Reading assignment for Wednesday, February 22. Your reply (under Comments) is due before class. Remember, you don’t need to answer all or even any of the questions, but your response should demonstrate you’ve done and thought about the readings. Be sure to check and make sure your response posts.
When you were re-reading Audre Lorde’s essay, what do you thinks she sees as the master’s tools / what is the master’s house? What is she proposing instead?
Looking at the individual contributions to the anthology, how would you make the case for them with someone who felt offended or threatened by the authors’ anger?
The beauty in Audre Lorde’s writing is that she does not just sit around listing the reasons for her anger. She uses her anger to propose solutions, calls to action, revolution. In one of her most powerful lines from “The Master’s Tools Will Not Dismantle The Master’s House”, she writes, ” This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master’s concerns”. I feel that the “tools” Lorde are referring to are the tactics of distraction that dominant groups use to undermine progressive attempts of those groups that are not dominant. When men ask women to explain feminism to them, then women begin to waste their time explaining things when they should be reaching out to one another to enact change. What angers Lorde is how white women are aware of this tactic and act against it, yet hypocritically ask token lesbians and women of color to explain their feminisms. Even further fueling the flames of the anger of these lesbians and women of color is that often white women already have preconceived notions of these feminisms they’re asking about, and are merely asking to selectively listen to parts that resonate with what they already think. If these are the “master’s tools”, then the “master’s house” is oppression, and the master’s house cannot be dismantled by polite questions that feign inclusion and only selectively listen to answers. It can only be dismantled when women can start communicating with each other in a discourse that is inclusive and active, rather than a stagnant rehashing of oppressive tactics.
I agree with Michelle’s comment on the idea that the master’s tools that Lorde refers to are the tactics used by the oppressors to keep the marginalized there, although I also thought that maybe part of these tools came from the conformity of the oppressed to remain isolated and “outside the circle of ‘acceptable women.'” As Lorde says, “As women we have been taught to either ignore our differences or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change” and this mentality keeps marginalized women from coming together to create a force out of all these differences, thus this keeps these women isolated. Reading it a second time though, made me think that Lorde thinks that these differences are the tools and on their own, each in isolation, they will never overcome the Master’s house, but I think she encourages the idea that if these women were to seek each other’s company and learn to integrate all their differences and create them into strengths, they could form a very powerful community, and only when these tools are brought together, they can create a force that will make the needed changes.
In Audre Lorde’s “The Master’s Tools Will Not Dismantle The Master’s House”, she talks about a tool that the oppressors use to keep the oppressed in their places. I feel that the tool is ignoring our differences or viewing them as “causes for separation and suspicion rather than forces for change”. It’s similar about the situation she found herself in at the conference, where the only black female speakers were only asked to be part of one section and not the others as if they couldn’t attribute to the other parts. I especially like that survival is “learning to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled” and that a community should be described as though that stand outside the dominant definition. I feel that it is saying that we should be ourselves and take control of our lives similar to Moraga’s poem “The Welder”. I like that Lorde writes about how difference is this source of power to bring us together to form change. In math the word “difference” refers to subtraction or to take away. But here she uses to talk about coming together.
When I read “The Bridge Called My Back” the first time I did skim through all of the poetry and I concentrated more on the essays this time around I did the opposite. If I were to choose a favorite author or contributor I would choose Cherrie Moraga for poetry and Gloria Anzaldua for her essay contributions. Both women explore imagery and they are more engaged to the audience I feel than the other writers. For Cherrie Moraga I liked the poem “For the Color of My Mother” the title was drawing and the content was touching. How a young girl grows up in the shadow of her mother not speaking until her mother is passing. It brings about the feminist restraint and the nod of approval of how her daughter came to be. And for Gloria Anzaldua I still really enjoyed the Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to 3rd World Women. She brings about women’s struggles most that I can relate to now even though this was written over 30 years ago. She knows how women feel the oppression and the need to succeed in a male dominated world.
I think that Lorde had very complex meanings to masters tool and masters house. A key quote that helps explain the meaning of the two is, ” Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women …, know that survival is not an academic skill.(99)” I think the master’s tool refers to 3rd world women who are acting as token feminist for white feminist. I think the masters house represents the Anglo dominant USA. Lorde claims you can’t beat the master at his own game while being used by him. I think she means that white women feminist aim isn’t to get info from 3rd world women to help the 3rd world women, instead white feminist goal is to just use the womens knowledge however they want to their benefit like a tool. The masters house is the USA which Lorde feels the Anglos basically rule since they get to set the standard for other races to follow. I think Lorde is implying that 3rd world women can only elevate themselves through their races and each other. It is a bo win situation if 3rd worldd women try to rely on white feminist to uplift them.
Jo Carrilo’s poem really illustrated the differences between Anglo and 3rd world women. The key qoute that summed up the understanding gap between the women was, ” And when our white sisters radical friends see us in flesh not as a picture they own, they are not quite as sure if they like us as much, we’re not as happy as we look on their wall”. I think this poem really described how Anglo women believe that 3rd world women are happy to be struggling taking care of kids, providing food for their families, and barely survivng based off of their assumptions. However, these anglo women find out when they meet these third world women, their fluffy assumptions of the womens lives are false. They see these women aren’t happy with their struggling conditions and want better lives.
The master’s tools can be defined as the methods that the “racist patriarchy” uses to belittle the feminist community, or those who are considered the “other.” Audre Lorde also mentions the “fruits” of that same patriarchy as a way to establish a system with a leading head who examines the same things that grow there. The fruits are criticized and pushed down further and further. But the tools used to drive this community down, are not successful, thus the master’s house cannot be dismantled, it or any of the living things in it, with its tools of ignorance.
Because each of the pieces offers insight to a woman’s experiences, I would first ask that the offended reader re-read the text and understand what the points are that are being made. Starting with the description of the creation of a color chart outside of the colored communities, through the poems of how we’re seen by the white woman and who we really are, to insight into international issue such as the immense gas consumption that exemplifies the U.S.’s imperialistic ways. There are several writings in the text that both men and women can relate to, especially once one understands that the issues addressed in the book are not particular only to women of color.
“What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of the same patriarchy?”(page 98) I think this line help me understand who is the master’s tools and home. I feel Audre Lorde tries to express that the tools are the oppressed, in this case the black lesbian feminist, but in general the people of color, the poor people and the people society tries to ignore. Knowing that, then we can conclude that the master’s home is the white dominated society, because it is in that world that these people are oppressed. With that being said, are we then calling the whites the master? I think so.
I really liked what Lorde says about freedom so that we are not used but are creative instead. Lorde says this comes from the difference between the passive “be” and the active “being” (page 99). Knowing this I feel that it gives the oppressed a new tool one that doesn’t belong to the master because in order to understand the difference you have to be oppressed. Which is probably why when the oppressive community wants to find out about what this tool they have to turn to the oppressed. Which is where they begin to “tokenise” people and instead of progress they end up in the same place.
That is why I feel Lorde says “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s home,” (page 99) because if the oppressed does not break away, to find their own voice , their own strengths, they will not be able to break away from the opressor.