de Beauvoir on Separatism, Woman-Only Space
Jul 10th, 2008 by admin
From a 1976 interview with Simone de Beauvoir (interviewer is John Gerassi):
Gerassi: I understand … that many feminists have insisted on being separatists. But in terms of the revolution, theirs as well as mine, can we win if we break up into totally separate groups? Can the feminist movement achieve its ends by excluding men from its struggle? Yet the dominant part of the women’s movement today, here in France at least, and it’s also quite true for America, is separatist.
Beauvoir: Just a minute. We have to investigate why they’re separatist. I can’t speak for America, but here in France there are many groups, consciousness groups, which do exclude men because they find it very important to rediscover their identity as women to understand themselves as women. They can only do this by speaking among themselves, telling each other things they would never dare in front of husbands, lovers, brothers, fathers, or any other masculine power. Their need to speak with the intensity and honesty required can only be fulfilled this way. And they have managed to communicate with a profundity that I never thought possible or imaginable when I was 25. When I was among even the most intimate of my women friends then, truly feminine problems were never discussed. So now, for the first time, because of these consciousness groups and because of the toughness of the desire to genuinely confront women’s problems within these groups, real friendships among women have developed. I mean, in the past, in my youth, until very recently, women tended never to become genuine friends with other women. They saw each other as rivals, enemies even, or at least competitors. Now, mostly as a result of these consciousness groups, not only are women capable of being true friends, they have learned to be warm, open, deeply tender with each other: they are turning sisterhood and fraternity into realities – and without making that relationship dependent on lesbian sexuality. Of course, there are many battles, even strictly feminist battles with social impact, in which the women do expect men to join, and many have. I’m thinking, for example, of the struggle here to legalize abortion. When we staged the first massive demonstration on that issue, three or four years ago, I remember well the great quantity of men present. This doesn’t mean that they were not sexist: to uproot what has been anchored in one’s behavior pattern and value system from the earliest days of childhood takes years, decades. But these were men who were, at least, conscious of that sexism in society and took a political stand against it. On such occasions men are welcome, indeed encouraged, to join the struggle.
Some in the blogosphere are abuzz over the fact that a self-identified anti-pornography man has been arrested for or charged with sexual assault. I had never heard of him before the abuzz-ment, had never seen or read his blog, ever. Evidently the guy also once worked on a rape crisis line.
Of course, this is abhorrent behavior. But, not surprising.
As for me, I’m not at all impressed to see all-porn-all-the-time males gleefully rejoicing over what a self-proclaimed anti-porn man has done, particularly since sexual assault is a major theme of the pornography these same guys promote, advocate for, and for all I know, make, sell, whatever. From my perspective, some of these guys are only one step removed from the guy from whom they are distancing themselves (if that). I’m not impressed. When you stop making, using, advocating for pornography and the prostitution of women, then what you have to say might begin to have credibility with me.
Beyond that, all I have to say about this guy whose name I never heard until today is, this kind of thing, which happens all of the time, is why, as women, we must have woman-only spaces, woman-only rape crisis lines, woman-only rape shelters, woman-only domestic violence lines, woman-only domestic violence shelters, woman-only lands, woman-only Festivals and woman-only spaces of all kinds. There is plenty of work for men to do on their own, as de Beauvoir says, primary of which is to confront and challenge amongst themselves their own use of and advocacy for pornography and prostituted women.
Thanks to jeyoani for the link to the interview with Simone de Beauvoir. 
Heart
Exactly.
There are some very interesting conversations going on in blogs about the implications of this crime for automatically considering egalitarian-professing men to be real feminists or even male allies at heart. I would recommend looking at radfem blogs like Buried Alive and Rage at the Manchine. Fascinating thoughts there. The gist of some of the thinking is, “You’re an egalitarian male? Fine. Get out there and do some work to prove it–meanwhile, we women are going to be talking and meeting together in women-only space.”
“There is plenty of work for men to do on their own, as de Beauvoir says, primary of which is to confront and challenge amongst themselves their own use of and advocacy for pornography and prostituted women. ”–Heart
You bet!
I think what a man (or woman, for that matter) believes about woman-only spaces tells you so much about that person.
So far as male allies, I have been disappointed one too many times by the behavior of profeminist men, especially those I’ve encountered online over the years. I think there are some really good guys out there, though, still — really good. And, my observation is, the good guys just keep doing their own work and don’t ask or expect to be recognized for it.
Having said all of that, in this particular debacle, I’m picking up on some new and improved ugliness on the part of the pro-porn/prostitution side in the form of, “Let’s get the pro-feminist men! What do you have on them? Anything? How about we insult them any way we can find!”
In a particularly patriarchal, male supremacist manner.
Who is more despicable in the eyes of male supremacists/patriarchists — be they men or women, whether they say they are feminists or not — than a man who rejects pornography or prostitution? He is a “wuss” (hate the word, using it because in this context it makes sense to) extraordinaire, is he not? He is also a Benedict Arnold! Breaking ranks with his male supremacist fellows in their bonding rituals over the bodies of women, to wit, pornography and prostitution! How dare a man reject porn. How dare he support radical feminists. What is the world coming to, if men reject porn and prostitution, whatever shall we do, we might actually end up with a revolution on our hands! And women might actually begin to be viewed as fully human.
So I don’t really like this big brouhaha being made over this guy I never heard of before, as though he is so very different from the men making the brouhaha. The pro-porn/prostitution side is vested in discrediting any man who opposes porn and prostitution. It doesn’t make sense to me to take much of anything they say about men like this seriously. They can be expected to lie about these men, just like they lie about all of us as radical feminist women.
I’m not saying they’re lying about this particular guy. I read Pisaquari’s blog. But the pro-porn side’s meltdown and theatrics are strategic, they are not, I don’t believe, in good faith, and they do not impress me either. These guys want anti-porn/anti-prostitution men to fail and will do whatever they can to discredit them, just like they do to us as feminist women. They want some anti-pornography/prostitution man to hold up as Exhibit A of the fact that there ARE no REAL anti-porn, anti-prostitution men. Because in the end, only men can stop using porn, prostituting women, but men CAN, and they know it, and so these guys are to be soundly insulted/lied about/slandered/trashed/mocked as the “wimps” (hate that word too, using it in context) they are. We all know Real Men Use Porn and Prostitute Women.
Anyway, there are men who deeply and completely oppose porn and there will be many more.
Who is more despicable in the eyes of male supremacists/patriarchists — be they men or women, whether they say they are feminists or not — than a man who rejects pornography or prostitution…
Women.
(I know you agree. And I agree with you about the tone, yuck.)
But I also notice that insulting [allegedly] antiporn men is of course done in antiwoman ways (a wuss, after all, is virtually a girl). And I definitely notice a lot of hoopla — attacks, defenses, whatever — about how much the sexual assault of this woman affects MALE FEMINISTS.
I looked up the story, and the first feminist blog result I got was a male feminist talking about how the guy sold HIM out. Which is funny, because I don’t think HE was sexually assaulted and that assault made into pornography for the amusement of his child-porn-using abuser. So, no, he wasn’t sold out.
Yes, the antiporn ugliness is ugly. But it seems to be applied derisively against all “supposedly antiporn” feminists. Not just the poor endangered unicorns. :p
Yeah, funnie. I actually had a paragraph in my comment above about the way that anti-pornography/prostitution men are subjected to sexism/misogyny, just as you say. They are violating gender stereotypes for men and that makes them what? Women! And eligible to be treated as women are treated by sexist men; to wit, “wuss” and “wimp” and all sorts of diminutive adjectives and descriptors which, if the people who use them would take some time to think about it, evidence the way gender is all about subjugation (as opposed to mystical fantasies in the head or chromosomes or phenotypes yada).
But I didn’t know if I wanted to go there yet. :p
I find this whole quite disturbing.
For I find odd that people are pro-porn and prostitution seemed so concerned that this individual should making “amateur porn” and sexually abusing whilst he does it.
It disturb me because I do not hear them complaining when women and girls are sexually abused in the making of the porn. They do not protest about continual raping of prostituted women and girls. They do not help to end the end the sex trade which is built on pain and degradation of women and girls.
But attacking a “feminist” man who sexually abuses is such a soft target.
I am angry at what that man did. But, it is not rare for abusers to build up trust and then use that as a way to get away with their crime.
But it hard to be angry about sexual abuse, if you support an industry that provoke the use of violence in sex as a legitimate way of life.
Examples of what I’m talking about from the pro-porn/prostitution side about anti-porn/anti-prostitution men:
I find what appears to me at first to be yet another garden variety (as these things go, there aren’t actually THAT many of them I don’t think) male radical feminist blog… Since I’m in the mood to snark, I read and roll my eyes a bit: yeah, your classic: all of 22 years old and teddibly teddibly earnest,
Male radical feminists (note, I don’t think a man can be a feminist or a radical feminist, but I think they can be allies, and the good ones don’t identify as feminists in any event, but whatever) are steretoyped as young (hence naive) and then the diminutive and effeminate “teddibly teddibly earnest”. Mr. Magoo comes to mind, or maybe Stewie on Family Guy.
hetboy dweeb fangirling …creepy and risible in a milquetoast way at best
I mean, how much more unmasculine is it possible to be than to be a hetboy dweeb milquetoast, especially with the “que” spelling?
squeaky clean,
A man cannot be ”squeaky clean” and still be a man. It violates Section 34(b)(9) of the Codes of Manhood. Real men (not the anti-porn/anti-prostitution kind) are sweaty, dirty, stinky and hairy (thus they cannot be “squeaky”, too much hair). Squeaky-clean is for :::shudder::: GIRLS.
“articulate,”
Real men, not the anti-porn/prostitution kind, are not articulate. They are strong silent types who brood in their caves, their steely masculine silences interrupted only by the occasional grunt, belch, spit or blowing their noses onto the ground.
nice trimmed fingernails and suchlike,
Everybody knows the hands of any self-respecting man are dirty and rough with filthy fingernails from working under the hoods of 4×4s.
In other words, a man who opposes pornography and prostitution is less than a man and therefore deserves to be treated as women are treated by misogynists, be the misogynists male or female.
Rebecca: For I find odd that people are pro-porn and prostitution seemed so concerned that this individual should making “amateur porn” and sexually abusing whilst he does it.
It disturb me because I do not hear them complaining when women and girls are sexually abused in the making of the porn. They do not protest about continual raping of prostituted women and girls. They do not help to end the end the sex trade which is built on pain and degradation of women and girls.
EXACTLY, Rebecca! That’s exactly it. That’s what I was wanting to say but didn’t say anywhere near this well in saying the pro-porn/prostitution crowd is basically only one step away, if that, from what this guy did, because they watch, they use, they make, they buy pornography that is all about the rape and sexual assault of girls and women.
Let’s not forget that in spite of what he said, Kyle Payne was at heart a pro-pornography man. He masturbated to porn, eventually worked his way to child porn as many porn-addicted men do, and as Rebecca said he made amateur porn with his camera when he found a vulnerable woman to force against her will.
Kyle is anti-porn like many men who say hitting women is cowardly; not really, but don’t it sound nice to say publicly before abusing women privately? Hugh Hefner calls himself a feminist too, something that gets pointed out with every Playboy Foundation check sent to pro-choice organizations but is refuted by the multiple women who claim he sexually abused them.
Kyle obviously has a serious pornography problem, and his case proves what radical feminists say about the destructive effects of pornography and pornsickness. The shit warps men’s minds, ALL men’s minds who are exposed to it. Kyle Payne is one more anecdote to add to the evidence that men who use pornography are more likely to believe rape myths and be sexual assaulters than men who don’t use pornography.
Thanks for your kind remarks.
I find the pro-pornography crowd getting high and mighty about this one man, reminds of my stepdad.
I remember him watching the news about a “serious” child rapist - that is a man who raped a girl who was not ”family”. My stepdad said would a straight face -
“Men like that should be hung.”
Because his raping of me and showing me porn was a minor event.
This is how I see the pro-pornorgraphy and pro-prostitution crowd. They view the porn and prostituted women and girls as being consenting. That either they do not feel pain or are good at acting.
The pro-pornography and pro-prostitutute crowd refuse to see the human face. So how can they tell if they women or girl are in pain or are being raped.
In that is unimportant, for what matters is that their needs are meet.
Like my stepdad, they are always in the right regardless of the human cost.
Sam (and everyone), so interesting, here’s another part of the interview with de Beauvoir that I excerpted above and it’s relevant to what we’re saying here (and awesome. Here is a woman who calls them as she sees them.)
Kyle Payne has both your blog Heart and Rebecca Mott’s blog on his blogroll. He also has a link to Spinning Spinsters on there. Just letting you know.
The point is, that this guy is a rapist, not whether or not he “identified” as a feminist.
If women want to be so optimistic (and, I think, gullible) as to invest any degree of trust in a male because he says he is a “feminist”, then they’ll have to learn, won’t they?
All this brouhaha proves is that most women are so heavily invested in the concept of “some <b>good</b> men” that they are willing to entirely distort their perspective of what is the far greater violation of women, namely, rape.
Once again, it makes the desire for male “goodness” and the pre-eminence of that desire amongst most females, more important than what actually *happens* to females.
If the facts of this case point to anything, they underscore that males of *any* sort are not to be trusted in matters of sexual assault.
Apologists for the male of the species will just have to get over it.
I don’t know how it is that I never heard of this guy. To my knowledge I haven’t even seen an incoming link from his blog.
deBeauvoir really gets it right, as always. Thanks for posting the inverview; I’d never seen it before.
I have always thought the key to it all is how women do set out to construct their spaces. Women only space that is politically powerful, or opens the door to real conversation among women, is actually rather rare. It is the most threatening thing to patriarchy when women unite amongst themselves. There is no substitute for this.
Men are not radical feminists or feminists. The law settles their hash when they get out of line badly enough, and feminists make sure basic laws are in place to put male hate speech and actions in check. Men can support the end of pornography and prostitution, let’s see if they go out and do this.
Women can be easily cowed into letting the wolves in sheep’s clothing into the chicken coop. It is the male enemy’s job to try to make women feel bad for wanting their own worlds and spaces.
The genius of feminism was simply to create an environment where women felt comfortable telling the real truth of their lives, without having to “posture and role play” in front of men.
Sexism is a habit, men are afraid of honest conversation in front of other men, and they are always afraid of their “fragile masculinity.” It’s why I never hear men condemn pornography or prostitution, unless they are right wing christian fundamentalists, who are secretly using it and buying prostitutes anyway.
I maintain that men are essentially unsophisticated animals, and that when women create separate spaces and power, we negate men, we create our own worlds, and ideas, and cease to do battle with the inner pigs, the outter haters, and the out there rapists of the world.
Otherwise, we don’t see the power of early feminists like deBeauvoir. I especially loved her comments on men’s choice to have children vs. women being coerced into this “role.” Women like to believe they have choices, but I see them as going along with the basic con game. Easy to say I suppose, because I am a radical lesbian, and don’t really need men at all for anything. Harder if you are heterosexual and actually attracted to there jerks! A fate worse than death in my humble opinion.
One interesting thing, the interviewer says the dominant movement in the U.S. and France is separatist. That is definitely something that has changed and not for the better. Half the time women have never even heard or thought of the reasons for separate space that de Beauvoir names.
de Beauvoir had to deal with Sartre , I know she needed woman-only spaces!
Yes, that’s true Heart, deBeauvoir was referring to the dominant movements in the U.S. and France as being separatist — but that was a long time ago.
As I said before, it is VERY rare these days. Even most young lesbians out there rarely if ever experience separatist lesbian feminist space anymore. Foolishly, Gen X switched to GLBT, and that put lesbian concerns and space out the door.
Men only pretend to agree with these things to get things, and they have absolutely no intention of changing or caring or doing anything to inconvenience themselves.
Why women continue to think men will change, and stop being radical and separatist is beyond me. It will not change a 5000 year old oppressive system, and that is what we are really dealing with.
Either women finally get this, or we’re going to have these accomodationist rangles and rants going on forever. Men feared radical feminism; it terrified the living hell out of them, and I still hear men say how much they feared lesbians back in the day. That is a good thing. Men need to fear women, to shake in their boots at the thought of ever insulting a woman anytime. Women defend their men, they remain loyal to them, they marry them, they cook and clean for them. Would they do this if they had a true viable economic choice?
Women, for the most part, never having seen radical feminist space and feel power of it, still don’t know what it is a lot of the time. When you’re surrounded by woman hatred, it’s hard for women to see it. It becomes invisible to women, and they breath it in like the cannaries in the coal mines.
Level Best, you mean to say there are women naive enough to be automatically considering egalitarian-professing men to be real feminists or even male allies at heart? It is reckless enough to give such men the benefit of the doubt, but automatically? The motives of such men should be suspected. Even if their motives are good, their comprehension should be suspected. I think most guys on the Randi Rhodes message board, for instance, profess egalitarianism, but does it mean anything? They thought nothing of calling Hillary Clinton a bitch, or worse, and most of them think Larry Flynt is a First Amendment hero! Unfortunately, so does Randi Rhodes, much to my dismay. Liberals, pah!
Hugh Hefner, as Sam noted, and Ampersand also claim to be pro-feminist. I do think there are some genuinely good men, but professing to be egalitarian is a long long way from actually being so. Usually such claims are setups for betrayal. Gerassi asks, but is it real? The question that comes to my mind is, how deep does it go? In my experience, male professions of egalitarianism are rarely more than skin deep political correctness. They may even think they mean it, but they do not comprehend what it means. I will not call a man an ally unless he can demonstrate he has rebelled against his conditioning all the way down to the core.
If I were looking for recognition, I’d post here more often, but usually I don’t think my comment would be relevant. I come here to pursue my education, and occasionally to challenge those you censor, Heart, to come over to my blog to argue with me. Most of the hostile commenters I get won’t stick around for an argument; they prefer the hit and run vacuous insult, generally. The main exception is my Camp Trans entry. Some trans activists did stick around for awhile and argue somewhat rationally, at least compared to the rest of the sorry apologists for the privileges of manhood.
It’s hard for me to understand why these guys don’t want to argue with me. If they don’t feel like defending their nonsense, why bother in the first place? I guess it makes them feel big to cast a stone even when it only shows their own silly braggadicio. It’s not as though I don’t have ample fodder on my blog to stoke their contempt for guys who challenge conventional wisdom about women, or science. Ampersand told me, when I went over to his blog to confront him over his choice of rescuer, I obviously held him in such contempt, he didn’t see any point in responding! Nice dodge, after his cronies had been badgering me for a few days, while he was on vacation. At least some of them argued with me, but not Amp. I guess it figures most enemies of feminism would rather throw mud than argue with somebody like me, a logic expert who likes debunking irrational pernicious myths like male superiority.
The alleged male friends of feminism can be sneaky and slippery, like Amp and this Mr. Payne. Why Amp didn’t want to argue, I sometimes wonder. His excuse rang hollow. Maybe I did make him look bad. He gives male defenders of feminism a bad name, which was one reason I decided to confront him. Not all of us are phony, but I’d have to agree, it’s wise to be suspicious of men, no matter how good their words sound. I’d never claim to comprehend feminism, but I have studied and interacted with it enough to know, I want to defend it. This world needs a feminist revolution, before it gets fouled beyond all hope of recovery. As a scientist, I can see just how bad a mess men have made of things. The men vying for power aren’t just arrogant and corrupt; their ways cause real damage, not only to women, but to this planet’s ability to sustain life. I see no end in sight, short of a feminist revolution or such obvious ecological crises that everyone with half a brain would be forced to wake up and smell the coffee. The web of life can only stand so much stress before it makes life impossible for its destroyers.
Aletha’s quote of a quote:
“Level Best, you mean to say there are women naive enough to be automatically considering egalitarian-professing men to be real feminists or even male allies at heart? It is reckless enough to give such men the benefit of the doubt, but automatically? The motives of such men should be suspected. Even if their motives are good, their comprehension should be suspected. I think most guys on the Randi Rhodes message board, for instance, profess egalitarianism, but does it mean anything?”
Do women actually believe what men say? Surely we should be smarter than this by now.
I am especially suspicious just now, having tried to negotiate with a pirate thinking he can steal the Free Soil Party and run for President. I threatened to publish our correspondence, so he stopped answering. I imagine it was too hard to keep up pretending he liked me. He told me he added Julia Ward Howe to his list of famous Free Soilers. She is nowhere to be found. Perhaps he is playing games with me, and she will be there tomorrow. He will be the first example for my Fight The Lies section of the blog. He got himself on the official candidate list with FEC and Vote Smart. Mona stumbled upon him after trying futile searches she hoped would find Heart as a Presidential candidate, without using her name or Free Soil. It might be possible, but I do not know how. This pirate has no honor, so his word is worth nothing. He signed his first irate response to my request he cease and desist using the name for his campaign, claiming he did searches and never found any new Free Soil Party,
Douglas S. Van Raam
2008 Free Soil Party Presidential Candidate
http://www.myspace.com/freesoilparty2008
I warned him I would ruin him. He also pretends to be egalitarian. It means nothing, another sweet nothing, thinking I will believe him. Actions speak louder than words, Mr. Pirate.
Aletha, Satsuma, it really does seem to me as a reader not only of radfem but liberal feminist blogs that many young liberal feminists are not as sceptical as they should be of professing male feminists. For example, there were many shocked comments from these women in response to the sexist savaging of Hillary Clinton on the Daily Kos and other such blogs. Me, I strictly agree with Aletha in comment 21: action speaks louder than words. But I am a crone who has seen enough to ALWAYS question the sincerity of professing male feminists and to keep my eye on them for cracks in the facade.
Re: Aletha’s and Level Best’s commentary above, I believe that each generation of women should try to build on the knowledge that exists.
Radical feminism is scary even to most women. There are a lot of people that have a huge vested interest in keeping women ignorant and pliable. I believe the rise in porn availability in the early 70s or so, was a direct response to the women’s movement of that time. Pornography is about male terrorism against women, nothing more, nothing less.
What I fear most these days, is that young women are not preserving women’s space, or creating a lot of new women’s spaces. Just the phrase ‘Obama Girl” is enought to creep me out!
It’s hard to really know the difference it how a room actually feels with women’s wisdom and energy is in it.
Even I forget this, and then suddenly I’m reminded. One time, at a financial conference I attended, they had time for small group sessions, and you could choose what you wanted to learn about. These conferences are obscenely male dominated and white dominated, and it shocks me to see how my industry is so closed to women. But anyway, they had a workshop run by a top producing pioneering woman at the firm. She is a legend, and to tell you the truth, I was a little bit scared and in awe of her to attend.
Well, I got to the room, and there she was up front, and I was the first to arrive. I sat in the last row, and I’ll never forget her warm welcome, as she invited me up to the front row and shook my hand. When she gave her lecture, it had an amazing loving quality about it, and all the women in the room were asked for their opinions as well. Even the men who came became more open and less stuffed shirty. It reminded me of the incredible power of women, and how rare it is for us to meet other women who were the pioneers of pioneers. I made sure I ordered a copy of her speech on CD.
This women’s space in a world of toxic patriarchal contamination is worth revisiting. To create more of it, and to expand this energy can be empowering everywhere.
Of all the posts and articles on this site, I think I like this one the best. We can all be especially angry over the events of the election, but DeBeavior really leads us back to the original thinker of feminism. Patriarchy is nothing if not the great distractor of women. It tries to fool women into believing that they need men, or that women don’t have a special power all their own.
You can be transformed by women’s space, love and energy at any moment at any time. Thanks for this interview, because failing to remember when we were once free, we can invent! Gold star to anyone who can guess the famous radical lesbian feminist whose lines I paraphrased
Monique Wittig.
I have that poem up on my fridge.
Gold star zooming across the Internet to none other than Mary Sunshine!
:-) 
:-) :-) Five star smile too for good luck!
Ah the good old days when women really read and could quote all the lesbian feminist greats out there!
There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied. You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember . . . You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent.
Gold stars for me!
Sonia Johnson used this quote of Wittig’s as the theme of her presentations at the Feminist Hullaballoo last year.
I keep wanting to write about the French feminists– so misunderstood! I love Monique Wittig, but my favorite of the French feminists is Luce Irigaray, constantly mischaracterized as a biological essentialists, which she is so completely not.
Well, Satsuma, I can quote them all, guaranteed, I promise you I am the Queen. Try another one. :)
I watched a few of the Obama Girl videos. Perhaps if I liked the man, those videos would not have turned my stomach so, but a Wonder Woman with a crush on Obama just struck me the wrong way.
I did start a Fight the Lies section on my blog, and linked to my correspondence with the pirate, which I posted unedited on my new wide open message board. Since it is not woman-only space, I expect the section open to the public to get messy, but I also have a section where only registered users can post, and another section only registered users can see. This is an experiment. My idea is that I will allow people to register if they have shown they have something worthwhile to contribute. I could also create a woman-only section, but Heart already has a woman-only message board. We used to have such incredible discussions there, but after the hacking last summer, it was never the same.
Well, Mary Sunshine got the first gold star! But Heart you get a couple more! French feminists! Finally, now we get to the intellectual greats on feminism worldwide!
Good old Lucy Irigaray… ah those were the days before we had tattoos and nose rings! Those were the days when feminists gathered together to discuss complex theories, before the cell phones took over, before Obama girl, the days when the great lesbian feminist poets could fill an entire auditorium. Now its Adrienne who? Mary who? or hey is it Adrienne who? Now you can’t find a feminist under 40 who has even seen a New York Times, much less read one!
Remember the days before blackberries and cell phones, but failing that INVENT
P.S. I remember the days when heterosexual women had no idea who Monique Wittig was… not bad for an ex-fundie Focus on the Family woman Heart, not bad at all!
Brilliant interview and discussion.
It is very hard trying to make close women friendships when you are a single, over 40 feminist. I still see most women, straight or lesbian, looking for a romantic partner. They are afraid or unwilling to cultivate friendships.
The people I can count on in my town and who actually want to get together and hike, bike, hear music, etc, are men. The women
are rarely available for more than a phone call. I can not tell you how much this frustrates me and makes me sad.
All of you women who were a part of Women’s Liberation and know what all women spaces are like are very lucky.
I think we should bring back that name - ‘liberation’. It is clear as a bell, and we are still prisoners of patriarchy.
lauren brought up some excellent points about women’s seeming unavailability for friendships. I was quite shocked to go back to lead lesbian drop in groups, only to find that about the only topic the women wanted to discuss was dating.
They seemed to have very little interest in a larger community, or even how to begin to go in that direction. This was a huge change from lesbian and feminist groups of the late 70s and 80s, where there was a lot of activity, a lot of energy, and most of the women were not obsessed with dating or relationships.
Sad as this may sound, every time I want to go to museums, concerts, operas or even try some new restaurant in town, lesbians seem to either have no money or no interest. Gay men have a huge cultural education, and they had access to the exact same public schools I went to. It was as if women would go blank at the mention of Bach, or tune out at the thought of theater.
We had a group reading from several authors awhile back, all ages, and there were several booming bars and clubs down the street, but only about 12 people showed up for the readings and discussions. Write and publish a book, and you’ll be lucky of lesbians even ask questions about it, much less buy it or read it.
As a lesbian age 25 who Monitque Wittig was, and you’ll draw a blank look as well.
I’ve been in women’s groups, and I sense a kind of brittle fear, or a kind of hesitancy to just speak up with gusto and passion about anything. Afraid of politics, afraid of disagreement, we live in a world of dulled senses.
It’s like a virus has eaten the heart of feminism as a passionate everyday occurance among women out in the world lauren. I don’t know why it’s all about the sex and the boyfriends, girlfriends and nonsense, but that is often the case. Here we have a passionate few, but these ideas are obscurely located on the Internet, but they are not very common out in daily life. I like to eavesdrop on women out in cafes or public spaces just to see how many of them are talking about the issues of the day, or the position of women in society, and wow, I’d be embarrassed to report what they ARE talking about a lot of the time. People on this blog actually get mad at me for telling this stuff, but it is real.
Perhaps that militant type of woman is really a rarity throughout all of human history. It’s easy to get women scared and running for cover. Since I don’t have that luxury of pretending to look straight, I’ve learned to cultivate a blunt and pretty tough manner if I need to. I don’t shrink from disagreement, or in questioning the hetero status quo. Again, my commentary scares women, it’s as if the truth is something even they don’t want to face.
I think the right wing really intimidates straight women into feeling afraid of their ambitions. I’ve seen more women on my little hill pushing baby strollers around here than all my time up here over the past 14 years.
Outside of your small feminist friendship groups, how does everyone here see daily life of women in America these days? Lauren and I can’t be the only ones noticing this.
lauren, allecto at “Gorgon Poisons” has a great post about reclaiming the phrase “women’s liberation.” I highly recommend it.
And I share your frustration about making CLOSE women friends. I love many women (and back at me, I hope!), but all have partners, and/or children, and/or jobs that make “free time” to hang out with them very difficult to find. We make time for each other crises (when loved ones are in hospital, etc., deaths of parents) but not for the fun and learning times. And I’m just as time-tangled as any of them, being sole financial support of my household for the past many years.
I certainly encourage you to keep trying to connect! Go to book studies, events, classes, etc that reflect your closest interests and don’t be shy to try conversation with women there.
Lauren and I can’t be the only ones noticing this.
Satsuma, I *totally* notice this. It is so profoundly depressing that I don’t even try to talk to women in real life any more.
I just can’t handle the disappointment that I know I will feel.
Gay men have larger cash and curiosity reserves to spend on cultural events (and any other self-focused improvement project one can imagine) because a)they are men, b)they profit from patriarchy, and c)they were raised to believe exploring their own interests is at least as important as building relationships with others.
Lesbians aren’t and don’t and weren’t.
Mary Sunshine, thanks for the validation. On the scale of things, I suppose this isn’t a biggie like rape or prostitution, but it’s something that I notice.
funnie - lesbians are not poor. Some are, thousands and thousands worldwide are not. The issue is lesbians showing any interest in non-pop cultural music or theater. Now in my town, we have literally hundreds of free concerts all over the place, and I get free tickets to all kinds of shows, which I share with one and all. When was the last time you met a lesbian who made an analogy between Stravinsky and Mozart, for example? When was the last time you met a lesbian who showed interest in art, or even wanted go to an art opening? Art openings are free by the way. Los Angeles has thousands of art galleries. When was the last time you met a lesbian who was totally excited to see an all woman’s Shakespeare company perform “Othello?”
What frustrates me, is we have amazing academics now, but out in the trenches you’d be hard pressed to find women who even have time for culture. Much less a meandering conversation spontaneously sprung up on the old front porch!
Just keep track of what you see in the world, and tell me I’m not crazy about this seeming lack of interest that women often show in something more elevating than the mundane get the chores done. Online, you can see this, and obviously we do this here, but we still have a lot of attrocity and a tiny bit of DeBeauvoir.
BTW (by the way) I was very encouraged to read over 30, count ‘em, posts for the DeBeauvoir interview! This was an amazing piece and worth meditating on. It was that powerful!! This gives me hope.
Somebody said that women are usually there and engaged when something really bad happens. Women are just great about this.
When my big old dog died earlier in the year, a couple of my good friends were just so loving to go out to dinner at the drop of a hat. I wasn’t actually all into telling the sad story, but what I needed most on that day was just to be with other women who loved animals and totally GOT what the loss of my beloved dog meant to me. Oddly enough, I was not acting grief stricken, but I was story telling, fun loving, and I was happy to be with good friends.
Now do we need a disaster or a cause to come together and really talk? Mary Sunshine, do women not want to talk in real life? Is this only a lesbian issue?
What I worry about is women’s seeming lack of time just to be together, and to hang out, and to talk. Brave me, I still reach out constantly — bring a pot of coffee out on the front porch and invite neighbor women to come by. Sometimes, it’s wine and cheese at sunset. But as Mary Sunshine said above, it can still be “profounding depressing” (Mary’s term) to talk to women in real life. Now I know this can’t just be me, but something is up here.
We all have very busy lives, but I often wonder why it is that I am never as busy as everyone else. I don’t value busy-ness I guess, and over the years, I’ve tried to teach my clients the art of this.
My job is actually far more demanding that a lot of people’s jobs, and yet, I rarely feel overwhelmed. Even when I was knocking on doors and paying my dues cold calling, I still had time to daydream, or to bump into a friend and just have a cuppa and chat. On the phone, I am never in a hurry, and clients are often amazed that I take time to ask how they are, and to mean it. It’s not all make 200 calls a day, but to make each call count and have meaning on a deeply human level, to thank some person in head office for being great. To stop mid-day and mail off a pretty thank you card to someone who helped or advised me.
I notice women’s fear of intimacy, and I ask myself “Is this still homophobia?” Is this still straight women’s fear of really talking and having REAL friendships with lesbians who are out and proud?
Now you all must know what I mean about how fearful a lot of women out there are of having any controversial opinions, you must notice this. It’s not just me. It’s not just me who notices that women out in the world rarely talk about current events at all, much less get down for serious talk. It’s pretty much chitty chatty out there in Starbucks land or grocery land, or whatever urban land is out there.
And then there are the lesbians, and I swear to the goddess we are in decline as a community in big old Los Angeles. Every now and then something truly magic happens. But it’s the exception rather than the rule.
I’m telling this from the perspective of over 30 years of activism, cultural work, music and politics folks, and I feel that I have to reinvent the wheel thousands of times with women. I get worn down by this, and I wondered what was up out there in real-land.
That’s all I’m saying. But the minute I question why lesbians balk at cultural interest, someone gets down on me and yells at me when I ask why gay men jump at a concert invitation, and lesbians could care less. Now really, the usual excuse for this lack of cultural / hang out / inspirational life is the “poverty” of lesbians compared to gay men. But I don’t buy this. I think it is the poverty of the soul of lesbians, an unwillingness to really go for the gusto or to even be interested in the spontaneous.
Although I’m not exactly perfect at explaining this phenomena of women being unavailable for friendship and actually blocking this a lot of times with this busy bee ness, it is something I profoundly feel and notice. I’m writing this because I feel this is blocking feminism. We have forgotten the fun of solidarity and the joy of being together. We get so focused on the latest outrage, that we forget the dream of women’s space, and it’s power that DeBeauvoir writes about so well.
I keep returning to Monique Wittig’s statement about remembering a time when we were not slaves, and failing to remember to invent this time.
This is a serious thing when women show a passing interest in the cultural. Here we have more free concerts than at any time in human history, but the thing lesbians got most excited about, yet again, was the Sparks basketball team! The softball game, and I wondered about this. Is it real conversation women and/or lesbians fear, real intimacy to deal with what matters in life, and where we are inspired to go?
If we overlook these small details, we’ll be lost at the thought of being killed by porn, by homophobia, by neglect. What I see maybe is our collective feeling of neglect and rejection, just because we want roses and not just bread.
So Mary Sunshine and Lauren, I’m asking you both if you have more ideas about this, and if you’d care to give some advice on what you see, and perhaps share ideas of how this came about.
And don’t everyone go into knee jerk. I’m never sure what it is people refer to here most of the time. We are pretty good on the feminist classics, but the power of culture and iconic art, well, I’m not sure what to think.
Why is my comment about gay men and culture immediately assumed to be about the supposed lack of money that the lesbian out in the world doesn’t have, when the concerts and events out there are free?
Are women more afraid of friendship? Are straight women not worried about this? Is there a difference in what straight women do together vs. lesbians?
I was about to lose hope in women’s conversational ability completely until I uncovered blogs! Hey, thinking women are out there! As the years have gone by, they have slowly disappeared out in the world. Now not everyone, obviously I meet very smart women all over the place. But they seem ever too busy to discuss in detail a poem or to sip tea and contemplate the flight of a tiger swallowtail, and I wonder…..
It’s just stuff I notice, that’s all, and I report here what I notice.
Satsuma @ 23: I believe the rise in porn availability in the early 70s or so, was a direct response to the women’s movement of that time. Pornography is about male terrorism against women, nothing more, nothing less.
Technology enabled it, but the popularity cemented it. Definitely it was a reactionary stance to the rise of the women’s movement. It was their last stronghold — women as sex objects to be used. And sadly now, this reactionary view is now mainstream accepted culture, thinly disguised as women’s ‘empowerfulness’ or some such BS.
Yes, technology definitely lit the flame Stormy. Now people get feminism actually confused with pornography, and it’s amazing to see how this came about. One case in point is the new summer series “Swingtown” — at the end of an episode where people are hosting a fundraising party to defend the rights of the actor in “Deep Throat,” the episode ends with Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman.” Clearly the 20-30 somethings writing this series have no idea that I AM Woman and the freedom of women and pornography are not even remotely related at that time. Ah, the next generation and its sense of recent history…scary I say!
As time has gone by, I just said, I won’t associate with people who support porn or own it. It’s one of my friendship deal breakers, and I think we all need to be very clear with people on this point.
It really helps, because now, people have become toxically contaminated with the stuff, and like the picture of Dorian Grey, it is starting to show on their faces and souls. Toxic pornography, like Mercury poisoning, does take time to reveal itself. We have been warning people about this for decades, and like Global warming, they’ll get it only when it’s too late.
Stormy & Satsuma,
You’re a treat.
This is not related to this thread.
Just wanted to announce lesbian Kay Ryan’s appointment as poet lauriet! Don’t even know who this woman is, so those who want to post and tell me– I’d appreciate it.
Can’t believe this stuff sometimes. Lots of bad in the world, and then suddenly a golden apple drops right from the tree in the middle of main street!
If it is not actual poverty (despite an actual, factual wage gap), but “poverty of the soul of lesbians” that is to blame for lower-profile participation in highbrow cultural events as compared to gay men:
Why are women’s souls “poorer” than men’s? Please, spell that out for me.
Many women who came of age before Title IX find women’s professional sports extremely compelling and prideworthy.
I’m just talking about music and theater and art here; it’s very noticeable, that’s all I’m saying Funnie. i can’t speak to sports because I’ve never much been interested in them, except to play them myself. But as a spectator, these things are boring to me.
Just curious, what instruments do women play here? I know Heart has mentioned that everyone in her house plays something, or sings.
It was interesting attending a Judy Chicago retrospective and lecture awhile back, because the room was just packed with women, but as I waited in line to have my books signed, it was a very heterosexual group. So hear was Judy, this incredible driving force in opening up the gallery system and visual arts to a whole generation of women, and still there was this kind of fear of lesbian existence, and this absense of it.
I hope you see this. I wasn’t sure where to post it because it deals with the separatism in the general sense.
I assume you know the New York Times did an article on separatism.
The Girls On Girls podcast on here tv, which I had up until this point been enjoying, did an episode on separatism this week (Feb. 28th, 2009) in response.
Although it is a comedy show, I was surprised they went the route of under-analysis and just echoing the misogyny instead of engaging with it. I do not live on wimmin’s land, but I support the concept of separatism. I am not sure I have the right to say something, when I chose to live in the dominant culture as well.
I am writing to you because you have more history with the movement, and right now, I am just at a loss. Is it our responsibility to forcibly educate those that don’t want to learn? Do we really need to add another burden to our already straining backs? But, at the same time, it is so painful and disappointing to hear these words from other women.