I want to keep the discussion we ten lesbians held this afternoon at Boulder's new Lesbian HERstory C.R. group private, so I'll just share this general observation: a lesbian-only space contains a different energy, its own power, its own cocoon of safety. Except for Indigo Girls concerts and bars like Seattle's Wild Rose, I've never actually been in a lesbian-only space until today, and I still feel emotional about the experience. In the past three years, I've been lonely so much of the time, and today I felt entirely connected. Heard. Understood.
My brother-in-law, who, other than my former husband, is the kindest man I know, asked me a couple of weeks ago why I wanted to organize a lesbian-only event. I stuttered through an inadequate answer. Tonight, I can explain clearly: because even in a world that increases its acceptance of lesbians every day, we need space to be with just each other. We breathe differently there.
Insisting on lesbian-only or women-only space hasn't always been a popular approach, as I've just read in Michelle Goldberg's essay "What is a Woman?" in this week's New Yorker (August 4, 2014). Goldberg's summary and analysis of the battle that has raged since the 1970s between radical feminists and transgendered male-to-female people includes decades of challenge to women-only space. Goldberg focuses on the Michigan Womyn's Fest, which has been severely criticized by the transgendered community because it admits only "womyn-born womyn". Musical groups like the Indigo Girls have announced boycotts of the event until it becomes trans-inclusive. Women (womyn) on the other side of the debate have argued they simply need a women-only space for awhile, to feel safe and unencumbered by societal oppression. The trans community has reacted with anger to that, saying it implies trans male-to-female people are unsafe. Consider, too: in the summer of 2010, some of the people at the protest camp Camp Trans committed acts of vandalism that included the spray-painting of a six-foot penis and the words "Real Women Have Dicks" on the side of a kitchen tent (Goldberg 28). That kind of violence is of a specific kind, and it is counter to what the majority of male-to-female people argue they want: inclusion into the safety of women-only places.
In the weeks before today's C.R. group (and before I read Goldberg's article), two trans male-to-female people emailed me to ask if they could sign up for the lesbian HERstory group. My answer: yes! If they identity as lesbians, they're welcome in the group. To say otherwise -- to say, as some radical feminists do (Goldberg mentions Sheila Jeffrey), that a person who is biologically male still benefits from our society's male privilege and so cannot participate in meaningful feminist dialogue -- is to imitate what has so often been done to us as lesbians. I think trans people in lesbian spaces deepen the kinds of conversation we can have. Return to what Monique Wittig said in the early 1980s: "I am not a woman, I am a lesbian." If someone genuinely identifies as lesbian, we must open our arms and pull them in. If we do not, we'll repeat the 1950s rejection of the butch lesbian, the 1960s separation from working women and women of color.
But what if a man emailed me to ask if he could join our lesbian-only group? Our space today would have felt entirely different. We wouldn't have talked the way we did. In an era in which we are encouraged to include everyone so we offend no one, we lesbians still desperately need spaces where we can just be with other lesbians -- not with the bar scene pressure to date, but with a C.R. group ability to comfort, inspire and empower.
In "21 Love Poems," Adrienne Rich wrote, "No one has imagined us." No one, that is, but each other. I can think of no better reason to gather, just for awhile, in the same room with each other.
