"Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests"
About this Quote
Lorde doesn’t bother with polite phrasing; she goes straight for the wiring. “Programmed” is the tell: this isn’t a personal failing or a few bad choices, it’s social conditioning installed early and reinforced everywhere. The line targets a specific trap Black women are pushed into under racism and patriarchy at once: being told your value is legible only through male approval, then being pitted against other women as rivals for a resource that was made scarce on purpose.
The subtext is strategic. Lorde is naming how systems protect themselves by recruiting the oppressed into their own management. If women are busy auditioning for male attention - and measuring each other by proximity to it - they have less time, less trust, and fewer structures for collective power. Competition becomes a kind of social tax: it feels private and interpersonal, but it keeps political change expensive. “Define ourselves” underscores the deepest harm: not simply losing opportunities, but losing language for the self that isn’t borrowed from someone else’s gaze.
Context matters because Lorde is writing out of Black feminist and lesbian feminist struggle, in which “male attention” isn’t just romance; it’s safety, status, and sometimes survival in a culture that punishes Black women for being too much and too independent. Her intent isn’t to shame desire. It’s to insist on a reorientation: away from the audition and toward “common interests,” a phrase that sounds almost plain until you hear the provocation inside it - solidarity as a radical, disciplined choice rather than a feel-good slogan.
The subtext is strategic. Lorde is naming how systems protect themselves by recruiting the oppressed into their own management. If women are busy auditioning for male attention - and measuring each other by proximity to it - they have less time, less trust, and fewer structures for collective power. Competition becomes a kind of social tax: it feels private and interpersonal, but it keeps political change expensive. “Define ourselves” underscores the deepest harm: not simply losing opportunities, but losing language for the self that isn’t borrowed from someone else’s gaze.
Context matters because Lorde is writing out of Black feminist and lesbian feminist struggle, in which “male attention” isn’t just romance; it’s safety, status, and sometimes survival in a culture that punishes Black women for being too much and too independent. Her intent isn’t to shame desire. It’s to insist on a reorientation: away from the audition and toward “common interests,” a phrase that sounds almost plain until you hear the provocation inside it - solidarity as a radical, disciplined choice rather than a feel-good slogan.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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