Cultural Evolution

I came across an interesting essay on the University of Michigan website today and it made me think quite a bit about Mariel Cove and its place in lesbian fiction. The essay, which can be found here, is part of a series on lesbian history and looks specifically at cultural issues. It covers a lot and it's pretty dense, but it's well worth a read. 

The essay covers three main aspects of lesbian cultural history - sports, fiction, and film - and it talks about the ways women have acted and been viewed in each field. It talks about female athletes who "were interpreted as unruly heterosexuals," lesbian writers who chose to write queer narratives through the eyes of gay male characters to avoid being outed, and intentional cues that were put into classic films that an audience of the day would have understood were meant to hint at a lesbian relationship. 

The essay also discussed an interesting concept: women's music festivals. 

Currently numbering over twenty nationwide and with origins in 1970s lesbian-feminist movement, these festivals provide public venues for women- and lesbian-identified music, performances, and comedy acts. The music festivals, according to Morris, offer a collective space where “love between women wins approval and sanction, not punishment and ostracism” (Morris, 21). Moreover, at these festivals, women have opportunities to learn skills and work at jobs that are traditionally male-dominated, such as serving as producers, agents, security, press, stage crew, and budget planners.

Reading about the women's music festivals was immensely fascinating for me because in our book, the tiny cluster of homes and shops known as Mariel Cove is home to a series of four women's festivals. Women from around the country flock to the island for a week during each festival to engage in the various festivities and enjoy the beautiful location. Like the music festivals, these fictional festivals are a safe place for women - lesbian or otherwise. One of our characters, Lia, works for the Wiccan festival that takes place in Season 1.

However, the women's music festivals discussed in the essay have one major problem; it's a pretty big problem, and it's one that Mariel Cove specifically looks avoid: the people who run and attend the music festivals attempt to put a rigid definition on what constitutes a "woman" and what constitutes a "lesbian," to the exclusion of everybody else:

...the politics of identity policing are above all present in women’s music festivals. Debates are continually waged between organizers and protestors about how “women” as a category should be defined and about whether or not transgendered women and men, boy children, biological men, and S&M activists should be allowed to attend these “women’s” festivals.

There's more on this topic later; they go more in depth, discussing the issues the lesbian community at large has had with finding a good definition to describe itself. The problem with this attempt - which is one of the main points of the article in general - is that it excludes so many groups of lesbians who are already viewed as being on the fringe of society as it is. Lesbians come from all types of women and they can look like anybody, so it's problematic to point to any particular group of women and say, "You aren't the right or proper kind of lesbian because you're ___________. Only we, the ___________, matter."

One of the complaints I hear frequently from the other authors is that it's hard to find good, diverse lesbian fiction and TV shows. The women are all the same: middle-class, city dwelling, white, early- to mid-thirties, feminist, democratic, insert-your-label-here. But what about the other lesbians? What about the older women? Or the women who live in small towns? What about the African-American or Latina lesbians? And outside of these basic labels, what about the women who identify as bisexual, or who don't like labels? What about transgendered women? 

Mariel Cove is a haven for women where many lesbians have moved because of the safe environment it provides, but we don't scrub our fiction clean until only one type of lesbian remains with perhaps one or two token "outliers" so we can claim diversity. Mariel Cove was written with the idea that lesbians consist of a large group of very different women, so why should our characters represent anything other than that simple truth? After all, look at us: there are six writers and one editor, and we're all so different that if you offered to take us out to dinner I'd wager we'd spend three hours just trying to hash out where to go (and even then I doubt we'd all agree; we'd just be tired of arguing =P ). If just the measly seven of us are so vastly different, why on earth would we assume that all of our characters should be the same?

After reading the essay from the University of Michigan, I've realized something very important. My favorite part of Mariel Cove isn't how much fun I had writing the story, or how intriguing the mystery is, or the great sex - my favorite part of Mariel Cove is the fact that we've managed to construct a story that does a far better job of accurately representing the diversity of lesbians - of all queer women - than most other works out there, and it does it in a way that feels completely natural. 

The book comes out April 1st - I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject when it does. Until then, you can read a free sample here. Give yourself an idea of what Mariel Cove is all about =)

Sources:

1. Garrett, Emma, and Rachel Silveri. "Lesbian History: Cultural Issues." Lesbian History: Cultural Issues. University of Michigan, n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2013.