With each of my labels I, like Lorde, find identity and comfort, as well as fear and isolation. The narrative dictated to my gender by the dominant male gender often confounds the search for the true narrative of my life. As a result, I have often subscribed to the central insight that silence is a response to internalized or illicit actions, and therefore silence is necessary (Olson 57). Such prolonged male control finds each woman confined in silence to “draw the face of her own fear; fear of contempt, of censorship, of some judgement, of recognition, of challenge, of ambition”, and recognizing that it is in silence that we are immobilized not in our differences, but in our silence (Lord 21-22). Lorde argues that "differences within the self are a strength to be called upon rather than a responsibility to be changed" and allowing differences to work together refutes a history of limitations (Alexander