Are women's communities a thing of the past?

Gina Razete and her partner were taking a break, traveling the country by RV, when they rolled into Apache Junction, Arizona.

Tipped off by RVing Women, a group they belonged to, they put down roots at a RV-manufactured home community called the Pueblo - for three months.

"We didn't like the desert," Razete explained.

But the couple did like the concept of a community of women, many identifying as lesbian, sharing life and camaraderie, especially as they aged. So in 1996, Razete, with real estate in her blood and family in Fort Myers, Florida, found 50 secluded acres and cleared the land for 278 RV lots.

Women came to the Resort at Carefree Boulevard and liked it so much they put one- to three-bedroom manufactured homes around the ponds at the center of the property; each unique and lovingly landscaped.

From the beginning Razete designed it to be neighborly, with lanais facing the street to encourage people to wave to one another. And they do.

"It turned out to be beautiful," she said. "The homeowners did that."

Marketed to lesbians as a place where "you can be you," the enclave is among a scattering across the country that set out to create an intentional community of women - an idea a younger generation is exploring in very different ways.

"You can never explain it," 1970s-era feminist Rita Mae Brown said about love. That hasn't stopped people from trying, sometimes in cruel ways.

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Living apart in all-women's communities gave Brown's generation safe spaces to invent themselves.

"They were started by women who are now in their 70s, 80s and 90s who grew up in a world of great prejudice and danger because of who they were," said Suzanne (her full name), who lived for 10 years in a similar women's community, Discovery Bay Resort on Washington's Olympic Peninsula.

Discovery Bay's founders, Zoe Swanagon and Loverne King, also started the Pueblo where Razete and her partner had stayed, and a third women's community across the road, Superstition Mountain.

Straight or not, the times for their generation were restrictive in ways not imaginable today.

So novel was the idea of women acquiring their own property that a land trust movement formed to assemble large tracts for women to settle and farm.

"A woman couldn't get a mortgage or a credit card in her name without a husband," recalled Barbara Lieu, who has lived in and helped found two women's communities. "We just wanted to get away from male energy."

At 73, Lieu can say she's lived longer in a lesbian community than outside it. Straight, married and divorced by age 31, she knew she wanted to come out and be active in feminist circles.

With a partner, she went in 1976 to a nascent community, the Pagoda, as four lesbians were closing on some 1936 cottages on the St. Augustine, Florida, oceanfront.

Starting as a vacation getaway, the women acquired more cottages and made it a retreat. Another 1930s building inherited from affiliates of National Organization for Women became their spiritual church.

Pagoda soon became an icon. Women contributed monthly to stay at the cottages. The owners converted a two car-garage to a theater, bringing in lesbian performers. Each year they raffled off a free week's vacation, and people all over the country paid a dollar for the chance.

Pagoda even redefined the nature of work, Lieu says. Each resident performed a different in-house task but earned the same wage. Her partner, a lawyer, gave legal advice. Others cleaned toilets. She kept the books.



"I hear now talk about toxic male energy," Lieu said. "We had lesbian women energy. It was amazing and delightful."

The communities weren't, and aren't, for everyone.

"I could care less about living with women," said Suzanne. "I went because I needed a home."

Owning a women's book store for eight years, Suzanne knew the support women could have for one another.

"It has been there as long as women have been alive, and has nothing to do with straight or gay," she said.

But Discovery Bay had a 400-square-foot park model the size of a railroad car that she could afford. Once there, the fear level among the women, mostly retirement age, felt oppressive to her.

When she listed her home on the open market instead of by word of mouth, "People got pissed," she said. "Women didn't speak to me for years. The fear is very real."

A former Pueblo resident filed a discrimination complaint against that community, alleging residents were encouraged to find lesbian buyers for their RV lots, according to an Arizona Republic report.

Carefree homes, which currently range from $205,000 to $260,000, sell through a real estate broker as well as by owner, mostly by word of mouth. Although the clubhouse, a separate legal entity, is for women over 21, men and children are welcomed as guests.

"Anyone can walk through the door and live here," Razete said.

Arlene Goldberg, an activist in Southwest Florida's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer community (LGBTQ), calls the enclaves "throwbacks" to a separatist era that she thinks send the wrong message of tolerance the movement is trying to achieve.

"These days most of our community blends into the general public, so people get to know us as just people like they are," Goldberg said. "What's different is who we love. Separating communities does not further our cause, which still has much work ahead to secure equal rights."

Razete doesn't disagree.

"Just because we like it here doesn't mean we're not part of the whole conversation," Carefree's developer said.

With a median age of around 62, almost all of Carefree's few hundred residents work or volunteer in the world beyond their gates.

"I totally support what she's saying," said Lieu on hearing Goldberg's view. "To eliminate this need to be separate. It's the 21st century. But we are having a little bit of a throwback time."

Although it will be three years in June since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality for same-sex couples, it didn't stop the killing of 49 people at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando in 2016.

"I think there are people who would like nothing better than to take us backward," Razete said. "The general climate now seems to be very hateful."

After 20 years on the St. Augustine beach, Lieu and a core group of Pagoda women created another women's space, Alapine on 108 rural Alabama acres. This time their intentions were different.

"We needed to create a safe nursing home," she said.

Older now, the women worried about what could happen to lesbians in old age.

"A couple could be together for 20 to 40 years, but in a nursing home they would not be able to hold hands or kiss. People would treat them like scum," Lieu said.

Building their own nursing home didn't work out, she admits. Carefree residents had a similar hope, but the cost of such a facility was prohibitive.

Aging for single residents in women's communities is doubly hard, with fewer financial resources and supportive family members to help with care.

At Alapine, residents fill out forms identifying an emergency contact, a medical power of attorney and do not resuscitate instructions, if any.

Neighbors help neighbors, but when Lieu's best friend suffered three heart attacks and a stroke, "It's honestly hard," she admitted. "The needs of my friends are beginning to outpace my energy and my patience for helping."

Goldberg's nonprofit Visuality has developed a training model for Southwest Florida nursing home providers to sensitize staff to the unique lives and needs of LGBT seniors who may be living invisibly in their midst.

"Many people who go into nursing homes aren't out, or they go back in because they're afraid," Goldberg said. "When I asked one director about the facility's LGBT community, she said, 'the what?'"

Visuality associate Maggie Mariello, who's spent a career in memory care, trains Alzheimer's and dementia staff in sexuality, required by Florida law.

"Two women or two men may be lying in a bed and not even realize the other is there," Mariello said. "It's a physiological need for companionship and safety. It shouldn't be denied someone because their partner has the wrong body part."

In 2016, a new women's community kick-started its way into being in Brooklyn, New York, launched by and for a generation of women exploring the intersection of identity and politics.

Called New Woman Space, the community had no bricks or mortar at first; just a 30-day pop-up place for women to gather comfortably, whatever their sexual identity, and explore their callings.

Now it operates on the ground floor of a residential building leased by women holding classes, staging community events and art exhibits. And more like it are popping up everywhere.

"I believe there is a growing need to connect in a physical space and be seen in person," co-founder Sandy Hong explained the genesis of the space. "We want it to be alive with a real feeling of community. We hope it will be a home away from this chaotic city."

Hong, a first-generation Korean-American who identifies as queer (someone not conforming to a traditional gender role), is as intentional in her 20s as Lieu was when she struck out for St. Augustine in the 1970s.



"I'm a firm believer that my purpose in this lifetime is to become who I am supposed to be," she said. And if her choice means isolation in later life? "I won't fear it. Once you experience a certain part of yourself, there is no way to turn back."

Lieu sees the lesbian spaces of her generation disappearing because young activists like Hong, who identify as gender-fluid, don't need them.

On one hand, she thinks, "That's wonderful. We did want the right for people to be accepted as they are."

On the other, "It leaves us in our 60s and 70s feeling like, 'what did we do all this for?'"

Women are still reaching for life-affirming spaces, says Hong. It's a generational question.

"Where do I go to be heard, to find community and be as fulfilled as I possibly can? I don't believe that goes away after a certain age," she said. "If anything it becomes more pronounced."

New Women Space seems to fill a void for women in their 20s, post-university, to congregate with others working on the issues they care about. After two years, the business model is holding its own financially.

"Like the Parkland students, there is a quantum leap in the way we think about things," Hong said, "but we're just part of the continuum. We wouldn't exist if those before us hadn't."

Follow this reporter on Twitter @Paticiaborns.

