Women, Wimmin, Womyn, Womin, Whippets - on Lesbian Separatism
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[ Takver's Initiatives ] [ Radical Tradition Contents ] Women, wimmin, womyn, womin, whippets - On Lesbian Separatism by Julie McCrossin About six weeks ago I began interviewing people about "Lesbian Separatism" with the intention of writing an article. I received a message that Girls Own would like to print such an article. I contacted the collective several times and warned them how long it was going to be. I was assured that up to three pages would be available. When the collective read a first long installment debate arose over whether they would print it. The final draft was submitted to a second meeting. I gather the collective was divided in its attitude. A compromise was finally reached whereby they refused to publish it this issue. It will instead be published next issue in two months time, and other copy will be sought to make up a "Lesbian Separatism" edition. I think that had this article been non-critical it would have been printed as arranged. The delay constitutes a form of censorship and an attempt to neutralize the article by presenting it amidst contrary opinion. Why not print it as planned in this issue and call for responses from the Girls Own readers for the next issue? open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com This article is topical now. I would suggest it is no more controversial than articles and graphics of a "separatist" nature which appeared last issue. A group of friends decided to help me print it immediately, to coincide with Mary Daly's visit. Please send comments, criticisms and responses of all sorts to the Girls Own collective as contributions to their next issue Julie McCrossin This article is a response to the increasing sense of disquiet I've been experiencing about some ideas and attitudes around the feminist ghetto. I am concerned about the implications of a whole series of things I've heard or seen written such as: 'men are mutants'; 'its know use putting energy into men'; 'can heterosexual women be feminists'; 'porn is violence against women'; 'smash the sex shops'; 'castrate all rapists'; 'dead men don't rape'; 'kill them in their cots'; etc. Was there any relationship between these ideas? What could I read to explain to me the analysis behind them? The crunch came when I woke up one morning to hear Fred Nile of the Festival Of Light praising the actions of Brisbane Uni feminists which lead to the removal of girlie magazines from the university newsagent. Fred was calling for community response to the "nauseating filth" of Caligula. Soon after some women are alleged by police to have thrown paint at the screen during a session. A remembered my misgivings over the tone and ideas behind the Reclaim The Night marches which focused on sex shops. What exactly is the difference between the Festival of Light's position and ours? Fred Nile says Caligula degrades women too. Do we advocate censorship? Can we afford ambiguity at a public level? I decided to write an article to spell out my misgivings and to invite people to respond. I have talked to lots of people and done some scattered reading. My aim is to initiate written and open debate of ideas, not to have a go at any one. This article has become an examination of "Lesbian Separatism" because it was to that spectrum of ideas that I open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com traced many of the tendencies I find so unpalatable. Why Be A Feminist? Why be an anarchist? Why incorporate a body of ideas into the way you view the world? Political analysis gives us insight into our experiences and puts them into a context by helping us to understand the way the world works and its effects on us. Its aim is to help us work out tactics to change what we don't like. I remember my first contact with women's movement ideas at Sydney University in c. 1972 sex role conditioning; women were not naturally inferior; monogamous, heterosexual marriage was not the only way. A little later I got involved with Gay Liberation it was alright to feel sexual feelings for your own sex! �� What was the effect of these ideas? of this new found analysis? ..recognition, things clicking into place, relief, � encouragement. It was liberating information. The world now seemed a bigger place, full of more choices. My brother's refusal to do any washing up because it would set a dangerous precedent, may have been a funny line, but it was unfair as I'd always felt. There were lots of women who were aroused by their own sex - whats more, the numbers appeared to be increasing. After "The Loudest Whisper" and the evasions of the school chaplain, this was news indeed! I had similar mind expanding sensation when I was first introduced to anarchist ideas. Alexander Berkman's indictment of state violence and Emma Goldman's criticism of the way the Russian Revolution developed were good news to this left-winger who had always felt uneasy with the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. To hear of a form of organization that didn't involve leaders or hierarchies or forced obedience to party lines of any colour, offered an ideal worth fighting for. When I started to think about why I found the "lesbian separatist" ideas floating around town so unpalatable, I realized it was more than the absurdity of the mutant theory, more than the prejudice and authoritarianism of dismissing half the human race, more than the reverse sexism it was the hopelessness such ideas engendered. These ideas have the exact opposite effect to the original women's liberation concepts. They are restricting. open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com confining, inward turning and exclusive, not only of men, but of many women too. If you believe men are incapable of change, the future is indeed frightening. The tactics such an analysis gives rise to reflect this hopeless quality - from no support to issues involving men, no involvement with male children, mistrust of heterosexual women; through to castration and death lists. What Is Lesbian Separatism? It would seem that "lesbian separatism" is a broad term meaning different things to different people. Women I spoke to in Sydney ranged in their interpretations from "not wanting to put energy into men", to consideration of ways to eliminate men all together. In Britain the lines have been more clearly drawn. Ludo McFingers gives a succinct description of the development of separatist threads up to 1978 in London in her article "The Way of All Separatists" in the Blatant Lesbianism. She writes how urban separatists squatting in London in the early 70's eventually moved into the country and became isolated and politically impotent. She writes "separatism as the extreme wing of radical feminism has been superceded by the revolutionary feminists, who call for the struggle to be taken back into the streets . They hate men, see women as a sex class, support biological determinism, reject reformism and despise the left."(1) Here are all the ideas I associate with the term "lesbian separatist". I understand there are some women who call themselves "separatist" who may only agree with parts of the whole spectrum. 1. Patriarchy. Separatists assert that patriarchy is the fundamental cause of all oppression in our society. It is the sum total of means by which men maintain dominance over women. In a patriarchal analysis men are identified as the enemy and the creators of all other divisions and inequalities throughout history. "Women's oppression predates and is the root cause of all others."( 2) I get the impression that all men, each individual man, benefits and thus all men are responsible. All men are considered guilty and all women are considered innocent. open in browser PRO version Are you a developer? Try out the HTML to PDF API pdfcrowd.com A Sydney woman I interviewed felt that there had been two camps from the word go - socialist feminists, who see economic causes as the root of our oppression, and radical feminists, who see patriarchy as the cause. She said "Women have never had any power and have always been ruled by men. Out of that comes class, race and economic divisions. Women have no say and have always been oppressed in some way." As a British woman puts it "I know what it is and who it is that oppresses me most, each time I walk outside my front door. Its not capitalism, its not class structure, its not other women, its men . No woman is to blame because none of us had the power to create these structures."( 3) "Lesbian separatism" is asserting that sex/gender is the basic division in our society. All other inequalities are subordinate side-effects. Faced with a complex world, such a suggestion may be appealing in its simplicity. It invites direct and radical solutions. But it just isn't that simple. Class and race are equally significant. To fully understand a society we need to work out the relationship between sex, class and race based divisions, and to consider them in the context of the particular culture and historical period. Any movement for social change which chooses to focus on one basis of oppression and to downgrade the significance of the others, is bound to be misleading and oppressive itself.