Mab Segrest

As Segrest writes, her book "is by a lesbian, who cannot look at race in an uncomplicated way, who has worked to articulate the many interfaces among misogyny, racism and homophobia in a culture ravaged by all three" (Segrest ix). In her political and personal awakening, then, Segrest recognizes that hatred, fear and prejudice come in many flavors, and the courage that rises to meet that hatred, fear and prejudice also come in many flavors. She did not suddenly awaken to the destructive nature of "misogyny, racism and homophobia." To the contrary, in certain areas of life she went through great resistance before she was able to accept the truth about herself and her society.

Segrest was not a latecomer to race consciousness. As a child, she says, she was already averse to white racism:

In the white household where I was raised, themes of race permeated our family interactions. After my parents bought our first television in the mid-1950s, civil rights battles . . . became a fare as regular as tomatoes or iced tea. . . . I often replicated these battles with my siblings as white reactions increasingly repulsed me (Segrest 2

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-wife and her friend. Such a person would be recognizing that justice is won not by defending one's own race at any cost, but rather by seeking to discover the truth, without consideration of race. The major awakening which led her to combine sexual and gender politics with racial politics occurred in the early and mid-1970s when she came to accept her lesbianism. Her falling in love with a woman forced her to confront an issue which she had previously tried to deny as central to both her personal and her political identity. However, as in her fight against racism and socioeconomic injustice, as with her open fight against the activities of the Ku Klux Klan and her own family's conservatism, when she came to face and accept her lesbianism, she held nothing back on that front either: I "came out" with an energy that gave everything an intense charge. . . . Fury came up through my feet when I suddenly saw all the evidence of woman-hatred in the world around me and in the culture I had studied---the rape, battery, violence and the suppression of creativity (Segrest 40). In other words, Segrest was quick at each level of her awakening to see the bigger issues involved. After accepting her lesbianism, she did not merely fight ag
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Approximate Word count = 1573
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)