The thing relish most in life is variety, and understanding other people and cultures. If I had to live in a tiny community of people essentially just like me, I’d kill myself.

Eh, maybe some of you pushing 50 should move down to ole Alabama and reinforce yee old womyn’s land.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6CNjM2crgE

But as someone who benefitted enormously from lesbian-separatism (which is where I learned loving kindness, class theory, and the scope of children’s rights, just to name a few examples), I’m not willing to settle for whoever is currently controlling the “community message” as the definer of a given community or movement. My point is that ALL of these approaches and analyses have to coexist and do their separate work for change to occur. There is no One True Path.

So, separatism and assimilation are both essential. Obama-style efforts at “bipartisanship” and radicals like me arguing for a war crimes tribunal both have their place. You choose your work based on your limits. I would argue that those who “separate” and go live in peaceful harmony somewhere have not necessarily opted out or given up on “action”. I can’t pass that judgment on them and see no value in doing so.

And — for those who question the very basis of our society’s structure, choosing to seek recognition completel illogical. To quote Carmen Vazquez, “I challenge the notion that attaining ‘equal rights’ in a society that forsakes social and economic justice is worth our while.”

It’s an argument that all social justice movements contend with, this dissonance between wanting freedom and respect while also rejecting the right of those in power to pass any kind of judgment at all. How do you express that? The answer is “Every way we can”, which as human beings tends to be creative and contradictory.

A the B, I did not read the article as condescending. It was reported in an uninflected way that allowed the reader to interpret in terms of her or his own values. If you think astrology is ridiculous, the article allowed the people quoted to make themselves sound ridiculous. If you take astrology seriously, they sound serious. To my mind, this is exactly how a “centrist” publication like the NYT would report, for instance, somebody who lives in a gated community because he thinks that immigrants are all potential terrorists. If you’re most of us, it sounds paranoid. If you’re Pat Buchanan, it sounds reasonable. This lack of inflection should not be mistaken for either overt condescension or overt respect. It’s because the reader is expected to interpret in terms of her or his own values that we need to ask what those values are likely to be, I think.

I don’t know exactly what your perspective on this is. I don’t feel like I have the right to expect boldness from any given individual. I don’t know her story. I do, obviously, feel like I have a right to comment on who is represented in a major media outlet, and how.

MJ, emotions certainly are engaged on this topic, on all sides and for many reasons. At least one of the women quoted in the article was clearly not “indifferent” to men. Also, to say that “movements” have “embraced” separatism or nationalism is to gloss over if not crush quite a lot of internal disagreement. Certainly one natural response of oppressed people is to try to separate themselves from their oppressors. But plenty of members of oppressed or disadvantaged groups have strongly rejected such a course and insisted on recognition.

And so why does everything have to be uphill? Remember the first lines of Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese”?:

You do not have to be good/You do not have to walk on your knees/for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting./You only have to let the soft animal of your body/love what it loves.

‘K?

Another way of looking at these communities: Are these these women opting out of general society as much as opting in to an alternative. What makes living in cities or the suburbs better, just because it is the norm?

Finally, here is Boulder, lots of people talk to spirits, animal or human. Is it that much different than talking to God or Jesus? (Can of worms now opened.)