I’m a bit late to the party about this article, from the weekend NY Times, regarding a fading community of lesbian separatists in Florida. The portrait of these women, who made a choice you don’t see as often nowadays but which was perhaps more popular in an era of idealization of subsistence farming (i.e. the 60s and 70s), has been much discussed.
But it has surprised me how hostile people were about it, how they could not help themselves from reading a critique of their own lives into this narrative. I’m talking about the people who wrote things like, “But men can be feminists too,” or “I’m sorry, but I enjoy cock,” or “Why are these women mean to male babies?”
Because that was not my own reaction in the least. When I read the article, I actually – and I’ll deny it if you ask me in person because it totally dismantles the old-crone impression I’m trying to make – kinda teared up. These women found a way – and it was not an easy way for them, let’s be honest – to live their lives such that they felt more human. They felt more like whole people living apart than it seemed society would grant them.
And that’s fucking sad, but the reason it’s sad is not because they’re “wrong.” I’m just not willing to call these women deluded about their own experiences. They had, obviously, a kind of early life that turned them from men permanently – of being lesbian in a society that barely had a name for it, or of being raped or sexually abused, or of being told their worth was nothing absent marriage and the bearing of children. I wish everyone would keep in mind that it’s patriarchy that’s wrong here. It’s patriarchy that made these women feel this way. They did not make this stuff up, in short.
And as a feminist it is my job to recognize that such experiences exist, that it is important to listen to the women who lived through them, and not try to shame them or make their choices about mine. It is important to listen because they have something to contribute to my feminism, these lesbian separatists. They can tell me more about how scared they used to be. They make it real for me, all these notions I have from Douglas Sirk movies or what have you about the repression of the fifties.
I can cut their critics some slack, but only a little. Sometimes, when I am in the heat of an internet argument, I start to forget how much of my devotion to feminism is rooted in good old boring ordinary compassion. Because I am a person who enjoys talking about ideas abstractly, I can sympathize with those who want to synthesize the contributions of these women, read them down into a pithy statement like “Good feminists should live apart from men” that I can then refute with rhetorical razzle-dazzle.
But those discussions, they aren’t the whole truth of the matter. They aren’t about the women themselves. And though I’m always going to keep talking about feminism abstractly, I often wish everyone would keep their eyes on the ball. I got into feminism because the state of women in this world – and I do mean all women, old, black, poor, and queer included – makes me so incredibly sad. And because it always seemed (at least to me) that the task of feminism was, in the end, largely one of empathy, of reaching outside yourself to help someone else, even if only by listening.
Et tu, commenters?
I have a huge amount of respect and love for all kinds of communists (as in people who live on communes) and have counted myself among their ranks at different times in my life. At the same time, I don’t think my love and solidarity (abstractly) for the women in the article precludes criticism of their project. Exclusionary practices by some feminists, while understandable, have created real conflicts within the feminist and related movements, and I think the reactions of some commenters reflected those conflicts (even though those commenters may lack the insight and historical knowledge to express themselves in a more constructive way). The views expressed by the women in the article — that women are superior or less violent than men, that “woman” is a knowable and policeable category of person, etc. are definitely up for debate from other feminists and I think that is totally legit.
JD, I don’t think these things are beyond critique, obviously. What I think they ought to be is beyond simplistic reduction and, as you put it, comment without effort to understand first (a) the historical perspective in which these comments are made; and (b) the attempt to criticize with insight.
Of course we have to discuss assertions like these and what they might mean for “our” feminist project, but I guess of late I have grown weary of the tendency of this internecine conflict to devolve into straw discussions that fail to get at the heart of the issue.
Why would that article inspire anyone to anger. I mean, sure, you can disagree and claim the world is a different place now (which I hope it is), but all that article does is probe for compassion.
Oh, right, I forgot that the internet was anonymous, and thus all the anger and hate spewed across it doesn’t ever hurt anyone because it isn’t real.
I guess I’m not sure then what you are saying is the heart of the matter. I read you as saying that readers of the NY Times article should pay more respect to, to listen more to, the women described by the article. But I definitely might be missing your point?
Well, I don’t see respect/listening as opposed to critique – in fact, I would argue the best way for the latter to happen is if it follows upon the former, is my point. I may be making the hilarious argument that internet discussions of these things are frequently surface-y. Stop laughing.
hey, I wrote “i like cock” but uh… I was trying to joke? it was like 3 pages in and everyone was so angry and worked up. Just seemed like a ridiculous thing to get up in arms about, both sides sounded kind of silly to be honest.
Your seriousness is inspiring Pilgrim! You definitely deserve your handle. It’s good you started this website so you can have the important conversations on your own (smarter, more serious) terms. To be honest I don’t think most people even read the article, they were just giving knee jerk responses.
I think the essential issue here (for me, at least) is understanding that this commune does not exist in a vacuum. This was not a group of college students deciding to drop out of so-called mainstream society just for the hell of it. This was a reaction to repression and persecution that was, in my belief, a valid reaction. Stories like those of these women are deeply affecting to me, in part because my stepmother went through similar experiences when she came out as a lesbian in the mid-70s. She was disowned by her parents, who only took her back into their fold when she married my father (her first male partner; she now calls her sexuality “unlabelled”). Agree or disagree with the philosophy behind the separatism, but understand why it happened and why these women felt it had to be this way. The patriarchy and the extreme hatred of same-sex relationships dictated that separatism had to happen in the first place.
I will say I thought it was weird that the article was framed in terms of “is lesbianism chosen.” I think its an interesting question but it didn’t seem provoked by the article at all.
JD, you’re thinking of a different article than the one I’m talking about above, but here’s the link in case others wish to speak of it – that’s what led people to frame these things this way. Again, I don’t think this article, or even the tract described therein, says what people think it does.
I will own up to leaving a vaguely “But I like cock”-y comment on the Jezebel post regarding this article. This is in part because the post combined a discussion of this article with Julie Bindel’s in The Guardian on political lesbianism. The result was a little confusing, and I think it left the less informed and the prone to knee-jerk responses (I will count myself sadly in their ranks) feeling on the defensive about our life choices.
Oh, I should also say that such defensiveness is obviously unwarranted, and I recognize that.
Khrushchev, I think Julie Bindel’s article needs to be read carefully too. I mean, I’m not saying that a close reading will lead you to agree wholeheartedly. I’m saying it might make you think about some things.
One of the points I do find interesting about “political lesbianism” for example is that I do know tons of heterosexual feminists who date men with some… interesting attitudes about feminism and women. I will cop to having done the same in my younger and less harpied days. And, you know, at the end of the day, I do think there is some truth to the “are you blowing up bridges by day but mending them by night” observation in that context.
Personal is political sure is a bitch sometimes, no?
I don’t understand why so many people would experience such a strong angry response to so much hot, sexy, naked girl-on-girl action.
Leave the Lesbians aLone!
I like that this went up right after the Ann Lee Harpy Hall of Fame piece, b/c she too was someone who advocated communal/separatist life. In fact, I’ve always wondered if Mother Ann was a lesbian who wound up advocating celibacy simply to get away from the sexual demands of the patriarchy.
I had mixed feelings about this article, because I have a strong dislike for separatism, be it feminist/religious/Parti Quebecois in nature. I think that the ideal society is a diverse one. I would never want to live apart from men, and not just because I love cock. I also love my two dads, my three brothers, my five nephews and my many male friends, both platonic and otherwise. My life would be much poorer without them.
That said, I think P.Soul’s compassion is the correct way to regard this article. I am sorry these women feel that they are better off by cutting off contact with 50% of humanity, but it’s their decision and they surely have their reasons. Also, the end result appears to be harmony and contentment. I wouldn’t want to live there, but I might enjoy visiting.
As an undergraduate I participated in an oral history project that was part of the background research on this article, and although the community of women we interviewed did not make the “final cut” they talked with the reporter and photographer involved. I was in touch with one of them recently, and she says people have very mixed feelings about the final article. There’s not one, monolithic way of thinking about being an all-women or all-lesbian community, even among people who live in them!
I just want to add my voice to the the original post in saying that it is really important to remember that, politics aside, communitarian ventures are about making a life worth living for the folks involved. The women who were part of Aradia and Hawk Hill (the communities we studied) were and are diverse, politically active, and working extremely hard to live lives in accordance with their values, and to work for social change in an imperfect, sexist, homophobic, world — while also creating an alternative space where they could thrive.
P.Soul, my fave queer professors were always saying shit like, why is it that all the “power” feminists are straight women, even married no less??? I have to admit I often wonder why there is so much emphasis on heterosexual paradigms when reading for example MacKinnon. Lesbianism seems an obvious “solution” or road for someone like her or Dworkin, and yet they never chose it (am I right about that?)
@PSoul: It is SUCH a bitch. I did read Bindel’s article, and I did get a lot from it, but only after I left my cock-loving comment.
@BeckySharper: That’s an interesting question about Mother Ann Lee.
The issue with this kind of separatism is that at the time the commune was founded, there were very few people who would embrace the kind of diversity that is now tolerated (and sometimes just barely) in our time.
Although in her early life she married a heterosexual man, Dworkin claimed to be a lesbian, though some people get testy about that because she lived for the latter part of her life with a man, fellow activist John Stoltenberg, who identified as gay. They did marry, eventually. MacKinnon does not really talk much about her own sexuality but from anecdotal evidence I hear she identifies as straight.
Radical feminism does tend to talk about heterosexual paradigms, but not out of an exclusionary impulse, it seems to me, in what I’ve read. MacKinnon and Dworkin more or less agree with the animating spirit of political lesbianism, which is to say that patriarchy is present in the sphere of sexual relationships between men and women, and almost inextricably so. I’m aware of queer theorists questioning their focus on these relations, but more from the angle of claiming that MacKinnon “ignores” intersectionality, which is also wrong IMHO. But then, I have read a lot of MacKinnon.
@JDRegent: They never chose lesbianism b/c sexual orientation isn’t a matter of choice. Even people like Ted Haggard, whose entire existence was predicated on living a hetero life, wasn’t able to stick with his “choice” not to be gay.
I always get pissed off when lesbian separatists imply that I’m somehow less of a feminist because I sleep with men. It’s ridiculous to reduce all male-female relationships to what happens in the bedroom. My sexual relationships are a tiny part of my total positive interactions with men.
@BeckySharper: My initial comment about this was based on the “political choice” bit, which I get but which I don’t personally agree with. I worry about the slippery-slope that could result when it leads to bigots viewing sexuality SOLELY as political choice and then attempting to “cure” them. (Although why not cure people of heterosexuality, then?
I would never consider you to be “less of a feminist” because of your sexuality. Was I less of a feminist when I was with my ex-fiance? Was I more of a feminist when I shared my bed with another woman? I’m not sure I can answer that easily.
Becky, I don’t know that we have to reduce the narrative of someone’s sexuality to “choice” vs. “hard-wiring” here. It may be some combination of both, and what does it matter, anyway? It isn’t central to my critique of heterosexism that it all be a matter of genetics. I’m willing to listen to all reports, is what I guess I’m saying.
I think your second comment is exactly the kind of reaction I worry about, though. First of all, lesbian separatists tend to think you should downplay those other relationships with men too, so they’re not being inconsistent. And second of all, I think mostly they are being provocative by pointing out that there is an element of compromise involved in sexuality sometimes that, way back when they all brought this up, the 1970s, was hardly obvious or given among heterosexual feminists.
I would be interested in see how women coexist when they live completely and totally without men in any context. I bet it would be illuminating.
I’m not sure “political lesbians” claim to have changed their sexual orientation from straight to gay. Maybe just that they changed their sexual behavior.
Moreover, SarahMC, important to remember that the original political lesbian manifesto explicitly said that there was no compulsory fucking of women as such; just that women should not fuck men.
@JDRegent: “First of all, lesbian separatists tend to think you should downplay those other relationships with men too, so they’re not being inconsistent.”
Yeah, that’s where I get offended. B/c it implies that every man is just a cog in the big crushing wheel of the Patriarchy and therefore a threat to womanity. And while none of us are outside the Patriarchy, least of all men, that kind of thinking strips men of their basic humanity and every thing that they have in common with women. It’s remarkably similar to the misogyny that encourages separation between men and women in ultra-conservative Islam, Judaism and Christianity.
Well, from my perspective, rather than from lesbian separatism’s, there is some value in recognizing that while men can be feminists, while men can and do choose not to participate in patriarchy, the vast majority of them do, often with little challenge from the feminists in their lives. And that to me is worth thinking about. In my own life too! I have learned to speak up at work when someone makes a joke that offends me, when I want to talk about how birth control belongs in the stimulus even though a cloud passes over certain men’s eyes when I say so. Because I don’t think men get a free pass on these issues just because they don’t beat their wives.
It’s like what we talked about yesterday: patriarchy is not simply the province of “bad dudes.” It sets up a system of privilege that the men in our lives do trade on.
PilgrimSoul, I think my main reaction to the Times’ lesbian separatists was compassion as well – because what kinds of experiences would you have to have to say, flat-out, without condition, “men are violent”? And some of the women of the commune didn’t seem as exclusionary as the others – while they all enjoy women-only space, some of them seemed to feel that male guests should be allowed.
The Times article started with a statement that the communes were trying to stay “relevant”. But I think they, and the entire feminist movement, has made female separatism less relevant (in America, at least) by changing society so radically.
Coming in late in the day to boldface P.Soul’s last comment. Every man benefits (in some ways; they are also hurt) from the Patriarchy, will he or nill he. They can’t unchoose to be in it anymore than women can. They can recognize it for what it is, and try to change their behavior and views, but that’s not a get-out-of-jail free card.
Which is where the lez-sep thing comes in. There was (and yes, is) some gender essentialism going on here which I agree is unhelpful, but they were/are trying to get the P as out of their lives as much as possible (or their lives out of the P, whichever). As a political choice, I get it, even though I think it isn’t really possible.
I also don’t think that being exclusive about whom one lives with is necessarily a judgment on other peoples’ feminisms (although certainly, that happens on an individual level sometimes and is generally shitty). As in, I am choosing to live with other (mainly white, just to acknowledge) lesbian feminists and to not have sex with men, that doesn’t mean I’m calling you a bad feminist because you don’t do that. In fact the only people calling anyone bad in this scenario are the people who call the lesbian feminists bad feminists. HMMMMM maybe I’m starting to see your original point P.Soul.
My questions about the heterosexual paradigms in a lot of radical/power feminist writing is that I think the existence of other forms of sexuality is actually theoretically disruptive to the radical feminist description of gender relations, not that I think individual feminists would be individually emancipated if they had same sex partner sex instead of heterosex.
PilgrimSoul, I love that you are bemoaning the shallowness of internet commentary. I say this in solidarity as someone who has railed in all seriousness how we just really need to be more respectful and thoughtful on the internet. I have gotten *really* worked up about being being jackasses on comment threads.
I didn’t read this NY Times article, but I generally support people setting up communities in which they feel comfortable (for instance, this one).
I did comment simply “But… I like men” on the Jezebel post regarding Julie Bindel. But I didn’t mean that in the sense that I’m heterosexual, though I am, but in the sense that I enjoy men as well as women. I like being around them. They enrich my life immensely and I wouldn’t want to be separate from them. I didn’t say it defensively: I think you can only get defensive about a choice you’re not completely comfortable with, or that deep down you know doesn’t sit well with your values.
I guess I’m trying to echo what Becky was saying in that it’s sad to me that these women have been so traumatize/disgusted/etc. by the Patriarchy that they find it preferable to cut off interaction (and the richness that interaction can provide) with 50% of the human population. However, if this is how they feel most comfortable and fulfilled, I say more power to them.
I don’t know if it is sad exactly. I have lived in intentional communities before and we definitely selected for homogeneity of ideology, even though we were different in a lot of other ways. Those women don’t seem sad to me.
While I can totally understand the desire of someone who’s been abused (physically or otherwise) by the patriarchy to, as PhDork says, “get the P out of their lives as much as possible,” it does seem a bit like a cop-out from the “feminist crusader” perspective. As someone mentioned yesterday, you can’t change the system from outside it. So in trying to build yourself a permanent haven from the P, you are kind of removing yourself from the feminist struggle in society. I can imagine this would be a huge relief and a positive life-change for some women, but I see it more as a personal choice than a political one.
I guess it seems sad to me because you’re screening based on an inherent characteristic (sex), even though it’s also based on ideology. Like… I guess I’m just always sad when people write off an entire category of people as so hopeless or terrible they don’t want to have anything to do with any of them.
I think I’m also projecting, because I have so many men in my life I love and I would be very sad to lose them or to have never had those relationships with them.
Thanks for this post, Pilgrim Soul.
As a lesbian, I often feel battered by living in a patriarchal, homobigoted, racist society and desperately need a refuge from it.
Lesbian separatists are controversial I think because they identified a need they had as individuals and then set about creating a community that could take care of that need – to be safe. And they were uncompromising of their needs as individuals in a culture that demnds that women compromise what they need to others.
I love interacting with my brothers and sisters of color, but I understand that they need “safe space” away from the color of my (white) skin. It isn’t about me personally, but about a power structure I can only abdicate partially, not completely, because my skin will always be white.
This is the same situation with women only spaces (and for clarity I include transwomen in women only spaces). Women only spaces are safe space for some women. It may be a weekend retreat, it may be a longer retreat, but it is necessary for some women.
I love theory, but I must remember that theory sometimes does not take care of the needs of humans – and so theory must balance itself against those very real needs of humans: to feel safe and accepted and loved.
@JD: How is it theoretically disruptive? If it’s because the existence of LGBT people implies that not all people live in a heterosexual paradigm, well, I think most radfems would say, duh. The extent to which they think patriarchy is inescapable is often exaggerated by critics, IMHO – obvs we have the power within patriarchy at least to see it, because without any space for agency there would be no possibility of feminism itself.
@bluestockings: Yes, this is true. As Twisty put it at I Blame the Patriarchy once, “Racism, for example, is wrong, even if some black chicks think I have my head up my ass and don’t invite me to the cookouts.”
It seems disruptive to me because they appear to be making claims about WOMEN, as a category, and then seem to say that the thing that makes us women is our experience of sexual subordination.
Well, I think the latter part of your statement is incorrect – I’m not sure I’ve understood radfems to be saying very much at all about “the thing that makes us women” other than to identify patriarchy as a power structure. They have definitely said that sexual subordination is an all-too-common theme of women’s experience, and that we can’t wish ourselves out of that situation.
But assuming you are correct, I’m still not sure how it is the case that homosexuality exempts one from the gendered nature of sexual subordination. Gender doesn’t start and end with genitalia, as we well know.
Someone posted the NY Times article on metafilter and it turned into a 200+ comment shitstorm. There were comparisons to white supremacist groups. I couldn’t believe just how angry it made some people to know there as a group of older white women living together in the woods of Alabama. There was, however, this awesome comment from someone who used to live in a different separatist commune.
[...] The Pursuit of Harpyness: What We Should Talk About When We Talk About Lesbian Separatism – “These women found a way – and it was not an easy way for them, let’s be honest – to live their lives such that they felt more human. They felt more like whole people living apart than it seemed society would grant them.”And that’s fucking sad, but the reason it’s sad is not because they’re ‘wrong.’ I’m just not willing to call these women deluded about their own experiences. They had, obviously, a kind of early life that turned them from men permanently – of being lesbian in a society that barely had a name for it, or of being raped or sexually abused, or of being told their worth was nothing absent marriage and the bearing of children. I wish everyone would keep in mind that it’s patriarchy that’s wrong here. It’s patriarchy that made these women feel this way. [...] [...]