ABSTRACT
I was asked to contribute some thoughts toward a new agenda for the women’s movement, one which placed community building and empowerment of our marginalized sisters as central to the feminist struggle. The language of community, empowerment, and sisterhood is evocative and hopeful and, at first, it made sense. As I began gathering my thoughts and revisiting accounts of women’s struggles and action, I found myself returning to the words of Aurora Levins Morales. I cannot start from a place of community and sisterhood. I must start from separation, from difference. First, I argue that a women’s movement committed to community building and empowerment must start by recognizing and honoring difference. Surface claims of sisterhood crafted in images of connectedness and belonging often serve both to mask and to reinforce the many boundaries of difference that separate women and the relations of power and inequality which justify and naturalize these divisions. Second, I contend that the current discourse of blame and shame targeting poor women, especially poor women of color, is not marginal but central to the continued divisiveness among women and to the oppression of all women. Finally, those committed to taking the
knowledge, experiences, and concerns of “women at the margins” seriously need to grapple honestly with the power relations at work among women as part of a vibrant women’s movement.
