At the DC Radical Faeries weekly potluck, a group of women-bodied and women-identi?ed folks came together to answer a question: Why the hell are we women/wimmin/wommon/wombon with the DC Radical Faeries?
The question of women in the Radical Faeries is fraught with complex feelings and controversy. Some Faerie groups include women and female-bodied people, some don’t. The DC RadFeys, thanks to the efforts of some existing mem bers and the persistence of one woman in particular, include people of all genders in our Faerie ? ed space. While the DC Rad Fey are, like other Faerie groups, mostly queer men, our events have involved women, female-bodied people, and people of other genders for the last several years. The ? rst woman to become part of the DC Rad Fey was told by someone from another group, “Girls can’t be Faeries,” but after some painful growing together, she and the DC Radi cal Faeries proved that that was not the case. In some ways, women and female-bodied Faeries are just like other Faer ies, though in some ways we bring an energy all our own.
Like other members of the DC Rad Fey, women members have come, stayed for a while, left, come back, taken hia tuses, and been participants at potlucks, governance (!) meetings, and ceremonies. For some male Faeries, welcom ing female members into the group has meant the loss of something special about a queer-centric, male space. Some male Faeries feel that their sexuality is suppressed in the presence of other-gendered people, particularly women. But something has led the DC Radical Faeries to include women, and people of all genders, in their space. Why? And why do women and female-bodied people come to a space that is so dominated by queer men? Really, why the hell would women/wimmin/womben/womyn want to be part of such a space?
The women and female-bodied current members of the DC Radical Faeries embody a range of identities, from not-so crazy Bi cat lady, through lesbian-identified bisexual fag
Perhaps as a result of the complexity of relation ships among genders in the DC Radical Faeries, several of us female-bodied folks expressed that we don’t always feel like “full members” of the group – despite the fact that one of us is a Circle Keeper! Some of us think of ourselves as a “Ladies Auxiliary” to the Faeries, or some kind of associate members. We are a part, and yet we are apart, somehow. Of course, one’s mileage may vary, and there are female-bodied Faeries who feel fully integrated into the group, but the sense of being on the edge of things is something several of us have in common.
hag, to sweet and sassy, to female-bodied but not woman-identi ? ed, to straight up queer. Most of us have not felt met in the fullness of our lives or identities in all-women’s groups. We are, like many other Faeries, freaks and refu gees, liminal people in an already liminal space. We are the grrlz who like to dress up and wear ball gowns to go to the Quick Stop, just because, and we are the women who kick it up in hiking boots and overalls. We are butch sometimes, femme other times, and often just beyond the bounds of what gender binaries have to say.
We have looked for places out of reach of the gender police, and often we haven’t found those places in other GLBT or women’s spaces. In those groups, we’ve often found classism, transphobia, homophobia, limiting worldviews, and just not enough room for us to live fully as our whole selves. Maybe we’ve brought a kind of “male energy” to women’s spaces, or maybe there just wasn’t room for all of who we are. We have looked for a place that shared our vi sion of liberation from gender oppression, and it is with the Faeries that we have found it.
The Faeries bring a message of liberation from gender norms, and in many places that message has been limited to queer men. But how can a message of gender liberation be kept solely for one gender? How can we really challenge the gender binary and yet insist on keeping some gender groups out of the sandbox? The DC Radical Faeries have shared that message of liberation in many ways.
Similarly, having many genders involved contributes to the already varied sexual tapestry that is the DC Radical Faeries. We are people into men, women, transfolk, people into queerness, people into liminality…we are female-bodied, male-bodied, male-identifi ed, female-identifi ed, neither, both….we are into power exchange, we are vanilla, we are exhibitionists and we are shy. Some of us are into the frisson that comes from opposites attracting, butch-to-femme or top-to-bottom. Some of us don’t identify our sexuality with binaries of any kind. From this vantage point, having female-bodied people and women involved with the Faeries just adds another spice to the soup. As one member points out, the presence of women and female-bodied people makes the space more inviting and welcoming. And that welcome is a core part of who the DC Radical Faeries are.
According to Faerie after Faerie, they come to the DC Rad Fey because “anything goes,” because “I can be all of who I am,” because “people are accepted here, no matter how freaky they are,” because “I am tired of gym bunnies,” because “it’s okay to be Pagan,” because “no one’s going to tell me I’m not Pagan enough.” Over and over again, we- -men, women, transfolk, and others express a longing for acceptance, a longing to be beheld in our wholeness, to be just as fabulous as we want to be.
Ultimately, it is our hope that the gender diversity that women bring, like the gender diversity that others bring, whether men, male-bodied people, transmen and –women, or others, strengthens and enriches Faerie space, and contributes, wherever possible, to a more fully fabulous Faeriedom.
