Lesbian Separatism is Inevitable

The Heart · Lesbian Separatism Is Inevitable

How NK & Phoebe fell in art love.

This episode was written and produced by Phoebe Unter and Nicole Kelly, with sound design by Phoebe Unter. Kaitlin Prest edited this episode.

YOU ALSO HEARD "Belen" compliments of SAN CHA from the album La Luz de la Esperanza. "Esa Mujer" by K Pasa USA. The voice of Chanel Miller reading her letter to her rapist.

You heard an excerpt from "Lesbian Nation" by Ariel Levy. And Jill Johnston saying “all women are lesbians except the ones who don’t know it yet.”

Many thanks to Kamala Puligandla for listening & editing, and Ari Mejia and Mara Lazer for notes & support. Noted gay librarian Lane Goldszer contributed research to this episode. Thanks to Elyssa Dudley for recording the Dyke Ranch experience, and everyone who attended this truly special event in Baja in 2016. 

transcript

Kaitlin Prest:

From Mermaid Palace and Radiotopia. Welcome... to The Heart.

[theme music starts, a drum beating like heart] 

I'm Kaitlin Prest. And after a long sleep, this show has returned. I'm back with this music in your ear with two new magical humans. Phoebe Unter and Nicole Kelly. 

[low voice sings with music, music is muffled] 

They are the new producers of this show. They are spending hours and hours sitting in headphones, bringing microphones into their most intimate moments and being forced to listen to those intimate moments again and again and again and again as they carve and shape them into stories that will register and resonate for you. And this is their inaugural Heart episode. And today on the show, we are going to hear a love story of a certain kind. 

My new favorite kind of love, because I'm not in romantic love right now and I'm questioning everything about the fact that we build our lives around that special and unpredictable drug. It's about, a certain kind of rite of passage. It's about friendship. It's about community, it's about utopia. It's about you. 

[music fades to silence]

NK:

Your mom is a quintessential 90s power mom. 

[music starts: Whitney Houston "How Will I Know" intro, upbeat synthy 90s beat]

Her business cards have gold embossed letters on them to match the gold blazer that she wears to sell houses. Her lips and nails are painted a bold shade of red because red is her power color. 

Your mom never even considered not working. And some of the other moms judge her for it. Your mom tells you that you can do whatever you want. That it doesn't matter if you're a girl or what color your skin is. 

[music stops]

Phoebe:

You spend hours and days at a time in lush imaginary worlds you create with your sister. In one of your favorites, your turn of the century tenement dwellers. You pretend to be tweens with factory jobs who occasionally tend to each other's outbreaks of scarlet fever. You gravitate toward these characters and all your pretend games. The indigene exiled and exploited. You rub ash from the fireplace on your faces and wear baggy clothes and earth tones instead of the hand-me-down sequined princess outfits in your dress up box. You like how distant these worlds feel from your leafy backyard in the suburbs. You like that the imagination must be engaged fully for each terrifying home birth and excitement over a piece of penny candy. 

NK:

If you like something, you love it. You watch your VHS tape of The Little Mermaid so many times that the tape wears thin in the VCR and you have to ask your parents for a new one. In the story, you love the way Ariel can swim around unsupervised, hanging out with her friends, thrifting and crushing on a boy. You love the way she sings and the way her red hair billows up behind her and the way she hoists herself up on a rock in the surf. You do this too, imagining the wind, imagining you have hair exactly like hers. By pushing yourself into a cobra pose in the yard. You don't think about what Ariel is giving up to be with Eric: her voice, her family, her innate amphibian nature. But you do identify with her longing to be somewhere anywhere else. 

[dial-up computer sounds]

Phoebe:

Every night when you're supposed to be falling asleep, you're actually in bed under the covers on a clunky laptop you check out from school, touching yourself while reading pages on Wikipedia dedicated to various non-penetrative gay sex acts. After browsing mutual masturbation or tribadism, then comes the main event. The anonymous chat rooms. The first few times someone asks you for your age, sex and location, you only fabricated a little bit. You say you're 18 or 21. A woman, in a city that is not your city, but is another mid-sized Midwestern metropolis you've been to. 

Eventually, though, you try all kinds of combinations. You're 34. You're interested in women. Then you're a man interested in women. Then a man interested in men. 

If it ever feels too hard to keep up an act, you can close the chat and a new one pops up in its place. 

You tell no one that you do this. 

[dial-up computer sounds]

NK:

So you already know that you want to be a writer and you convince your parents to let you apply for a summer program in Vermont. Your creative nonfiction teacher also plays in a punk band, and she wonders why all of your essays are about love. She asks you, what else are you thinking about? 

[slow guitar strums, heavy wah - it’s the beginning of X Ray Spex’ Germ Free Adolescents]

[bass and drum start] 

Phoebe:

The newness of college, of suddenly being desirable and having basically anonymous sex almost every night you go out, the excitement of being wanted… it wears off. You spend most of your time laying on top of your best friend on the shag rug you purchased together pining for real love. You learn the names of everyone in each other's extended families and tell each other everything you've ever thought about while masturbating. 

NK:

In a U.S. history seminar taught by a silver haired lesbian communist from the Bronx, you read about the radical feminist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a working class woman radicalized by marriage and motherhood who left her family to join the movement in the 70s. You're amazed at this decision. Are women allowed to do that? 

Phoebe:

You read the beat poets and then when you realize they killed their wives with no redress, you swerve toward reading women only. Once you open the door, a parade of radical feminists begin to march through and rearrange your views of yourself like they're pulling moldy food out of the fridge.

[music fades away]

NK:

No one that you knew at home ever used the word feminist. Not even your mom, who always knew exactly what she wanted. It feels wrong to love this. To love her choosing herself, choosing her politics, choosing the movement, over being a wife and mother. But you do. Her choice makes something click turns on a light inside you. 

Phoebe:

Feminist theory is ruining your relationship. The more you read Valerie Solanas and Shulamith Firestone, the more the hetero power dynamic swallows up your ability to think of your boyfriend — who is temporarily living with you — as the funny, gentle human that he is. His most innocuous gestures warp into patriarchal power grabs. 

NK:

Do you want to be a wife and a mother or an artist and a lover? Stevie Nicks'  words hang on a Post-it over your writing desk. A question that needs answering. 

[high pitched keyboard melody wavers]

You eat a bunch of shrooms to find the answer and wind up spending eight hours sobbing on someone else's front porch. Your gaze is fixed on a bush that undulates ever so slightly. And then pulsates like a heart. 

[music beats louder]

And you feel the tension of the last five years drain out of your body. 

Phoebe:

Scream singing Nelly Furtado "I'm Like a Bird" in the passenger seat of your best friend's car is when it hits you. Maybe you should give boyfriends a rest. 

NK:

It's like a birth and a death are happening at once in some unknown deeper self is pushing its way out of the recesses of your mind. 

Phoebe:

You trust yourself to know what you should do. Finally. 

NK:

And the experience of facing that new self is so intense that you weep for hours. 

Phoebe:

Before the feeling has time to wear off, you start plotting your escape.

[the song “Belen” begins, a chorus sings ethereally like a waterfall of voices]

NK:

You're still crying that night when you break up with your boyfriend. 

Phoebe:

You have to get out of that apartment. 

NK:

And it's not just him. You have to quit everything

Phoebe:

Where even the things you want have started to feel like they're his idea. 

NK:

Most of all, this habit you've picked up somewhere of breaking your own small promises to yourself. 

[music continues: chorus singing]

NK & Phoebe:

[the two distinct voices speak simultaneously, slightly overlapping]

So you book another trip to Mexico. Alone. 

[San Cha blends into "Esa Mujer" by K Pasa USA, percussive Mexican dance floor music] 

Phoebe:

One night at a clothing optional house party in Mexico City, you have sex with two strangers you meet on the dance floor. But that's not the most exciting thing that happens to you. The most exciting thing that happens... 

[music drags to stopping]

[we hear a wisp of NK’s laughter. There’s raucous party in the background]

Phoebe (at the party):

(to NK) What a time to catch you. 

NK & Phoebe:

You meet  someone. 

NK (at the party):

(to Phoebe) I was living in L.A. before. 

Phoebe (at the party):

Oh! 

NK (at the party):

But I've been in Mexico for a minute now. 

Phoebe (at the party):

I live in L.A. 

NK (at the party):

[excited laughing] 

Phoebe:

Who's probably a lot like you because you're both spending most of the night in the kitchen, drinking and talking about the adventure that you're on. 

[party sounds underneath]

NK:

You tell her that since your break-up, you've been trying to figure out who you are now, starting over. And you're also kind of retracing your steps, trying to remember the person you used to be... 

Phoebe (at the party):

(to NK) I was trying to say, I just have so many questions. 'cause I'm like, I feel like, you're like, I've only been doing this for like 2 weeks, but it seems like you've been, like, hanging out for a while. 

NK (at the party):

(to Phoebe) I just came to spend Christmas with my sister.. 

NK:

She's a lot younger than you, but also kind of reminds you of you. 

Phoebe:

She's older. 

NK:

Like you were once this reckless.

Phoebe:

She seems like she's living for herself. Like she's just thrown off an enormous weight. 

NK:

She seems like an artist, she tells you about the spaces she's been hanging out in, places you've never heard of. 

Phoebe:

She's written a book. 

NK:

And it seems like she doesn't give a fuck what anyone thinks. 

Phoebe:

She takes out her journal to write something down-

NK:

she's not even wearing pants. 

Phoebe:

...at a party, ugh! So introspective and deep

NK:

And when she takes out her journal to write something down, you see it's full of the drawings she's made of people she's met and places she's been, and notes to herself written in this perfect  her block lettering. 

Phoebe:

And she flips through some pages and you can't help but notice. 

[quotes are overlapping]

NK:

you can't believe it when you see what she's already written there. You go to get out your journal and you say…

NK & Phoebe:

Look! 

NK:

You say. 

Phoebe:

On one page it says….

NK & Phoebe:

A lesbian is the rage of all women. Condensed to the point of explosion.

[cackling laughter, thunder, music is higher]

[there’s a pause and then the X Ray Spex guitar strum returns]

NK:

Dear Phoebe, it was really cool to run into you again at the orgasm forum. Actually, I forgot to ask you where you got that cannabis pussy cream. Also, I wanna invite you to this gender fuck party we're having at my house,. 

Phoebe:

Dear NK, that sounds great. I think I'll wear this dick that I made that you can drink red wine from. Hopefully people will want to suck it. 

NK:

Dear Phoebe, 

Phoebe:

I've been thinking about what you said about political lesbianism, but—

NK:

I'm also surprised that I have this sudden interest in second wave feminism. But I guess it's because I love hyperbole and a good manifesto. 

Phoebe:

Dear NK, it's wild. I was in a bookstore with my boyfriend and I picked up this magazine. I opened it to a random page and saw your name. So I started reading. 

NK (reading):

Break up with your boyfriend

Phoebe:

…was the first sentence. 

NK (reading):

Make a list of all the places to start your new life, the life in which you do and say whatever the fuck you want. 

prying boyfriend:

(to Phoebe) What is that? 

Phoebe:

(to prying boyfriend) Nothing!

Phoebe:

And I immediately turn my body away from him because I was like, wow, I might just do everything this essay tells me to. 

NK:

You exchange letters from one summer to another. 

Phoebe:

Through the fall. 

Phoebe:

Have you read this article?

Phoebe:

The winter. 

NK:

Uh, relate! 

[choral voices from the San Cha song returns]

Phoebe:

Into the summer of 2016.

NK:

The summer of 2016 is one long undulating rage cry. 

news anchor (archival tape):

…fatal police shooting of African-American man… 

NK:

As violence flares up around you. 

protesters (archival tape):

hands up, don't shoot! hands up, don't shoot! 

NK (reading):

The summer started when the Stanford Rapist got away with it. 

Chanel Miller, reading from her victim impact statement:

I still don't have words for that feeling. 

NK (reading):

We were stunned, which is not the same as being surprised. 

Chanel Miller:

The pain became so bad. 

NK (reading):

They found a car full of explosives at the pride parade. They found 50 people already gone in Orlando. In self-defense class, I cried each time they simulated assault. 

Chanel Miller:

You are the cause. I am the effect. 

Phoebe:

It seems like every other week you are at a rally, a protest, a vigil. 

NK:

You look at the videos, the images until you can't anymore. 

Phoebe:

For another victim of police brutality. 

NK:

Until waves of grief fall over you and you have to look away. 

NK (reading):

On the 4th of July, police killed a Black man for being poor. On the 6th of July, police killed a Black man over a tail light. And on the 8th of July, they killed, on the tenth they killed, on the 12th, and the 17th and the 23rd they killed. They killed in Istanbul on Ramadan and Nice and in Germany. And never has my powerlessness felt so palpable. 

Phoebe:

Dear NK, what if we took our political beliefs to their most extreme conclusion? 

[music begins: "Magic Man" by the Heart, guitar solo]

Phoebe (reading from the article Lesbian Nation):

There is no reliable record of how many women were calling themselves lesbian separatists at the height of the movement. The most colorful separatists, although they were neither the most influential nor the most ideological stalwart, were the Van Dyke's, a roving band of van driving vegans who shaved their heads, avoided speaking to men unless they were waiters or mechanics and lived on the highways of North America. For several years, they were on a quest to locate dyke heaven. 

[music: Janelle Monae song, "I like that" begins]

Jill Johnston (archival footage):

All women are lesbians except those who don't know it. Naturally, they are, but don't know it yet. 

Phoebe:

We want to follow the paths of the 1970s lesbian separatists to experience life in the political playground they built. To have one weekend where we can escape the constant stream of manmade violence and just be together. 

NK:

To bring 15 of our closest, most wild, endless, rage filled patriarchy fucking friends to a remote horse ranch in Baja that we called Dyke Ranch. The official newspaper of Dyke Ranch is the cunt rag, which contains our manifesto. 

NK (reading our manifesto):

[fades in] Kill money, kill hierarchy, kill white supremacy [fades out]

NK:

Which we call five phases of mourning for the feminist revolution. 

NK (reading our manifesto):

[fades in] kill slavery, kill war, kill religion, kill misogyny [fades out]

NK:

The Van Dykes had convened in Baja in the 1970s, and so we took Phoebe's van and did the same thing.

[van door closing, engine squealing to start]

By sundown, we're passing through Ensenada, driving up a long, winding dirt road in the dark. Past abandoned, burned out cars and through huge potholes. 

[sounds of the group outside, bugs buzzing. We hear snippets of conversation: “The sensory is the fun part… I love touching things when I’m on molly!”]

NK:

Within 24 hours of arriving at Dyke Ranch, we sort ourselves into various Sapphic factions. Out in the stables, the horse dykes pick ticks off of horses all day and ride bareback through the woods with their tops off. The survivalist dykes spend the morning at target practice with bow and arrow and spend the afternoon foraging and chopping wood for the fire. 

a Dyke Ranch dyke:

…those fruits aren't generally native to wherever we're hiking…

NK:

The witch dykes are running the apothecary. Making mugwort tinctures to induce psychedelic dreams, making spells to appease spirits and protect the ranch energetically. 

Phoebe:

One dyke refuses to be categorized and spends most of her time in bed wearing a black muumuu, chain smoking menthol cigarettes and reading the latest New Yorker. 

[a bonfire fire crackles and pops]

We sit around the fire. You feel the warmth of the fire on your skin.  

NK:

Telling stories about all the experiences that have led us here. 

Phoebe:

You see faces illuminated. 

NK (reading):

It is a campfire we built ourselves, a fire that turns red, dark blue and teal. It tastes like making a meal together. It sounds like all of us laughing at once. It feels like chopping wood, riding bareback, taking our shirts off, hitchhiking. It's loud. It takes up more space in public. It feels like being believed. 

Phoebe:

You are ready. You don a black muumuu. 

NK:

We watch as you turn away from the fire. Then we follow you into a field, towards a single light,. 

Phoebe:

Illuminating the grass beneath a tree in the middle of the field. 

NK:

The warmth of a fire recedes behind us. The grass is cold and wet beneath our bare feet. You kneel, you bow your head. 

NK:

There's a single lightbulb. 

Phoebe:

You're scared of who you might become but you know you have to do this. 

NK:

Illuminating the grass beneath the tree in the field. 

Phoebe:

You close your eyes and the sound approaches. 

[sound of clippers fades in] 

The sound of the blade. You feel a flutter in your chest. Your hair has become this shield. The metal is cold when it first touches you, but it moves gently. You sense hesitation and you reassure them, you're ready. Then they move it across your scalp in long, confident strokes. The pressure sends pins and needles to other parts of your body. 

It's suddenly quiet. 

[vibration sounds like a motor]

You open your eyes and see chunks of hair fall onto the wet grass around you. You reach up and all you feel is your bald head. 

NK (reading):

We talk about our dreams of feminist utopia on a horse ranch in Baja when we are finally alone together. It's the right to a home. It's the abolition of prisons. It is reparations for slavery paid with free education and schools no longer tasked with the teaching of half truths. It is publishing the letter you wrote to your rapists. There is nothing more valuable than our collective imagination. [NK nearing tears] And so we embrace this fantasy. We tell these stories in order to live, in order to keep living. And when we talk about our dreams of feminist utopia, we say this is what it feels like. We're finally people. 

[choir, San Cha singing returns]

NK:

A manifesto should be a grandiose declaration.

NK (orating):

I wake up incandescent with rage…

NK:

A self serious provocation...

NK (orating):

If the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion than I am a black hole!

NK:

A call to action. A call for revolutionary change.

[choir fades]

The descent from Dyke Ranch back to reality is jarring, and so is interacting with people who aren't part of our bubble, which was punctured by a group of women arriving for a bachelorette party. 

Phoebe:

I did break up with my boyfriend less than 24 hours after returning from Dyke Ranch, and it gave me the push I needed to nurture my desire and be in queer relationships. I became a real dyke. That's a different story, but a true separatist, I did not become. Separatism is probably best as an ideological channel to something else, but not as a lasting way of life. The reasons why are obvious. In the 70s, they said it fell apart because everyone slept together, which is all fun and games until someone sets their ex's van on fire. I don't know how it felt then, but now it's clear that seeing gender as the primary or only power dynamic to struggle against is a privilege only really afforded to white women. And woman and man don't really feel like fixed terms. So why not fight the binary altogether? Manifestos aren't necessarily meant to be read literally. 

NK:

In a way, though, I've never really returned. I've held on to a little part of it. I still believe that an idea can be potent enough to actually change the way you live. That a belief can spark a seemingly small act walking out. And that small acts of resistance and refusal can be personally transformative. I still think that real power can come from a truly collective experience and an imaginary world. 

[Heart "Magic Man" guitar riff returns]

Kaitlin Prest:

This episode was written and produced by Phoebe and NK and sound designed by Phoebe. I edited this story. You heard music by San Cha from her album La Luz de la Esperanza and K Pasa USA, the band that threw the party in Mexico City where NK and Phoebe met. You heard the voice of Chanel Miller reading her letter to her rapist from 2016. You heard an excerpt from Ariel Levy's article Lesbian Nation about the Van Dyke's. And you heard Jill Johnston saying “all women are lesbians except those who don't know it yet.” Thanks to Elyssa Dudley for recording Dyke Ranch and everyone who attended this truly special event in Baja in 2016. I wish I had been there. I bet you do too.

Go to the Heart's Instagram feed @theHeartradio for photos and ephemera from Dyke Ranch, including content from the original cunt rag. Special thanks to Kamala Puligandla  for listening and editing. And Ari Mejia and Mara Lazer for notes and support. Noted gay librarian Lane Goldszer contributed research to this episode. The Heart is a production of the audio art company Mermaid Palace. If you want to check out Mermaid Palace and all of its magical shows and arts, go to @MermaidPalaceArt on Instagram. You can follow me @KaitlinPrest and you can follow the Heart, Phoebe and N.K. @theHeartRadio. The heart is Phoebe Unter, Nicole Kelly, Sharon Mashihi, Chiquita Paschal and me, Kaitlin Prest. Jen Ng is our designer and I am your host. This show gets made by donations. In fact, the reason why we came back is because we got a really generous donation from a very special person. You know who you are. If you want the show to keep going, we highly encourage generous donations from people who love our work. Go to MermaidPalace.org/theheart to donate. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode. We're doing this all year long. Can you believe it?