By Madeline Price (she/they)
Content warning: child marriage, female genital mutilation, domestic violence, rape and sexual assault, transphobia
It would be remiss of me, when discussing rebuilding a feminist reality after the global pandemic, to fail to explore the attempts at building a feminist utopia which have come before us, from the Woman’s Commonwealth to the lesbian separatist movements.
Women and men must exist separately
Since the 1800s, lesbian separatist movements have been establishing women-centred spaces, without the presence of men, across the United States of America, Australia, New Zealand and Western Europe. These spaces (known commonly as Womyn’s Lands – note the exclusionary use of ‘womyn’ in their wording), practice various forms of lesbian separatism – the idea that women must exist separately from men, socially, economically and politically, in order for the goals of feminism to be achieved. At their peak throughout the 1960s-80s, there were an estimated 150 intentional, women-centred communities in the United States of America alone.
The Huntington Open Women’s Land (HOWL) was one of these spaces: a secluded patch of 50 acres, nestled amongst wildflowers, woolly bushes and deep ponds, founded in 1986 by a private donor and designated as a place for women and women only (inclusive, notably, of trans women). The space functioned as a cooperative with the equal division of labour amongst residents: repairing buildings, tending to crops, overseeing finances. The board of HOWL, a group of five women aged 60+, are now concerned: recruitment efforts for the next generation of separatist feminists to take over HOWL have been unfruitful.
In Australia, Amazon Acres was a women-only community established in the mid 1970s, amongst a sprawling 400 hectares of remote land in New South Wales. The collective had few rules: men and meat were banned for the most part, and even machines at times, as they were tools of the patriarchy. The ban on men extended to young children, and was used to justify transphobia in the collective. Today, no one lives at Amazon Acres, and the land is waiting to be handed to the next generation – if they want it.
The members of Alapine, a residential Womyn’s Land in the USA, face a similar concern: in the past few years, their population is dwindling, with many residents undergoing knee surgeries or hip replacements, and needing to relocate for significant medical care. Whilst it was the work and contributions of this generation of women who made Womyn’s Lands a possibility, the values that underpin the women’s land movement are aging with the residents.
Challenges to these Womyn’s Lands abound: the exclusion of men has been extended in many cases to male infants and male relatives, transphobia is rampant, and there is significant lack of acceptance of bisexual and heterosexual women by many residents. And the next generation of feminists do not want to take on the burden of living off-grid in communities built from a non-intersectional framework.
The modern-day Womyn’s Lands
Such challenges to these communities are being tackled head on, in an attempt to build feminist communities into the new feminist reality.
Modern takes on women’s lands take a different track: perhaps, the answer to building a feminist reality and utopia lies not in long-term communal living, but in short-term ‘breaks’ from society?
SuBAMUH (known also as the Susan B. Anthony Memorial Unrest Home Women’s Land Trust – conveniently ignoring the racism of its namesake) is one of those places, offering a women-centred, intentional, short-term educational and living community. Unlike many traditional Womyn’s Lands, SuBAMUH offers space for women, LGBTIQA+ folk and allies to live, rest and recreate outside of contemporary society with minimal rules: 8-10 hours of work provided to the community per month, financial independence and no guns.
A third response in building a feminist reality and utopia has been purpose-built communities, based on feminist principles, aiming to solve a particular societal challenge.
In O’ahu lies Pu’uhonua O Wai’anae, a self-governed village of approximately 250 people living on the edge of the Wai’anae Boat Harbour. Predominantly, the residents are Native Hawaiian, and come from backgrounds of houselessness, addiction, trauma, injury, abuse, illness and vulnerability. Their community encompasses knowing their neighbours, communal responsibility in caring for children, and community service by all. Overwhelmingly, it focuses upon building community relationships as the first step to recovery from houselessness, trauma, injury and abuse.
Similarly, the village of Umoja in Kenya houses a woman’s only refuge for survivors of sexual violence. Located in the grasslands of Samburu, in northern Kenya, the women of Umoja manage farmland, create jewellery to sell to tourists, run small businesses (including a camp where groups of safari tourists stay) and recover from the brutal violence of child marriage, female genital mutilation, domestic violence, rape and sexual assault. Currently, there are 47 women and 200 children residing in Umoja, which has been in existence for 25 years. It is a democratic, education- and healing-focused community, founded by and for women.
Finally, in North London, there is the Older Women’s Cohousing group (OWCH), who have a created a space for women over 50 years of age to live together in a purpose-built block of flats. Their decision to create a community for women was a given from their founding: OWCH note that older men from their era had not benefitted from feminism’s awakening of gender consciousness, and were still almost “universally unreconstructed in their views of male dominance and female subservience as a ‘natural relationship’”.
Building this reality
But is creating a world – or at least a space within it – separate from the current reality, really the answer?
Roxanne Dunbar-Oritz, founder of Cell 16 (a progressive feminist organisation founded in 1968, and known for its focus on separatist feminism) thinks not. Fifty-two years after the inception of Cell 16, Dunbar-Oritz now believes her original theory on communes as a means of liberation was misguided – that they are the symbol of a political movement’s devolvement, the equivalent of hands thrown up in the air, of giving up. She notes: “[i]t really took a lot of energy out of the movement. The ones that went out to the communes didn’t have any societal effect, in terms of making changes, or a political impact… But it can develop into a nice lifestyle. In that way, it’s kind of elitist.”
Significantly, the creation of these spaces – in addition to be exclusionary and elitist – fails to acknowledge the simple fact that the patriarchy is detrimental to men too.
In building a feminist reality – and rebuilding our society after a pandemic – a feminist separatist response simply is not feasible: we are all impacted by the patriarchy, and we need to stick together in order to overcome it.
To explore more about this reality, visit:
Further resources:
· In Pictures: The Feminist and Lesbian ‘Women’s Lands’ of 1980s America;
· Who’s Killing the Women’s Land Movement?; and
· The Crushing Effects of Patriarchy of Men and Women Today.
***In an earlier version of this piece, we linked to an article mentioning Herland Feminist Ecovillage. Since then, we have been made aware of abuse that occurred within this cult, and removed this link. We stand with the survivors of this abuse, and very much appreciate the strength it took to speak out against this.