An article in this weekend's NYTimes (in the fashion and style section, shockingly!) visits the issue of lesbian separatist communes in the US.
They called it a lesbian paradise, the pioneering women who made their way to St. Augustine, Fla., in the 1970s to live together in cottages on the beach. Finding one another in the fever of the gay rights and women's liberation movements, they built a matriarchal community, where no men were allowed, where even a male infant brought by visitors was cause for debate.Emily Greene was one of those pioneers, and at 62 she still chooses to live in a separate lesbian world. She and 19 other women have built homes on 300 rural acres in northeast Alabama, where the founders of the Florida community, the Pagoda, relocated in 1997.
To be honest, I didn't know these places still existed. I've personally never had the desire to live apart from the larger world, with just lesbians. The closest thing I can think of are the lesbian cruises, which to be honest, don't appeal at all. While in my social world I definitely have a desire to surround myself with other queer people, I choose to live in a group house with straight people. Just as I wouldn't want to live in an entirely racially segregated neighborhood, I wouldn't want to live with just lesbians.
These days, she and other members worry about the future of Alapine, which is one of about 100 below-the-radar lesbian communities in North America, known as womyn's lands (their preferred spelling), whose guiding philosophies date from a mostly bygone era.The communities, most in rural areas from Oregon to Florida, have as few as two members; Alapine is one of the largest. Many have steadily lost residents over the decades as members have moved on or died. As the impulse to withdraw from heterosexual society has lost its appeal to younger lesbians, womyn's lands face some of the same challenges as Catholic convents that struggle to attract women to cloistered lives.
As the article implies, I think the interest in these types of communities is generational. There was a strong separatist faction in the lesbian feminist movement of the 1970s and this seems to be a remnant of it. Women from that generation faced a whole different set of challenges growing up lesbian, and the women in this article seem to have reacted to those challenges by wanting to create their own isolated communities.
My main problem with these communes (besides my lack of desire to be part of one) is that they do nothing to push, challenge or transform the wider society. It's commonly known that when someone knows a queer person they are much more likely to be accepting of queer people overall. If we separate ourselves, what are we doing to change the world for new lesbian's growing up? That's the other challenge of these communities. They are extremely exclusive and only available to a certain sector of the population. Women with money, women without strong ties to men, women of certain races and backgrounds.
These communities also don't seem to reflect the growing diversity of the queer community. According to the article, some don't allow residents (or even long term visitors) who are not lesbian identified. It also does little to challenge the binary gender structure.
Read the rest of the article here.
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Yet another chick party I'm not invited to (even if I am a cross-dresser and earnestly at least a little bit transgendered and like women, I'm not going to be invited, we know this).
This is like high school all over again!
But isn't the commune idea still alive in another form? While not isolated from the rest of society, I and many queer folks live in LGBT friendly areas and take recommendations from each other on where to live. Many neighborhoods in Minneapolis (Loring Park area and parts of north Minneapolis) are huge draws for LGBT folks.
I can't imagine wanting to live in a commune away from the world and I agree with you that it is a generational thing and part of the lesbian separatist movement, but I also see a connection between us queers being drawn to each other for support, and in many cases, safety.
I CAN imagine living in an all-lesbian commune. I would like to see how womens authentic selves come out when het, bi and les women arent under the patriarchal scope. I'm sure its a place ripe with innovation. Or at least a vacation home.
To me, it's the classic activist split.
You can either work within a system to change it, or withdraw and create a completely separate system.
They're both legitimate strives towards social change and I don't think one is better or worse. Each have their benefits and their drawbacks.
You do a great job of mentioning some of the drawbacks of this alternate stream approach. It sure can be alienating, it's hard work to exist "off the grid" and may not directly demand change from existing society (though I would disagree that it doesn't challenge the way mainstream culture operates).
However, working within a system is hard work too. Beurocracy can dampen a firey radical spirit. Not seeing immediate change can dishearten us. These communes and other examples of alternate stream social change keep some of the momentum that those of us trying to work within a dominant system can lose after slamming our heads against our obstacles. They show us that there ARE other options out there. It's possible just to pick up and do something totally different.
Some people will choose to remain in the "world at large" and work for change there. Some will create change in another form on their own terms. Having people work with each method keeps things really interesting.
Dont you think the insider activist methods help out the outsider activist methods and vice versa?Both support each other by being the catching mitt for one another when one method is burned out. I think they both refresh each other so they can both end up working for the same common goal without losing out on both of the methods.
Would any of you be more euthusiastic for an all-female island in the south pacific? Where you could go vacation and party? I think that would be nice! It wouldnt be some dry American prairie.
Yes! I totally think they both need to be there to keep refreshing each other. They're not mutually exclusive formats by any means.
It also seems if you listen to the slideshow that their neighbors -- at least some of them -- do understand that they're lesbian and do interact with them to some extent (as suppliers, etc, the article was unclear exactly how).
So, given that these lesbians are probably the only out ones in the area, it's not entirely fair to say that they're not impacting anyone. Even if they aren't talking about gay rights with their neighbors, they are still in some small way "normalizing" homosexuality for some in this otherwise very straight, bible-thumping area.
Which would you all rather have:
A.) Quiverfulls
B.) Lesbian commune living off the grid?
C.) religious extremists (like the polygamists)
Hardly an issue to me!
I'm in my early 50s and certainly remember the separatist movement well and, frankly, fondly. I have to say that I really don't think someone is obliged to work to transform the planet by virtue of being a lesbian (or whatever else). But still, I think that to construe separatist movements as withdrawing to a safe space is to misconstrue them to a very great extent.
At that time there was a widespread hope/expectation that there would be something transformative about GLB sexuality and a lot of separatists were thinking that they were building communities that could be models for broader radical social revolution. In that context, today's GLBT focus on getting married and joining the military looks a little bit like capitulation in the culture wars.
"At that time there was a widespread hope/expectation that there would be something transformative about GLB sexuality and a lot of separatists were thinking that they were building communities that could be models for broader radical social revolution."
Sweet! Wish I was a boomer!
the idea that intentional communities can exist as models for social change and for more just ways of living is very much still a part of the IC movement, as much as it gets branded as escapist.
it's also not an either/or. members of the community i lived at are very much involved in radical organizing and 'change the system' sorts of activism on local and national levels...just like lots of other people who happen to live in the country.
The issue I have with separatism of any stripe is that it is naturally self-limiting, and therefore offers only a very limited critique of the society at large.
Take the Shakers. They died out for a reason, and it wasn't just the celibacy requirement (though that did a job on them). It was also that by enforcing celibacy, they cut off a natural way for people to build communities, which is to have children in them and raise families of whatever structure.
Lesbian separatists run into the same problem. Absent parthenogenesis, the only way to grow them was to get other people to join them or have kids. Kids may be of either sex, so whatever family structure you have has to include that possibility. If you don't, then you have to hope for a steady stream of joiners.
But the steady stream of joiners only works if the rest of society stays bad enough for people to want to do that, the minute things get any better separatism loses its force as an organizing principle.
On top of that, there's the issue that to offer a critique of the way society operates, people have to know you exist. They have to see the example. Hiding away does nothing for that part of the agenda.
Then there's the class issue. I am sorry, but the only people who could afford to live in the communities described in that piece would have to be independently wealthy. Not super-rich, but certainly not working class people. Unless you grow all your own food and generate your own power a la the Amish you need to have money coming in someplace.
I don't deny the scarring that I see a lot of these women describing. But withdrawing to a safe place is precisely what they spoke of. And honestly, I haven't heard of a social movement that accomplished anything by doing that.
actually most kids raised on non-religious intentional communities do not live in those communities when they grow up. procreation is just not how secular communities grow and attract new members. having lived on a commune, i can assure you that it's all about recruitment. i suspect the reason 'womyn's land' communities are in trouble is partly because gender and sexuality just aren't the lines people want to form ICs around these days and partly because lesbian separatism along with it's 2nd wave ideological roots just isn't hip with the young folks. radical faerie lands (some exclusively gay men, some mostly gay men but open to all) are doing just fine these days, so far as i can tell.
'lesbian' has been increasingly painted as the anti-hip, the non-radical, the ugly and boring, etc. in young queer circles (which i think has a lot to do with misogyny), so recruitment for these communities is going to be a real hard sell, unless they're willing to alter their founding visions.
"procreation is just not how secular communities grow and attract new members."
A difference between kids not staying and this commune is that this commune effectively bans people from pro-creating (via whatever method the woman in question might choose). If the woman has a male baby she would presumably be required to leave (or put him up for adoption) and if she had daughters she would only be allowed to stay if the daughters were lesbians. Pro-creation isn't for everybody, but I can see this sort of community being a real turn-off for any lesbian who ever wishes to have children.
as far as class goes, i don't know about these particular communities, but there are some ICs (called 'egalitarian communities' - see www.thefec.org) that basically operate as worker owned cooperatives. there is no joining fee, you need to buy no land, your housing and food and health care are provided for you, and in exchange you provide a certain amount of labor to the community and are given an owning share in it. there are other economic models that don't require independent wealth but do require a portable job or marketable skills that can get you by in fairly rural areas. there are also urban communities and communes that don't limit job options or put an economic burden on members any more than living in that area alone - plus there's all the savings from pooling resources (buying food in bulk, sharing a car, sharing child care, etc.) honestly, i haven't seen a more economical model of living anywhere than the commune i was at.
Well, isn't any form of activism inherently self-limiting? We only have 16 hours in a day so we have to make some hard choices about where we invest our time and energy.
"And honestly, I haven't heard of a social movement that accomplished anything by doing that."
Oh, I strongly disagree with that. Both feminism and the LGBT rights movement were profoundly shaped by varying degrees of separatist activism. These movements created publishing opportunities where there were none, developed cooperative business models focused to the needs of specific communities, and created spaces where it was safe to explore uniquely queer and feminist perspectives. In turn, these ideas have gradually filtered into the mainstream.
Wow! Thats amazing! I would love to live in an all lesbian neighborhood(or an all-female, no men allowed neighborhood). I dont think the lesbian seperatist philosophy is so out of date. Lesbians and gay men compromise a small minority in today's society so why wouldnt they want a community in which all of the members are the same as they are. Heteros take this for granted.
These lesbian communes remind me of Harpy Farm from the book,"Doc and Fluff."
On the one hand, it's true that I can't really understand these women's life experiences and motivations, and their life histories have affected their decisions in any number of ways.
On the other hand, I can't get past the fact that every woman involved, it seems from the article, is white. Or that there was potential, not-actually-really-joking concern about a visit from a five-month-old grandson.
Maybe he was very precocious.
Having lived in a very liberal female-only space for awhile (at college) I would just like to say: don't knock it 'til you've tried it.
It's certainly not for everyone. I left it deliberately, and in hindsight have mixed feelings about that decision.
While I still don't necessarily regret my decision to leave, I think anyone who hasn't lived in a single-sex place with very liberal women should know that's it's wonderful in all sorts of ways you wouldn't necessarily imagine. It really is different, and some women really are different, when men aren't around...
someone PLEASE tell me why this is in the fashion and style section of the NYT?
I'm actually okay with this - the Style section is where I've always seen the NYT put living-arrangements-related articles unless they're about major demographic and financial patterns. That and safety/major access stories are the only ones they ever put in the News section. Barring the weekly Home & Garden section, I don't see where else it could go by the paper's usual classification system.
The idea that they wouldn't even accept male children is a bit much to me. I find that sad, I mean, bigots and misogynists miss out on the joys of living in a diverse world, and I don't see how this is so different. How can we demand to be accepted if create our own communities that aren't accepting to others?
I want to experience living on a separatist community. I crave it. I really feel like I'm overdosing on maleness with each day that I live in this world. The world I live in is very much a male designed one.
I imagine it would be very purifying to be on a womyn's land. I am 32. If there's a renaissance in separatism, I'll be on the bandwagon.
With each day that I live and work in a male centric world, I become more bitter and resenting of men. I think if I could get a break from it, if I had that womyn's world to return to whenever I needed it, I would lose some of that negativity towards maleness. It's not that I hate men, I just resent the way they take up so much space and dominate the world which women have to live in as well. Bring on womyn's land.