The Wish for a Community-College-Convent of Women
The Sisterhood written
Right now been studying women's Colleges & Universities. Went through about 10 of them thoroughly & they ARE NOT a good template or inspiration for my / our sisterhood. Whatever their claims toward female empowerment, they come across as cookie-cutter-made from a worldly view, with MILD concessions to women's empowerment. Not a one of them speaks of Matriarchy or Patriarchy or any of the strong words we use in our teaching on this. They are kind of like weak, milk toast, pretenders to women's emancipation, to liberation from men. They are not addressing the issues, confronting the facts - they are wishy washy pretenders to the throne of Mother God & women rule. So I cannot gain from studying them.
One negative feature how this cannot be my ideal is they take only those who can PAY. Colleges are not for POOR PEOPLE. Indeed, some students work their way through college, but that means they are not needed to work & support their family - poor offspring must usually do that.
Next, I went through about 20 or so women's convents / monasteries. They are good sounding as far as the love of God - that part is fine. However, again, they are not liberating women from Patriarchy but they are living under the auspices of the male-domination Catholic religion. Some of them spend each day wasting their valuable time praying for PRIESTS & deacons & the magisterium of the Catholic Church. So at bottom line they are under the control of Patriarchy & serving them in some ways.
I might also add that in their acceptance of candidates, they do
AGE DISCRIMINATION. Very few say they will consider a female over 40. Most want
new women to be 20 to 30. One of them says a female has to be NEVER
MARREIED. {?} To me, this seems like ageism. They are saying over 40 you aren't
any good. Why? I cannot figure that out. When I applied to
join the convent near me, long ago before I lived here, I was over 40.
Maybe that's part of the reason they didn't accept me. But every single
one of the convents I read were slow to accept anyone 'overage,' although they
said they might make an exception. So they are doing exactly the same as
Patriarchs are, putting women 'out to pasture.' Making women feel worthless after middle age.
And as I read through about 20 of these convents today, including the one I know in my town, I can see plainly they are no help, inspiration or guideline for my Sisterhood - except in that the women participants are supposed to be dedicated to God & serving Her {Him to them.}
I tried to find other women's communities are sisterhoods & so
far have found no viable one - there were a couple but as I read them they seemed
either mainstream or strange/fringe, like lesbian groups {I saw a pic of a dyke
working on a car, & I thought, wow, if half the women are dykes or look
& act like men, sizing up the other women with lust - won't it be the same
or similar to being with men? Which we DON'T WANT. I'm not against
lesbians or dykes - but would not want to have a large amount of them in the
order, like say over 20%, lol} or trans-gender men wanting to be women in
communities. Nothing to gain strength or moral support from.
I have learned today how DESPERATE the world is for what I want to do: Nothing like my Sisterhood EXISTS - No college, University, convent, monastery, community or Sisterhood such as I hope for exists - that I could find so far. If any is out there it's secret. And some cite the Mosuos & African & such communities of women we all know about - but nothing like the Sisterhood in a Caucasian, European or any other kind of setting which we are familiar with.
And if, like all my channeled friends are saying, I will have huge funds from my life story - that is what I can do with them but I must have a VISION, a pattern, a organized plan. I cannot throw my money away in a chaotic, unorganized fashion hoping someone will do good with it. There has to be a solvent, concrete plan.
And even if these predictions are wrong & I do not get huge sums of money, what I have now is sufficient to start this endeavor, - look at this Womyn’s Land example - but I must have a PLAN! Rasa
Womyn’s Land by Shannon Quinn
Below is the couple who started this movement, very charitable people - George & Martha McWhirter
Since the 1800’s, feminist
groups around the world have decided that enough was enough, and they would be
better off building off their own peaceful societies without men. These
all-female communities range from a boarding house full of women all the way to
the extreme; a commune where only women are allowed to enter.
1. Martha McWhirter
Saved Women From Unhappy Marriages
This trend of all-female
communities started way back in 1860, when a happily married woman named Martha
McWhirter ran a Bible study group at the Union Sunday School in
Many of the middle-class
housewives who showed up at Martha’s Bible study became close friends, and they
began to open up to one another, because they felt like this group was a safe
space. Many of them prayed every single week for their husbands to stop
drinking, beating, and abusing them. These women could not leave their abusive
marriages because they had children, and the norm at that time was to stay
together for the kids. The women were financially dependent on their husbands;
it was not normal for middle-class wives to work at that time, and they didn’t
have good childcare options. They were powerless to change their lives, and
could only pray to God and wish that there was an option for them to leave
their husbands and live independently.
At this time, almost no one
ever got divorced, either. In most states, a judge would not grant the divorce
unless the woman was beaten near-death on a regular basis, and there needed to
be proof. People could not afford to outrageously expensive legal fees to get
divorced, either. Even when people could afford it, most would stay legally
married and live separately, but they were not allowed to marry a second time.
Since the situation was so difficult, most women stayed with their abusers.
After hearing all of these
stories from all of these women, Martha McWhirter grew more and more angry at
the plight of abused and unhappy women. She encouraged the ladies in her group
to stop pretending like everything was OK when it wasn’t, and to confront their
husbands about their marital issues. She wanted them to try to make their
relationships better, but if the man refused to make peace, then the women
should not have to put up with abuse.
At that time, women were
raised to “be seen and not heard”, and it was unladylike to get angry. Many of
these women did not even have the strength or the self-worth to confront their
husband when they did something wrong, express their anger, or to even speak up
and voice their opinions. Martha Mcwhirter began to encourage these women to
stop having sex with their husbands if they truly hated them and wished they
could afford divorce. The advice that she gave the unhappy ladies in the group
was that they should continue to do their daily household chores, take care of
the kids, and that’s it.
This may sound like a small
thing, especially since we have marriage counseling today where both partners
talk about their problems. And by today’s standards, just about everyone has
heard of putting your husband “in the dog box” when the wife gets really mad,
but this was revolutionary for the time. It was the very beginning of feminism
and women’s empowerment.
2. The
Sanctificationists Started A New Trend In Women’s Liberation
About 10 years into listening
to all of these desperate women talk about their individual stories about their
unhappy marriages, Martha McWhirter started to have prophetic dreams from God.
In the dreams, He told her that women did not have to endure this abuse, and
that she needed to start a community where these ladies could escape and live
independently from their husbands.
Martha’s husband George ran a
general store on the bottom floor of their house. They moved to an apartment
upstairs, and cleared out the rest of the spare rooms to let women live in the
spare rooms whenever someone was running away from a particularly abusive and
unsafe marriage.
These women were grateful for
the help, and they didn’t expect to get free rent. Every time a woman stayed
with the McWhirters, they offered to help run the general store and do their
household chores in exchange for rent. These women also started to find jobs
around town in order to get their own income so that they could pay for their
own food, clothing, and other necessities. They started to do laundry, sell
eggs and milk, and began clean houses in town to earn an income to pay for
themselves and their children.
Since these women were all
close friends who were in similar situations, they didn’t think twice about
lending money to each other if one person came up short that month. After a
while, these women began to feel more and more empowered. With each other’s
support, they could actually pay their bills perfectly well without a husband.
Eventually, there were too many women to fit in McWhirter’s house. All of these
women pooled their incomes together to buy a boarding house. Each woman got
their own bedroom, and they shared their kitchens, bathrooms, etc. Their money
went into a treasury, and everyone benefited from the collective work of the
group. This became known as the Belton Women’s Commonwealth.
3. From Desperation Came Enterprise
In these communal living
spaces, women were feeling powerful and free, so they dared to think bigger.
Instead of just doing odd jobs just to survive with basic food and shelter,
many of the women began opening small businesses around town. The two most
popular all-women businesses in the
Before this time, it was
completely unheard of for women to become entrepreneurs. Men were usually in
charge of the money, and many women were not given enough education to even
know how to handle accounting. In 1891, the group defied all expectations and
formed a corporation called The Central Hotel Company, and they opened multiple
hotels in order to get income from renting rooms to men and women. With this
money, they were able to purchase two farms that would grow food to support
food to feed all of their employees. In this Commonwealth, each individual
woman’s work was seen as being extremely valuable, and they felt appreciated
for the first time in their lives. It only encouraged them to keep working
harder, which in turn, lead to more success.
4. Women Became More
Educated In Various Fields
In the 1800’s, married women
had to bear the burden of raising all of their kids alone, clean the house, go
grocery shopping, farm their land, and satisfy their husbands’ wants and
desires. With all of these duties, there was almost never any time left for
indulging in their own interests until their children were grown up. Life in
these women’s communes was drastically different, and for many, it was a chance
from them to finally receive an education.
Women living at the commune
had set work hours, and they shared the household responsibilities. There were
also classrooms full of kids, so one women did not have to raise her kids
alone, either. This made it faster and easier to get their chores done, instead
of being a housewife that was on-call 24/7. They actually began to have the
luxury of free time. Many women learned to read and write for the first time in
their lives. Others learned trades that were usually reserved for men, like
blacksmithing and shoemaking. In modern times, a lot of these women’s communes
that are still around encourage learning carpentry and other construction
skills that are typically reserved for men.
Once these women learned how
to read, they became obsessed with it. Since most of their basic needs were
taken care of, they spent their pocket money buying books, which was seen as a
luxury for many housewives at that time. The book collection of the Belton
Women’s Commonwealth became so big, and the interests of all the women in the
group covered such a wide variety of subjects, both men and women in the town
began to come to the Commonwealth’s personal library to visit and borrow books.
It dawned on the ladies that they should open a real library, so they did. It
was the first public library of
5. The Commonwealth Didn’t Let The Haters Get Them
Down
This may or may not come as a
surprise to some people, but there was plenty of backlash about the
Santificationist movement. Most Christian churches taught their congregation
that divorce was not acceptable under any circumstances, because the man and
woman made a promise before God that they were going to stay together for the
rest of their lives. It is still technically against the rules in the Catholic
faith to this day, and if a man and woman get a legal divorce, the Catholics
believe you are still spiritually married in they eyes of God. Many people
blamed Martha McWhirter for the rise in divorce rates in
One day, two Scottish
brothers were visiting
A mob of
women came out of the boarding house with their kitchen knives. These men were
threatening them on their private property, so technically; they could have
even shot these men for trespassing and threatening them. The phrase “Don’t
mess with
6. Remaining
Celibate…Unless You’re A Lesbian
As we
mentioned before, during the Sanctificationist movement, women were encouraged
to remain celibate in a bad marriage, and they were not allowed to bring men
over when they lived in an all-female commune. If the women living in the
boarding house wanted to court a new man and get married again, that was fine,
If you’re a straight woman living in the commune, staying away from sex was
supposed to help you keep your mind clear.
The “no sex”
rule became controversial in the future, especially in more modern times, after
the “free love” movement. So, this rule would change in some of the future
communities, but most of the hardcore female communes still abide by the rule
of celibacy.
It almost
goes without saying that back in the 1800’s, the reason why many ladies were
unhappy with their marriage was because they were a lesbian, but society taught
them that they needed to marry a man. {Rasa says: That is an UNFAIR statement. You first explained these women were ABUSED
& that was the cause of their misery, they were not unhappy due to being
lesbians}. Which is it? I accept the
abused part, as we all know how abused women still are.} Many of these
women who lived together in the Commonwealth were secretly lesbians, and they
lived in absolute bliss together in these boarding houses, because they never
thought it would be possible for them to do so.
In future
all-female communes, women would become more comfortable admitting that they
were lesbians, and that was the reason why they chose to join the group. This
was not always the case, though, and these communities still continue to house
women of all sexualities.
Rasa says: the rest of this article veered into a complaint about transgender men not being accepted into women's communes. This is not the issue I am thinking about or writing of, so I skipped it.
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