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My Dearest Intersectional Sisters Analysis

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My Dearest Intersectional Sisters, I address this to you for selfish reasons. In each one of you I envision myself, and by recognizing your existence, I am legitimizing my own. Something I was in desperate need of over this course, as I am sure you will be too. This is not an easy burden to admit, nor is it one that is easily dealt with. Don 't be fooled by the scatters of Audre Lorde and the seemingly intersectional works you notice in the beginning, as I made the mistake of doing. If this course was a means by which to empower us, I would not be able to count the number of individuals who share our history, our culture and our beautifully melanated exteriors on a single hand. So it is with a heavily lifted heart that I write this too you. …show more content…

Our womanhood is a trait that cannot be hidden, but I urge you to consider this; Why should we apologize for it? Is it because accepting being a woman-identified-woman means accepting those innermost desires and urges that our male counterparts mistake for weakness? I speak, of course, of Audre Lorde’s definition of the erotic. The erotic should not be confused with the pornographic. It is not an exploitation of women 's bodies, it is a celebration of the power inside us. An empowering release and “Within the celebration of the erotic in all our endeavors, [our] work becomes a conscious decision - a longed-for bed which [we] enter gratefully and from which [we] rise up empowered” (340). The erotic is going beyond the physicalities of our being women. It is the sensual touch of hands, it is taking back our sexuality. It is an empowering, orgasmic energy that radiates off of each of us when we accept its …show more content…

We also must let go of the idea of wanting a heterosexual lifestyle. Throughout LGBTQ history, equal rights somehow got equated to marriage equality. In this capitalist society we are currently living in, marriage and procreation are shown as the ultimate goal to strive towards, and so we, as societies scapegoats, put all of our efforts into making it so we could have these heterosexual practices. Oh yes, we are society 's scapegoats. As John D’Emilio put it, “...while capitalism has knocked the material foundation away from family life, lesbians, gay men, and heterosexual feminists have become the scapegoats for the social instability of the system.” (473). We are being used to reinforce heterosexuality by being offered as a darker, alternative lifestyle with no prospects and no chance of being “normal”. Heterosexuals look to us as a low-class working citizen looks to a homeless man; “Well it could be worse. I could be that poor

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