Rising queer icon Doechii set the internet aflame this month when she said she considers straight men a “red flag,” triggering a tsunami of posts from aggressively aggrieved cis men proving her point. Women of all sexualities who witnessed the viral moment resoundingly echoed, “same, girl.” Following the similarly incendiary Man or Bear trend, the moment spotlit how the feminine urge to withdraw from men entirely is, regrettably, timeless.
Women-only enclaves, including those protecting queer love, have existed for centuries, though the historic erasure of lesbianism and “obscenity” obscures just how prevalent sapphic partnerships have always been. The colonial theory that no lesbians existed within West Africa’s Agojie (“The Amazons”), medieval Europe’s Beguines, or even Ancient Greece’s numerous gynaikons (women-only housing) is hilariously implausible given what we now know about queer prevalence and human nature.
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With Women’s History Month underway, it is a perfect moment to look back at a few times this last century when women collectively said, “Oh hell no” and established matriarchal communities to escape gender-based violence, anti-queer bigotry, and mismanaged male emotions.
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The Barbizon: 1920s-1980s
Dubbed “the hotel that set women free” by author Paulina Bren, The Barbizon was a stately women-only hotel on New York City’s East 63rd Street just off Lexington. Opened in 1928 during the height of Prohibition, the 720 rooms beyond its lobby were strictly off-limits to men save for the occasional emergency plumber or doctor. (Author J.D. Salinger was known to lurk in the lobby and coffee shop trying to score dates, because of course he was).
Amenities at the pink-tinged complex included music and dance studios, Turkish baths, a solarium, one stately oaken library, and public lectures on subjects ranging from art to politics, positioning The Barbizon as a beacon for creatives, secretarial school students, undergrads, and New York’s transient parade of aspiring starlets.
While not the lesbian bacchanal prim conservatives claimed, The Barbizon was a safe space for queer women, sapphic exploration, and overt displays of feminine sexuality to exist away from sex pests like Salinger and the judgment of evangelicals. A not-yet-world-famous Grace Kelly — a future princess long rumored to be bisexual — allegedly danced topless to Hawaiian music through the halls. Carol author and lesbian icon Patricia Highsmith lived, loved, and wrote there with Sylvia Plath also in residence, inking a fictionalized version of her accommodations into The Bell Jar. The Daughters of Bilitis, America’s first major lesbian rights org, held their 1964 conference at the hotel in a concerted effort to avoid interference by the FBI.
A creation of its time and place, the colloquially nicknamed “Dollhouse” was definitely not a feminist Eden. Hotel staff, often advertised as “chaperones” to well-monied parents of daughters, enforced rigid dress codes and curfews while openly discriminating against “less attractive” and older guests. The Barbizon also participated in racism and classism to the same degree as other prominent residences in America, an unfortunate reminder of the limits of first-wave feminism, as documented by Mademoiselle guest editor Barbara Chase-Riboud, believed to be the first woman of color granted a Barbizon room.
Despite its shortcomings, The Barbizon was a rare entity encouraging female independence, welcoming single women at a time when landlords and boarding houses were legally permitted to reject unmarried women. Its parlor talks and studios helped residents not only explore identities beyond housewife but also cultivate marketable job skills and financial independence.
The building eventually went coed in 1981 and was regretfully converted into yet another pyramid of overpriced luxury Manhattan condos in 2007.
The Van Dykes: 1970s-1980s
Perhaps the punniest of all itinerant lesbian tribes, The Van Dykes were exactly what their moniker suggested. In the late 1970s, fed up with patriarchy and capitalism in equal measure, the Van Dykes packed their Volkswagen vans and U-Hauls and drove right out of mainstream society, establishing nomadic caravans across the United States as part of the Lesbian Separatist Movement.
This grassroots community was explicitly by and for lesbians, going so far as to ban male children “on Women’s Land” (established separatist colonies). The intent was not cruelty toward mothers or their offspring but rather excising patriarchy from the lives of gay women exhausted by a world unwilling to recognize, let alone accommodate, women’s autonomy or lesbian partnerships. By limiting interactions with men to only the most necessary — mechanics, waiters, and medical professionals — the utopian goal was a safer, more peaceful, and less fraught existence. “We will soon be able to integrate the pieces of our lives and stop this schizophrenic existence of a straight job by day and radical political work at night,” explained Nancy Groschwitz in 1979’s Practical Economics for a Women’s Community.
Like biker gangs or Celtic clans, each regional lesbian separatist faction had its own name — The Gorgons settled Seattle, The Furies around Washington D.C., the Gutter Dykes in Berkeley. The Van Dykes dominated highways and quiet roadsides, afloat on a sea of pavement across the American west, Texas, and even Mexico.
Started by Heather Elizabeth Nelson and Ange Spalding, the mobile Van Dykes shaved their heads, kept vegan, espoused radical self-sufficiency, and did it all with a nerdy humor preserved in handmade feminist “zines” and super gay parodies of popular songs. When asked where, exactly, they were going, Van Dykes often replied “dyke heaven.” As new members joined, they adopted their tribal, self-referential last name.
The Van Dykes and the larger separatist movement were eventually undone by infighting. Disagreements ranged from the predictably petty (who was banging who) to the painfully divisive (whether trans and bisexual women should be allowed on Women’s Land). Intersectionality was still hotly debated at this time, driving all too familiar wedges between marginalized groups needing unity to thrive.
Queer historians are straightforward that, given separatism’s isolation plus lesbian erasure, documenting the movement’s total number is impossible. Most agree with queer history expert Lillian Faderman that there were “thousands” of total members spread across various settled farms, co-ops, and mobile caravans. The Van Dykes are believed to have had a few dozen members at their peak, some of whom are still alive and followable today.
Umoja: 1990s-Present
Nestled on the edge of Samburu National Reserve, roughly two hours by Jeep from the capital city of Nairobi, lays the women-only village of Umoja. The community is populated and maintained entirely by women and children, with adult men banned from the premises.
The settlement was originally established in 1991 by Rebecca Lolosoli in the aftermath of personal tragedy. Genitally mutilated and forcibly married at 18 to older Kenyan businessman Fabiano Lolosoli, Lolosoli began addressing the widespread problem of rape in the area at local government forums. As punishment, she was violently assaulted and robbed by a gang of Samburu men outraged by her advocacy. Her husband, a man with money and influence, did nothing to intervene, communicating through indifference that her beating was warranted.
Lolosoli fled the marriage and home. After gathering the support of roughly a dozen other traumatized local women and rape survivors, she established Umoja (Swahili for “unity”). Umoja’a singular purpose was to act as a sanctuary for women fleeing forced child marriages, sexual assault, domestic violence, and female genital mutilation. Since some women escape to the village with children in tow, sons are allowed to live with their mothers until adulthood so long as they never try to dominate or harm any resident.
In exhaustingly grand tradition, Kenya’s men once again proved Umoja necessary by… violently attacking it in protest. Lolosoli and various village residents received countless death threats. Their livestock was, and still is, repeatedly stolen. In 2009 — nearly 20 years after Lolosoli’s departure from their marriage — ex-husband Fabian showed up on the premises with a loaded gun, shouting for Lolosoli like a deranged Tennessee Williams character (She was fortunately off-premises at the time).
Given Kenya has some of the strictest anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the world, romantic relationships in Umoja are not documented or discussed openly. Sodomy is still a felony in the state, and same-sex marriages have been constitutionally banned since 2010. That said, visitors to the area have noted lesbian partnerships between some residents, as well as deep platonic bonds and shared childrearing.
As of 2024, some 40 families shared the labor and resources at Umoja. The women generate income by selling intricate beadwork and handmade jewelry to tourists, hosting tours, operating a nearby safari campsite, and selling water from their well to neighboring communities. Lolosoli remains the enclave’s matriarch, an unofficial mayor and treasured authority tasked with keeping things running. Education is a priority in the village, with a large percentage of revenue allocated to free schooling for its children. With the help of donors and NGOs, the women were able to purchase the land they live on, increasing the likelihood Umoja will survive for decades to come.
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