Sun, surf, and segregation

[beetiger]

I’m back from a week of pure escapist lounging in Key West. I managed to get plenty of sun without collecting a sunburn, plenty of water while only getting slightly queasy once or twice, several slices of excellent Key Lime pie, the opportunity to commune with both stray cats and chickens and captive butterflies, and my recommended weekly allowance of drag shows. The week’s soundtrack was overall excellent, though lediva did lament the lack of Beach Boys. Most importantly, I got a well-needed big ol’ chunk of high-quality time with lediva, who is just an amazingly wonderful person to be around.

We stayed at Pearl’s Rainbow, a women-only resort in the old part of Key West, and a perfect home base for wandering around. It was quirky and comfortable and populated by older-than-Spring-Breakers lesbian couples, who lounged around a pool surrounded by tropical plants, sunning themselves. It was cozy and safe feeling and just right. I’m not sure why part of me feels, on a gut level, that these people are more like me than the perfect-in-a-bikini 22 year-old Spring Breakers on the boats, without talking to either of them. It’s all physical stereotyping, and it makes me feel vaguely ashamed when I catch myself at it. Sometimes I feel like a real fake in lesbian spaces, me with the wedding ring and the phallic talisman tucked into my clothing and the sort of straightish look and the determinedly ambisexual spirit.

In general, I’m kind of conflicted about the fact that I really enjoy women’s spaces, gay or straight. I know so many gender-variant people who’d love to be welcomed into that kind of community, and just can’t for physical reasons manage it. I know people in male bodies who are much more safe/caring/loving/add-your-own-stereotype-here than some women that I know. I’ve been in women’s groups where people are gossipy, catty, and just not very nice, and ones where the main topic of conversation is male-bashing. And I can’t really put my finger firmly on what the difference in womanspace is, something that feels energetically different, something about the gender sameness that matters, even though by all reasonable rights it shouldn’t. Nevertheless I really crave it, especially in a spiritual/religious context.

Now I’m back in the office, with a lab bay filled with about seventeen quadrillion boxes that got sent to me during the week, a dusting of snow on the grass outside, and no increase in desire to hang out with my coworkers, whom I’m not sure noticed that I was gone. Life goes on.

Comments

Safety and Comfort

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

Unlike a lot of the women who choose women's spaces, I don't actually feel unsafe in mixed-gender spaces, or particularly safer in women's spaces. As I mentioned above, I've been in women's spaces that have gotten really ugly; no guarantee of safety there.

It's a strange thing in the nature of gender-segregated spaces that people who are excluded by them seem to "want in" much more than other types of private spaces separated out by interest. No one complains that they can't go to Republican conventions when they are Democrats, or that Catholics aren't welcome at a Jewish temple. It just wouldn't be of interest.

I wish I knew why gender is so core to our culture, whether there is something existentially different about that parameter. I know women's spaces feel emotionally different from general spaces, or spaces that are divided up in any other way I've experienced, in a way that I really like. Maybe it's just the standards of behavior, I don't know. Maybe, given our culture, it's the only way for the some women who are scared and inhibited by their relationships to men to act like themselves.

I've been to pagan events which were not technically women-only, but which had very small numbers of men at them. It didn't ruin the space for me. So I suppose if we could figure out how to build feminine spaces that just were boring enough to men that only a few of them would show, it might be okay.:) (Though ask Bard. He's been at some of these things from that perspective, and I daresay he didn't find them that friendly.)

I would like to see more openness to people who really believe they belong in women's spaces, but who don't physically fit the mold, transwomen who don't pass well or sissybois who actively pursue a feminine identity all the time. Women's space, to me, *is* a psychological thing, but it comes from the psychology of consistently living as a woman in one's mind and in our culture, not from having a vagina.

I often wonder whether, in that perfect world down the line, there would still be a place for places for people who share something to gather away from people who don't share that thing, for a time. I think there would, though that place wouldn't be a place that collects taxes or massive advertising dollars or any of those things that make excluded folks feel like the need to bash down the doors.

Just someplace where I could hear women's voices singing.

Re: Safety and Comfort

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

It's a strange thing in the nature of gender-segregated spaces that people who are excluded by them seem to "want in" much more than other types of private spaces separated out by interest. No one complains that they can't go to Republican conventions when they are Democrats, or that Catholics aren't welcome at a Jewish temple. It just wouldn't be of interest.

Now, I don't think it's that simple in my case. This isn't just a matter of "the grass is always greener." I'll spare you going over my resume. ;p And as a matter of fact, not only have I always wanted to see Mecca, I felt an insatiable curiosity about what was in the Temple's Holy of Holies ever since I read the Old Testament... and I found myself filled with a seething annoyance many years ago when I read about that one Greek Orthodox temple that even female livestock, much less female humans, are excluded from...

And I don't think that utopia would mean eliminating all the places where people who share something to share it in the absence of people who don't understand or embrace it. I think it would mean those places would represent that think they seek in a more pure and just form, free of illusions and easy answers about what that thing truly is. I think it would mean being able to truly know the nature of each would-be participant, well enough to know whether they're a threat to this holiness, without making inevitably cruel and baseless guesswork from their external appearances. Again... if you believe that the thing you sought at Heaven's Pearl was a chromosome, a hormone, or a genital mode, you are welcome to make that case.

Some other time, maybe in person, we'll discuss the DScream and our own highly successful experiments in boredom and obfuscation as a filtering tool. :)