Separatist Feminism

[VictorGollancz]

Ok, I really am really very late for work at this point but I thought it might be nice to have a space in which we can discuss separatist feminism. I've read a lot of advocates of it, and even incorporate some elements of it into my own life - I prefer not to live with men, for example - but I don't practise it totally and I can't find any examples of any separatist communes.

Does anyone know anything more about it? Does anyone live in a separatist way?

Surprisingly good Wiki link here

What interests me is how terribly normalised heteromonogamy is, to the point where people are implying that single mothers are separatists sort of by default, which isn't necessarily so. There is a fair old difference between the radical lesbian separatists who want to avoid men as much as possible, and the women who don't want to live with a male partner but socialise with men, work with them and indeed have sex with them sometimes.

sorry if my post came across as meaning that single mum = separatist, that's not how i intended it. (although i bet there are some who would see it as that, in quite an accusatory way.)

i was thinking more of how it can be like that - when we first moved here (the US) i was on a visa that stopped me from working. i found a group a bit like mn in rl, went on mn, helped at dd's school which is nearly 100% female staff (the exception being the principal), and other mums helped out. when i took dd to brownies, swimming etc it was almost all mums who did those things, at the school bus stop it was mums, and at the grocery store a large % of the check-out staff are female.

if i hadn't been married to dh, i would have been living an almost entirely female lifestyle. i can imagine that the same is true for many sahm who don't have a male partner.

i'm with SAF that I'd like to see some different types of family being accepted. i mean WHY is it so shocking that one man should have 3 wives (or a woman several husbands?), but infinitely less shocking for a man to have an affair behind his wife's back?

to me, it all comes down to materialism & power - these systems were put in place to protect the finances & possessions of the men, and then we are told that it is 'god's will' or 'best for the kids', or even that we can't be happy unless we are like this. who says so?

i'm sure many people are happy in their family set-ups, but that also others aren't. that doesn't make them bad people. they should be able to find a way that makes them happy, without being judged. ( i am, of course, NOT referring to any relationships with any abuse in them, that's a whole other issue)

I'm struggling to see how your objections relate to the rest of this thread, Jenny. I can see your opposition to talking about a theoretical idea; but eve there, I think that in the main the discussion has concerned the real life experiences of those who lean towards separatism. That can hardly be dismissed as ?naval gazing".
As to your point about men/women as a group, I don't think anyone has said anything that disputes this. In fact SaF has made some very interesting points about how certain ?female? gender roles are privileged in society to the extent that some women who inhabit them have difficulty imagining that gender based discrimination is still happening.
Of course some women are doing just fine. I am quite successful at what I do, for example. But that doesn't mean I don't think that others don't share my privilege. In fact quite the reverse. I want my situation not to be confined to certain women who adapt better to the patriachy than others. I want society to abandon its discrimination in favour and against women and men who don't conform to the preestablished norms.

I was really only engaging with the first few posts and haven't trawled though... the op asks for experiences of people who have wilfully chosen to live in a separatist manner - op prefers not to live with men, ie placing all men together into one homogenous group with characteristics that op finds not to her taste, whilst all women are similarly grouped and found favourable. She suggests that this is something more women should consider - in order to achieve what? Something about men then abandoning patriarchy - well, if 'men' (all 3bn) knew they were part of some shadowy and malign social norm, that'd be the first step towards abandoning it. I suspect that this is not the case. It is the unrealistic nature of the concept that makes it akin to adolescent navel gazing (naval gazing would involve ships, surely?)

Gender-based discrimination will always exist. Separatism would be an example of sexual discrimination would it not? I'm sceptical about all the various theories that have been dreamt up to explain away those who take issue with the 'patriarchy around every corner' attitude of most of these pages' posters, however. 'Patriarchy' - there's another example; assigning all the inequities of life a male character...

I do, however, like your last line. We could just say 'people', though, couldn't we? Yes, I know the emphasis was on the and, but generally, it's people who struggle and people who get treated unfairly and people who have to strive for what's right. By dividing us and defining us by our genetalia one naturally creates divisions. How is the aim for a fairer society assisted by divisive action?

So, I guess I'm saying that the 'feminists' posting on these pages are the most sexist bunch of individuals I have come across in a long time. Ironic, eh?

Deary me Jenny, as Cat was talking women and men (ie people) did you want her rephrase to make it more palatable for you, what is it about the word women, that made you uncomfortable?

That aside,and I am a little tempted to suggest you go Google sexism. As society treats women and men differently, and systematically disadvantages women(but some women more than others)...it is hardly surprising to find feminists who fight against that, to discussing responses in terms gender.

Um, Jenny, if you read the rest of my posts you'll notice that I have a male partner, plenty of very dear male friends and although I don't think I've mentioned my father on this thread, he's great as well. Do I want to live with any of them? Not particularly - if you stick around this board a thread on Wifework will probably turn up, discussing the outrageously uneven division of labour and the happiness statistics for single women vs married men. I don't want to clean anyone else's shit but my own, thank-you very much, and given that it seems that even the most prepared partnership can slide into the woman picking up most of the shit, intense, INTENSE negotiations are going to be needed before I change my mind on that.

But largely I have a very happy life that engages with largely decent men. My point is more along the lines of why do I think my own privilege is more important than the suffering of other women? Separation is a group decision, where women work together, and would necessarily involve women like me choosing chastity and the end of important relationships. I'm interested in that, and discussing that.

I have a funny feeling that in a commune, some women would still end up doing the 'wife work' while other women sat around doing not much and a few being 'Queen Bee'.

How do I know? Well, its group behaviour, pure and simple.

I've lived in mixed groups of male and female students and there was always some who preferred to live in a tip and some who cleaned the bath, tidied the kitchen and so on. It wasn't always the blokes that were the slobs.

Morebeta, oh that's possible of course. Women are no more all wonderful cary-shary perfection than men are all beasts. But because men are the more privileged group, the ones who as a group have all the money, all the power, who consider themselves people and women as 'sort of something else' and many women feel the same, being without men for a while is good for women. It needn't be for life, it needn't even be for more than a few hours a week to effect a little useful change, but there are substantial differences between being in single-sex company and mixed company.

To be honest lenin I;d rather jjump off a cliff than live in a commune of any kind.

Should I end up in supported care when elderly I would far rather choose to end my time.

It's my AS traits thatc ause that I know but it's absolutely who I am without a doubt; the one stood on her own and quite happy at school, etc etc.

I am fine with other people wanting to but it's not for me. One of the hobbies I have has a tendency (in no way enforced) for the women to spilt one way and the men the other, and I am at the back with a pile of colured gels and a craft knife ploughing quietly on. Just my nature.

I did do an all women halls many moons ago and hated it; actually I developed a phobia of the kitchen and had to live off takeaway. So it's not about the other people per se but sharing spaces with them. I know I am not alone in that. Socially everything I do has to eb thought through, there are no spontaneous smiles, automatic understandings of jokes or knowing how to walk through a crowd.. At times that level of conscious processing becomes hard work.

Lenin - "men spending time with men".

Now there is something I really do have expertise on. Men have been going into little exclusive cabals, clubs, communes for eons and my regular experience is that it is rarely a good thing.

I'm just of the opionion that hell is indeed other people - men , women, children, they all annoy me equally.
I have to say that I preferred my old job which was 80% female in my department, there were 10 women and two men, my job now is with mainly wankers men who I thankfully don't have to spend a lot of time around. Actually, the v. young men in the customer sales office are lovely and treat me with respect, it's the idiots in the other sales/buying office that are foul mouthed , misogynistic pigs and they are generally in their 30's, not married ( no surprises there then) and have flashy cars as a substitute for a family life - I'm lucky to get a grunt out of them yet if one of the young women from the warehouse comes in they are falling over themselves to talk to her (hmm) As a 40 something woman I'm practically invisible to them.

I lived a more female-centric life when DH was in the Air Force strangely enough, allbeit in a very male orientated enviroment - there is often a large group of women on base while the men are away , so naturally it's a life of mother and baby groups and coffee mornings etc., so it was helpful to have that support network when we all had young babies and children, it's just such a long time ago ( 15 + years) that I've forgotten how nice it actually was.

I'm not too worried about men spending some time with only other men for company, really. But it needs to be proportinate, and not be used as a way to exclude women from other things eg the men-only workplace drinking club means that women cannot rise above a certain professional level because all the real work is done in the drinking club.

I think a lot of people out there simply don't want to acknowledge the idea of privilege and the fact that it exists.

They want to pretend that we all operate on a level playing field and so therefore the very idea of living separately is just stupid and unnecessary. If only it were true that we're on a level playing field. Funnily enough, when privileged groups want to promote separatism - racially, eg in the USA in the South and in Apartheid South Africa - they also used the pretence that there was no such thing as privilege and that the separatism wasn't based on one group getting fewer and crapper resources than the other group.

"I wonder if those so against women spending time with women feel the same way about men spending time with men. Do you have the same or different reaction?"

YES, definitely, particulalry because men tend to spend time with men doing things that i like to do - riding mountain bikes, hiking, skiing, martial arts, not drinking coffee, eating cake and 'watching the kids' or heaven forbid shopping

there are two women in our group of friends (myself and one other) who will always want to be on all the big bike riding weekends with the men... and to be honest there is at least one man who prefers to stay home with the kids.

If separatism became a standard way of living would it make things more equal?

I think you'd still have women at the bottom being oppressed by the women at the top of the group. All animals are equal and all that.

Unless high-flyers are going to do their fair share of the drudge jobs.

But I quite like the idea of my MD doing the cleaning I just can't see it happening.

I don't think anyone at all is advocating a world divided entirely along gender lines - lots of the posters on here are saying that degrees of separatism might appeal to them at least for a while, but the women who want to live entirely man-free are in a small minority everywhere.
Yet that tiny, pretty powerless minority is such a TERRIFYING threat to the mundane world and the patriarchy that people keep bleating on about how it can't possibly 'work', can't possibly be allowed.... because otherwise other women will Get Ideas. And stop allowing men to use them as servants and breeding stock.

I wouldn't like to live in a commune (my dream is to live on a remote island by myself) but what I have found very interesting is how some posters have found the whole concept utterly offensive. Very weird.

I hardly think Beta and I are the voice of the Patriarchy, he's a SAHD and I my children live with me a lot of the time. We're not exactly Fathers for Justice.

I have no problem with women (or men) doing this, I just don't think it would work on a large scale. On a small scale it would but I still think you'd end up with a hyriarchy.

I assume we're allowed to have opinions?