for male dominance, which prevents women from achieving self-determination and devoting themselves wholeheartedly to political struggle. In general, the idea that oppressed groups must fight among themselves for scarce resources is an illusory one, keeping Black people, or women, from demanding all that they truly deserve from the truly powerful. Lorde concludes by reminding her readers of the very real threats Black women face because of the interlocking racism and sexism they endure. She tells the story of a viciously murdered Black woman named Patricia Cowan, and then explains that Black women have lower life expectancies than Black men, white men, or white women. Therefore, solidarity among Black women is necessary, and homophobia cannot be allowed to threaten it.
Analysis
This essay describes how individuals' lives function within a kind of quadrant based on race and gender. In a male-dominated, white-dominated society, both white women and black men are oppressed and deprived in certain ways. However, Black woman are doubly oppressed, and, rather than receiving double the amount of solidarity and support, often face hostility and suspicion from both Black men and white women. This basic framework, in which systems of oppression such as racism and sexism are viewed as interlocking in complicated ways, is known today as "intersectionality." This term wasn't coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw Williams until 1989, a decade after Lorde published this essay, but it's a useful way to think about her logic nonetheless. Lorde's argument, that Black women have experiences completely distinct from those of non-Black women or Black men, is essentially an articulation of intersectional thinking.
Rather than identifying homosexuality as another identity, like race or gender, which might cause someone to be oppressed, Lorde thinks about it as a means of connectedness between women. Being a lesbian, according to this view, is basically a way of establishing networks of support and solidarity between women. It's essentially a romantic and sexual version of the friendships and family relationships between women that have been essential to the advancement of feminism. For this reason, homophobia and heterosexism aren't biases that exist in and of themselves: they're functional expressions of misogyny and patriarchy, oriented towards preventing women from forming identities independent from men. This is dangerous for everyone, not just lesbians, because, Lorde writes, self-actualized, independent individuals are necessary parts of any movement towards freedom. If lesbianism helps some Black women become self-actualized and independent, then it is good for Black heterosexual women and men who want to be freed from racist oppression.
As a result, Lorde implies that anti-lesbian sentiment and action in Black communities is basically a distraction from the very real issues at hand—to name a few, violence against Black women and lower life expectancies based on race and gender. In this regard, Lorde echoes the novelist Toni Morrison, who famously noted in a talk just three years prior to this essay's publication that “the function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being." In this way, Lorde frames her plea for the acceptance of Black lesbians as a deeply pragmatic one. She presents racism within feminist circles, and sexism and homophobia in Black communities, as petty and immature squabbles that dangerously keep people from fighting real and dangerous enemies.
