In 1976 I was studying Philosophy. It was my Honours year and I had decided to write a thesis (10,000 words) entitled In Defence of Separatism. This year I decided it was time to put it out into the public sphere. It’s a long story and is connected to my interest in prehistory and mythology.
My year of thinking about separatism meant that I thought a lot about power, how it is used, by whom and for what purpose. Oppression and domination and the power of institutions were also central to my thinking. At the end of 1976, I travelled to Europe. I lived in squats with other lesbian feminists in London and then took off to Greece. In London I heard about matriarchies and about Crete. So I bought the two volumes of Robert Graves’ Greek Myths. Crete blew my mind. In part it did so because here, I thought, was an example of a culture with flourishing art, with images of the snake goddess and a huge range of other works and no evidence of fortifications or war. So power in this society operated differently.
It strikes me now that all of this came to me in a great rush. But of course I had been reading, looking, talking to other feminists. Some were very well informed and I found the whole subject totally fascinating.
By 1979, after reading more, I was studying Ancient Greek. I was reading Jane Harrison’s book Prologemena to the Study of Greek Religion and her small book Mythology. There was a flowering of scholarship and art by feminists in the late 1970s and 1980s. I had postcards of images by Monica Sjöö and recall vividly the painting of God Giving Birth (1968).
Returning to my book, In Defence of Separatism, I would not have understood the importance of what I was seeing in Crete without my understanding of power, without an understanding of what women can do. My argument in the book is that women need the strategy of separatism in order to throw off the shackles of patriarchy, to gain strength, get a chance to learn about our own creativity and to celebrate. Women will do this in different ways: for some it will be a way of life; for others it will be time to enjoy the company of other women, to engage in political action with women, by women, for women.
In Defence of Separatism is out now in Australia and Aoteroa/New Zealand; in the UK in mid-October; in North America in December.
More information here: http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/Bookstore/book/id=324/
(Meet Mago Contributor) Susan Hawthorne.
I echo Sara’s love and admiration for your writings Susan. It has been my experience that though separatism may include praxis and activism, influences and notions of Goddess as central to all living and non-living entities can also be included in a hermeneutic of separatism. Living in a community where everyone studied the scriptures of Goddess, Her ethics inspired altruism in terms less familiar to western discourse. What we call service to humanity, or karma yoga, in Yogic terms blossoms into altruistic work.
So, I say yes to separatism! While women of a certain age remain estranged, isolated and in need of more Women inclusive groups and communities.
Male constructs of separatism are still problematic, they tend to divide us across spiritual, political, class, ethnicity and many other social subdivisions.
I’d like to know more about other senior women living as recluse, because the tolerance level in certain women groups excludes women who adopt a more radical belief system. This reminds me of Dworkin’s “Right Wing Women” and makes me question to what extent today’s “left” wing women are indistinguishable from a normalized/normative right wing–through schooling in defense of the status quo.
I would like to hear what other solutions you suggest for expanding Women Centered groups for healing the prevalent effects of internalized patriarchy.
Yours in Her
I love to read what you write Susan. You write with such clarity. I still believe that a period of separatism is required for women to develop into the women they are, but these days I don’t see many women seeking this way of ‘becoming’ – and i find this disturbing to say the lest.