Some thoughts about women-only spaces and what they mean to feminism.

I’m sort of thinking aloud here, so bear with me if I ramble and feel free to interrupt me and ask for clarification.
I’ve been reading a lot about women-only spaces lately. (I refuse to use the term “womyns” or any other similar linguistic conceits because, call me crazy, but I kind of like being able to communicate with the entire population, not just that percentage of it who are liberal arts grads. Also, I already suffered through Lacan at university, and once was enough.)

This seems to have become a nexus of conflict among feminist, this concept of women-only space, in part because of the issue of whether or not mtf transwomen count as sufficiently womanly to be allowed entry into such spaces. I have mixed feelings about that issue which can’t really be explained in yes/no terms. I also have mixed feeling about the idea of women-only space in general. So, at the risk of saying something offensive and having everyone think I’m a giant asshole, I’m going to try to write my way out of my confusion.

On a gut level I’ve never understood the need for women-only spaces. I think that part of the reason is that, through no choice of my own, I spent the majority of my adolescence in one.
I went to an all-girls boarding school. We were of course allowed out occasionally to go shopping or to visit our families, but for the majority of the time we were confined to the school grounds. My alma mater sits within the grounds of a former abbey. The actual place is gorgeous – old buildings, carefully manicured grounds, green and full of flowers in the spring and summer and picturesquely snowy in the winter.

I fucking hated that place. As pretty as it was on a superficial level, from a social perspective it was Lord of the Flies with snow and tennis courts. This is no surprise, really – it was after all full of teenagers, who tend to be rather unpleasant creatures regardless of their gender. It also featured a staff nurse with alarmingly Nurse Ratchett-like tendencies (I remain to this day convinced that she hurt the kids on purpose as often as she could – Pink Floyd anyone?), bizarre and inexplicable rules, an overly regimented schedule that would surely have been excellent preparation for anyone considering a career in the armed forces, and copious quantities of brainwashing in the art of being a proper young lady with all the obnoxiously classist implications one might expect. Oh, and windows that didn’t close properly combined with non-functioning central heating – in the winter, in Scotland. Apparently pneumonia is supposed to build character. I’m not kidding – I once spent an entire term being forced to play sports outside in the snow while I had bronchitis. See what I mean about Nurse Ratchett?

I’m fairly certain that my distinct lack of rose colored glasses when contemplating the idea of women-only space can be attributed to my attendance at that school. It was there that I learned that the concept of sisterhood as a thing that one can rely on is nonsense – women are people, and people are selfish, arrogant and cruel. Some people are wonderful creatures, of course, but the majority? Selfish, arrogant and cruel. Even if they have vaginas.

There were less than 10 men ever allowed within the grounds of that school, except on the couple of days per term that parents showed up to drop off or pick up their kids. There were 3 male teachers, 3 gardeners, a groundskeeper cum janitor, and a doctor who showed up for an hour or two about once a month. That was it, and two of the gardeners were teenage boys, not men. As far as men who could have represented a threat to the safety of the female students – please! Two of the teachers were married to other teachers and watched like hawks by their wives, and the other one was almost fired when he started a (completely consensual and non-sexual) relationship with one of the students – and before anyone starts freaking out, note that he was 22 and she was 17. Those men were no threat to us. The gardeners were scared to death of the students, unsurprisingly given the massive difference in class – if any of them had so much as winked at one of us he would have been out on his ass with no references immediately. The doctor was forbidden to see any of the students without a female nurse present. The janitor we had more contact with, since he was always puttering about fixing things – those were some old buildings and there was a lot of maintenance to be done. He was a lovely old man – I remember going back to visit a couple of years after graduating and running into him walking his dogs, two giant Irish Setters. He gave me a hug and asked me how things were going in London – it’s a small school, news travels fast about what alumni are up to, plus one of my friends who was still there liked to play with the dogs.

So, from the point of view of those who think that women-only spaces are valuable and necessary I experienced exactly what they want for girls. I spent my teens in an environment where I could have wandered around in my underwear in the middle of the night without any fear of male violence whatsoever, although the janitor would have scolded me and made me go fetch a scarf lest I catch a cold if he had caught me.

And yet…that place caused me more psychological trauma than any other situation I have ever experienced. Like I said, my strongest association with the place is Lord of the Flies. It was horrible. Hazing was standard, bullying was commonplace and the staff made no attempt to keep it in check, it was so looks-obsessed that I knew multiple people with eating disorders by the time I was 12, the academic competition was insane BUT everyone was required to pretend they weren’t actually trying lest they face the mockery of their classmates for being a geek. Yet, those who were naturally academic to the point of not needing to study who nonetheless made great grades (like me) were still harassed because our not having to study just wasn’t fair! The class dynamics were insane – I once witnessed a girl being bullied and told that she was a “plebian” who was destined to be a complete social reject because she was using the wrong brand of hairbrush. Hers was insufficiently expensive. And that’s the tip of the iceberg. Anyone without a pedigree was guaranteed to be treated with contempt. The few students who were not white were treated like shit. Imagine the situation when they put one student who was from Nigeria in a dorm with another student who was white South African…yeah, that was fun. And not a single other student defended the Nigerian girl, because nobody’s mother knew her mother and besides her parents were vulgar new money so who cared how she felt? I’m not even going to repeat some of the comments made to my friend Yvette, who was Taiwanese.

Then there were the female teachers who actively abused the students. One of my first experiences of sexual harassment was at that school – my housemistress used to pat me on the ass and give me this horrible, creepily salacious wink. She was in her fifties and I was 12. She also once walked in on one of my friends when she was in the shower, pulled the shower curtain open and stood there talking to her. She refused to allow my friend to put on a towel even when she started crying. When my friend got back to the dorm she sat down on my bed shaking so badly I thought she was having some sort of seizure. As soon as I hugged her she started sobbing. The last time I heard anything about that girl she was in her twenties and still having flashbacks. And that teacher was far from the only staff member who pulled shit like that.

That place taught me that women are every bit as capable of being crappy excuses for human beings as men. There was no male influence making those girls or the female staff act the way they did – that stuff came from their own hearts.

For a significant percentage of the students, that women-only space was an extremely hostile environment. Those girls didn’t come together and celebrate their innate womanly empathy, they ripped each other to pieces like a pack of wild dogs, and some of the staff circled the fight and picked off the weak members of the group any chance they got. The only way to survive was to form your own pack and protect each other.

So, when I hear people glorifying woman-only space as somehow safe, my immediate reaction is – what the Hell have you been smoking? How little knowledge of human nature do you need to have to think that, when put in a group, women will automatically be kind to each other? Women are people, and people kind of suck. Also, have you never studied group psychology?


I did feel safe from male violence there, though. Which was good, since I had quite enough to worry about with the teacher who kept grabbing my ass.

The thing is, even before I got there I rarely felt at risk from male violence. I spent most of my childhood in Libya and Saudi Arabia. There were multiple occasions on which I was targeted as a result of my race – kids threw rocks, yelled taunts, beat me with sticks, one once hit me hard enough to knock me right off my bike – but most of it really was about race and not gender, at least in Libya. Saudi Arabia – now that was where gender started to enter the equation. But the interesting thing was…race was still part of the issue.

I can clearly remember the first time I heard the phrase “All Western women are whores”. I was about 11 or 12. It was sneered at me by a man in his twenties who was backing me against a wall and trying to grab my boobs, and it was in response to my “I’m just a kid, please leave me alone”. Lovely, eh? That was definitely male on female bullshit, but there’s no doubt that race was a part of it too.

Similar things happened intermittently throughout the time I was in Saudi. Creepy behavior from guards at the airport or random men in stores, muttered obscenities (I’m pretty sure that the fact that I completely forgot how to speak Arabic while I was there was in part the result of my subconscious wish to not be able to understand what those men were saying to me) – yep, happened all the time.

And yet…I never actually felt like I was in danger other than that one time. Pissed off, sure, but endangered? Nope.

I used to go out and run around in the middle of the night with my friend who lived a few doors down. We would sneak out the window and shimmy over the walls after our parents went to bed. There was a sports complex being built across the street and we would go and play football there, or just hang out on the bleachers and talk. The desert is lovely at night, we enjoyed being outdoors. When she left to go back to America I used to go outside by myself. 15 year old Cassandra used to go sit on the swings in the playground alone and count stars at 3 in the morning, climb the monkey bars, walk along the walls.

I felt completely safe doing that, even with the harassment (important point to note, that one - feeling aggravated, annoyed, pissed off etc is no the same as feeling physically threatened). Why? Well, for a start there’s almost no street crime in Saudi outside of the major cities. Everyone knew that. Parents let their kids play outside all day with no supervision. Your chance of getting attacked by a stranger if you didn’t live in Jeddah or Riyadh? Close to zero. And, with all the things I resented about being there, that part I loved. In fact, I never even questioned my ability to move around safely – I took it as a given.

And then there’s the other side of the race issue. As a rich foreign kid with white skin I was pretty much immune to any kind of retribution for my behavior. No Saudi girl would have been allowed to wander around like that, but me?

Twice I was picked up by the police on my late-night rambles. The first time I was 10 and my friend was with me. The cops asked us where we lived and we pointed across the street, and they gave us a lecture and told us to go home. The subject of violence was never even raised – they were more worried about us hurting ourselves by falling off the bleachers or misusing the sports equipment. There was sexism there, sure – what do girls know about sports? – but in terms of the threat of male violence? There was none at all. The second time I was 14. The cops found me lying on top of a platform in the playground, listening to music. That time I was about 10 blocks or so from home. They scolded me and insisted on driving me home, and waited outside for a few minutes to make sure that I really stayed inside. One of them saw me peeking out the window and wagged his finger at me. Again, my fear of male violence during this encounter? Zero.

Now, can anyone tell me what the elephant in the room is, here? Race. Class, too. What do you think would happen if a Saudi policeman in any way harmed a young ex-pat kid? Very Bad Things. It would be an international incident. Not only would my parents be furious, so would the British Embassy. No cop in his right mind would do something so likely to fuck up his career.

This is why I have so many problems accepting the idea of sex as the only or primary axis of oppression, by the way. I was the classic colonial kid. Of course I was disciplined by my parents and the teachers at my special ex-pats-only schools, but as far as the locals were concerned? I was untouchable and I knew it, and so did all the other ex-pat kids. Most of those kids grew up to be horrible little brats precisely because of that – we could be rude to adults and get away with it as long as those adults were locals. That’s not a good lesson for a kid to learn. By the time I was about 4 or 5 I knew that I could get away with just about anything as long as my parents didn’t catch me. That sense of untouchability, which is strikingly common amongst ex-pat kids, is all about race and class. Even though I was female, my race and my class insulated me and I was always very much aware of that fact.


And yet…that wouldn’t have made much difference if we had been in another country, one that wasn’t as “safe”, one with more street crime. The kids I knew who grew up in Malaysia or Lebanon or Pakistan or Thailand or Haiti were obnoxious little brats who ordered adults around, but they would never have run around alone in the middle of the night, because even with the insulation of their race and their class it would still have been too dangerous.



What am I getting at with all of this? I guess I’m trying to figure out why, even though I was raised as a girl, I still grew up without the sense of fear of male violence that seems to be standard in most other women. The assumption that most people would probably make is that it’s because of my all-girls school, but I’m not sure about that. I think I was pretty much fearless long before I got there. There were very few other girls there who felt comfortable wandering around alone at night the way I did (and still do). I don’t think it’s purely being a privileged colonial kid, either, although I’m sure that’s part of it – like I said, I have friends who grew up as colonial kids in other parts of the world who never had that innate sense of safety.

Part of it is probably personality, but I don’t think that’s the whole story either. Personality isn’t entirely innate, after all.

You know what I think a big part of it is? Having parents who raised me to think I had the right to go anywhere I wanted and expect to be treated fairly (and yes, I’m aware that the fact that they were able to teach me that without lying through their teeth is the result of white privilege). They taught me that the fact that I was female did not mean that I should expect to be harassed in any way, and that if I did encounter harassment I was in no way required or expected to tolerate it. They also taught me that I had the right to fight back if anyone threatened me – the first time I was bullied in kindergarden my Dad taught me how to adopt a fighting stance and throw a punch. I tried it out the very next day – I decked the evil little brat who had been bullying me. That boy never gave me shit again. That was a VERY important lesson, and one that most girls are never taught.

Did I mention that I love my Dad?

Being taught that I had a right to defend myself helped give me a sense of boundaries, no doubt about that, but I still think that the fact that I grew up in places with almost no street crime is key to the way I turned out.. My parents never taught me to fear strangers or to be constantly looking over my shoulder because it wasn’t necessary. That’s a gift that not many kids get, and one for which I am profoundly grateful. Then again, without the lessons I got about defending myself would it have made any difference?



So, how does all this tie in the concept of women-only spaces? I’ve lived in one, and it didn’t help me at all. What creates a feeling of safety is living in an environment that’s, you know, SAFE. There’s a lot more to that than just eliminating men from the picture. I felt safe as a child and a teenager in two of the most male-dominated places in the world, and that carried over into the way that I relate to the world as an adult. I felt profoundly unsafe in my women-only environment – I was sexually harassed by the person most directly responsible for my wellbeing for fuck’s sake! I’m pretty sure that the fact that I constantly threatened to tell my parents was the only reason she never took things any further.

This is part of what bugs me about the idea of women-only space. It’s based on the idea that men are often violent – which is true, that I acknowledge, although I have issues with the assumption that ALL men are not to be trusted – but it’s also based on the idea that women are not violent, or inclined to abuse power, and that’s just not true. I know that first hand.

The more I think about it the more I think that a more effective strategy in terms of giving women the feeling of security that some seek in women-only spaces is the thing my parents gave me – the idea that they have the right to expect decent treatment, and the idea that if they are treated badly they have the right to fight back. The external stuff we can’t control, but the lessons we teach our daughters? That we can control.

The problem with women-only spaces is that they’re temporary. Unless we all plan to live on communes, we have to deal with men all the time – at work, in public spaces, in most cases in our own homes. Wouldn’t if be more effective to teach women how to create safe spaces for themselves even when men are around? Wouldn’t that be a far more radical notion – not that male violence is so inevitable that retreat is the only solution, but that male violence is simply unacceptable and should be treated as such? Wouldn’t we serve our daughters and younger sisters better by teaching them to expect better treatment and how to fight for it? Do we really need women-only spaces for that, or would it be far, far more effective to seek the changes we want in the everyday world? Isn’t the very idea of women-only spaces admitting defeat in a certain sense?

I don’t like the idea of accepting defeat. The idea that women don’t feel safe in their everyday environments pisses me off, and I don’t think it’s acceptable. I don’t want to retreat, I want to fight, and I want to give younger women the tools they need to fight, too. Most importantly, I want to give them the message that they are ALLOWED to fight back. I just don’t think that retreating to women-only enclaves sends that message at all.


Readers – I’m curious. How many of you had parents who sent the message that you were entitled to expect not to be harassed and that you had the right to fight back if your boundaries were overstepped? I really wonder how many girls ever got that message, and if it’s in any way tied in to which women become feminists and which women don’t. The first few years of life are key from a developmental point of view – what effects does it have on a girl to be told that she had the right to have boundaries and defend them even when it pisses other people off, as opposed to being taught that her entire purpose in life is to please others?