"-To take our differences and make them strengths"

    Today's readings highlighted a great barrier that faces social progression in any situation, which is the inability of a group of oppressed people to look past their own differences and unify against their oppressors. This can be a subconscious behavior, but is most often very conscious, as it was in the case of race creating a divide among women. Rather than thinking in the unified way of "We are women", they thought in the individualistic, inefficient way of "I am a black woman" and "I am a white woman". Every aspect of white privilege that was highlighted by Peggy McIntosh permeated the women's rights movement, barring their unification and prolonging their oppression.
    This problematic way of thinking spread not only to race, but to virtually every difference that exists between them. Women of lower socioeconomic status and women who did not fit the heternormative model of sexuality were also prone to this systemic divide in interests. Less attention was given to them by the elite white women, and therefore the women's rights movement lost potentially millions of supporters. To have looked past their differences would have been to bolster their anti-patriarchal front. That being said, they should certainly not have forgotten their differences, but rather merely shown how their differences did not weaken their efforts. I loved the way Lorde worded their opinion on this matter, stating that "community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist."
   
     As I read the piece about white privilege, I couldn't help but thinking of how it applies to matters other than race. Being a gay male, there were certain points in the piece which prompted me to compare "white privilege" to "straight privilege". I found myself applying certain facets of the piece to my own life, and thinking of more that I would add if the piece had been about sexuality. In a similar way to how differences divided women, differences between the gay community continue to divide them and weaken their efforts to achieve equality. Those gays deemed more "feminine" separate themselves from those deemed "masculine", creating the exact kind of divide that existed among women while they strived for equality. In this way, we can see how the problem of race and difference in general affects all social movements, and was in no way limited to that of women's rights. It is something that people of the future must look back upon and learn from if change is to be effected efficiently and quickly.