First, I contest the assertion that there are two equal or similar extremes within the CoB. Sure, there are people who strongly believe that God is happy that people are lgbtq and straight, while others strongly believe that God is aghast that some people are lgbtq. Strongly believing something does not necessarily make one an extremist. There are people who believe that it is wrong to be lgbtq who are extremists – people who say that a congregation should be punished for asking Annual Conference to discuss a 28-year-old decision. That sounds pretty extreme to me. There are people who say that lgbtq people and allies are being led by the devil or are overtaken by evil. That sounds pretty extreme to me. There are people who stalk and photograph conference attendees who visited the Womaen’s Caucus booth. That sounds pretty extreme to me. There are people who send death threats to lgbtq church leaders and their allies. That sounds pretty extreme to me.

Now I hang out with some rather radical progressives, and I have never – not even in our private, uncensored spaces – heard anyone suggest that someone else be punished for their beliefs, or that the Devil is controlling them. I don’t know of anyone who strongly believes that lgbtq people are fully worthy of God’s love who stalks and catalogues the people who visit the Brethren Revival Fellowship booth – even though, if anyone had reason to fear the opposition it is lgbtq people and their allies, the ones receiving death threats – NEVER sending them. These two “extremes” are not even equal players: decades ago a seat at the table was given to the Brethren Revival Fellowship, but many homophobic (and undecided) Brethren have refused to allow lgbtq folks a place in their churches, a booth in the Annual Conference exhibit hall, or a place in the “body of Christ.” (Thank God, it’s not actually up to them!)

Second, if I am to be labeled an extremist because I strongly believe that I, and other lgbtq persons and allies, am a beloved child of God, I celebrate it! I follow the way of an extremist from Nazareth who was threatened, tortured, and killed for his radical upheaval of the social and religious structure. I am called to feast and commune on the margins, just as Jesus did 2000 years ago.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was called an extremist by the religious and political leaders of his day who feared the change he brought to our country. Sitting in a jail cell in Birmingham, King wrote these words:

Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”…was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand I can do no other, so help me God.”….So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?….Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists. (King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail)

Perhaps the Church of the Brethren and the world are in dire need of extremists who extend Jesus’ table to all – homophobics and lgbtq folks, war veterans and conscientious objectors, climate change-skeptics and climate change activists. And like Jesus, when we sit down for the feast, we honor each person but also compassionately tell the truth about God’s way.

Lesbian separatism certainly informs my work, including the ideas that (1) separatism is a no-saying to male parasitism and a withdrawal from the dominant/subordinate, man/woman relationship;( 2) protectors are not essentially different from predators;(3 ) a feminist agreeing to defend women’s rights is actually coerced into solidifying status quo values that make women’s, but not men’s, rights debatable in a democracy; (4) heterosexuality provides a legitimation of all forms of domination, most especially the exploitative and paternalistic justification of imperialism;( 5) separatism is a focusing on lesbians and a lesbian conceptual framework from which new values can and have emerged. (Hoagland, 196)

Hoagland does not particularly explain these ideas, likely assuming that her audience will already be familiar with these tenets of lesbian separatism. This article appears in Hypatia, a journal of lesbian thought. While I was initially reluctant to fully grant these points (particularly #4), on a second read I realized the deep truth of each. I am not sure how to incorporate point #3 into my own feminist work, but am grateful that I know realize I need to. I appreciate that Hoagland dives right in to her subject, not apologizing or tip-toeing. She is acting on point #5, focusing on a lesbian conceptual framework.

Hoagland offers a helpful example of the fresh conceptual framework possible within a lesbian-only space.

Before the women’s liberation movement began, women’s anger was madness. When a woman got angry, men would discount the anger by saying, “You’re so cute when you get angry” or “The bitch is crazy.”After the women’s liberation movement got under way, women’s anger became a righteous response to male domination. Men went right on saying the same things, but by coming together in a movement and focusing on each other, women as a group created a different context and stopped referring to men’s values and perceptions of women. (A similar phenomenon occurred as Blacks as a group focused on each other, ignoring white definitions/perceptions of blackness.) Tragically, that women’s anger has become once again taboo or psychological (therapized, especially among women), which suggests that the context of the movement has been co-opted and patriarchal disciplinarians and professionals have reasserted their control. (Hoagland, 200)

Hoagland does offer a definition of “heterosexualism,” a term she employs (and I think coined, since the earliest use I’ve found is in her 1988 book Lesbian Ethics) to justify the importance of lesbian-only space. “Focusing not on sexism, homophobia, or even heterosexism, I consider heterosexualism-a relationship between men and women” (Hoagland 196). Quoting her own previous work she explains that “Heterosexualism is men dominating and deskilling women in any of a number of forms, from outright attack to paternalistic care, and women devaluing (of necessity) female bonding as well as finding inherent conflicts between commitment and autonomy and consequently valuing an ethics of dependence” (Hoagland 1988, 29, quoted in “Why Lesbian Ethics” 196-197). As heterosexualism does not allow women their own agency, it affects all women, even those not in romantic/sexual/domestic relationships with men. As a woman in a romantic relationship with a man, of course I wonder how to have heteroqueer relationships that do not involve the problems of heterosexualsm. Reasonably, Hoagland is not concerned with this question, though I am interested in reading others’ wisdom on the matter. (And here I go, placing my heterosexist agenda on a perfectly reasonable lesbian set of concerns.)

If my romantic relationship with my partner was able to exist in a vacuum of only the two of us, I imagine we could have a fairly successful heteroqueer relationship. But I realize that even our most personal feelings and activities affect and are affected by the cultural system we live within. I cannot deny Hoagland’s assertion that “heterosexualism is a particular economic, political, and emotional relationship between men and women: men must dominate and women must subordinate themselves to men in any number of ways. As a result men presume access to women while women remain riveted on men and are unable to sustain a community of women” (Hoagland 1988, 29, quoted in “Why Lesbian Ethics, 197). I have experienced this broad orientation (beyond sexual or romantic) toward men within my own self and many of my female friends, and I know it often means that we see each other as threats, and of secondary importance. As Hoagland writes, this orientation toward men “undermines women’s community. Thus, two serious problems of heterosexualism for women are female agency and community. By not trying to fit ourselves into a (heterosexual) women’s framework and instead recognizing our own, lesbians can discover that from lesbian lives come different conceptual possibilities” (Hoagland, 197).

The tendency for women to orient toward men is driven not only by external societal and economic factors, but is developed within women by cultural norms.

The values assigned to women are the feminine virtues: self-sacrifice, altruism, vulnerability (Hoagland 1988, chap. 2). As a consequence, the healthy and normal woman’s actions are to be toward others. If we try to fit that model, it means our actions are away from ourselves, with the result that our ability to act is located in others. And that means that the primary mode of female agency is manipulation. (Hoagland, 197)

But what if these actions are aimed at other women, and at us by other women? The other-oriented nature (thanks in large part to nurture) of women would not serve patriarchy. Would it still undermine women’s agency, or would it redefine what agency might mean, celebrating interdependence as a way to honor both individual and community? Hoagland seems to say yes, in her discussion of female agency as creativity, rather than sacrifice. She describes a memory of a Take Back the Night gathering. A woman who was married to a man found the time she invested in the event to be a sacrifice from her “normal life.” A worthy sacrifice, but still a de-centering, in Hoagland’s estimation, of this woman’s life which was normally centered on her husband and home. Hoagland, however, writes

We did not consider our work away from our centers; and on nights like those, as well as others, we were taking the reality we were creating in our homes, collectives, bars, consciousness-raising groups, and other meeting places, and extending it to the streets. In considering actual lesbian lives, I found that our actions were not sacrificial but creative. (Hoagland, 198)

In communities of women where women’s lives are centered on one another (and therefore affirming of the woman each one is), giving of oneself can be giving to oneself, since the giving is all in service to women.

Thus, I am suggesting that by considering the category “lesbian,” not “woman,” we discover a different sense of female agency. In lesbian lives we find that choice is creation, not sacrifice. As a result, we can revalue female agency, developing it independently of the manipulation and control from the position of subordination of heterosexualism. Female agency becomes not a matter of sacrifice but a process of engagement and creation. And if we regard choice as creation, not sacrifice, we can regard our ability to make choices as a source of enabling power, rather than as something to avoid because it appears to mean loss. All that is lesbian exists only because we’ve created it. And realizing this, we can realize that our power lies in choice. (Hoagland, 198-199)

Seeking such interdependent community is a way for lesbians to enrich their own lives, and resist a draw toward “masculine” traits that the binary gender system hoists on lesbians. “Being a lesbian is not a matter of remaining isolated (and thus pursuing masculine agency); it is a matter of recognizing and sharing things with other lesbians, from oppression to recipes, from resistance to outrageousness” (Hoagland, 199).

Just as lesbian ethics offer a new understanding of choice, Hoagland believes that lesbian community offers a constructive, positive way to understand difference.

In perceiving ourselves as one among many, we realize we are not destroyed (nor created) by another’s reflection, but we also realize that we are not the whole picture. I am suggesting that one’s self in relation to others need not be a matter of a polarity. Further, in dealing with differences, no one of us lesbians is purely a dominator, purely from the privileged classes, and no one of us is purely from the subordinate classes. How we live in resistance or acquiescence to any of these classes provides crucial information in community. Thus, as we pursue the work we are doing, we begin to realize that difference is not only not a threat and that difference is more than a gift: difference is at the center of our survival. Most communities strive to be culturally homogeneous .As lesbians we have the possibility of developing difference in new ways if we consider the reality of our lives. (Hoagland 202) Read Audre Lorde for more on the constructive power of difference!

So why lesbian ethics?

If from the reality of our lesbian lives we realize “lesbian” is a category that creates some distinct values and also some distinct possibilities – choice as creation not sacrifice, community as a context of values in which we are one among many, and community as the possibility of difference – then we may approach ethics differently: not trying to control situations but acting within them. Moral agency then becomes a question, not of how am I going to stop all the injustice, but rather what is my part, and what are we going to do next? (Hoagland, 203-204)

Why Lesbian Ethics? By Sarah Lucia Hoagland

Source: Hypatia, Vol. 7, No. 4, Lesbian Philosophy (Autumn, 1992), pp. 195-206

Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of Hypatia, Inc.

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810086

Accessed: 23/11/2010 13:32

The old cover (left) is certainly dated. The picture could be much larger, since images are generally more eye-catching than words. But why switch to the drawn image on the new cover (right)?

The woman on the new cover is not Audre Lorde. Her neck is long and skinny. Her cheekbones are ridiculously sharp, and her eyes are unnaturally large. Her nose is long and thin. These changes make the woman more traditionally “beautiful” than the real Audre Lorde. They also make the woman look like an ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic of a person, rather than Lorde, a contemporary Black american. The full lips and twisted hair of the drawn woman still note her “Blackness.” She is looking up and askance, almost batting her eyelashes at the tall man standing in front of her. Did Crossing Press even read Sister Outsider?

Crossing Press published 200 Ways to Love the Body You Have in 1999. What about the body (and face) of Audre Lorde? There are plenty of other pictures of Lorde available, if Crossing Press wanted a fresh cover for the second edition.

Incidentally, Crossing Press was bought by Ten Speed Press in 2002, so I suppose I can’t really write a letter of complaint to anyone.

Patricia Hill Collins argues that both the content and method of meaning-making in the dominant Eurocentric, masculinist world of thought are oppressive to black women, as well as simply inadequate.  Accurate knowledge about black women is unlikely to ever come from “within a white-male-controlled academic community because both the kinds of questions that could be asked and the explanations that would be found satisfying would necessarily reflect a basic lack of familiarity with black women’s reality” (170). Black women scholars can only be welcomed into the dominant world of ideas/academia if they swallow any truths that contradict the findings of the Eurocentric, masculinist body of knowledge, because this inconsistency is a threat to dominant truths (and thereby the knowledge validation process that affirmed these truths). A black women-only scholarly space, therefore, results by necessity as these thinkers are squeezed out of dominant academia, in which credentials are controlled by white male academicians (170). This space is also necessary because an oppressed group’s “lack of control over the apparatuses of society that sustain ideological hegemony makes the articulation of their self-defined standpoint difficult” (168).

Women tend to use “concrete knowledge” or experience in meaning-making and knowledge validation (174). A women-only scholarly space is concerned not only with knowledge, but also with wisdom. Wisdom, unlike knowledge, only comes with experience (173). Wisdom may come more naturally to oppressed groups, but is certainly most necessary for oppressed groups, as it “is essential to the survival of the subordinate” (173). For both “ordinary African American women” and “black women scholars,” great credence is given to real life, “ thus, concrete experience as a criterion for credibility frequently is invoked by black women when making knowledge claims” (173). Women tend to be “connected knowers” drawing on their capacity for empathy (174). A black women scholars work in their own spaces (or spaces that are black women-centric), what epistemologies and truths are they able to develop using experience, empathy and wisdom? The more these spaces exist unfettered by Eurocentric, masculinist tradition, the more these epistemologies and truths can flourish. Many black women scholars are able to speak from both their own epistemological tradition as well as a white-male-dominated tradition, but “resisting the hegemonic nature of [white male] patterns of thought in order to see, value, and use existing alternative Afrocentric feminist ways of knowing” is a challenge (176).

Though black women scholars may be able to speak from multiple epistemologies, “an acceptable knowledge claim may not be translatable into the terms of a different group” (176). There may be common language, but world views may be too diverse for the ideas themselves to be translated. “Black female scholars may know that something is true but be unwilling or unable to legitimate their claims using Eurocentric masculinist criteria for consistency with substantiated knowledge and Eurocentric masculinist criteria for methodological adequacy” (170). Is this a permanent withholding? It does not appear to be, though Collins writes that black women’s sisterhood is only available to black women, and implies that this is permanently true (175). If the very experience of sisterhood is exclusive to black women, and experience is necessary for black women’s epistemologies, it seems that there will be truths that will also only be available to black women.

However, Collins offers hope that universal truths can someday be uncovered. First each group must focus on its own meaning-making. For black women this involves “rearticulating a preexisting black women’s standpoint and recentering the language of existing academic discourse to accommodate these knowledge claims” (177). As different groups develop methods and content that are personal to their group, universal truths may be uncovered. “Those black feminists who develop knowledge claims that both [black feminist and white male] epistemologies can accommodate may have found a route to the elusive goal of generating so-called objective generalizations that can stand as universal truths. Those ideas that are validated as true by African American women, African American men, white men, white women, and other groups with distinctive standpoints, with each group using the epistemological approaches growing from its unique standpoint, thus become the most objective truths (177).

Wondering questions:

Why must there be a community of experts who evaluate knowledge? Expediency? Is expertise necessarily oppressive? Classist? Hierarchical? (170)

Are black women scholars speaking FOR “ordinary” black women? Is that what “ordinary” black women want? What do “ordinary” black women gain from black feminist scholarship?

Are universal truths objective truths? (177)

What epistemology comes from the “unique standpoint” of white women (my subject position)? I think we tend to agree that experiential knowledge is essential to our meaning-making. What are the differences between black feminist and white feminist (and other feminist) epistemologies?

Why so many typos?

Lorde does identify many, many aspects of patriarchy that keep women from their full potential. A women-only space would allow women to be interested in their own fullness and destiny, allowing them to explore what they are capable of. Men’s presence is a necessary limitation on women, given patriarchy’s hold on society, expecting women’s energy to be used in the service of men before themselves.

“As women, we have come to distrust that [erotic] power which rises from our deepest and nonrational knowledge. We have been warned against it all our lives by the male world, which values this depth of feeling enough to keep women around in order to exercise it in the service of men, but which fears this same depth too much to examine the possibilities of it within themselves. So women are maintained at a distant/inferior position to be psychically milked, much the same way ants maintain colonies of aphids to provide a life-giving substance for their masters.” (53-54 – Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power)

Women-only spaces allow women to explore the possibilities of their own voices, as well. Women are increasingly speaking for themselves, but in a women-only space women must speak for themselves. Some of the obstacles they encounter will arise from patriarchy, but a women-only space will allow women to work together, on behalf of themselves and each other, without the obvious option of the traditional male-centered model. “Black feminists speak as women because we are women and do not need others to speak for us.” (60 – Sexism: An American Disease in Blackface)

Lorde directly addresses women-only spaces, saying,

“The question of separatism is by no means simple. I am thankful that one of my children is male, since that helps to keep me honest. Every line I write shrieks there are no easy solutions.

I grew up in largely female environments, and I know how crucial that has been to my own development. I feel the want and need often for the society of women, exclusively. I recognize that our own spaces are essential for developing and recharging.

As a Black woman, I find it necessary to withdraw into all-Black groups at times for exactly the same reasons – differences in stages of development and differences in levels of interaction. Frequently, when speaking with men and white women, I am reminded of how difficult and time-consuming it is to have to reinvent the pencil every time you want to send a message.” (78 – Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist’s Response)

Lorde acknowledges the freedom, energy and life that women-only spaces afford her. As a lesbian she could routinely move in women-only spaces, relishing the understanding she might find there. Yet she has a son, making her life permanently intertwined with a man’s. (It’s unclear in Sister Outsider if she has any ongoing relationship with her former husband, the father of her children.) Saying that this keeps her “honest” implies that without the existence of her son, she might naturally move in women-only (or at least women-dominated) spaces, that these spaces are most appealing to her. Of course she also names all-Black spaces as essential as well, for she experiences oppression from multiple identities. Denying any aspects of herself is dangerous, and would perhaps counteract the benefits of a permanent retreat to a women-only or Black-only space.

“I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. But this is a destructive and fragmenting way to live. My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restrictions of externally imposed definition.” (121 – Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference)

Yet Lorde’s call to constructive awareness of difference must grow within equality. Women will not be subjects, equal to men rather than subordinate objects, without developing spaces (even if they are not physical) that are women-centered and women-only. “Interdependency between women is the way to a freedom which allows the I to be, not in order to be used, but in order to be creative. This is a difference between the passive be and the active being.” (111 – The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House) Developing an individual identity as a woman, and solidarity with other women, enable women to approach difference constructively. They also offer women a space outside the master’s house, that they may learn the truth – that they are not dependent on patriarchy for security, happiness or meaning.

“It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.” (112 – The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House)

Women-only spaces should not be romanticized. When women get together, oppressions of racism, classism, homophobia, ageism, etc., still exist. “Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are dying.” (119 – Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference) While Lorde is clear that white women must do “their own work” (42 – Transformation of Silence into Language and Action) of confronting their racism, she does not turn her back on their struggle, but urges it forward with astute criticisms (e.g., calling attention to racism and white privilege within the Second Sex Conference, New York, September 29, 1979 in her speech “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”).

Lorde’s focus on difference is in service to wholeness. While women, Black people, lesbians, and all marginalized groups must find their own spaces to develop and recharge, this growth should benefit a future that glorifies all.

“You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other. I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars are the same. What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work toward that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order to do this, we must allow each other our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness.” (142 – Learning from the 60s)

Continuing an investigation of women-only spaces

Formation

In the book Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, the ranch is a women-dominated space, though not a women-only space, as there are male workers on the ranch. While the De La Garza family is comprised only of women at the beginning of the story, Pedro is a family factor from the start – and soon marries into the family, as well. Still the family’s house – and importantly, its kitchen – is primarily occupied by women.

The home and family would not have been women-only without the death of Juan De La Garza. No one chose his death any more than he and Mama Elena chose not to have sons, so this women-only space came to exist through chance – or more likely for this story – fate. Though there is no official rule against men occupying the house or the kitchen (and in fact, Pedro does throughout the story), cultural gender roles, along with Mama Elena’s rules, keep the kitchen primarily women-only. These norms aren’t questioned by any of the women, though Gertrudes would certainly appreciate more interaction with men, and Tita would appreciate more interaction with Pedro.

Role in their lives

The women spend the vast majority of their lives in their home, and Tita is specifically in the kitchen or accompanying areas in her waking hours. Unlike the other women-only spaces I’ve considered so far, this one is a home.  This means that the women in the De La Garza family, especially Tita and Gertrudes, do not have regular contact with men at all (until Gertrudes leaves, of course). This means that their relationships with men are only functional – with ranch workers (and occasionally the doctor) and superficially social – at parties (that seem to be full of gossiping and shallow conversation). The first “meaningful” relationship either woman has with a man is with a romantic/sexual partner. Gertrudes comes to have many platonic relationships with men through her work in the revolution, as well. Tita forms a deep friendship with John (with romantic elements) but her primary relationship with a man continues to be with Pedro, even though they rarely speak with one another. She also has an important relationship with her nephew, but since he is an infant for the duration of their time together, I would not consider his gender to be a significant aspect of their relationship – not even functionally, since his implications for inheritance and lineage do not affect Tita.

Effect

While Mama Elena tells the priest “I’ve never needed a man for anything; all by myself, I’ve done right… Men aren’t that important in this life…” (80), she does not seem to find women important in this life, either. She is concerned with her own wellbeing and reputation, and therefore wants Tita to remain unmarried, and Rosaura to marry – these decisions have nothing to do with her daughters’ wellbeing or desires. Perhaps Mama Elena really means to belittle love, not men, since she has actually given up on any loving relationships. The text does not describe her own home, but we do know that her one romantic love ended tragically, and this seems like to be her reason for giving up on all love and relationships.

As Mama Elena sets the tone of this women-only space and home, it is not a space that affirms or empowers anyone. The only love seems to be between Tita and Gertrudes, and through her powerful cooking, Tita is enable to empower Gertrudes’ passion and help her seek happiness and fulfillment. Tita is affirmed especially by Nacha (even after Nacha’s death) and also by Chencha. The relationships between Tita, Rosaura and Mama Elena seem to make them all fairly miserable.

The tenor of this women-only space, with its disregard for love, does not contribute to women’s relationships with themselves, one another, or with men. Relating to the outside world is desirable in part simply to escape Mama Elena, but this is a side effect that does not benefit Rosaura, who dies, still miserable, at the ranch.

But perhaps I’m giving Mama Elena too much credit. This is Nacha’s space, too. This is Tita’s space. This is Chencha and Gertrudes’ home, at various points in the story. The love and legacy of Nacha keep Tita whole and full. Though she sacrifices her time and energy to serve the people around her, she does it because the kitchen is her refuge – cooking is her language. She certainly longs for Pedro, but she never questions her only existence and self-sufficiency when he is emotionally or physically distant. While the ranch may be filled with tension and turmoil and toxicity, especially for the women who live there, it is also a place that demonstrates the power of women to survive independently. But to thrive, Like Water for Chocolate makes clear, they must have love and men.

Morning Light’s Lab

When Tita inhabits Morning Light’s lab, it is certainly not a women-only space. In fact, it is now John’s lab. But Tita’s experience of this room is that she and Morning Light are the only people there. While being at John’s (and being away from the ranch) is libratory for Tita, this room that she shares with Morning Light is the place that brings her back to her sensuous self. Morning Light is a Nacha-like figure for Tita, offering her love and good food. Being at John’s house is Tita’s first experience of independence and not needing to work all day to care for others, and this allows her to shed much of her anger, sadness and shame. But working and learning with John are essential steps in her healing, as well.

• Ninny is able to share from her age and experience about menopause, and life, giving her purpose as an elder.

• Evelyn’s friendships with all these women give her confidence and a touchstone; she is able to worry about something other than Ed. She develops a life of her own, beginning with this friendship of her own.

• The friendship is acknowledged by both to be very significant.

Effect
• These women are truly supportive of one another and love each other.
• Evelyn gets a job, goes to the gym, cooks meals she wants – while these may all be attempts to please the wider world particularly through her appearance, they also seem to be empowering, somewhat independent choices for Evelyn.

• While Evelyn’s weight loss and attention to her appearance may be a way of pleasing the world and Ed, she also brings renewed tension to her relationship with Ed by standing up for herself.

• Ninny has someone to care for, and gets to relive meaningful years and events of her past in order to offer wisdom to someone else.
• Their friendship, particularly as inspired by Ruth and Idgie, reminds them both (especially Evelyn) that they are full and whole human beings.
The friendship of Ruth and Idgie
Formation
• The friendship began at Idgie’s mother’s insistence, though soon the women claimed it for themselves. The community generally supported their time together (until they became radical and powerful people were threatened).
• The women’s friendship is not “traditionally feminine;” they don’t talk about romance or babies or social relationships. Due to Idgie’s influence, many of their activities are quite untraditionally feminine (hopping trains, drinking, gambling, sneaking out of the house to steal a car and honey, etc.).

Role in their lives
• The women spend a lot of time together and their friendship is very significant to each of them.
• They change one another – though Ruth was supposed to change Idgie, she is transformed by her. Their love, respect and effect on one another are all mutual.
• Eventually Idgie saves Ruth’s life. Ruth helps Idgie save her own relationship with her community (and keeps her out of jail/execution).

Effect
• The women come to know one another deeply and affirm one another for who each is – including their vast differences. They help each other be more of who they truly are.
• Idgie helps Ruth stop obsessing over being liked.
• Ruth becomes Idgie’s partner when she thought she would live with fierce independence.
• Their friendship teaches them both that women are whole and full because each are so affirmed. Moreover, their relationship is a deep and constructive partnership which shows them both that they do not need men to have a place in the world or stability.
The consciousness-raising circle/classes that Evelyn attends
Formation
• The space exists, and is women-only, by choice and design.
• The focus of the space is “feminine” though this often means that it’s focused on women’s romantic relationships with men.
Role in their lives
• Evelyn does not find hope or inspiration – in fact it seems to bring out her insecurities and disappointments (she believes Ed would call her crazy for wrapping herself in cellophane and won’t look at her vagina – she won’t face “the source of her strength and separateness”).
• She’s going to the classes to “save her marriage” and perhaps this is the problem – it’s not really for her own wellbeing. She eventually quits.
Effect
• Evelyn is not affirmed by the classes because they only remind her of her own fears and disappointments. They are not touching her deepest needs for self-respect and appreciation.
• Other women may be finding empowerment, but the film does not show this.

The café
Formation
• Idgie and Ruth decide to open the café.
• They do borrow money from Idgie’s father, and George works at the café, but it is a women-led operation.
• George works at the café though we never see him in the kitchen. Grady does come in the kitchen so it is not a pure women’s-only space. Otherwise all staff are women (Idgie, Sipsey and Ruth).

Role in their lives
• It is a place to discuss important matters, such as racism.
• It is a place to see people’s needs (such as Smokey, seen by Sipsey, cared for by Idgie and then Ruth).

Effect
• The café is a space that defies patriarchy. It does not fully dismantle it, but within the café power has been somewhat shifted. This is seen most clearly when Sipsey, Ruth and Idgie have a frank conversation about Grady’s racism, and in the classic fried green tomatoes scene. Ruth and Idgie’s food fight is a time of honesty, raw emotion, playfulness, and easy forgiveness.

• This freaks Grady out – like the racial integration of the café, this intimate interaction between two women is outside of his control and sense of normalcy. As the sheriff, as well as a powerful white man, he is the LAW and expects the world to be in his control.

• Frank also enters the space to exert his control, but the “least expected and least-of-these” disallow him.

• Ruth and Idgie run a successful business in which black and white people eat and work side-by-side and hobos get free food. They are living a new paradigm, and having a great time of it. The café affirms their hope and self-sufficiency.
The wholeness and fullness of women is even more pronounced in the book, in which Ruth and Idgie’s romantic love for one another is acknowledged. More on lesbianism’s essential role in feminism to come!

These are the questions I will use to unpack the women-only spaces in many of the movies and literature that I engage for this blog.

Formation

• What led to the existence of this space?
• Why can only women be there?
• Is it the women’s choice that they, and only they, are there?
• Are there things about the space, other than its occupants, that make it “feminine” or women-oriented?

Role in their lives

• How often are the women there?
• What role does it play in their lives?
• How significant is the space to their lives?

Effect

• Does the space affirm and empower women? Do they love one another?
• Does the space contribute to women’s relationships with themselves and one another? With men? With the broader world?
• Does the space teach women that they are full and whole human beings?

Women have come into male spaces in male ways because that is often the only option. Women need to be able to enter all spaces with a full, whole sense of their womanhood—their selfhood.

Freedom should not be fully individual without attention to others – women know this. Christianity speaks to this (though of course it is often problematic). Women can offer the world a lesson on sacrifice – including the nuances of pitfalls and pain.

A marginalized group must be focused on its own wholeness, rather than finding equality with the center group. This is how they can make themselves their own center, rather than always giving the center its normalized, powerful position.

It is essential for men to occupy “women’s” spaces or quality will never  be realized.

While there are many constructive comparisons among various margins and centers, one disanalogy between black/white and women/men relations is that women and men share many more physical spaces and their lives are more constantly intertwined. Segregation between genders happens in psychological, intellectual, etc. spaces as much as physical.

Women are more inclined to defend and perpetuate oppression in order to maintain harmony with men they love. It is much harder for women to find their own spaces for internal consciousness and growth. Lesbianism has its own merits, but one way that it dismantles patriarchy is by offering opportunities for women-only spaces.

Women-only spaces in film and literature:

Real Women Have Curves

Fried Green Tomatoes

Like Water for Chocolate

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought by Patricia Hill Collins

Why Lesbian Ethics? by Sarah Hoagland (actually about lesbian-only space)

Do you have suggestions for literature, films, etc. that offer insights on the role and power of women-only spaces? Contact us with your suggestions!

Elizabeth Berg’s The Handmaid and the Carpenter was a shocking disappointment. I have been reading Berg’s novels for 15 years, beginning with the sorrowful, inspiring Talk Before Sleep. I was excited to read this “Christmas book” exploring the human drama of Mary and Joseph. I credit Berg with much of my emotional education, and was sure she would bring nuance and depth to Mary and Joseph’s characters.

In fact the characters weren’t particularly original, but my real concern is the entrenched patriarchy that Berg describes, but does not unpack – let alone criticize. Consistently throughout the story Joseph lusts after Mary’s body, but frustrated by her ferocity and divine vision for her life. Mary is strong and capable, but continually shrinks to let Joseph be the pair’s decision-maker.

I really thought that the big deal Berg makes out of Joseph’s controlling nature (she mentions it frequently) was a build up to some moment of transformation. While he does come to appreciate his daughters’ curiosity and confidence, and therefore stops resenting Mary’s, he never understands her to be his equal.

I find it interesting that it is not until Joseph’s death bed that he admits to Mary that he has always believed she had sex with another man before their marriage. Why would such a controlling man be willing to marry Mary, and enjoy their relationship so much? Joseph’s love for Mary must have been mighty. Too bad the prevailing reason for his love is Mary’s physical beauty. That level of objectification of someone does not fit a man who decides to ignore his wife’s supposed infidelity. A controlling, objectifying man would need his wife to be all “his.”

I wondered if Berg had some keen plan of subverting the patriarchy she so consciously described, so I went to her website. This was all I could find about The Handmaid and the Carpenter:

What’s it About?

I always tell people that this is like “When Harry Met Sally,” but it’s when Joseph met Mary. It’s a little Christmas book that humanizes the event that inspired the holiday. Everyday details about food and clothing and daily life help make it seem as though you are there. Though you might not WANT to be when it comes to giving birth in a stable…..

What was the inspiration?

I wondered what it must have been like to be Mary, to be so young and suddenly thrust in the middle of this momentous event. And I really wondered about Joseph! How did he feel when he was told his virgin wife was pregnant? The book is largely a testimonial to faith.

No satisfaction here. Has anyone else read this book? Is there some redeeming element that I’ve missed?

The following 5 seem to reflect Baird’s self-defeating introduction to her article, which she re-states in point #3: Because isn’t it just a little bit cool that suddenly people want to be feminists again?

I would be thrilled if Sarah Palin inspired and empowered her female followers to believe in their own dignity and full humanity. Perhaps something in her Mama Grizzly rhetoric will strengthen these women’s self-esteem, but it is still in the traditional, narrow context for women – motherhood. Certainly it is positive for women to claim their own power, but Baird’s 2nd point:2. Because it will force us to properly scrutinize the Mama Grizzlies, the term Palin uses for politically active Republican women, which connotes fierceness, strength, danger—and size. Size? Is Baird really saying that Palin could expand women’s comfort with their own bodies? With the fact that they take up space? I simply cannot imagine it, since Palin’s popularity is firmly grounded in her own “traditional” good looks, which are dependent on her thinness.

4. Because Palin is kicking some goals.

So as soon as a woman has some traditional success, she’s a feminist? This is absurd.

5. Because we are thinking about what feminism is again—and abortion, in the lead up to midterm elections where, according to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, a record number of candidates hold extreme pro-life positions.

“We” are thinking about feminism again, and it’s a toned-down, safer feminism because Sarah Palin says it does NOT have anything to do with abortion. Or if it does, it’s pro-life. This is a rewrite of history and feminism.

6. Because Democrats need to lift their game. The challenge for Democrats is to stop ridiculing Palin and start trying to outsmart her with their own rhetoric.

This simply has nothing to do with whether or not Sarah Palin can call herself a feminist.

I’m actually quite interested in this conversation (what feminists must believe or do). If anyone has any thoughtful words on the subject, I’m eager to read or hear them!