Laverne Gagehabib's Circles Of Power: Lesbian Feminism

During the 1970s, lesbian feminists formed communities in Southern Oregon that supported their mutual interest in uplifting women. These women left behind a rich written record of their motivations for creating and experiences living on lesbian lands, as evidenced by the Women’s Press article “(Hetero)Sexual Politics” by Su Negrin and in the diaries of Ruth Mountaingrove, a founder of the women’s community Rootworks. LaVerne Gagehabib and Barbara Summerhawk’s Circles of Power: Shifting Dynamics in a Lesbian-centered Community, the product of exhaustive interviews with women from these communities, offers a sociological analysis of how women’s lands benefitted the inhabitants. Together, these sources point to the formation of Southern Oregon

Lesbian separatist women felt “a need to return to nature…. to establish an alternative community in the countryside, where women could explore a female-based spirituality.” This spirituality manifested itself in meditation circles, consciousness-raising exercises, and solstice and equinox celebrations, events where women came together on lesbian lands to share their feminine energies with one another. They felt at peace and supported when they were together but alienated and oppressed when they interacted with men, including gay men who “were into more-than-average hostility toward women.” Because of this, women aimed to distance themselves from not only men through the Women’s Movement and separatism, but from gay men through the Lesbian Liberation Movement. For the women of the Southern Oregon Women’s Lands, lesbian separatist communities were the only feasible way to live according to their radical feminist political

As Su Negrin wrote in Women’s Press, “sexual politics affects women in other and more oppressive ways than men,” suggesting the belief in a direct correlation between heterosexuality and the patriarchal oppression of women. For many women who followed this line of thought, becoming a lesbian was a matter of course, the obvious next step in their emerging brand of radical feminism. Southern Oregon Women’s Lands were, for some, a lesbian utopia, “born out of a politicized lesbianism that set out to consciously create a new separate culture.” This consciousness of the causes of their oppression gave reason to their desire to live solely among women, give energy to women, and love women. Not all women in these communities experienced lesbianism in the same way. Some had been lesbians for as long as they could remember, some were not lesbians at all but lived among women who were, and others politicized their new lesbian sexuality, making the conscious decision to separate their lives entirely from men. This latter group of political lesbians believed in “a superior status for lesbians” in the feminist movement and imagined lesbians as one “homogenized…harmonious group.” Ironically, this mindset created divisions between political lesbians and women who did not