A Burst of Light

by Audre Lorde

S/M is not the sharing of power, it is merely a depressing replay of the old and destructive dominant/ subordinate mode of human relating and one-sided power, which is even now grinding our earth and our human consciousness into dust.

S/M is not the sharing of power, it is merely a depressing replay of the old and destructive dominant/ subordinate mode of human relating and one-sided power, which is even now grinding our earth and our human consciousness into dust.

It is reflective of a whole social and economic trend of this country.

Sadomasochism is congruent with other developments going on in this country that have to do with dominance and submission, with disparate power—politically, culturally, and economically.

As Erich Fromm once said, “The fact that millions of people take part in a delusion doesn’t make it sane.”

I’m not questioning anyone’s right to live. I’m saying we must observe the implications of our lives.

I speak not about condemnation but about recognizing what is happening and questioning what it means.

The subject of revolution is ourselves, is our lives.

It is in the interest of a capitalist profit system for us to privatize much of our experience.

there is an underlying integrity that asserts itself in all of our actions.

The question I ask, over and over, is who is profiting from this? When sadomasochism gets presented on center stage as a conflict in the feminist movement, I ask, what conflicts are not being presented?

I feel that we work toward making integrated life-decisions about the networks of our lives, and those decisions lead us to other decisions and commitments—certain ways of viewing the world, looking for change. If they don’t lead us toward growth and change, we have nothing to build upon, no future.

You do not get people to work against what they have identified as their basic self-interest.

I do not believe that sexuality is separate from living. As a minority woman, I know dominance and subordination are not bedroom issues.

If it were only about personal sexual exchange or private taste, why would it be presented as a political issue?

Feelings are not wrong, but you are accountable for the behavior you use to satisfy those feelings.

The s/ m concept of “vanilla” sex is sex devoid of passion. They are saying that there can be no passion without unequal power. That feels very sad and lonely to me, and destructive. The linkage of passion to dominance/ subordination is the prototype of the heterosexual image of male-female relationships, one which justifies pornography. Women are supposed to love being brutalized. This is also the prototypical justification of all relationships of oppression—that the subordinate one who is “different” enjoys the inferior position.

We, as women and as feminists, must scrutinize our actions and see what they imply, and upon what they are based.

But it is necessary for you to stop oppressing me through false judgment. I do not want you to ignore my identity, nor do I want you to make it an insurmountable barrier between our sharing of strengths.

But what is normal in this deranged society by which we are all trapped?

it puts a terrible weapon into the hands of your enemies to be used against you to silence you, to keep you docile and in line. It also serves to keep us isolated and apart.

We cannot afford to waste each other’s energies in our common battles.

Just as racist stereotypes are the problem of the white people who believe them, so also are homophobic stereotypes the problem of the heterosexuals who believe them. In other words, those stereotypes are yours to solve, not mine, and they are a terrible and wasteful barrier to our working together. I

no matter how difficult it may be to look at the realities of our lives, it is there that we will find the strength to change them. And to suppress any truth is to give it power beyond endurance.

He said, “Humanity can now destroy itself,” and he wept.

How does a system bent upon our ultimate destruction make the unacceptable gradually tolerable?

How are we persuaded to participate in our own destruction by maintaining our silences?

How is the systematic erosion of freedoms gradually accomplished? What kind of gradual erosion of our status as United States citizens will Black people be persuaded first to ignore and then to accept?

Eventually institutional racism becomes a question of power and privilege rather than merely color, which then serves as a subterfuge.

we all need to examine without sentimentality or stereotype what the injection of Africanness into the socio-political consciousness of the world could mean.

We are Lesbians and Gays of Color surviving in a country that defines human—when it concerns itself with the question at all—as straight and white.

If we raise our children in the absence of an accurate picture of the world as we know it, then we blunt their most effective weapons for survival and growth, as well as their motivation for social change.

Our parents are examples of survival as a living pursuit,

We know that all our work upon this planet is not going to be done in our lifetimes, and maybe not even in our children’s lifetimes. But if we do what we came to do, our children will carry it on through their own living. And if we can keep this earth spinning and remain upon it long enough, the future belongs to us and our children because we are fashioning it with a vision rooted in human possibility and growth, a vision that does not shrivel before adversity.

I believe that raising children is one way of participating in the future, in social change.

We had to learn and to teach what works while we lived, always, with a cautionary awareness of the social forces aligned against us

Learning to recognize and label my angers, and to put them where they belonged in some effective way, became crucial—not only for my own survival, but also for my children’s.

If I could not learn to handle my anger, how could I expect the children to learn to handle theirs in some constructive way—not deny it or hide it or self-destruct upon it?

As a Black Lesbian mother I came to realize I could not afford the energy drains of denial and still be open to my own growth. And if we do not grow with our children, they cannot learn.

And what our children learned about using their own power and difference within our family, I hope they will someday use to save the world. I can hope for no less. I know that I am constantly learning from them. Still.

Gays and Lesbians of Color are different because we are embattled by reason of our sexuality and our Color, and if there is any lesson we must teach our children, it is that difference is a creative force for change, that survival and struggle for the future is not a theoretical issue. It is the very texture of our lives,

Yet I trust them, deeply, because they were raised to be their own woman, their own man, in struggle, and in the service of all of our futures.

While I watched this movie I was also thinking about the course of my own life, the paths I feel bound for inside myself, the way of life that feels most real to me. And I wonder what I may be risking as I become more and more committed to telling whatever truth comes across my eyes my tongue my pen—no matter how difficult—the world as I see it, people as I feel them. And I wonder what I will have to pay someday for that privilege, and in whose coin? Will those forces which serve non-life in the name of power and profit kill me too, or merely dismember me in the eyes of whoever can use what I do?

But now that I am becoming less lonely and more loved, I am also becoming more visible, and therefore more vulnerable.

I want to write down everything I know about being afraid, but I’d probably never have enough time to write anything else.

Coming to terms with the sadness and the fury. And the curiosity.

I suspect I shall have to concentrate upon how painful it is to think about death all the time.

I am listening to what fear teaches. I will never be gone. I am a scar, a report from the frontlines, a talisman, a resurrection.

I was filled with a sense of self-answering necessity, of commitment as a survival weapon. Our battles are inseparable. Every person I have ever been must be actively enlisted in those battles, as well as in the battle to save my life.

Survival isn’t some theory operating in a vacuum. It’s a matter of my everyday living and making decisions.