LDO: Is lesbian land for you?

I know I’ve been conspicuously absent the last week or so, but life on the land is just so chock-full of activities that between that and earning a living, I’ve hardly had a spare moment to post anything more pithy than my bad wildlife photography. Our project du jour is fixing the road, which involves digging metal washtubs full of dirt and rock that has washed into the gutter and dumping it back into the eight-inch-deep muddy ruts. We’ve also taken a digging bar (a six-foot piece of iron) and a garden rake to the packed gravel along the sides of the road, loosening and then raking that into the ruts also. It’s dirty, hard, slow, heavy work that every bone in my body screeches* could be done quicker and more easily by the application of cold hard cash. Alas, when one has little cash but plenty of time and elbow grease--and when one is trying to eschew the capitalist patriarchal middle-class expectation that one ought to be able to pay someone else to do what one doesn't want to do oneself--one does what one can.

But never fear, I have not forgotten my intrepid readers. I have put together this little quiz so that you all can answer the question I know is burning in your dear little hearts—“Could I be a landdyke? Could I? Could I?” While I do not intend this quiz to provide a definitive answer, I think it can point you in the right direction, since a scientific random sample consisting of me and my landdyke girlfriend scored pretty high.

*The bone-screeching is particularly intense when they are all being jarred as my arms and shoulders bear the brunt of the digging bar connecting with some giant, half-buried rock.
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The Quiz

1. How many women’s lands, past or present, can you name? Give yourself one point for each.


2. Have you been to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival? Give yourself a point for each year of attendance.


3. Would you go again? Give yourself another point if yes.


4. Give yourself a point if you’ve gone tent camping for a week or more, with no battery-operated gadgets, you’re still friends with everyone you went with, and you’d do it again. Add another point if it rained for more than an hour.


5. Read through the following, very partial, list of benefits of modern middle-class life:
   ~ running water
   ~ flush toilets
   ~ daily showers/tub baths
   ~ central heating
   ~ air conditioning
   ~ unlimited grid electricity
   ~ your current vehicle
   ~ your current job
   ~ health insurance
   
   Check any item that you are NOT willing to live without. SUBTRACT one point from your score for each check mark.
   
   Circle any items that are negotiable—for example, if you are willing to trade in your economy car for a four-wheel-drive pickup, or you could live with solar electricity instead of being on the grid, or you’re willing to change jobs. Give yourself one point for each item circled.


6. Speaking of jobs, do you have a job that’s flexible—that is, could you easily get work in your field in any area, or are you someone who’s willing to do any kind of work to earn a living? Give yourself one point for having flexible job skills, and two points if you would take any job you could get. (possible total = 3 points)


7. Could you telecommute in your current job? Give yourself a point.


8. Do you have an independent income, such as a trust fund or disability benefits? Give yourself a point.


9. Give yourself a point if you currently live on less than $10,000 per year.


10. Can you entertain yourself? Do you have hobbies and interests that do not require a great deal of equipment, technology, or infrastructure? Give yourself one point if yes.


11. Are you physically capable of lifting, carrying, pulling, hauling, hammering, digging? Give yourself a point if yes.


12. Are you a do-it-yourselfer? If something’s not working, can you figure out how to fix it from a book? Would you rather make or build your own than buy it? Give yourself a point if yes.


13. Do you like the country? Are you willing to cope with dirt, mud, bugs, extremes of temperature, nearby livestock, driving a long way to get anywhere, everybody knowing your business, lack of lattes, etc.? Give yourself one point if yes, and an extra point if you already live or have lived in the country.


14. Do you enjoy the outdoors? Would you be happy spending a large percentage of your time working and living outside? Give yourself a point if yes.


15. Do you like to grow at least some of your own food? Give yourself one point if yes.


16. Are you attached to femininity? Subtract one point for each personal care product you use daily. And yes, soap and shampoo count.


17. Can you be naked around other women? Are you okay if other women are naked around you? Give yourself a point if yes.


18. How social are you? If you want to interact with more than four people every day, subtract one point. Give yourself one point if you can go a whole day without speaking to anyone and be content.


19. Do you have experience making decisions in groups? Give yourself a point if you can work with other women to create constructive solutions to problems.


20. Do you have, or can you realistically get, a sum of cash so that you would not have to work while you get settled? Give yourself one point.


21. Do you expect women’s communities to be “better” than patriarchal culture? That is, do you expect that they will have transcended all the problematic attitudes and dynamics of patriarchy before you arrive (or after)? Subtract one point if yes.


22. Do you have children under 15 who live with you? Subtract one point for each girl child and two points for each boy. Give yourself one point (total, not per child) if you homeschool your children.


23. Are you attached to a particular climate or geography? “I could never live away from the ocean” or “I can’t live with poisonous snakes.” Subtract one point if yes.

Results

• Less than 10 ~ It’s not looking good.
• 11–15 ~ You’re a definite maybe.
• 15 or more ~ You could be happy on women’s land.

Discussion

Not all lesbian lands are the same. This quiz is not representative of conditions at every lesbian land community. Even if you scored low, it is conceivable that you could find an on-the-grid lesbian land with city water, good roads, near a fair-sized town or city where you could maintain the kind of middle-class lifestyle I’m assuming you have now (and I’m aware that this is an assumption). However, most lesbian lands are rural and life there is some degree of rustic, requiring a great deal of building, restoring or repairing of housing; gardening and other outdoor work; and the willingness to take on boring, menial jobs to bring in cash. I’m not sure why there are not more urban lesbian communities; part of the reason, I suspect, is that living, and especially owning property, in large towns and cities is becoming more and more expensive. Cheap living is more often than not the province of the country; most landdykes want to be able to call the majority of our time our own, and we’re willing to trade a lot of comforts for it.

This quiz also assumes that you already know and desire the benefits of country and community life—fresh air, a relaxation of patriarchal appearance and behavior requirements, greater autonomy and sustainability, the struggle to live alongside women you may not like or agree with and to nevertheless value them and what they bring to the group. If you like living in the city—if the opportunity to run out to the 7-11 for a burrito at 2 a.m. outweighs in your heart all the downsides of urban living—crime, high rent, noise, pollution, crowding, lines, sprawl, sick buildings, heat, asphalt—or if you’re an individualist who likes living on her own land and having everything her own way, then I’m assuming you’re not considering the LDO anyway.

A close reading of this quiz should make obvious the enormity of the lie that women who separate from men are privileged elitists who are out of touch with reality. In truth, I don’t know any woman living in lesbian community who earns more than $20,000 per year. Landdykes are trailblazers in renouncing the modern middle-class lifestyle that leftists loudly condemn while they happily indulge in it. We reduce, reuse, and recycle incessantly. We question the need for wasting water on daily showers and sewer systems. We find ways to grow food in the most inhospitable of climates—this past week I have enjoyed eating fresh tomatoes, zucchini, spinach and chard from the garden every night for dinner. We haunt yard sales and thrift stores, salvage building materials, and build things using clean, cheap, nontoxic materials like mud, straw, and cotton insulation made from worn-out blue jeans. Our cars are secondhand and often more than ten years old. In short, we’re like a lot of poor and working-class people everywhere; the only difference is that at least some of us walked into this life with our eyes open, motivated by political principle and personal passion as well as economic necessity.