What Do We Want From

If White American Feminist Theory Need Not Deal With The Differences Between Us, 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 While You Attend Conferences On Feminist Theory Are, For The Most Part, Poor Women And Women Of Color? What Is The Theory Behind Racist Feminism?

Sadomasochism Is An Institutionalized Celebration Of Dominant/subordinate Relationships. And, It Prepares Us Either To Accept Subordination Or To Enforce Dominance. Even In Play, To Affirm That The Exertion Of Power Over Powerlessness Is Erotic, Is Empowering, Is To Set The Emotional And Social Stage For The Continuation Of That Relationship, Politically, Socially, And Economically.

What Do We Want From Each Other After We Have Told Our Stories

Difference Is That Raw And Powerful Connection From Which Our Personal Power Is Forged... 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. Without Community, There Is No Liberation, Only The Most Vulnerable And Temporary Armistice Between An Individual And Her Oppression... Survival Is Learning To Take Our Difference And Make Them Strengths.

As A Black Lesbian Feminist Comfortable With The Many Different Ingredients Of My Identity, And A Woman Committed To Racial And Sexual Freedom From Oppression, I Find I Am Constantly Being Encouraged To Pluck Out Some One Aspect Of Myself And Present This As The Meaningful Whole, Eclipsing Or Denying The Other Parts Of Self. But This Is A Destructive And Fragmenting Way To Live.