Dethroning Tyrannies
Exploring the legacy of Audre Lorde
You’ve perhaps never heard of Audre Lorde, or know very little abut her.
Don’t feel bad. She likely never came up in your formal education.
I discovered Audre Lorde in 2011 by stumbling upon her book, The Cancer Journals, in a West Chester, Pennsylvania used bookstore. It caught my eye at the time, having just lost an uncle to lung cancer. Audre Lorde wrote the book in 1980 about her struggle with breast cancer, which took her life at the age of 58 on November 17, 1992.
The Cancer Journals consists of an introduction and three chapters, each featuring passages from Lorde’s diary. I might have slid the book back in place and never thought of Audre Lorde again, had it not been for reading these lines as I thumbed through the pages:
“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. What are the words you do not have yet? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?”
It was Audre Lorde who challenged me to face the “tyrannies” that I “swallow day by day”. What are these tyrannies? The stories, scripts, roles, and pressures of who we are supposed to be… told to be… expected to be. Audre Lorde especially felt this as a black lesbian feminist woman in the 50’s. Her male contemporary in this identity struggle was James Baldwin. Baldwin wrote, “It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”
Let me ask you something. Do you think you have swallowed any “tyrannies”? An imposed script, role or expectations, which you internalized and accept? Are there “silences” in your life that are sabotaging your happiness, well-being, and self-actualization?
Let me toss something out for your consideration.
Maybe it’s…
all the words you won’t say
all the feelings you won’t feel
all the questions you won’t ask
all the doubts you won’t voice
all the hurts you won’t admit
all the desires you won’t express
all the dreams you won’t embrace
all the secrets you won’t share
all the risks you won’t take
all the wounds you won’t face
all the intuitions you won’t trust
all the parts you won’t accept
all the vulnerabilities you won’t reveal
all the shame you won’t relinquish
all the masks you won’t shed
all the help you won’t request
all the power you won’t own
all your beauty you won’t see
all the love you won’t receive
… that keeps you walled off from the life you want.
Audre Lorde would say, yes. She wrote, “If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.”
Who is Audre Lorde?
Audre Lorde, born to Caribbean immigrants in Harlem, was an American writer, professor, philosopher, intersectional feminist, poet and civil rights activist. She described herself as a “black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet.” Despite being legally blind, she began to read and write almost as soon as she could talk. She was the first black student admitted at her gifted high school, and published a poem in Seventeen magazine when she herself was 17.
From 1972 to 1987, Lorde resided on Staten Island. During that time, in addition to writing and teaching she co-founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. For over a decade, she was a professor of English at City University of New York (CUNY). She fought for the creation of a black studies department, and was distinguished as the Thomas Hunter chair.
It was the 1976 release of Coal, a collection of poetry by Audre Lorde, that established Lorde as an influential voice in the Black Arts Movement. She was the recipient of many honors and awards, including the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit, which conferred the mantle of New York State poet for 1991-93. In designating her New York State’s Poet Laureate, Governor Mario Cuomo praised her: “She cries out against injustice as the voice of indignant humanity. Audre Lorde speaks with a power and eloquence that reaches and touches people everywhere.”
As a poet, activist an intellectual giant, it would be impossible to cover the wide-reaching impact of Audre Lorde’s life and work. Perhaps Audre Lorde is most known for her impact on the development of feminism. She is considered a pioneer of third-wave feminism, vigorously asserting the necessity for intersectionality in the movement, which she articulated in her “theory of difference.”
It would be unthinkable to adequately convey the impact Audre Lorde had on the development of feminism. I would place her right next to a philosopher I previously covered in this series, Simone de Beauvoir. Her insistence that her race, gender, sexuality, health, and motherhood were all unique but intertwined identities was an important contribution to her work as a philosopher and feminist.
Lorde set out to confront issues of racism in feminist thought. She maintained that a great deal of the scholarship of white feminists served to augment the oppression of black women, a conviction that led to a contentious confrontation, most notably in a blunt open letter addressed to the fellow radical lesbian feminist Mary Daly, to which Lorde claimed she received no reply.
To understand Audre Lorde’s impact on feminism, there are a few important distinctions to be made. You will see there is overlap, but if you want to explore the landscape of racism and feminism, you should familiarize yourself with the following terms and concepts:
Intersectionality - a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, is the acknowledgement that everyone has their own unique experiences of discrimination and oppression, given factors such as gender, race, class, sexual orientation, physical ability, etc. Intersectionality recognizes the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other. For example, what if you were a 65-year-old black lesbian woman. The oppression or prejudice this person might experience could be a confluence of racism, ageism, sexism, and sexual orientation discrimination. This would be different than if you were a 35-year-old white heterosexual woman. This person might be a victim of sexism, but not the other discriminatory areas.
Black feminism - a branch of feminism that focuses on the African-American woman’s experiences and recognizes the deleterious combination of racism and sexism. The black feminist tradition has a rich history worth exploring. Audre Lorde asserted that the prejudice and oppression one feels as a white woman is the not same as the prejudice and oppression experienced as a black woman, and that these differences are significant. Lorde wrote, “The oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true, but that does not mean it is identical within those differences.”
Intersectional feminism - puts a spotlight on the complex and cumulative manner in which the effects of different forms of gender discrimination combine, overlap, or intersect. Discrimination don’t exist in a vacuum – for those who embody different marginalized identities, these often overlap and amplify each other to create a unique experience of discrimination that is more than just the sum of its parts. Audre Lorde wrote a short essay about this entitled, There is No Hierarchy of Oppressions. Here are a few book suggestions for learning more about intersectional feminism.
I recently published an article about my own journey in feminism, An Unlikely Feminist: The humbling journey of a white, American, cisgender, heterosexual, religious male... becoming an intersectional feminist.
Lesbian feminism - a subset of feminism, lesbian feminists consider same-sex relationships legitimate and use their lesbian identity as a basis for community building and collective action. Lesbian feminism challenges the perception of heterosexuality and male supremacy as “normal” and presents alternative ways of thinking about gender and power.
Womanism - a term originating from the work of African American author Alice Walker, which holds at its core that mainstream feminism is a movement led by white women to serve white women’s goals and can often be indifferent to, or even in opposition to, the needs of Black women. Both the empowerment of women and the upholding of Black cultural values are seen as important to Black women's existence. In this view, the very definition of “the feminine” and “femininity” must be re-examined and contextualized.
Third-wave feminism - while the advances of second-wave feminism had undoubtedly achieved more equality and rights for women, the movement that emerged in the early 1990s focused on tackling problems that still existed, including sexual harassment in the workplace and a shortage of women in positions of power. Grounded in the civil-rights advances of the second wave, Gen X third-wave feminists born in the 1960s and 1970s embraced diversity and individualism in women, and sought to redefine what it meant to be a feminist. The third wave saw the emergence of nee feminist currents and theories such as intersectionality, sex positivity, vegetarian ecofeminism, transfeminism, and postmodern feminism.
To understand all four waves of feminism, this article is helpful.
Audre Lorde and the Theory of Difference
Audre Lorde’s activism, poetry, and theory remains some of the most influential feminist work in history. Much of Lorde’s work was formed on her experiences of racism, homophobia, and oppression throughout her life in the U.S. Audre Lorde documented her “theory of difference” in 1984 in her book of speeches and essays, Sister Outsider.
Published in Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde’s “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” is a powerful essay that calls for women to unite, form a cohesive movement, and recognize forms of oppression that go beyond sexism.
Audre Lorde wrote:
“Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.”
The emergence of intersectionality in mainstream feminism gives rise to the recognition of difference. Intersectionality analyzes the relationship between mutually existing oppressions of gender, race, class, sexuality and age. The concept is not exclusive to, the Third Wave feminist movement, though it was popularized by it.
Audre Lorde applied her theory of difference to politics, and to challenge the patriarchal construct of society. Political systems, historically, have been constructed around the parameters of masculinity. Lorde asserted that the competition, hierarchy, and aggression evident in politics are afforded to hegemonic men, and determine all others as deviant.
Think about this. The U.S. is pushing 250 years old. There have been 46 presidencies. Not one of them has been a woman. What??? Does that make sense to you? Never once a woman.
Audre Lorde’s importance to the history of African American political thought derives from her path breaking articulation in the 1970s and 80s of a “politics of difference.” That politics was largely predicated on her own identity as a black lesbian feminist who found herself marginalized from the leftwing social movements that most affected her: the feminist movement, the black freedom movement, and the lesbian and gay liberation movement. In other words, even in the movements that most represented Audre Lorde’s identity and philosophy was silenced.
In her fiery essay “Master’s Tools Will Never Take Down the Master’s House”, she wrote:
“For the master’s tool 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.”
Audre Lorde’s call for the restructure of power and recognition of difference laid the groundwork for the ecofeminist movement, which argues that patriarchy and capitalism are the causes of both women’s domination and the degradation of the environment. It should also be noted that Audre Lorde’s work in black feminism included acknowledging and celebrating the Black feminist origins of “self-care”. She wrote, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
Audre Lorde made landmark contributions across the spectrum of all the above terms, concepts and movements I outlined related to feminism. So if Audre Lorde was this extraordinary and accomplished so much, why have most people never heard of her?
Do you really want to know?
The answer isn’t pretty. The answer only serves to further prove her point. Perhaps the biggest reason why you wouldn’t have heard of Audre Lorde is because the intellectual labor of black women has historically been unacknowledged and unrecognized. Even the halls of progressivism have been defined and structured to marginalize or silence many people’s ideas and voices.
This is a topic all it’s own worthy of attention, which is not the focus of this article. To learn more about the topic of the intellectual work of black women, a couple useful resources are:
Audre Lorde was a prolific writer. She published thirteen poetry books, and six prose books. A few of her most known works are:
While I’m at it, a couple useful Audre Lorde biographies I would recommend are:
Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde by Alexis De Veaux
Conversations with Audre Lorde (Literary Conversations Series) by Joan Wylie Hall
Additional interesting video/recording resources are:
Should We care About Audre Lorde?
Maybe you have never before heard of Audre Lorde. Maybe you are wondering what Audre Lorde matters to your life right now. After reading this article, maybe her name will never come up again for you. She died over three decades ago.
I get it. Admittedly, I would have at one time thought this way myself. After all, what does a white, heterosexual, male from Nashville in 2024 (me) have to do with a black, lesbian, feminist woman from New York City in 1950 (Audre Lorde)??? I came to find out, that there was much to learn and gain from understanding Audre Lorde’s story and intellectual labor.
Who and how many people would you say have had the greatest influence upon the way you understand life, the world… or anything? Let’s add up all the people like your parents, teachers, closest friends, peers, social media friends, and the news outlets you watch. How many of these people are more or less like you or people who generally hold similar views and opinions?
Most people naturally seek out information that simply confirms what they already believe. This is called confirmation bias, the tendency of people to favor information that confirms or strengthens their beliefs or values and is difficult to dislodge once affirmed. One way to avoid this is to intentionally seek out differing opinions and perspectives. Seeing the world through the experiences of people different than ourselves is perhaps one of the most significant ways of boosting critical thinking, complex reasoning, higher intelligence, and greater compassion.
On the hand, Audre Lorde and I seemingly have virtually nothing in common. On the other hand, according to Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs she and I have everything in common. We are all 100% human. And although it looks different for each person, we all fundamentally desire, fear and seek the same things. In the interest of greater knowledge, wisdom and compassion, I want to toss out a suggestion. Consider engaging with one of the resources of Audre Lorde in this piece (book, video, recording, article), and then leave a comment and share something you gained by doing so.
Applying the Intersectionality Lens to Your Life
Audre Lorde was an American poet, intersectional feminist, and civil rights activist. She described herself as a “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” who committed her life to addressing injustices such as homophobia, racism, classism and sexism. As a persistent critic of second-wave feminism for its white and heterosexual biases, Lorde's work heavily influenced the discourse of third-wave feminism and modern feminist movements.
Below are some ways we can apply intersectionality to our daily lives:
Look at your own privileges. Reflect upon how all your different social identities – like gender, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, social class, level of education and ability – interact and give privileges and advantages which you may not even have asked for.
Listen and learn. Learn to listen to and respect voices that are different from yours. Include and collaborate with diverse groups of people, especially minoritized voices that are often left behind. Educate yourself on the different kinds of discrimination that minoritized groups face. Do not expect them to put the effort into educating you.
Make space. Give deference to those speaking from their firsthand human experience. Ask yourself if you are the right person to be speaking about certain issues, and make space for people to speak for themselves. Use your position to amplify minoritized voices.
Question how things are done at both individual and institutional levels. People’s values and judgements are often reflected in policies and practices. Question your policymakers on who is being left behind, whose voices are unheard, who will be benefiting from the policy, and who will be adversely affected. Push for inclusive policies that offer equity and justice for those who are the most minoritized. Also, question how you do things within your own spheres of influence, like your home or workplace. In what ways are we complicit in discriminatory attitudes, actions, and structures that maintain certain groups as the majority at the expense of others?
Ask for disaggregated data. Disaggregated data is data that has been broken down into smaller categories, such as gender, region, ethnicity, or marginalized group. Most quantitative data lacks important information on the people who are the most minoritized. Ask for data to be broken down by more than just gender and ethnicity categories to understand who is minoritized and how.
Here are additional thoughts on putting intersectionality into practice. Intersectionality is an analytic tool for studying and challenging complex social inequalities at the nexus of multiple systems of oppression and privilege. Remember that intersectionality is a way of understanding and explaining complexity in the world, in people, and in the human experience. Only by looking through an intersectionality lens will we be able to understand others and ensure that no one is left behind.
In one aspect of my professional work, I have integrated Audre Lorde’s pioneering efforts around intersectionality and oppression in my professional work with people in religious deconstruction, and those suffering from Religious Trauma Syndrome.
I train and certify people to be professional Spiritual Directors in the space of non-religious spirituality, with an emphasis in religious deconstruction, Religious Trauma Syndrome, and existential health.
Intersectionality is the acknowledgement that everyone has their own unique experiences of discrimination and oppression, or in the case of my focus, religious trauma.
In other words, religious deconstruction and religious trauma have important differences depending upon whether, for example, someone is:
Male or Female
White or Black
Age 55 or 25
American or Latino
Heterosexual or LGBTQ+
Former Christian or Former Mormon
Historically, most Spiritual Directors have been white, middle-aged men, who may or may not have done any work around intersectionality. Part of my interests in training non-religious Spiritual Directors is to diversify this group to better represent and understand these group/person-specific dynamics.
It's important that a Spiritual Director broadens their individual perspective to incorporate the different views and experiences of others. Here are a couple examples with resources to explore if you have an interest:
Religious Deconstruction/Reconstruction and LGBTQ+
Three articles to read:
The impact of religious trauma on the LGBTQ+ Community: A Systematic Review
Religious Trauma in LGBTQ+ Individuals: Cultivating Acceptance and Healing
Religious Deconstruction/Reconstruction and African Americans
A video and two articles to watch/read:
Black atheists matter: how women freethinkers take on religion
15 Stories By Black People About The Turning Point That Made Them Leave Christianity
Truly Seeing People
You can’t pluck out one characteristic of a person and think you understand them or their experience of life. John Steinbeck, in The Winter of Our Discontent, wrote, “I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.”
One of the things most of us are taught as children is not to judge others. Right? “Don’t judge a book by its cover!” And yet, despite our best efforts, many of us fall into this trap over and over again.
What do I mean by “judging others”? I mean unfairly jumping to a conclusion based on limited understanding, or seeing another human being through eyes of bias and prejudice. This kind of judging is a way of punishing another person because they do not check the boxes of the person we think they should be. Religion often fuels this judgement mentality.
When we judge people we reduce them down to a handful of characteristics, and draw a negative conclusion about them. This leads to the objectification of the person, whereby we make them the object of our condemnation and vilification.
Judging others is destructive both for the person judging and the person being judged. With all that in mind, here are 6 Reasons Not to Judge People:
1. You don’t know what is going on inside another person.
How many times have you been asked how you are, and said “fine,” even though you weren’t? We all know this is true. We mask our pain. We suffer in silence. We put on the happy/smiley face when we are dying inside. Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean another person isn’t hurting. A person’s actions or behaviors may not be any indication of what is going on inside of them.
2. People are doing the best they can.
I know this is sometimes difficult to believe about another person. I get that. It’s hard for me at times to believe that about others. But think about it. You know it’s true. It’s complicated! Life is complicated! People are complicated! There are a lot of moving parts inside and outside a person. Aren’t we all a little off – carrying pain, unhealed wounds, ways we protect ourselves, and other dysfunctions we have picked up along the way?
3. You don’t have all the answers.
At times we can look at another person’s life and just see all this stupid stuff it appears they’re doing. On the outside looking in, another person’s life seems pretty cut and dry to us in terms of what they should be doing or not doing or how they are handing a situation or whatever. It’s amazing how quickly we turn into the infallible personal life coach when it comes to another person’s life!
4. Being judged hurts.
It’s quite possible that the most painful human feeling is one of being judged. There’s so much involved – silent pain; being misunderstood; rejection in the very moment we most need understanding, love and acceptance.
5. Every human being is worth love and acceptance.
Judging people often leads to objectifying them. People are not objects. A suicide happens every 40 seconds. People will often show up in our lives at the end of their rope… hanging on by a thread. The expression of love, acceptance, understanding and kindness to someone who is struggling or hurting may be the difference between them giving up on themselves and life or finding the courage and hope to keep living."
6. Judging others reinforces the lie.
When we judge others we are perpetuating a toxic delusion on two levels. First, we are reinforcing the lie that a person can be reduced to our perception or experience of them in the moment or over some period of time. This is a denial of the truth that every human being is fundamentally an expression of the one and same pure and ultimate nature or essence. Secondly, judging others reinforces the lie of our separateness, which masks the truth of our underlying oneness.
Dethroning Your Tyrannies
Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” And Norman Cousins wrote, “The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we live.”
Back in the day when I identified as a Christian, I would tell people that I carried Jesus in my heart. And I guess in many ways he still is in terms of my understanding of him now. But I also carry Audre Lorde there. Audre Lorde - that black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet… who would not be silent… who would not swallow the tyrannies of her day… who would speak for those who had no voice… who truly saw people in their complexity and their suffering.
She wrote:
“I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.”
In the name and legacy of Audre Lorde, where do you need to break your silence, and what tyranny must you liberate yourself from? Maybe we need to do less looking at people, but truly seeing them in the complexities of who they are. What if we stopped judging people, and tried understanding them.
Intersectionality and Religious Deconstruction
The core insight of intersectionality and religious deconstruction is that religious harm is never just religious harm. It is always shaped by race, gender, sexuality, class, ability, culture, and colonial history. Likewise, religious liberation is never just spiritual liberation. It must address the full ecology of a person’s lived experience.
There are several layers that connect intersectionality to religious deconstruction. I’ll mention a few:
Layer 1 — Identity Axes (the person)
Gender
Race
Sexuality
Class
Ability
Neurodivergence
Immigration status
Cultural background
Layer 2 — Religious Structures (the system)
Doctrine
Patriarchy
Purity culture
Colonial theology
Clerical authority
Scriptural literalism
Evangelism
Shame-based moral formation
Layer 3 — Social Power (the environment)
Family expectations
Community surveillance
Nationalism
Legal structures
Education
Media narratives
Layer 4 — Embodied Impact (the body)
Trauma responses
Interoceptive disruption
Shame conditioning
Gendered embodiment
Sexual repression
Somatic fragmentation
I created a reflective tool for mapping how identity, power, and embodiment shaped your religious experience — and how liberation unfolds.
This tool works because it moves deconstruction out of the purely intellectual realm and into the somatic, relational, and structural layers where harm actually lived.
1. Identity Mapping
Prompt: Which parts of my identity were most policed, erased, or controlled by my religious upbringing?
Create a list or “identity constellation” including:
Gender
Sexuality
Race/ethnicity
Class
Ability
Neurodivergence
Body size
Cultural background
Family role (eldest daughter, pastor’s kid, immigrant child, etc.)
Purpose: To name the specific identity axes where religious systems exerted pressure
2. Systemic Mechanisms of Control
Prompt: How did the religious system target or regulate each identity axis?
Map the mechanisms:
Doctrine
Purity culture
Gender roles
Clerical authority
Shame-based moral formation
Colonial theology
Evangelism
Surveillance (community, family, leadership)
Purpose: To reveal that harm wasn’t random — it was structured.
3. Embodied Impact
Prompt: How did these mechanisms shape my body, emotions, and sense of self?
Look for:
Shame responses
Hypervigilance
Disembodiment
Sexual repression
Interoceptive numbness
Chronic guilt
People-pleasing
Fear of desire or intuition
Purpose: To connect identity-level harm to somatic patterns.
4. Internalized Narratives
Prompt: What stories did I absorb about myself because of these pressures?
Examples:
“My desires are dangerous.”
“My body is sinful.”
“My voice is a threat.”
“Obedience equals worth.”
“My culture is inferior.”
Purpose: To surface the scripts that still operate unconsciously.
5. Points of Rupture
Prompt: When did these narratives begin to crack? What moments, relationships, or experiences destabilized them?
Look for:
First doubts
First embodied “no”
First experience of joy outside the system
First encounter with a liberatory text or community
First moment of cognitive dissonance
Purpose: To honor the courage and clarity that initiated deconstruction.
6. Liberation Needs
Prompt: What does liberation look like for each identity axis? What do I need now?
Examples:
Gender: agency, fluidity, voice
Sexuality: pleasure, safety, exploration
Race/culture: reclamation, decolonization, ancestral connection
Body: rest, sensuality, presence
Mind: epistemic autonomy, curiosity
Community: chosen kinship, mutual liberation
Purpose: To articulate the shape of healing.
7. Ritual Supports
Prompt: What rituals, symbols, or practices support this liberation?
Examples:
For gender liberation: fire rituals, boundary-setting rites, voice reclamation
For somatic healing: breathwork, grounding, movement, water rituals
For decolonization: land-based practices, ancestral offerings, language reclamation
For shame release: composting rituals, shadow integration, grief circles
For relational repair: chosen family ceremonies, mutual witnessing
Purpose: To turn insight into embodied, communal practice.
8. Integration & Rewilding
Prompt: How do I weave these liberated identities into a coherent, living spirituality?
Consider:
Symbolic lexicons
Archetypes that resonate
Nature motifs that mirror your journey
Community structures that sustain you
Values that anchor your rewilded path
Purpose: To move from deconstruction → reconstruction → rewilding.
In Summary
If you haven’t heard of Audre Lorde, it may be because the intellectual labor of black women is unfairly unrecognized.
The theory of intersectionality transformed our understanding of discrimination and oppression… thank you Audre Lorde.
Sometimes our silence is the loudest statement we make.
When we look at people, are we actually seeing them?
“I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.”
- Audre Lorde
♥️
This writing has been a wonderful gift on a sunny Sunday morning in Seattle. I never heard of Audre Lorde previous to reading this, will certainly explore her more now. Thank you for taking the time to share this and shining the spotlight on her.