Lesson Notes - Second Wave and Intersections of Race and Social Class

Today's readings included the following:

• Lorde, Audre. "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House." [pdf] (Annotated)
• "National Black Feminist Organization Statement of Purpose" pp. 171-174. (Annotated) 
• "The Combahee River Collective Statement." (Annotated)
• Hayden, Casey, and Mary King. "A Kind of Memo…to a Number of Other Women in the Peace and Freedom Movements" (Annotated)
• McIntosh, Peggy. "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack"

Some questions:

1. According to Hayden and King, why is it kind of difficult to advocate for change for women?
2. Why in what ways are black women's, lesbians, and Third World women's experiences different from white women? (cite specific examples!) Why is it important?
3. What about intersections of social class?
4. What about intersections of heteroxesuality and heteronormativity?
5. What is does the "private is public" position? Why is it so important?
6. How do these readings relate to Friedan's work? Simone de Beauvoir's work? What about our earlier readings from the abolition movement? 

Consider the following quotes from Audrey Lorde's The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House. Explain their meaning and importance:

Poor women and women of Color know there is a difference between the daily manifestations of marital slavery and prostitution because it is our daughters who line 42nd Street. 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? 

Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master's concerns. Now we hear that it is the task of women of Color to educate white women -- in the face of tremendous resistance -- as to our existence, our differences, our relative roles in our joint survival.