… our sons must become men – such men as we hope our daughters, born and unborn, will be pleased to live among. Our sons will not grow into women. Their way is more difficult than that of our daughters, for they must move away from us, without us. Hopefully ours have what they have learned from us, and a howness to forge into their own image.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the unique challenges that sons face as they grow into men, highlighting the hopes parents have for their sons and daughters in their future relationships.
Audre Lorde reflects on the transition from boyhood to manhood, suggesting that while daughters will develop within the influences of family, sons must navigate the world independently. The quote underscores the importance of parenting in shaping the character of sons, with a focus on encouraging them to develop their individuality while carrying forward the lessons learned from their upbringing.
In practice
In a parenting seminar discussing the challenges of raising boys.
The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.
There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.
I know I have a very self-destructive tendency since my mother died, I have got to be honest.
Men live by forgetting and woman live on memories.
Obviously, there is much similarity among the challenges of transgender people and all women - from health care to harassment to discrimination in the workplace.
I am the woman I grew to be partly in spite of my mother, and partly because of the extraordinary love of her best friends, and my own best friends' mothers, and from surrogates, many of whom were not women at all but gay men. I have loved them my entire life, even after their passing.
A good compromise is one where everybody makes a contribution.
It lies in human nature that where you experience your first laughs, you also remember the age kindly.
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