Audre Lorde's "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." is not just a statement about a tool being tainted by its origin. It's about what kind of tool a "master" would create: Whips. Chains. Violent suppression.

That's the meaning: You cannot just take tools whose purpose and politics is dominance and violence and "make them liberatory". This goes deeper than "just" embedded politics or lofty talks about ethics, it comes down to what kind of relations you believe do and should and must not structure the world.

@tante

This applies to language and words too.

I am getting tired of slurs being "reclaimed" yet the oppressors are still suing them and you can't call them out because everyone else (or a whole country) is now using the word. Frustrating.