Keeping College Women's Spaces by and FOR WOMEN

I have something to say about this, LIVED this past week. I was in a situation with my brother and nephew where they were threateningly violent, and had to call cops and leave the situation. Fortunately it did not translate into the physical, but the intimidation was very, very real.

The next day I took my partner across my campus, my alma mater in that town, and we ended up in the Women's Resource Center with two lovely young women, EXACTLY where we need to be. Now, 30 years ago when I was going to school, I was part of the Feminist Alliance and Lesbian Caucus. These two groups faded away, and now there's the Women's Resource Center. It is where we needed to be after male violence and threat in my own family.

I felt safe, acknowledged, the only thing that dismayed me was when they mentioned men were permitted in there too, so women really didn't have a safe male free space to just be..but any men were expected to behave with dignity and respect towards the women, and were INFORMED of that should they come into the Center. At least there were SOME rules.

Fortunately, none appeared while we were there, and we got just the validation we needed from the situation we had just been in with family...the male violence and intimidation.

They also informed us that they also hosted a 'queer women's group' which sounded good to me. There also was a major LGBT center on Campus too in another building.

For us, in a town where we didn't know anyone but family, a State where we no longer had connections, this safe haven ON CAMPUS was ESSENTIAL for us.

The same is true if I were to take Women's Studies, and did take Women's Studies back in the day.
Women's Studies was taught by WOMEN! What a fucking concept! It was revolutionary because we were learning our OWN HERSTORY, our OWN VOICES, and OUR OWN REALITY reflected back at us, after 2000 plus years of completely patriarchal civilizations, religions and values.