I didn’t have any big, new reactions after reading the New York Times article about lesbian communities. It felt a bit superficial and simplistic to me, but most newspaper articles on subjects one cares deeply about seem reductive. It turns out that some of the women I met in the course of our oral history project were interviewed for the piece. I spoke with one woman yesterday who’d spoken with them and reported that the collective response to the finished piece was, predictably, mixed. Meanwhile, the article has, also predictably, been fodder for debate on some of the blogs I regularly read. I particularly wanted to highlight a post up at the new blog In Persuit of Harpyness, What We Should Talk About When We Talk About Lesbian Separatism. In reflecting on both the article and the conversation generated about it, the blogger writes:

As a feminist it is my job to recognize that such experiences exist, that it is important to listen to the women who lived through them, and not try to shame them or make their choices about mine. It is important to listen because they have something to contribute to my feminism, these lesbian separatists.

. . . I can cut their critics some slack, but only a little. Sometimes, when I am in the heat of an internet argument, I start to forget how much of my devotion to feminism is rooted in good old boring ordinary compassion. Because I am a person who enjoys talking about ideas abstractly, I can sympathize with those who want to synthesize the contributions of these women . . .

But those discussions, they aren’t the whole truth of the matter. They aren’t about the women themselves. And though I’m always going to keep talking about feminism abstractly, I often wish everyone would keep their eyes on the ball.

As someone who has spent time on womyn-only land, and has listened extensively to the life stories of the women who were kind enough to let us ask nosy questions about their lives as lesbians and as feminists, I think this post gets to the heart of the matter here. Communal living arrangements, sort of like feminist thinking and activism, is a response to a particular historical context and personal experiences, and like feminism communal living is an organic, fluid project that constantly grows and changes to meet new challenges. Hopefully, the New York Times article will spark conversation between generations of women who are intrigued by the idea of communal life, and spark creative, contemporary approaches to experiments in living that will help our elders and youngers improvise lives worth living.

. . . Can’t it be both/and?

Meghan O’Rourke, over at Slate’s xx factor blog has a post up, The Sexual Fluidity of Women about this weekend’s article on sexuality research and women’s desire in the New York Times Magazine. In the post, O’Rourke argues that the implicit question of the article is this: “Are contemporary women doomed to experience a schism between what their bodies lust for and their minds tell them they want?”

Don’t you just love it when questions and answers are framed in terms of what “women” (as a single corporate entity) experience or desire? The article itself, which appears to be an interesting round-up of contemporary research of women’s sexuality (I’ll have to sit down and read it more carefully when I have the time — alas, assigned reading takes priority this morning), poses the tiresome “what do women want?” question . . . as if we, as a some inexplicable half of the human species, are a problem to be solved. Women (unlike men, the question implicitly suggests): They’re so complicated and confusing! They confuse us with their sexuality!! Isn’t the answer to the question “what do women want?” self-evidently “each one of us wants something slightly different”? While I’m glad people now recognize that generalizations about human sexuality made from studying primarily male subjects is inadequate, redressing the problem by making generalizations about “women” doesn’t seem like a very useful response.

I also do not understand why it’s useful to recycle the body/mind dichotomy when talking about sexual desire and experience. Regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or any other factor you can think of. Our bodies and our minds desire different things in different contexts, at different points in our lives. In my experience (in sex as well as elsewhere) it’s quite possible to desire two seemingly contradictory things at the same time — without losing your mind or your integrity. Framing a so-called dissonance between physical arousal and self-reported desire (an example O’Rourke highlights from the article) as a “schism” imagines that, just because our bodies and minds operate on different levels simultaneously, they are in opposition to one another — why should this be the case? Sexuality is beautifully complicated. Human beings are beautifully complex. In sex, as in everything else, our Selves — both body and mind — act and react in an ever-shifting composition of ways that scientific studies will likely never be able to fully document and explain.

For other bloggers’ thoughts (updated as I find them):

Bethany L. @ feministing community
StreetScholar @ feministing community
Elizabeth @ sex in the public square
Amanda @ pandagon
Jill @ feministe, cross-posted at yes means yes
Courtney @ feministing
Figleaf @ real adult sex
Vanessa @ alternet