"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" ?

[hermionesviolin]

So, i finally read Audre Lorde’s “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (in This Bridge Called My Back).

Those of us who stand outside the circle in this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference; those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older, know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those other identified as outside the structures, in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support. (emphases in original)

Sounds like you can dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools but you need new tools to build a new house.

Comments

[samfeasor.livejournal.com]

I agree. That quote was the backbone of my Women's Studies education (my favorite professor was a big fan of Audre Lorde), but I always felt that you need the master's tools to begin change, and then your own to really change things.