There are moments that reveal to you exactly who you are and why you better be clear about it all. There is a specific kind of exhaustion that comes
There are moments that reveal to you exactly who you are and why you better be clear about it all.
There is a specific kind of exhaustion that comes with watching the wheel turn. You see a new generation arrive with their sharp theories and their checklists of “harm,” and you realize they are still playing with the packaging of a reality they may not have had to fully unwrap yet. That used to be you and your colleagues too. You get it.
Audre Lorde’s work isn’t a museum piece. It was a map drawn in blood by someone who was being hunted by the very systems we still live in. When people critique her for “gender essentialism,” they are often critiquing her for having the courage to name the specific, physical target that the world had already placed on her.
Theory is a luxury of the safe. But WHO is changing systems so that they work for the reality of what it is to be a female human being? Especially when it can be unsafe to even name that you are a woman or girl. 
Theory vs. Survival
Audre Lorde wrote so much about her battle with liver and breast cancer. In The Cancer Journals, she wasn’t writing about a “team sport.” She was writing about the terrifyingly lonely experience of being a Black woman facing mortality in a system that viewed her as a “deviant” or an afterthought.
It is easy to call gender a “construct” when you aren’t currently being denied life-saving care because of your biology. Just like it is easy to say, “race card” or race a “construct” when you have not been targeted, denied, or harmed because of your race….yet. Or when a doctor who believes that ‘everyone is the same’ misses something specific and potentially life-saving about your health condition that actually does impact people like you differently.
When you look back at her life—fighting cancer for fourteen years while writing the very books that gave us the language to even have this conversation—you see a woman who didn’t have time for the “team sport” of social niceties. The stance wasn’t unkind it was simply a very real truth about her experience.
She recognized that while we need community for the struggle, the experience of the body is often a solitary journey. Something frequently asserted especially in mental health and wellness for example, but only “harmful” when a woman says it.
I recall the sadness of being left behind in this journey when a disabled Black woman I was serving as an Independent Living Coordinator simply went to the ER and never came back to us. We had started to organically become friends. Smile, hug, laugh when we saw one another. Smile and laugh through our entire visit.
After her shocking death, I talked to the family and friends. Theories. Thoughts. But, in the end, I just missed her so much and still do. She was filled with life and there were no signs that death was near. She was relatively young. That exuberant energy I liked about her and looked forward to connecting to, gone.
Why the “Harm” Critique Feels Incomplete
First, not every position that people disagree with is “harm.” Harm is child abuse, rape, emotional abuse, domestic violence, poverty, physical assault, police brutality, child rape, genocide, murder…..not words on a page that you disagree with. That needs to be said because if everything is “harm”, nothing is harm. Harm is very specific and Survivors of harm have yet to have people listen to and act upon preventing acts of harm so others don’t suffer. We still have so much work to do.
In any case……
When people call Audre Lorde’s work “harmful” because of “gender essentialism,” they are often critiquing her for naming the target on her back. Like folks do.
Lorde wasn’t being “essentialist” for the sake of being exclusive; she was being precise. She knew that the system doesn’t “deconstruct” you—it treats you as a woman, ignores your pain as a woman, and silences you as a woman. If you aren’t allowed to name that specific experience, you can’t defend yourself against it.
I know. It feels like a team sport when you are in a seminar or on a screen. Everyone cheering one another on, around theory. I was working in nonprofits doing the same thing. Until things I could no longer ignore kept adding up.
Because that feeling evaporates the moment you step into the fluorescent light of a doctor’s office. You sit there with your history and your pain, and you realize the entire room was built for someone else’s comfort.
You feel the icy coldness of a system that views your biology as an inconvenience. They tell you a procedure will be “uncomfortable” when it feels like your body is being broken. And if you make a sound, if you show the human response to torture, they use your own resilience against you. They shame you for not being “strong” enough to endure their neglect. Mock you. Verbally and in writing-just in case. You will never forget that part.
Every woman who has managed to stay here long enough has a version of that story. Each and every one that isn’t connected to certain uplifted characteristics-one of them is being male.
We have stood in that desert and I mean desert, because no one takes your “female human being” side. You can be the GOAT like Serena. You can look like a first name icon who came from a magazine photo shoot. You can have educational credentials. You can be well known in the community. You can be famous. You can be a doctor just like them. But you are a woman or girl then good luck to you because people treat you according to what that means in this world.
We have watched our children’s lives hang in the balance while someone stood in a white coat looked at a clock. For years my family reminded me: “Listen he is still lucky just to be here.” They were correct but not because I didn’t cry out for my entire pregnancy.
When a woman starts carrying a baby, it feels as if that multiplies the invisibility. Now I know it is the same when it is you and anything additional….tumor, fibroids, pain, poverty, weight…. Add anything to a woman and people start acting like they can’t see you or hear you anymore. That’s societal math for you.
Women who have navigated systems for years and had poor outcomes and close calls aren’t attempting to excluding others. Such women know and have the scars to prove that the system doesn’t care about your “performance” or your “identity” when it is deciding whose pain to ignore. It targets you because of the body you inhabit.
When you need medical care, they don’t know what is wrong with you because the resources, the research, and the priority all went to catering to male comfort and pleasure. I hate that truth, but it is the truth.
The Needle is Stuck on Repeat
It is heartbreaking to watch the script repeat. You see younger women walking into the same traps, armed only with new words for old violences. They think the world has changed because the language has changed. But the systems still prioritize male pleasure, male power, and male peace. They will let you die in the hallway and then speak well of your “strength” at the funeral, served alongside a nice meal.
Critiquing the work of those who came before is easy. It’s a way to FEEL like we are moving forward while the vehicle isn’t moving much at all. But that work is the only reason there is a floor beneath us at all. Lorde wasn’t trying to be perfect for a future audience. She was trying to survive a Tuesday.
Something different comes over you when you live through it because you know-like you knew hundreds of times (probably thousands now but you just got tired of counting) that when you are alone at the police station or the hospital bed, the “team” isn’t coming fast enough to change the system. (How insurance bills, what is approved, options, care, treatment with dignity, follow up care, who stays and who goes, who takes over the stack of a woman’s responsibilities…)
Someone has to change it but they must first recognize that there are these beautiful and miraculous human beings called women and girls. These folks have specific needs in this world just to survive. Other needs must be firmly set in place for advancement.
Who changes systems that harm women?
There are moments that reveal to you exactly who you are and why you better be clear about it all. Where it becomes essential to name the place the specific place where the “Master’s house” tries to break you. Because as a woman or girl, you stand in a world built for the pleasure and comfort of certain men.
Like the Warrior Poet asserts, solidarity is a goal, self-reliance is the survival requirement. Moments when only your own voice is there. And you need that voice to be as sharp, precise, specific, and as “essential” as the very real threat you are facing. Every woman who has stood in that desert, felt the sting of the “modern torture” of medical neglect, and chose to keep breathing out of pure defiance—that is the lineage of the Warrior Poet.
She did not leave this earth until she had her say.
**Women and girls have proof of all of this through stories, but the thing is because we are female human beings too few will listen-and that includes women.
Meanwhile women will continue to uplift, protect, support, and platform the every word a man says and dare other women to critique or criticize him.
The Isolation of Lived Experience
The Body is Not a Debate: In a medical setting, the “construct” disappears. You are dealing with a biological reality that the system is often poorly equipped to handle, especially through an intersectional lens.
The “Double Jeopardy”: For Black women specifically, that “aloneness” is compounded. You aren’t just a “female” in that office; you are a Black woman navigating a system with a documented history of ignoring your pain levels and over-pathologizing your behavior.
The Limits of Inclusion: While inclusive language aims to make sure no one is left out, it can sometimes “sanitize” the very specific, raw, and often violent experiences that are unique to the female body. When the language becomes too broad, it can feel (and harm you) like the specific struggles you’ve endured are being erased or “watered down.”