Lorde originally delivered this speech on September 29, 1979 at the the Second Sex Conference's _The Personal and the Political Panel_. Lorde used her time to critique the conference itself for excluding marginalized women, particularly poor women, Black women, Third World women, and lesbians. Lorde argued that the power structure and methods of white patriarchy (the master's tools) will not lead to liberation (dismantle the master's house.) For example, Lorde calls out how one paper misguidedly assumes a patriarchal model of nurturance and so wrongly concludes that women "who attempt to emancipate themselves pay perhaps too high a price for the results." However, Lorde notes, there exists crucial shared support systems and interdependence between lesbian women. Lorde explains that interdependence between women is "not pathological but redemptive," a freeing and generative force that allows one to live with purpose and creativity. Lorde critiques "mere tolerance of difference between women" as the "grossest reformism." Instead, we should embrace our different but equal strengths as the path toward a new and better world. >Only within that interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters. Lorde explains that women have been taught to ignore or fear differences. However, liberation can only be had in community that embraces difference. Lorde declares, "divide and conquer must become define and empower." That is, the patriarchal strategy of weaponizing difference must be abandoned for a strategy that clearly understands and leverages differences of perspective and experience. Lorde calls out an old tool of the oppressors to "keep the oppressed occupied with the master's concerns," whereby the oppressed class is burdened with explaining their condition to the dominant class. She explains how this is recreated when women of color are tasked with educating white women. Finally, Lorde calls for everyone to examine our internalized racism, homophobia, and other biases so that we may better understand our conditions and create a better world: >I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.