My Own Private Xenophobia

My Own Private Xenophobia
(c) Melina Magdalena 2007

Xenophobia - a fear of foreigners or strangers

A question for this week - to what extent are my attitudes and prejudices governed by my fear of the strange?

This question can only arise if I subject myself to the same level of scrutiny to which I subject and judge others. It emerges as I wallow in a cloud of grief that envelopes me from time to time, like a cloak lent to me by some friendly stranger to shelter me from the the indifference of those who allow my tears to fall unremarked.
Why a friendly stranger? The tears are mine. My griefs run both deep and wide. Under this cloak I can let them flow in private. I can honour my grief, express my sorrow with no expectation that others will allow me this unimpeded. A friendly stranger indeed. I know no one who suffers other people's tears easily.

Another question - to what extent must 'safe space' be constituted within exclusivity?

This question arises from my intense personal need for safe space, a need which I believe I share with every other human being. But what may be safe for me is not the same as what is safe for others. So to what extent can I reasonably expect that my need be answered?
I first encountered the concept of 'safe space' when as a university student, I was introduced to the Women's Room on my campus. I readily took advantage of this room for study and time out. This was well before I was a wife, a mother, a divorcee or a lesbian. I was intrigued by the idea, and I welcomed this haven. Even though I had no words for verbalising why I felt so refreshed by spending time in the Women's Room, I felt acutely the difference between being in a male dominated sphere and being in a female exclusive sphere. It took me many more years to appreciate the insight, strength and intelligence that must have been required for the women who first set out to carve their own space on campus.
The idea of a Women's Officer was similar. For quite a while I didn't know why I thought it was a good idea for there to be a women's officer in the Student Union, but I was glad that she existed.
Later, I noticed there were new positions, new categories, some of which I could enter, others that excluded me. Suddenly there was an Environment Officer, a Sexuality Officer...

As well, my personal journey of discovery coincided with the merging and transformation on university campuses around Australia of women's rooms, women's departments, women's studies into shared spaces. At the university I attended for example, Women's Studies disappeared into Gender Studies, into Gender and Labour Studies. In other places, Women's Studies was similarly subsumed by something called Queer Studies. These merges have not been popular in all quarters. There are as strong arguments to support the separation of Women's Studies from Queer Studies or Labour Studies, as to support their subsumption.

When I was abused and then separated and then raped I discovered to my chagrin and outrage that there was no safe space on this planet. Not for me. I learned to live with the feeling that danger was ever present.
I imagine this experience is similar to the experience of desensitisation that people go through when they live in a place where there is constant warfare, under the threat that at any moment, they might be blown to pieces, or see someone next to them annihilated in an instant.
I hope it is not perceived as insensitive for me to compare these two human experiences. But if safe space is something which every human being requires; if safe spaces are a human right, than it is important to explore what happens to people when safe spaces are not available.

Because I am a mother of a son and a daughter, lesbian separatism was never something to which I felt I had access. Although on the one hand I felt far freer and safer in the company of only women, there was no way I would abandon my son in the expectation that he would grow up to abuse his position as a white male. With hindsight, I have come to appreciate how lucky I have been to avoid the excesses of separatist attitude.
And again, this insight was not gained without due pain. When I left the mixed company of idealistic patronising misogynist racist peace activists and entered a female-exclusive peace group, it was with an expectation that we would all treat one another as we expected to be treated; that justice, sweetness and light would prevail; that the burden of hard work that was required to mend the world would be a burden shared amongst friends, not a matter for endless contention and the obsessive controlling power of consensus blocking that was the favourite ploy of male peace activists who were afraid of taking action.
How my mighty expectations were brought low is already a matter of public record. It's my naivete that makes me cringe to remember it these days. And yet - the promise was there, the possibility still hovers endlessly on the horizon - it is power that corrupts and shatters love and goodwill and courage and perverts them into the same old same old patterns of exclusion and victimisation time and time again, whatever the gender of those who seek to use their positions of power and control others.

My next foray was when I took on the mantle of Reform Judaism. Here is my home, I thought! Here I can be myself, I can explore my heritage, I can mend the torn shreds of my secret longings to reconnect with my past and paint a colourful, positive picture for my children of what it means to be Jewish in the world today.
The synagogue didn't approve of me or my children. I lacked both the funds and the chutzpah to convince them of our worth. I tried to give in kind, but got rejection after rejection in return. This was no safe space for me, or my children.

I went to a LesFest soon after I came out as a lesbian. At last! Safe space! Women's only space! But what on earth is a woman born woman? It took a few years for me to understand what this meant.
Perhaps I'm a slow learner? Perhaps it's my natural optimism that prevents the cynicism that would pop up like those annoying balloons on my monitor to ensure I didn't stray from the stoic path of realism. I don't suppose I've ever lived in anyone else's "real world". Mine must be very different from the norm.

On the other hand, lesbian space has come to be very special to me. The world I inhabit in my everyday allows me to be myself so long as I stick to the paths and keep off the grass. Within reason, I can be surprising. I can speak out. I can come out sometimes, and expose myself as a lesbian. I prefer to pretend that I am out, when in fact most of the time no one questions my sexual identity. And that can be quite convenient. It feels almost safe, in a funny kind of way.
My days are spent in this heteronormative world, where I live a kind of half-life. Although I do not feel constricted or confined to the closet, nor am I free to relate to most of the other women in my world, and certainly NOT to any of the men, in any way except as an apparent heterosexual.
This is familiar to me. I have adapted to living in this way. It begins to burden me only when I have no respite. No lesbian safe space. No lesbian company.

And this is where the question of my own private xenophobia begins to play out.

As a woman, what must I do to find women's only space some of the time?

As a lesbian, what must I do to find lesbian only space - just occasionally?

Is there something wrong with me that I define lesbian safe space as a space where lesbians are free to gather and socialise where we do not have to suffer the endless gaze of heterosexual men?

This week I sought lesbian only space at a public restaurant. It was Adelaide's monthly lesbian dinner, at a gay-friendly restaurant, on the first Friday of the month. This has been a long-running event in a city which boasts very few regular public lesbian get-togethers.
Yes! This dinner was at a public restuarant.
No! We have no rights over who dines at this restaurant on any particular night.
Yes! Restaurant management reserves the right to open its doors to whomever it pleases, in order to turn a profit.
For me, it has become an unfriendly, unwelcoming place to be. On this occasion, as well as the lesbians, there were two other groups there. One was a group of men who were attending a men's health conference. Interestingly, they did not impinge on lesbian space. The second group was a mixed bunch of people who are into BDSM.
Perhaps this is where my xenophobia and prejudices kick in? I freely admit - BDSM does not attract or interest me in the slightest. In fact, I find the idea repugnant. I'm not interested in being converted.
It was my observation that this group of people used the restaurant space to their full advantage with no consideration for the needs of anyone else in the restaurant that evening. We lesbians were relegated to a few tables into which we were packed like sardines, trying earnestly to communicate and socialise as though the BDSM men and women were not loudly and rudely flaunting their presence and impinging on our space.
Their arrogance was all the more profound because it felt as though there were a quality that they were enjoying it all the more because they were opressing a weaker group and getting off on this fact, rather than it simply being a quality of relief and refreshment to be gathering for once, in a BDSM safe space.

Which brings me back to the question of exclusivity. It seems that for me, safe space is constituted equally by what is not there, as what is present. In order for me to feel safe, something must be lacking.
My impulse is to reject the possibility of finding safe space at Out4Tea anymore, since the first Friday of every month is now marked not only by the lesbian dinner at Caos Cafe, but the BDSM dinner in the same small space.
There are probably places where we would like to all be weirdos together, safe and free and happy in the fact that we are different from the mainstream, but just because we are two facets of queer does not mean we all get along like one big happy family, even if we ought to. Just because neither group is heteronormative is not enough of a bond to make all of us feel safe in the presence of one another.

Perhaps it is my xenophobia that prevents my embracing the presence of queerness in all its forms as constituting safe space for me? How can I own this fact, without being blamed for it? Am I automatically at fault because of my attitude?