A Big Room of Our Own
There’s something special about women’s spaces. Especially queer women’s spaces. I can’t put it into words, so I’ll quote Virginia Woolf from A Room of One’s Own: “Life for both sexes—and I look at them, shouldering their way along the pavement—is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion that we are—it calls for confidence in oneself.” Women’s spaces, for me, amplify the ability to be confident and courageous. Women’s spaces encourage me to explore, both inside myself and outside in the world at large.
In 1984, young, single, and newly clean and sober, I attended my first women’s music festival, the Southern Women’s Music Festival near Atlanta. So many women! So many topless women! I saw Cris Williamson and Lucie Blue Tremblay for the first time. Alicia Bridges performed “I Love the Nightlife.” I had no idea she was a lesbian. Everyone in charge, from the security guards to the sound engineers, were women. It seemed like there were miles of crafts tables and tons of food. And did I mention, all the women?
Everywhere, for four days, it was all women, all lesbians, all the time. I had never felt so free, courageous, and bold. I was mesmerized by the sight of so many women together in one place and felt the concept of sisterhood in my bones for the first time. It seemed like everyone was celebrating, in a good mood, friendly, loving. It was like a lesbian pride parade for four solid days, a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I’ll never forget.
Some say it’s getting harder these days to find women’s spaces, especially lesbian spaces. Not necessarily true. Yes, depending on the source, only 15-21 lesbian bars currently remain in the US. Taken by that measure, you could say that lesbian spaces have all but vanished. The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, which drew tens of thousands of us in the 1970s and 80s, died in 2015, a victim, many say, of transphobia.
But with a quick online search, I found dozens of women’s festivals, including the Michigan Framily Reunion coming up in August, a “womyn’s music festival by womyn, for womyn.” Then, there’s the 47th annual National Women’s Music Festival in Wisconsin this coming July, the West Coast Women’s Music and Cultural Festival, the all-inclusive Fern Fest, The Dinah—which bills itself as “the largest lesbian event in the world.” Don’t forget Women’s Week in October in Provincetown. These are just some of the festivals in the United States alone.
And, of course, there is Women’s FEST this month right here in Rehoboth. FEST stands for Fun, Entertainment, Spring, and Tradition. This outstanding event began in 2001, when CAMP Rehoboth was looking to expand its community center and programs. A small group of women, the CAMP Rehoboth Women’s Project, put on a half-day event in April, featuring speakers talking about health, financial planning, and legal protection for lesbian couples who at that time could not be married. Seventy-five women attended the sold-out program.
Today, 22 years later, thousands of women will converge at the beach for the four-day party downtown. Women’s FEST is now the largest women’s event in the mid-Atlantic. It features well-known performers, music, comedy, dances, golf, pickleball, Broadwalk on the Boardwalk, workshops and presentations, the auction, and so much more. Rehoboth’s bars and hotels will be full of women. What’s not to like?
So yeah, I would say that women’s spaces are alive and doing pretty well in 2023. We still have some big rooms of our own. ▼
Beth Shockley is a retired senior writer/editor living in Dover with her wife and furbabies.