For the last few weeks, I’ve been working on the chapter about lesbian land, and it’s a tricky one.
There are several reasons why this chapter is moving kind of slow. Separatism is certainly a factor—and while the vast majority of internal debate was around permitting male children or straight/bisexual women onto lesbian land, rather than trans exclusion, this is the place where I get to grapple with contested access and (sometimes literal) gatekeeping. I will not traffic in transphobia, but I want readers—especially younger people whose only experience of queer life is from the last decade—to understand why women made certain decisions in 1975 or 1985. (Don’t ask me why they or others made similar decisions in 2015 or hold transphobic views today, though.)
Perhaps a bigger stumbling block is that I’m such a keen and confirmed city dweller that I simply can’t imagine turning my back on all the benefits of urban community. As soon as I made it to a city with a significant queer community, with bars and bookstores and cultural events, I couldn’t imagine choosing to live anywhere else. (Young queers may have the internet, but I’m sorry they never got to go to a Sweet Honey concert in D.C. in the 1980s—now THAT was a scene!)
Maybe because I grew up without a bunch of mod cons that I now enjoy VERY MUCH INDEED, I cannot fathom why women who had indoor bathrooms, running water, and electricity (for the record, I grew up with some of those things!) decided to move to remote, undeveloped land, many without the skills required to thrive in a rural/farming situation, at a time when moving out there effectively isolated them from all the institutions that women were building in the city. Worse, I could feel myself assuming a condescending attitude toward those women—dismissing them as deluded romantics who had no idea what they were getting into or how hard it would be to survive in the country.
Fortunately, several of the women who founded or joined rural communities explained why they’d done so in memoirs, magazines, anthologies, and oral histories. And actually, June Thomas of 2022, they knew exactly what they were getting into. (And on lots of occasions—so many that the women who did move to the country couldn’t stop themselves from complaining about it—women who bought in to lesbian land communities didn’t live there, or spent very little time there. They wanted to support the movement, and they were drawn to the country, but they were also pretty attached to bathrooms, warmth, and a steady income.)
This paragraph from a piece in the Spring 1990 issue of Maize, by a woman who had lived on women’s land then moved back to the city reminded me that just because something is the norm, that doesn’t mean it’s normal. She makes a good case for the strangeness of apartment living.
I’ll never voluntarily light out for the territory, but I’m finally starting to understand why a whole bunch of women fled the city starting in the 1970s.
RECOMMENDATIONS: In general, I’m mystified by the BBC’s desire to make (some of) their radio shows and podcasts sound like certain American narrative podcasts. Not that there’s anything wrong with American podcasts—really, I’m a big fan—but BBC Radio is pretty damned good at making quality programs that people want to listen to. This week, though, I listened to an excellent 10-part BBC series that was a wee bit This American Life-y (you can always tell when the first name mentioned in the credits is that of the person in charge of sound design), but it was extraordinarily compelling because of the things the BBC is very good at developing: a reporter-host who is an excellent writer for audio (she didn’t say much, but what she said was always just right), amazing actualities, and perfect pacing over the course of the series, which is airing over two weeks on the radio—a new episode each weekday—but was available in toto on BBC Sounds. I’m talking about The Boy in the Woods, the story of what happened after 6-year-old Rikki Neave was murdered when playing truant from school. It’s about class, council estates, misogyny, bad choices, poor policing, and dogged reporting by the BBC’s Winifred Robinson. I know the subject matter sounds hard to take—and it is—but Robinson turns it into essential listening.
LISTEN TO ME: On Working Overtime, Isaac Butler and I answered a listener email about dealing with the things we make as artists and craftspeople (this is one of my favorite episodes—Isaac’s initial answer was both bonkers and absolutely correct), and with the help of writer and stationery enthusiast J. Robert Lennon, we got into the nitty-gritty of pitching short fiction. On Working, I had a great conversation with former professional poker player Annie Duke about her new book Quit, and why giving up on something is often the right thing to do.
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this newsletter and want to share it, or were forwarded this edition and want to subscribe, the link is https://buttondown.email/WhereAre. The archives are here. When my book is ready to be preordered, this is where I will tell you about that, but that won’t happen until 2024. Reply to this email to share any thoughts or ideas.