I’m aware that in the last two newsletters I’ve leaned rather heavily on the challenges and downsides of living on lesbian land, and having just watched* a bunch of landdykes, some of whom have been on land for more than 40 years, talk lovingly about the experience, I figured I should share some of the reasons they gave for being drawn to and for staying on the land. (*It was a recording of a Zoom presentation organized by Older Lesbians Organizing for Change. You can watch it here.)
Among the sources of landdyke joy offered in the roundtable:
Living on the land with other creatures
The community, specifically landmates
Being part of a movement of ecologically minded women
Solitude
The ease with which you can give landmates space
Getting to live on beautiful land, which wouldn’t have been possible without the women’s land movement
Knowing that help is always near
Skill-sharing
A sense of family, especially for women who had bad experiences with their birth families
The knowledge that they have protected a piece of land from less favorable uses. (The land trusts that many land projects have formed often include covenants that protect the land from, for example, subdivision.)
Providing safe, loving environments
“Connecting with women, with land, with spirit”
Living with possibility rather than in fear
Healing. Land is “a place to release betrayals and scars”
A place to relate to other women in a non-superficial way
For an even more brass-tacks take on what women seek on lesbian land, let me share a quote from Jae Haggard, who I’ve been corresponding with lately, and who always begins her emails with a reference to the beauty of the day in the high desert of New Mexico where she lives. Back in 1991, in Maize, the country-lesbian magazine she now edits, she wrote of the new property she and a partner had just moved onto:
We particularly appreciate our remoteness. Our nearest neighbor is 2 miles. We never hear intruding voices, dogs, or vehicles. We are at the end of a dirt road and we keep our gate locked. This quiet insulated land is ideal for our great desire to live as separate as possible from patriarchal culture—no TV, radio, newspapers, computers. We have only wimmin’s voices and energy here. We value living close to/with the land and her creatures. We think it is important for those of us living here to stay apart from city energy and male values, to create ways to make our livings on the land and not to work off the land.
Here I must acknowledge how much I’m addicted not only to proximity to other people but also to a whole lot of that patriarchal culture. My problem with all the potential alternatives to Twitter that I’ve checked out so far is that they’re insufficiently aggravating. Apparently, I need a base level of annoyance to fuel me through the day. (On reflection, though, it’s probably not all that hard to find a reliable source of annoyance on lesbian land.)
RECOMMENDATIONS: I got to watch all eight episodes of the new FX/Hulu adaptation of Fleishman Is in Trouble to prepare for a Working interview with Taffy Brodesser-Akner, which got me thinking about the kinds of books that lend themselves well to adaptation. I read the novel when it first came out, so my memory had obviously faded in the three years since, but after experiencing the property (as they say in theater) in two different mediums, it might have been reasonable to say, “Enough” and never think about it again. Instead, I want to read the book again. It is a rich text. (Also, Taffy is AMAZING. It’s kind of surprising that someone who’s so good at getting people to tell her things is such a generous sharer of thoughts and insights.) In short: read the novel, watch the TV show, and listen to our interview, which will be in the Working feed on Dec. 18.
LISTEN TO ME: On Working Overtime, Karen Han and I shared some thoughts on how best to ask for, give, and receive constructive feedback. I also interviewed the delightful lesbian romance novelist Harper Bliss for Working. I still don’t know how she writes three books a year, though!
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it. 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.
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