Women-Only Spaces: An Alternative to Patriarchy

Jennie Ruby

When a friend asked me when I feel I am most outside of patriarchy, I immediately answered "At Michigan." I wrote an article about the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival during September of 2001, and that month, it seemed appropriate to title it "Another World." The experience of the Festival is to me the quintessential experience that tells me that another world, a world outside patriarchy, is possible.

I realize when I return to the festival each year that experiencing a community created and run on feminist and egalitarian values changes me inside. When I first started attending the festival in the 1980s, I sometimes thought that part of the transformative feeling was because I was on vacation. After all, vacations can remove you from the workaday world and give you a sense of perspective and a feeling of relaxation. But for many years now I have worked nearly full time at the festival, running the off our backs booth and doing the requisite festival work shifts. Yet even when I am working, the festival does its magic.

One part of the magic is the feeling of safety. With no men on the acres of land there is a lifting of the constant, subliminal fear of rape and harassment that I walk with all the other days of the year. In my everyday life, I rarely feel the effect of the constant worry or fear, yet I am immersed in it and it is part of me. When I walk my dog at night near my home I am worried. I look twice into the shadows by the school building. I listen for footsteps behind me. But at the festival, I often walk down the path or road in the dark with no flashlight, surrounded by moon shadows that contain no danger. Footsteps mean women are approaching, and I look forward to a friendly greeting. The tension that I had become inured to at home releases its grip on my chest and shoulders, and in its absence I finally feel free.

What makes a feminist space? One characteristic is the empowerment of women to work and make decisions in an egalitarian environment. Another is the acceptance of women's bodies in all shapes, ages, sizes, and abilities. Feminist and feminist-related values must also be shared by the majority of people there: fair sharing of workloads and types of work, valuing nurturance and cooperation over aggression and competition, and working against sexism, racism, heterosexism, ageism, and classism.

It follows that another place I get out of patriarchy is at the off our backs offices. Sometimes a women-only space, and always a feminist space, the office is a miniature oasis where feminist ideas and values are the rule, not the exception. Working there, I can relax any worries of sexist competition and sexual harassment on the job.

Through working collectively, we put our minds together and work out decisions that contain the input of everyone. Instead of a group of people obeying and following one boss's view of things, sometimes against their own better judgment, we incorporate the strength of all of our opinions in each decision. Because hierarchy and authoritarianism characterize patriarchy, working collectively with each person exercising her own authority is an important alternative.

Within the off our backs collective, there is no formal hierarchical structure in which I have to obey some people and compete to keep others down. I don't have someone "above" me who has control over important aspects of my life like my income and how I do my work. Instead, I experience a work environment where my responsibility is toward the other collective members, toward the success of the magazine, toward the publication of feminist words, and toward the community of women worldwide. In a way, there is a lot more pressure in this job, because the responsibilities are determined by my allegiance and dedication to a vision I value, and not by a list of duties on a piece of paper. But I experience the work as having a lot less pressure.

To me, creating and experiencing women-only spaces and feminist spaces is essential to bringing about social change to combat the male-centered and male-dominant western culture so much of the world struggles with. Within these spaces we can feel what freedom from oppression would feel like. From these spaces we can get some perspective and begin to see, and develop alternatives to, the social forces we are embedded in and become inured to in our day-to-day lives.

Although we don't like to think of it all the time, the constant backdrop of our lives is that women are oppressed under patriarchy. We are caged and pressured by men at every turn. In addition to the constant fear and weary expectation of street harassment, we can expect sexual harassment on the job, being hit on by unpleasant strangers, and unfair competition for promotions or even just for credit for the work we do. These pressures are always with us--in the street, in our workplaces, in the line at the bank or grocery store, in our political groups, and even in our homes. If we have men in our lives, as lovers or friends or colleagues or family, the sometimes subtle internalized patriarchal expectations of both men and women affect us. The men may tend to take over conversations. As women we may end up doing most of the cleaning. The men may resist preparing, serving and cleaning up meals, either overtly or in subtle ways they don't even consciously intend, like doing it poorly. We may find the men in our lives taking our jobs less seriously than theirs, and ourselves unquestioningly acquiescing to that. Even well-intentioned men may, through simply neglecting to do it themselves, expect women to handle setting up all social engagements.

Sometimes it is hard to recognize the hot water until you get out of it. That's the critical element of women-only and feminist spaces. And while there can be feminist space with men in it, there is something indescribable and indispensable about women-only space that cannot be achieved otherwise. Certainly, those who were born male and raised as male children in our current society experience the oppressiveness of patriarchy and are capable of understanding and espousing feminism and being decent people. But they experienced an upbringing under patriarchy that was very different from what women experience from an early age. Often, they were groomed for dominance, pressured toward independence and strength over compliance and vulnerability, and socialized to objectify and distance themselves from girls and women. Even if this grooming and socialization didn't "take" in the case of one or another particular man, and even if a man consciously fights against it, a man will not have lived a woman's experience of patriarchy, and thus cannot contribute a woman's perspective in the type of women's space I am discussing. Furthermore, women themselves, due to our internalized experiences, react differently to men--so that even if a man devoid of all the effects of patriarchal conditioning existed, he could still trigger the automatic conditioning of the women present.

I do think that creating a real alternative to patriarchy, and not just an enclave, will have to rely on men's experience and contributions. Many men are doing exactly this kind of work: Paul Kivel, John Stoltenberg, Allan Johnson, Robert Jensen, Men Can Stop Rape and the Oakland Men's Project, among others. As a female feminist I support their work and respect it greatly. Analyses of men's experiences under patriarchy are crucial to the work of creating a better, nonpatriarchal world. I imagine that men must benefit from discussing these things in men-only spaces at times. As a woman, I certainly feel I understand a lot about men and would have a lot of good feminist advice for men who were exploring alternatives to patriarchy--but that does not mean I think I should intrude on a men's feminist retreat. When they come back from the woods, I certainly want to hear or read about any insights they have gained into men's and women's behaviors and beliefs. I don't ultimately believe in total separatism. But I believe that women, and also men, need to explore alternatives in separate environments at times.

Ultimately, the fight against patriarchy is a fight of values. Values are developed socially. We acquire our values in a very deep way as children, from our families of origin, extended families, schools, TV, other mass media, and entire culture. We refine our values throughout our lives both consciously and through encounters and experiences with others. To create far-reaching and deep social change, we must create social environments that express our new, feminist values. Women-only and feminist spaces and festivals are an essential step on the way to imagining and ultimately creating a world where there is an alternative to patriarchy.