For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power is rediscovered. It is this real connection, which is so feared by a patriarchal world.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of women's nurturing connections, framing them as a source of strength rather than a weakness.
Audre Lorde captures the essence of women's relationships, highlighting that the desire to nurture and support one another is a powerful and redeeming quality. In a society that often fears and devalues these connections, Lorde suggests that recognizing and embracing this nurturing instinct can lead to the rediscovery of true power and identity among women, which stands in contrast to patriarchal values that may seek to undermine it.
In practice
Using this quote in a women's empowerment seminar to highlight the strength of female bonds.
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.
A lot of my chosen family is black and I say that unabashedly. For anyone who doesn't understand that, they just don't understand me and my generation because especially in the LGBT community, the concept of chosen family is so important and it's a survival tactic.
Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.
Compliments win friends, honesty loses them.
So what’s wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?
The question isn't, 'What do we want to know about people?', It's, 'What do people want to tell about themselves?'
The widely held belief that the heterosexual nuclear family is best for children has long been used as a smoke screen for homophobia and as a talking point to quash marriage-equality efforts.
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