Audrey Lord: The Cancer Journals and Multiple Stigma

RACE, ILLNESS (Cancer), SEXUALITY, OBESITY


Published in 1980, this a chronicle of poet Audre Lorde’s experience with breast cancer. She began writing journal entries a few months after her mastectomy.Lorde's eventually died from a recurrence of breast cancer.

When The Cancer Journals was published in 1980, Audre Lorde was already an important feminist poet. She had often criticized the popular feminist movement for focusing exclusively on white women, and she insisted on talking about race and class as compounding forms of oppression (STIGMA), including the racist assumptions white women brought to their feminism.

Audre Lorde asks in The Cancer Journals where she can find a model of how to deal with cancer, an understanding or a guide. She also questions Western medicine and asserts that women should control their own health and healing.

Race & Stigma:

• Racial stigma and inequality The concept of an enduring racial stigma afflicting African Americans suggests that any successful and consistent theory of racial inequality must account for the processes that systematically block realization of their human potential. 
• The rewards accruing to the members of a disadvantaged group, given their productivity, are lower than the rewards garnered by others (call this the reward bias argument). 
• Reward bias (“racial discrimination”) in the public sphere is a relatively straightforward, universally recognized problem. 
• Owing to processes unrelated to their innate capabilities, members of the disadvantaged group lack opportunities to realize their productive potential (call this the development bias argument).
• Developmental Bias: racial disparity in developmental opportunities is often neglected moral problem that gives rise to unavoidable conflicts between cherished values and challenges settled intuitions about social justice. 

Sexuality & Stigma

There are several manifestations of sexual stigma these have been identified as enacted sexual stigma, felt sexual stigma and internalized sexual stigma. (based on Goffman)

• Enacted sexual stigma involves an act of discrimination or violence towards members of a sexual minority group. 
• This type of sexual stigma is not reserved for only members of the group but can be directed to the heterosexual family and friends of the individual or even towards those who allied themselves with the minority group.(contagious nature of stigma)
• This is referred to as a courtesy stigma.
• Felt sexual stigma consists of the apprehensiveness that one might have of being labeled with a sexual stigma based on the views and stereotypes that society has placed on sexual minority members. 
• This type of stigma is most likely to affect behavior because of the wide range of individuals that may be influenced by it. 
• An individual may begin to avoid situations where a stigma could be enacted or by avoiding the majority group overall.
•  Felt stigma can be a motivation to confirm a non-stigmatized status (PASS) instead of possibly having their sexuality questioned.
• Internalized sexual stigma becomes a part of a person’s self-identity as they begin to accept a sexual stigma they feel represents their belief system. 
• Their self-concept supports the idea of a particular stigma that society has created through negative or offensive remarks or actions, which consequently creates negative attitudes toward their own personality and sexuality. 
• In other words, the stigmatized individual begins to believe the negative views held against them, and begin to conform to common stereotypes.

Women's Health & Empowerment: "Cancer Inc."

Audre Lorde writes that battling despair means surviving and fighting, and it  means knowing that her work is part of a continuum of women’s work. 

• She questions the powerful medical establishment's insistence on prosthetics and other advances to help people look “normal.” (REFUSES TO COVER OR PASS)
• Believes that an insistence on being physically normal interferes with a woman’s ability to heal. 
• Wants to see women who with cancer as proud survivors

Silence is the Enemy:

Audre Lorde writes that when she was told her tumor was probably malignant she began contemplating her mortality. 

• She found that what she most regretted were her silences. 
• The book transforms silence, turning it into words and thus action.

Blaming the Victim = must hide masectomy