"No Man's Land: How to Build a Feminist Utopia"

Submitted by Mastodon on Wed, 2015-10-14 12:39

Article here. Excerpt:

'Waking up each day in the Land of Hims, where the pay gap is wide and sexism both subtle and overt, it's tempting to wish that the easy comfort and understanding found in the company of other women were a 24/7 reality. Spend some time at a women's college, or scroll through secret feminist Facebook groups where conversation can take shape freely, away from the patronizing or defensive rebuffs we've trained ourselves to brace for, and you might understand the lark of the feminist utopia. A place populated solely by women who Get It, living and working with ease. No leaning in, no pushing against, and best of all: no men.

Existing most famously in feminist theory, the lesbian separatist communes of the 1970s called on women to claim lesbianism or celibacy and move out to rural farms deemed "womyn's lands"—an act of literally and figuratively expunging men from their way of being. Though most of us wouldn't actually be willing to pack up and leave (either men or our lives), for some the wistful dream of an equitable women-only paradise, somewhere far off and away, remains an irrepressible desire.

Kate White is trying to put that desire into action. After coming up unsatisfied with the existing intentional communities she researched, which either required a hefty buy-in or were "too religious" for her goals, she's now in the midst of planning an entirely new space, using Charlotte Gilman's 1915 utopian sci-fi novel Herland as a guiding principle. The book imagines a placid world called the Land Without Hims, ruled and inhabited only by women, who have been free of gender stereotypes since the fall of men two thousand years before. "We are putting feminism into actual practice rather than just discussing things," White explains. "Building something new avoids the need for a revolution here [in the US]."'

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... and it fails, each time.

First, there's internecene disputes, many forming around jealous affections. Some monasteries and cloisters have been around for centuries. They work because part of membership requires that one forego romantic attachments and even forego friendships that become "too involved". These lead to distractions, or so it is believed, from pursuing the kind of spiritual life that monasteries and cloisters seek to foster among their members. Whether that is true is I suppose debatable, but one thing such a thing does do is substantially reduce disputes arising from jealousies.

Many of the feminist lesbian separatist communes that rose up in the '60s/'70s collapsed after just a few years because of romantic jealousies. Tight-knit, smaller groups of people are easily driven apart by this kind of dynamic. Imagine the TV show "Survivor" only instead of the conflict arising from competition to see who'll be last, it's for the affections of some cute newcomer to the commune. Now imagine this happening a lot, over and over. You get the idea.

The other reason these communes failed is a shortage of skills needed to maintain the places in a way similar to what the women who joined them were used to. These skills include, but are not limited to, carpentry, plumbing, electric systems, architecture, farming, and so on. Unless one is teachable in these things or arrives with these skills, she or he will have trouble finding ways to contribute in an actual commune environment. Some "off-the-grid" communes do exist and have since the '60s and '70s, but these are co-ed communes, and the members long ago decided that to maintain their preferred lifestyle, working off-commune would be necessary. Truly separatist communes will have none of that.

There are other reasons why such ventures fail, but these are the high points, What's significant about this story is the misandry that motivates the author and how mainstream it is. She writes in such a manner that no man today would dare write but in with reference to women. ("Oh how wonderful it'd be, and best of all: no women!") Such a male author would be out of a job faster than you can say "You're fired!" This particular author will probably get job offers as a result of her article. Sick.

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Submitted by Matt on Thu, 2015-10-15 01:40