Lesbian Separatism
Friday June 23, 2006
The other day I was hanging out with a friend and I mentioned that I had lived for a short time with a lesbian separatist in the 1980s. This friend, a few years younger than me, but fully immersed in the lesbian community, had no idea what I was talking about. She had no idea of what a lesbian separatist was. I'm reminded that even though we're both in the lesbian community, there are many diverse aspects of that lesbian community and one lesbian's experience certainly will not mirror another's. Although I don't meet that many lesbian separatists these days, the influence of lesbian separatism is still felt in our lesbian culture.
Comments
There is something to be said for the separatist life, comfortable, I would think. However, I think to be completely separate is to assume that the status quo can never change and to take yourself out of the changing process. If we aren’t in the mainstream, advocating for change than we are part of what lets it stay the same. We need to be part of society and force it to change, no matter how slowly…
I do not think separatism is conceptually comfortable..or, in the case of those women who live “on the land,” physically comfortable either. There is nothing “comfortable” about constantly maintaining awareness of the many “small” ways in which one’s participation in mainstream culture makes one complicit in misogyny, sexism, racism, and other various hates, and allowing one’s “beliefs” to actually materially affect the way one lives life. I live in the city..and consider myself to be a lesbian separatist. My meaningful relationships are with women, and my son, who I am have raised as a feminist, and with whom I engage on a very conscious level. I think that the essence of separatism is a channeling of energy to women..to their interests and projects… and a resultant denial of energy to men and their projects. How can any woman who allows herself to fully feel the misogyny that is ever-present in American (and other) culture, not be a separatist?
As an experiment, withold your energy from the men in your life, those men who have come to rely on you as their caretakers..withold also your erotic energy, cease flirting with men..or attending to them..and see the depth of masculinist ego and parasitic dependence on woman energy…as they fight for your attention, to which they feel they have some inalienable right.
When we stay in society and play a role that enable things to run smoothly, we perpetuate the system by which we are oppressed… I think we need more “trouble-makers”…. troubling the water..drawing attention to heteronormativity, and sexism…
Hear hear, Elizabeth! Glad to see that I’m not the only one who lives the ideals of lesbian separatism.
It is not my responsibility to fight the dominant paradigm. I do choose however to influence members of my community when I witness them acting rudely towards women, if I feel up to it. I don’t want to spend any of my precious energy “fixing” aspects of the world that I didn’t break. It’s hard enough to have energy for fixing myself.
On another note, I would like to interview women that have had a lesbian separatist experience. Please email me at kanakobird@gmail.com if you are open to responding to me.
Well said, Elizabeth. Thank you for taking the time to explain with nuance. I just want to add my voice as another lesbian who chooses to live a separatist life in a small city, lest others think they are isolated or alone. I did when I was younger, before I found the festival circuit or understood that womyn’s lands still existed. I am young. We exist. You are not alone. Go to Michigan. (www.michfest.com) It will seem like a miracle. We are powerful even beyond what we think we know. This society is still very sick and it’s okay for us to withdraw and use our energy in the way we know is healthy for us.