Wimmin’s Land Trip ’19

In September 2019, a group of 6 of us traveled to wimmin’s lands in Australia together for a private gathering of lesbians. The trip was self-funded, but some awesome more grown up lesbians did donate (thank you so much J and R!!!) and give us cleaning, gardening and demolition work to do for money. This was awesome because we got to plant native trees, hang out around lesbians, see spiders, and sweat while listening to Joan Jett all in the name of lesbian separatism.

We had hoped to use money fundraised from selling lesbian badges at Out in The Park earlier in the year to fund our trip but given we were not allowed to attend, we couldn’t. We brought them along to share instead.

I am directing this update to the women who created the lands, who helped us travel to the lands by funding our adventure (as above), encouraging and inviting us in the first place, those who shared camping gear with us, as well as to all the other awesome womyn there with us, and to Ro for so kindly giving our big-group-for-a-modest-apartment such a welcoming place to sleep in Sydney.

Throughout this post I will include short quotes from the others in our little group who came over.

Day 1 of the trip we encountered a few unexpected issues: Visa issues heading to Aus meant our driver (yes, the only one of us with a full license) was held up in NZ. She got over later in the day, but it felt like a wee roadblock. We spent the day supermarket shopping for vegan extremely earth friendly supplies (and some junk food), sorting out airport pickups, hanging out with a fantastically fluffy dog (and her lesbian family of human beings) and changing the pickup time for the rental car (more of a mission than you’ll ever know).

Day 2 we had another airport pickup as one lesbian’s uni had given her an exam on the Friday (not particularly thoughtful of the institution, but what can you expect – a male was in charge). Unfortunately, on that airport trip we got rained on heavily and had a wallet and phone stolen, but what can you do. The lesbian whose wallet and phone it was took it in her stride, and embraced being off grid.

Finally, we began our long journey to the lands, following our bright purple Comic Sans printed out instructions until juuuust before sunset we saw double venus signs among the trees, and knew we were ready for our driver to learn how to 4WD. Fortunately, some lesbians we met on the small dirt road jumped out of their car and gave our driver a quick 101. D did absolutely amazingly, a total natural, and before you know it, we had reached a hub of tents. Through another gate, a tunnel of trees (that did sound like they gave the car a few scratches, but luckily didn’t seem to affect our bond) and up a hill – we were greeted by the hum of lesbians going about serving up lentil curry and pitching tents last minute.

We were home.

We joined in with some pretty amateur ‘she’ll be right, she was right all along’ tent-pitching (in the morning, it was clear we had not aced that, as one of our group members had woken up in a pool of water, tent sagging over her head), then got into eating and it was time for the talent show.

I feel I cannot go into details without betraying the secrets of the land, but it was (obviously) a money can’t buy experience. As my friend said, “The sing songs were grand. The cunning lingus song was quite eye opening.”
The womyn who performed were all incredible – so talented at whatever they were up to. Lesbians are clearly gifted at wordplay, singing, making the most loving, lovely duets and at playing musical instruments. Our group member who contributed did all womyn of Aotearoa extremely proud, and everyone called for an encore!

That night I fell asleep to a chorus of women chanting something that sounded just like, “alleluia lesbians”. In my head, they were dancing around a campfire while singing this (in reality, there was a fire ban and because I was in the tent I can’t comment on the dancing). Whatever was going on out there, it was brilliant.

The next couple days …

We got up to all sorts, not always in a little group together. We were told iconic stories from the 70s, to stories from just the year before. I love the thought that ‘place is a collection of stories up til now’, and so I think hearing all the different tales helped us stroppy young dykes to really connect with the older wimmin and feel deep love for the land. There were some laminated news stories from the 70s and 80s that made us double over with laughter. These women really had been thought of and treated like witches, and sometimes they had embraced this image for effect.

We swam in the stream, and the ice cold water was perfect given the way-over-30-degree heat. When I asked the others to contribute to this blog, one said, “The skinny dipping was quite good. Very liberating.” Many of us (myself included) don’t usually like being so exposed in front of others, so being able to do that while feeling safe, and like you’re not in any way being objectified, was freeing and allowed us to have lots of fun.

We went adventuring, visiting areas of the lands I’d never seen before. We saw old little houses built using clever techniques for insulation, or with still-full libraries featuring Mary Daly and bell hooks – feminist classics. One building even has a stained glass labrys window, which must have taken real skill and effort to create.

We spotted snakes and goannas, leeches and ticks, and saw some huge birds soaring through the sky. We guessed they were Wedge Tailed Eagles – they were majestic and didn’t try to eat us.

There were talks on specific subjects, including how we can better support each other across the ditch, how we can take care of this special place, and the feminist lesbian movement. There was even a great chat around the campfire pit (not lit) about times different women have been mistaken as being men, and how they’ve reacted. “This is my most femmy shirt!” was a real highlight.

I think all of our favourite part of the trip to wimmins lands was being able to freely and openly chat to other lesbians, both older than us and our age (our group was all 18-23). It’s really rare to find and access lesbian only spaces these days in Aotearoa, and they really are so rewarding and special. To actually be around a decent sized group of other young lesbians, who are out as lesbians (same-sex attracted females) was life changing. It shouldn’t cost thousands of dollars and require crossing the Tasman Sea to find other lesbians, but at the moment, it feels like it does – and I want to emphasise that it was absolutely worth it.

“The whole trip was a really valuable experience as a detransitioned woman. It felt like coming home.”

So, after all this awesome bonding, adventuring, camping and posing for group photos that can’t go anywhere (it was a little bit sad to remember that if many of us are seen associating with each other, we are likely to face consequences), it was time to leave …

… in forty degree heat, in a traffic jam for something like nine hours, with forest fires on the side of the road. Good old Australia! Fortunately, we had an excellent DJ in the car – one who came up with this gem:

“Seeing our first man was quite confronting. It was a bit of culture shock. It was an affront to our values.”

We spent the following day in town, waking up at 5:30am to go play football in a park in the CBD. We caught up with some other womyn just back from the camp, went to Sydney’s Chinese gardens and visited loads of bookstores:

“Sydney women’s library was great, that was a real classic. They had books out of circulation very cheaply. We had to pretend our bags were really light to get back on the plane!”

Flying home we were all shattered but happy and extremely grateful. Thank you so much to the lesbians who gave us gardening and cleaning work to help us afford the cost of travel, as well as the kind koha. Your support means so much, and we really did make the most of this opportunity.

An enormous thank you to the wimmin of the lands, the wimmin who helped create them, those who help maintain them (from the paperwork side of things, to keeping the roads clear, to managing the aftermath of fires). I hope that next time us kiwis come over, it can be for a longer period so that we can help with the manual labouring/construction/prep side of things.

From me to the others in our group: thank you so much driver, your sense of humour and recovery from unexpected turns really saved the day. Thanks to our youngest, it was fun celebrating your birthday and spending time with you. To our talent show rep, you are so skilled and cool, I hope I get to see all sorts of projects you’re involved in over time! To the one of us who just trusted in our group and met us for the first time at the airport then dealt with a robbing right away, I knew from the first time we chatted we would be great friends and I’m so glad we are. And to my sister in mischief and herstory, I love your curiosity and preparedness: you were right to get a SIM card and I love that you got so much out of this trip.

I think as a group, we want to help change the public imagination of what is possible for womyn and girls, for lesbians in particular. Seeing the kind of utopian, healing, brave – not to mention hilarious – things womyn can do when they work together helps us to keep our minds open to great big possibilities. We saw those thanks to the womyn of the lands.

In sisterhood and solidarity,

‘The New Zealanders’




P.S. If you don’t come back from womyn’s lands spelling the word ‘woman’ ten different ways, did you even go?!

The Feminist Article the Green Party has Banned:

This opinion piece appeared in the 2019 Spring issue of Te Awa (the NZ Green Party’s newsletter) at this link. Marama Davidson, a Green Party Co-Leader and Member of Parliament, has since said this article “puts trans rights to exist up for debate” and it’s been removed.

Solutions that are Fair to Everyone

I am writing a personal response to Jan Logie’s words in the last Te Awa, where she says: “We continue to push for progress on LGBTQI+ freedoms, and resist the backlash that’s trying to undermine our trans and gender diverse whanau and roll back their hard-won rights”.

Who is the “we” in this statement? Is it the Rainbow Greens? I am a lesbian, supposedly under their umbrella, but I am part of the backlash. Is it the whole Green Party? I am a long-time Greens member, but I am part of the backlash. If the Greens caucus is acting on policy that feelings of gender identity over-ride biological sex, then some of us older feminists in the party have strong concerns about its implications.

Transpeople are a vulnerable group that until recently has been excluded from general consideration and now justly claim their right to be treated with equal respect. However, the hard-won rights Jan alludes to include those of male-bodied transwomen to be treated just like natal women and allowed to enter any space or role designated as females-only. Trans rights activists argue that if a man says he feels like a woman, he is one. Women must accept him as one of them, even when he retains his male bodily features.

Many feminists are concerned to protect the sex-based rights of women and girls, whose disadvantaged position under patriarchy is based exactly on our biology and whose primary problem is male violence. Hence sex-based rights include the right to female-only spaces and activities. But feminist analysis of patriarchy seems to be completely lacking in gender ideology. Indeed, feminists who have worked for decades to achieve the rights now enjoyed by younger women are being vilified.

I am horrified by what is happening overseas: the shutting down of free speech; the silencing and abuse of academic experts; young children being taught they can be in the ’wrong’ body, thus reinforcing stereotypes; women’s refuges and rape crisis centres no longer safe sanctuaries; lesbians being accused of transphobia if they insist on same-sex relationships; malebodied athletes entering women’s sports and taking the prizes; the very language changing to erase females/women, in the name of ‘inclusiveness’.

In New Zealand, meeting venues and publicity have been denied to gender-critical feminists, who are accused – sometimes very violently – of hate speech. The Abortion Law Reform Association now speaks of “pregnant people”, not “pregnant women”. Wellington Lesbian Radio has changed its name because ‘lesbian’ is not “inclusive”.

Most serious of all is the medicalisation of children. I recently met a woman who had taken her 11-year-old daughter to a doctor because of a sore throat. The daughter is a tomboy, with short hair. The doctor asked the mother if she wanted the girl to go on puberty blockers. An 11-year-old goes to the doctor with a sore throat and is given a suggestion of puberty blockers?

Gender-critical feminists have allies among some transpeople themselves, who see this ideology as a misogynist, homophobic, men’s rights push. No previous extensions of human rights for new groups have involved taking away the rights of others needing protection. It would be progressive of the Greens to be working for solutions that are fair to everyone, rather than reinforcing the current divide.

ENDS.

LRAA statement:

While Jill Abigail is not a member of our collective, we support her.

Here is a picture of the offending article, provided by an outraged Green Party member. We will replace it with a scanned in image as soon as possible:

Raglan Trip

An LRAA group went on a short notice trip to Raglan last week. Here is a run down of all the scandalous things we got up to:

We spent Friday evening catching up on political and social events over a lovely vegan dinner.

On Saturday, we had a relaxing morning. Some women went on a walk around Raglan at dawn (and got slightly lost), others started on our craft projects for Out in the Park (March 16!) with cups of tea and a couple others slept in. We are making some friendship bracelets, necklaces, painted rocks and some art out of the words, ‘sisterhood is powerful’ and ‘lesbian liberation’.

Julie Bindel was on the radio at 10am so we gathered around to listen to that for half an hour. You can listen to it here.

We discussed that in detail then went to the beach for a long swim! We were tired so we  afternoon napped while Joan Jett’s Greatest Hits album played in the background. It played twice before anyone got grumbly enough to turn it off.

We had some dinner then sat outside under the stars and talked.

On Sunday a few of us did yoga then we all cleaned up the bach together. We went back to the beach one last time before all heading our separate ways by 2pm.

We will give more notice next time so even more women are able to join us 🙂

Here is a photo of the view when you walk up the hills by the beach: