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Whenever someone says something along the lines of "we need to make this [venue] more welcoming to [insert race here]" I do wonder what it is they come up with. Because outside of having a venue where the desired populations exist or expanding language options within the space, everything else I can think of would be based on stereotypes. Like if someone came up and asked me, "Hey Turtle, how do we make this event more welcoming to black people?" I'd just say, "I don't know, did you invite any?" 🤷♀️
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@GalacticTurtle @DoctorDee Seems like a great place to be when you've failed at hustlegrinding and despise it. I'd give up on internet and games if that meant not living under constant risk of male violence, supervision, terrorism and not having to work at a job that's meaningless to you
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@Mynona @DoctorDee Barring a retirement pension, a trust fund, or a very benevolent individual, you’ll still be hustlegrinding to pay the mortgage and other living expenses. Your options for doing so will just be limited to small town USA. To my knowledge, none of these current lands are self sustaining.
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@GalacticTurtle @Mynona @DoctorDee I've done some reading and researching on American communes and such. It requires a religious grounding to keep them going, recruiting and staying alive. Now this "religion" can also be spiritualism, cultish, etc. It just needs some foundation of higher beliefs to sustain itself. There will never be a rational commune that Turtle could fit happily into. Reason is not sustaining, but plenty have tried. The closest thing Turtle could find today that resembles a reason-based commune is a small island community off the coast somewhere. Or a house-boat community.
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@DoctorDee From what I understand of the remaining women's lands (that define themselves as such) in the US are that they're in extremely rural areas (I know at least one is in Florida) where to participate you'd need to buy property on said land and that they're only for lesbians. And yes, the majority of women on these properties are older white women who have been there for some time.
So just from that, I'll offer some stereotypes that certainly ring true for me. The very concept of moving to rural Florida where this women's land and anyone that could be found in any direction are older white people is an absolute no. That goes against common sense. That's some "Get Out" movie material. I could be convinced to maybe spend a couple weeks down there as part of some larger event... but purchase property? Move my whole life? Nope. Does that show some prejudice on my part? Maybe. But it's true lol.
Then there's MFR which I've said I would be interested in participating in as a worker rather than to attend the actual programming. There's a whole brand of black women who are super into frolicking in nature, goddess whatever, magic vulvas, and spiritual healing. But I'm not about the hippie life (of course, no offense to those who are). I'm more interested in... networking (both career and social)... forming local chapters to help build a radfem infrastructure of sorts... and having debates about the types of topics you'd see on sites like Spinster. Don't need to go out into the woods for that.
The women's residences I do stay in are all in the city. They don't define themselves as "women's lands." They're not radfem aligned in any type of official decree. But they do serve women and they're located where the women and their jobs already are. They bar all men and don't feel bad for doing so. I don't think they're keeping tabs on diversity but the racial makeup of those places tends to be as diverse as the city itself. I'd say I hear Spanish being spoken just as much if not more than English in the common areas.
Back on the rural front, I spent a year living in rural Virginia. Associated myself with a black church that had a female preacher and a small congregation of women with one or two old men who would occasionally be shuffled in. Now, my feminist critique of Christianity could go on forever. Nonetheless in that little chapel, some days we'd spend a whole extra hour after the sermon just talking with each other, brainstorming community events, venting about whatever, and (most notably) prioritizing ourselves and our own security above getting involved with men. There were a few women my age at that church but most were middle aged or older. Never married. They ran salons and restaurants or worked at a nearby university.
So if anything I've seen that the spaces many women might be looking for might not exist in a place they might think to look. On the flip side, seeing radfems struggle with even creating these spaces in a theoretical sense is rather unfortunate and I think gets bogged down by things that don't actually matter that much.
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@GalacticTurtle Interesting! Yes - not only are these women's lands in rural areas (I think there are a lot in the western desert as well - Colorado, New Mexico, etc.) but in areas in the US where in general it's less safe/not safe for women of colour. And the financial and personal commitment required is a pretty high stake. Like you said initially, if for whatever reason you want 'diverse' people to participate in your thing your first step needs to be to be where the 'diverse' people are. And your next step, like your church example, needs to be to offer what these 'diverse' people want and need.
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@DoctorDee Indeed. And I do understand that back in the 70s and such a main purpose of the women's lands was to exist within this.... anti-capitalist, anti-industrial, live of the land framework. Alas, that's simply not a wise move to make for most people barring some level of apocalypse.
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@GalacticTurtle Yeah tbh I wonder that as well. Was just reading something about how 'women's land' (in the US?) isn't welcoming to women of colour, proof of which is that not many women of colour participate in the movement, and thought 'well maybe it's because there aren't a lot of women of colour in these areas?' (though I guess to be fair, now that I'm writing this, there's probably a high-ish population of Hispanic women in/near some of these places, and it might be of interest to find out why they might not have wanted to participate).
GalacticTurtle
Mynona
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