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.
I was thinking as I read this that a man Has asked me if he could join this group. A younger gay man asked me that a couple weeks ago. I have told him in the past that I would welcome him with open arms into a mom's group or even a lesbian mom's group... but I kind of shook my head and winced a little and said, no, I don't think that would work with this group. It made me a little sad--we share heart-felt moments frequently, and there are very few people who think as closely to the way I think as he does. But the existence of women's only space to be lesbians for a while is also very important.
ReplyDeleteIt also made me wonder if "mom space" is easier and less culturally threatening. I can't answer that question for sure. Despite the reliance on writers and thinkers assuming that mother's are revered in our culture, that hasn't been my experience. Raising two adopted daughters leaves me excluded from bio-mother spaces where birth stories are frequently shared. Raising two culturally different daughters requires me to ask different questions of the spaces that they live in, finding ways to help them when they are teased or treated differently. Sometimes I feel awkward even when they are treated specially--do my girls really need to acknowledge something with their friends Every time there is a piece of Chinese pottery? And raising one of my two daughters who has more special need requirements and so many differing diagnoses that even the specialized therapists says she puts the ability of diagnosis itself into question... (the leading diagnosis right now is Asperger's, but who knows!) makes my parenting work far more isolating than my late-blooming lesbianism.
All that to say, that it isn't just the challenges of being a lesbian in a world, that as you say, is more and more accepting of lesbians, but perhaps, more likely to erase our differences... But maybe something else or something more... that makes this kind of space so special.
I said at the first meeting that I felt my heart-rate go down just being in the space of that first meeting--and that I didn't even know it needed to relax! I would say that again after meeting a second time--but also that the gears in my head are turning--thinking about the importance of Herstory, of reading lesbians from the past and present, and sharing space together--that is not just safe, but thought-ful and thought-provoking.
Thanks, once again, for having the courage to start this kind of group, and perhaps even discover that you are only one of a few, but not The only lesbian in boulder! :)