December 31st, 2004
Manifest This
Ya see, this is the kind of stuff that pisses me off:
“Separatism…can be great in the short term–and for many feminists it’s necessary to achieving certain kinds of consciousness, security, and possibilities that can be strong enough to transform the mainstream. The goal of liberation, however, is a radical restructuring of society, one that women can’t achieve from the margins–even though they use this perspective to gain a clear vision of the center.”
So write Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards in their paean to mainstream liberal feminism, “Manifesta: young women, feminism, and the future” (2000, Farrar/Straus/Giroux). I’m exactly their age, so presumably I’m one of the “young women” they’re writing about and for. But it seems to me they know nothing about whereof they speak. How feminist is it to consider the place where men are “the center” and where only women are, separatist space, “the margins?” Have they spent any time in separatist space? ‘Til you do, girlfriends, spare me the condescending tone. That paragraph, the only reference to women-only space in the entire book (”separatism” isn’t even in the index), reminds me of my high school ex-friend Jodie who reportedly said that she thought it was good that I was going to a “girls’ school” (aka Bryn Mawr College, one of the top undergraduate institutions in the US) because I wasn’t “ready” for a coeducational environment. Clearly, women-only space is best for those of us who are weak enough not to be able to develop “certain kinds of consciousness” (whatever that means) in the company of men. Well, may it please the goddess that I never be ready for frat boy rape parties, sexual harassment, excessive courting of male athletes while women’s athletics languish, male-dominated classrooms, “getting my mrs”–and lowered female expectation and achievement.
So what is it like in separatist space? I’ll be glad to tell you, since Jen and Amy obviously don’t know. In separatist space, you’re in the center. The people of your world are women; women are the people of the world. Lesbians have been striving for thirty years at least to create the successful infrastructure for feminist, separatist communities in various locations across the US. This is the fertile ground, the laboratory, within which feminist change is taking place, right now, as you’re reading this. Women are learning to do things differently. We’re learning to interact with each other in new ways–to respect and hear each other, to honor each other’s input and opinions, even if we don’t like each other, even when we disagree. We’re finding our way out of win-lose patterns and into processes where every woman’s voice is heard and every woman’s concerns are considered. We’re recognizing and putting into practice the truth that the means is at least as important as the end. We’re inventing and trying out new technological processes–even if they don’t seem so technological–like building with natural and/or recycled materials, gardening successfully in the most inhospitable of climates, and composting human waste rather than flushing it into our drinking water. When you’re in separatist space, it’s very likely someone will slap a post-hole digger into your hand and tell you, “Dig a hole for that post, 23 inches deep.” No one says, “Now honey, are you sure you can handle that big heavy tool? Are you getting tired? Here, let me do that for you.” There’s room to try and practice something new until you get it right. Female competence, ingenuity, and strength are expected and rewarded in women-only space. If something is to be learned, achieved, completed, a woman will be the one to do it, and more often than not she will be a lesbian–a woman-loving-woman whose attachments to men, if any, are peripheral, not central, to her life. A woman–unlike Amy and Jennifer–who has no investment in securing or maintaining sexual relationships with men, is a woman free to appreciate all the possibilities the world has to offer. There’s no way to describe in words how different the world looks after just a brief time on women’s land, but it sure doesn’t look like “men at the center, women at the margins.”
Don’t get me wrong; life on women’s land can be hard, gritty, without many of the conveniences mainstream US citizens take for granted. It requires a continual assessment of the difference between “need” and “want,” what is required for survival and what is desired for comfort–and the consequences of survival and comfort in human and ecological terms. Women’s communities suffer often from a lack of funds and a lack of hands–precisely because of the bad rap separatism has gotten from prejudiced, inexperienced, dismissive, male-identified comments like Amy and Jennifer’s. But what women’s communities give birth to every day is the fulfillment of female potential. Every accomplishment makes us stronger and surer of ourselves. Every setback strengthens our ability to network with each other to find resources and solutions. And all of this we do for ourselves, together. Many women do this informally when we live alone or with female roommates. We do it for brief times when we work on projects with other women. We do it for a week in the woods at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. And some of us, the most determined and uncompromising, do it for a lifetime, facing both the nurturing and destroying aspects of the mother goddess in the haven and the crucible of women’s land communities.
So don’t listen to Jennifer and Amy. Find out for yourself what women-only space is like, and what it can do for you. Find out what opportunities women-only communities offer for living inexpensively and close to the earth. Find out what other women have to teach you, and what you have to teach, by spending a day, a week, a month, a year–even a lifetime–on women’s land. You might just find your center.
