Rural Relationships on the Oregon Women’s Lands
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Date
2022
Authors
Getz, Madeleine
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Residents of Grants Pass, Oregon, may have known their rural community was changing
when five lesbians from Montreal settled outside the town in 1974 and established WomanShare,
an all-female lesbian separatist collective. Certainly, as time went on, Oregon citizens living in
rural communities employed, served, and gossiped about various lesbian collectivist
communities existing a stone’s throw away, often in tones of disregard or distrust. And this
phenomenon was not limited to Grants Pass: Across Oregon, feminist-lesbians were building
collectives that acted as female-only spaces for full-time residents and hosted workshops and
visitors, supported publications, and conducted spiritual ceremonies during their operation.
Despite tensions that existed with surrounding settlements, thousands of lesbian visitors flocked
to these separatist utopias in the idyllic Oregon wilderness.
Description
Submitted to the Undergraduate Library Research Award scholarship competition: (2023). 18 p.
Keywords
WomanShare, LGBTQAI+, Grants Pass, Oregon