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1LolaWalser
Browsing the news now, I came across this photo-reportage about Tumai, a women-only village in Kenya...
Tumai, the village that banned men (many photos, captions in French)
Found a 2009 article in English: A village for women
Interestingly, they banned female genital mutilation. It's as if women AREN'T natural-born masochists, go figure.
Tumai, the village that banned men (many photos, captions in French)
Found a 2009 article in English: A village for women
About 30 women from the indigenous tribes of Samburu and Turkana led by Chile (35) decided one day to leave their abusive husbands and begin life on their own. The village was registered under the name Tumai, which in Swahili means hope.
Chile already had experience of living in a woman-only community from the days she had spent at Umoja, Kenya’s first female village founded in 1990 by 15 Samburu women. The founding residents of Umoja, which in Swahili means unity, were women who had been rendered homeless after their husbands had rejected them because they had been gangraped. Today, both Tumai and Umoja have been declared as violence-against-women-free zones.
Interestingly, they banned female genital mutilation. It's as if women AREN'T natural-born masochists, go figure.
2southernbooklady
It was a little while ago, but I posted about something similar happening in Columbia:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/207068
Women-only space is a topic unto itself, isn't it?
http://www.librarything.com/topic/207068
Women-only space is a topic unto itself, isn't it?
3overlycriticalelisa
wow. i feel whole worlds opening up just knowing these women and these places exist. hope, indeed.
4sturlington
It was striking for me that, when I was on a kick reading feminist utopias, for many authors a women-only community seemed the *only* way to achieve such a utopia. I don't personally believe that but I can see how Charlotte Perkins Gilman might in Herland.
5LolaWalser
>2 southernbooklady:
Yes, I remembered that example, it's because I came across these similar ones that it seemed a general thread might be useful. I thought the Colombian example represented something makeshift and transitory, like a temporary shelter. Presumably once the political scene there stabilises the displaced women would return to wherever they lived before, or at least to mixed-gender environments.
What these Kenyan women are doing seems to be of a somewhat different nature, as if there is an intention to make this way of life permanent, and a permanent possibility for other women.
I'm of a divided mind on this type of arrangement. On the one hand, there is no question that it helps sheer survival.
But it fills me with dismay to think that nothing short of gender segregation secures sheer survival for some women.
As a space to find safety, to recover, to learn, to strengthen and so on--I can see only positives. But this is not how the world should be, this is not how human society ought to be.
Yes, I remembered that example, it's because I came across these similar ones that it seemed a general thread might be useful. I thought the Colombian example represented something makeshift and transitory, like a temporary shelter. Presumably once the political scene there stabilises the displaced women would return to wherever they lived before, or at least to mixed-gender environments.
What these Kenyan women are doing seems to be of a somewhat different nature, as if there is an intention to make this way of life permanent, and a permanent possibility for other women.
I'm of a divided mind on this type of arrangement. On the one hand, there is no question that it helps sheer survival.
But it fills me with dismay to think that nothing short of gender segregation secures sheer survival for some women.
As a space to find safety, to recover, to learn, to strengthen and so on--I can see only positives. But this is not how the world should be, this is not how human society ought to be.
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