Discussion Paper

WOMEN STUDIES

[Author Name(s), First M. Last, Omit Titles and Degrees]

[Institutional Affiliation(s)]

As a woman we all experience some sort of women issues as Adichie mentions in her book “we should all be feminists. But I found so many of her stories relevant to me and my experience as women who born and grown up in Iran. I found some of my experiences so close to what adichies says about women have to face in Nigeria. for example, when Adichie talks about how people thinks about the word feminist in Nigeria and how it’s not part of their culture and definition that comes to mind for them is that feminist is women who hates men and does not want to get married. It is exactly what most of people think back in Iran. how a lot of women avoid themselves to be called as a feminist because there is so much negativity towards this word. Besides, when adichie talked about how we raise girls to be successful but not too successful because the higher they go that might change their view about men or marriage.

I remember last summer when I went to Iran for just visit how all the relatives come to my dad and constantly ask him if I want to date someone, or if I decided to get married. And when my dad told them that I just came for a vacation and I have to go back after a month. They warn him to be careful with me or how come he doesn’t want me to get married in my hometown and say with my family. I feel lucky enough because my parents are open minded and they know that my generation is living differently that what they had thought in past and they are fine with it. But I know a lot of my young women in Iran who’s been in a lot of pressure from family and society who sees them as in complete women who cannot find husband just because they want to focus on other things in their life.

Moreover, When Adichie says “Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice.” She basically refers to how society sees women differently than man and how we expect some certain behaviors as norm just for women but we don’t expect man to do the same thing. One example for that is when she tells a story of her friend who was a talented woman that took over a managerial position from a man and after a while other employees at the company complain about her style because from what they see she seems aggressive women. In fact she was simply tried to do the same thing that as her predecessor but since her predecessor was a guy employees accept that behavior from him but not for her. Because women are often considers as very sweet or kind.

How would you connect the arguments made in Adichie’s book to the author you selected? What are connecting arguments or themes? How are they also different from each other?

Adichie also talks about how we should aware of our acts because if we do something over and over it becomes normal. This connects to what Sister Outsider talks about in her essay “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”, that in Audre’s history, the confrontation with differences of race, class, gender, experience of racism, sexism, classism or social elitism, is mediated by parents who opt for silence to protect their children. This is why Audre Lorde's story is one of gradual awareness. This parental strategy sheds light on what will be at the heart of his struggles and his writings, the need to make visible and audible all these differences, sources of oppression in the American society of his time.

In order to articulate his poetry, Audre Lorde converges in his activism this dual concern, in response to his own socialization break the silence and fight against invisibility. Engaged in various social movements (civil rights, women, gays and lesbians) that cross the history of the United States, she chooses not to hide any part of herself, to display in space public the "mosaic" of his identities (Yarnell, et.al.2019), all the differences (of class, race, sex and sexuality, which have constituted throughout his childhood and adolescence as many "handicaps", according to her own words), for which she could not find a hospitable space: she presents herself inseparably as "black, lesbian, feminist, poet, mother, warrior."

In the women's movement, she participates with Barbara Smith, one of the most radical African-American voices in the USA, in organizing the struggle of black feminists and lesbians, with the creation in 1974 of the Combahee River collective. in Boston - who will publish his Manifesto in April 1977, calling for consideration of the interlocking nature of oppression systems. She made the voice of black lesbians heard at a conference in Chicago in December 1977, with her major text, "Transformation of Silence into Language and Action" (to appear in Sister Outsider). The urgency of this call comes in the context of diagnosing her breast cancer: she cannot "afford the luxury" of "choosing between different fronts (Lorde, 1977).

One of the major theoretical and practical is the radical critique of the white middle class American feminists that limited thinking about oppression to gender hierarchy, calling in particular to rethink the articulation of sexism, heterosexism, racism, classism, ageism. It makes it necessary to modify and renew the grids of feminist readings, it denounces as a form of myopia or blindness of the white feminists this non-taking into account of the plural realities, the differences between the women, in particular those which evolve in other social contexts than middle-class white communities.

The interesting element in this journey is Audre Lorde's experience of situations of cumulative disability: a daughter of black migrants, poor workers, considered blind, overweight, discovering her love for women, she is crossroads of multiple sites of related oppressions. And this is how she is repeatedly seen as outsider: marginal in her family, in school, in the world of work, in her friendly circle, in the (very masculine) circle of black writers and poets, in the middle of the left, in the New York lesbian circle. It is also in the marginalized lesbian community, also oppressed, that will impose on her the need to give shape to her rage, to break the silences, exposing the lines of division and sources of oppression at the same time. work, including in this group.

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY Lorde, A. (1977). The transformation of silence into language and action. Identity politics in the women’s movement, 81-84.

Yarnell, L. M., Neff, K. D., Davidson, O. A., & Mullarkey, M. (2019). Gender differences in self-compassion: Examining the role of gender role orientation. Mindfulness, 10(6), 1136-1152.