Picture this: a separatist community in the middle of the desert — made up entirely of women. It was a real place outside of Tucson called Adobeland. And the "no men" part was one of the only rules.
Adobeland was what’s called a "womyn’s land." They were also called lesbian lands — and some still exist today.
The movement began, according to author Penelope Starr, in the 1960s when back-to-the-land movements, feminism and radical lesbian separatism all converged.
Womyn’s lands gave lesbian women a place where they felt safe and gave them some control over their own destiny.
Adobeland was founded by a woman named Joan Pepper, aka Adobe. She bought 10 acres in the desert outside Tucson and invited other like-minded women to come and live with her.
Starr is a Tucson author and storyteller who first heard about the community from a storytelling event and tried to create a documentary about it that never came to fruition.
Her novel, “Desert Haven,” is inspired by Adobeland. Starr joined The Show to talk more about it.
Full conversation
PENELOPE STARR: Their conditions were fairly primitive at first. They didn't have any amenities. She kind of organized it as a campsite and she had to put in water and electricity.
LAUREN GILGER: Tell us about the philosophy. What would draw women there when they would come?
STARR: Well, it was kind of a national phenomenon at the time. There were books published on lesbian lands that had listings. You know, there's always been an underground network, so people would find out about it from all over the country.
So they would come there and the philosophy was basically: Do your own thing. Don't get in anybody else's way. And no men.
GILGER: And no men. [LAUGHS] Describe for us what the reaction was from the broader culture to this idea of women's lands at the time. Like, did people think they were crazy? Did people think they were interesting? Was it sort of a novelty?
STARR: I don't think very many people knew about it. It was pretty much an underground thing. When I talked to people about the fact that we were trying to do this documentary film, people would say, "What is Adobeland?" And they've lived in Tucson all their lives. It's a half-hour drive from my house, you know.
GILGER: Wow. Yeah. So tell us that story about how you heard of this and why it kind of piqued your interest.
STARR: Well, I was working at Wingspan, which was Tucson's LGBTQ community center, and I was running the senior program. And one of the programs we had was called a Colorful Life. And we would interview seniors and let them talk about their lives for a little while. I was doing storytelling at the time, so this was kind of a natural for me.
And someone suggested that we go out and interview Adobe, because she was getting older and this is all the history that we were trying to preserve. So two friends and I, Luann Withee and Pat Wolke, decided that we would take a camera and go out to Adobeland and see what we could see.
And by the time we got there, Adobe was no longer on the land. She was in a nursing home —
GILGER: What did you find on the land?
STARR: Some trailers, some underground houses. Some very ambitious projects that were finished or not finished.
There were people living there. One woman had been in a trailer there for, I don't know, 30 years or something. One woman had built a cob house, like Adobe, only it's cob. So it was a real mixed bag.
And the people who were there was a real mixed bag, too. People were there for a variety of reasons.
GILGER: Tell us about them.
STARR: Well, I went through some of my papers, and I realized that at least, oh — one, two, a dozen people that we interviewed aren't alive anymore. I feel very privileged that I had the opportunity to talk to some of the old timers and find out about what their lives were like.
A lot of them were pretty transient. They were dropout — that's what we used to call it. I don't know what they call it now.
GILGER: Not high school dropouts, like society dropouts, right?
STARR: Yeah, yeah. It was people who just didn't want to live in the culture the way it trying to define them. So they're trying to define their own lives. They lived what you'd call alternative lifestyles. They were much more willing to give up certain amenities in order to have the freedom.
So, it didn't cost a whole lot of money to live out there. Adobe never really asked people — you know, they were supposed to pay a few dollars to stay there. Some people did. Some people couldn't afford it. She would never ask anybody to leave. She was a very open hearted, very loving person.
GILGER: So you did a lot of interviews, as you're describing here, with some of the folks who lived there and some of the folks who had lived there earlier in an attempt to make a documentary about it that never came to fruition. But you did use a lot of those interviews, I understand, as inspiration for a book that you wrote.
So, I mean, tell us a little bit about your impressions of this and why it was something you were so interested in and pursued for so long.
STARR: Well, I think one reason was I was so inspired by these women who were brave and kind of crazy to go off and try to create a new society. ... Something that was separate and had different values. They honored the earth. They honored relationships.
That's not to say there weren't problems. You know, anytime you get people together, there's always possibility for conflict. But their guiding principles was pretty much to be independent women and take control of their own lives ... outside of the patriarchy, outside of the rules that have been been imposed upon them.
There was a woman who was there just because she wanted to be away from the world and didn't really want community, but it was a safe space for her to be.
There was a woman who had been there through various partners, you know, so she stayed. ... Her partners would come and go, that kind of thing. There was somebody who left because they couldn't afford to stay there anymore. So all of those stories are part of the bigger story of womyn's land.
GILGER: Let me ask you lastly about the state of some of these womyn's lands today. There are, as you said, some that still exist, but it sounds like there's, they might be having a harder time keeping going in today's world.
STARR: Well, part of the problem is that if these lands were started 40, 50 years ago, these women are aging out. They might need care or they might need to be closer to medical facilities. And they're trying to attract younger women, and there's a certain amount of success that comes with that.
But, you know, the future of these are all pretty precarious. The ones that are land trusts have a plan for the future. But sometimes a womyn's land could be a couple of acres that somebody had and let other people live there, and that person has to move on. And then what happens to the land?
Yeah, but there's a directory, and there's dozens and dozens of lands in various states of solvency. And some of them, or a lot of them actually, are saying, "Come on, you know, we have space. Come here, find this out. See how, how important it is. See if it's for you."
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