Beechtree: Lesbian Separatism for an Accessible Life

Connie Panzarino, an activist in the disability rights, feminist, and anti-war movements, established Beechtree as a space where queer disabled women could feel safe and free. She created a communal living cooperative where lesbian and bisexual women with various abilities connected with nature and each other, made accessibility a shaping tenet of their lives, and attempted to evade and disengage from oppression, primarily homophobia, sexism, and ableism.

An existing network of contact and exchange among disabled lesbians facilitated Connie’s creation of this anti-ableist, intentional living community for queer women. In  her memoir, The Me in the Mirror,  Connie describes how she purchased the land that became Beechtree. Barbara Deming, a disabled, lesbian, feminist, anti-war activist and writer, owned an eight bedroom farmhouse and 21 acres of land in Monticello, NY, 100 miles north of New York City. Two of Connie’s lesbian friends, Kady and Pagan, were Barbara’s neighbors, and in 1979 they told Connie that Barbara was "trying to sell it to lesbians." Because of their mutual connection to Kady and Pagan, Barbara soon offered Connie "a mortgage with financial terms [she] couldn’t refuse." Barbara’s solidarity with Connie as a fellow disabled lesbian made her willing to offer Connie an affordable financial arrangement, enabling her to purchase the farm. In the weeks leading up to her move to the farmhouse, Connie fantasized with one of her partners about growing vegetables, adopting a puppy, and filling the home with other lesbians. In an undated flyer for Beechtree, the commune is described as a place "for lesbians to live, work, and share a future where disabled lesbians can live without oppression." While accessibility and dismantling ableism were central to Beechtree’s project, not all of the lesbians and bisexual women who lived there were disabled.

As Beechtree became established, Connie and the other residents had several main goals: cultivating a physically healthy way of life; making the property and their lifestyle accessible; and eradicating various manifestations of ableism, homophobia, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression from their collective and individual practices.

Beechtree is an example of one of the many communes that were formed during the Women’s Land Movement, which began in the late 1960s, peaked in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and continues to this day. In her book  Herlands: Exploring the Women’s Land Movement in the United States , anthropologist Keridwen N. Luis defines women's lands as “independent living communities composed entirely of women.” Many of these communal living sites were inspired by the lesbian separatist movement and expressly embodied lesbian separatist politics, however, not all women's lands include solely lesbians or evince separatist politics. Lesbian separatism is a political theory and feminist practice in which women prioritize social, political, economic, romantic, and sexual relationships with other women. Similar to how lesbian separatists believed they needed to leave patriarchal society in order to prevent the reproduction of misogyny and gender oppression, Connie and Beechtree participants believed that creating their own separate community would enable them to live free from ableism.

Women’s lands include rural farms and communes like Beechtree as well as urban or suburban sites, the most famous example of which was  the Furies Collective in Washington, D.C. , which was active from 1971-73. Julie Enszer, a poet, scholar, and current editor of  the long-running lesbian literary and cultural journal Sinister Wisdom , describes the Furies as an "extraordinarily influential" "vital force in lesbian feminism" that was "part communal living cooperative, part consciousness-raising group, part revolutionary cell for radical feminism, part newspaper collective." Some lesbian separatist groups, including the Furies, focused on cultural production, creating magazines, journals, and music by and for women. While the Disabled Lesbian Alliance, an organization that Connie founded, occasionally contributed to  feminist publications like off our backs , Beechtree was primarily concerned with creating a separatist living space for disabled lesbian and bisexual women. Many women’s lands shared the emphasis on building a connection with nature and living off the land, therefore they tended to be situated in rural areas. Separation from mainstream society and collective, communal living allowed so-called “landdykes” to reconfigure patriarchal and heteronormative social structures. Women’s lands, whether or not they practiced lesbian separatism, were spaces for feminist movement building. Luis traces the origins of the Women’s Land Movement to women’s music festivals and peace camps. In her memoir, Connie describes the environment created by women's spaces like the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival as inspiration for the creation of Beechtree. She visited the gathering to network with other women’s land owners. Connie also attended the Seneca Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice, another evidencing that she was firmly enmeshed in the feminist milieu from which women’s land and lesbian separatist projects emerged.

For many, the politics of "women only" spaces have become synonymous with the exclusion of transgender people. In practice, some women’s lands isolate trans men, who may have once identified as queer women and then find themselves shunned from their previous communities, as well as trans women, who are misperceived as “male infiltrators” of spaces designed for “womyn-born womyn,” or what we would now call cisgender women. The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival infamously shut down after 40 years rather than allow trans women to participate in their version of women’s land. Contemporary Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, or TERFs, continue this legacy, which is associated with lesbian feminist politics and practices of the 1970s and ‘80s. 

Several contemporary feminist historians describe a desire to recuperate the politics of the Women’s Land Movement and Lesbian Separatism, which they argue have been historiographically dismissed alongside second wave feminism more broadly. In " Remediating disability activism in the lesbian feminist archive ," Rachel Corbman, a scholar of feminist, queer, and disability studies, describes the tendency of queer feminist scholarship to “define itself against the perceived essentialism and identity politics of lesbian feminism." Luis describes the “association of women’s and lesbian lands with lesbian separatism, a philosophy that is highly embarrassing to many modern feminists.” Perhaps most emphatically and pointedly, in " 'How to stop choking to death': Rethinking lesbian separatism as a vibrant political theory and feminist practice " Enszer writes:

The historicization of Beechtree within the Women’s Land Movement, Lesbian Separatism, and second wave feminism raises these complex historiographical issues. There is little evidence about how Beechtree defined “woman,” whether or not they included trans women, or Connie’s opinion on the biological essentialism that was popular in the movements in which she participated. The language used most often in primary sources to to refer to Beechtree’s community members is “women” or “wimmin,” an alternative spelling that some feminists adopted to avoid the word ending in “men.”

Beechtree’s radical politics of accessibility make it unique in the history of lesbian feminism. Centering disability activism and ableist oppression was by no means guaranteed in lesbian feminist circles. When identifying forms of oppression, most lesbian separatist manifestos did not name ableism or anti-disability discrimination.  A statement by the Disabled Lesbian Alliance published by off our backs in 1981  notes that a term to describe the oppression experienced by disabled people did not yet exist, emphasizing the paucity of discourse even in radical feminist circles about what we now call ableism:

Before moving to Beechtree, Connie founded the Disabled Lesbian Alliance in 1978 in New York City. The group advocated for accessibility at lesbian events and spaces, including ASL interpreters, printed materials in Braille, and physical spaces without stairs. As the open statement from disabled lesbian alliance succinctly begins, accessibility “means different things for different wimmin.” Corbman notes that the Disabled Lesbian Alliance argued for the importance of accessibility so that disabled lesbians could be included “in the world making project of lesbian feminism.”

At Beechtree, collaboration between able-bodied lesbians and disabled lesbians was vital for making the property and project accessible, not only for “emotional and physical support,” but also “to raise each others' consciousness, share our hopes, fears, and angers.” The women at Beechtree exemplified what contemporary disability scholar Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha calls "cross-disability solidarity" in her  book Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice : "the reality of our different disabilities not being a liability, that there could be ways we supported each other." At Beechtree, women with disabilities cared for and supported other disabled women. Connie gives several examples of the ways that the residents of Beechtree worked to make the space accessible to the varied needs posed by their disabilities: fashioning a sled to pull women with mobility limitations around in the snow; equipping each room with a daybed to provide a safe place for the women with epilepsy to lie down if they felt a seizure coming; carrying women who used wheelchairs upstairs and outside; reading together and turning the pages for each other. While making the house totally wheelchair accessible was a top priority at Beechtree, this form of physical accessibility was just one of many ways in which the residents thoughtfully considered accessibility and collaborated to meet diverse needs. Connie describes the atmosphere created by the collective emphasis on accessibility:

Living at the farmhouse offered access to cleaner air and the opportunity to grow and produce homemade food, cultivating the residents’ connection to nature and the land. Connie experienced improvements in her health while living at Beechtree, which she attributed to breathing the unpolluted air, sustaining a relationship with the land, eating healthy food, and being “surrounded by loving hands.” In 1981, two years after Connie moved to the farm, she described Beechtree’s future goals in  an interview with off our backs : "Other uses we plan for the land include striving towards self sufficient farming, for example raising animals, extensive vegetable gardens, renting plots for food growing or camping at minimal amounts." An undated flyer advertises garden plots, land rental for events, and trailer sites. Connie and the other women planted, grew, and harvested their food, baked and cooked, and gathered immune-strengthening herbs. For Connie, the women’s relationships with the land and nature was interrelated with their relationship to disability and difference:

Living without and fighting against ableism, misogyny, and homophobia were fundamental impetuses for the creation of Beechtree. Creating an equitable space for lesbians with disabilities meant dismantling “the power imbalances so ingrained in us by our patriarchal society.” For Connie, sexual liberation at Beechtree applied not only to her lesbianism, but also her non-monogamy. In her memoir, Connie describes how "each of the women at the farm was committed to confronting her own ableism. As a group we were to try to eliminate ableism in our living space, our working lives, and in the world at large." The Beechtree community respected each others’ independent decisions and autonomy, fundamental human rights that are often denied by ableist structures. Connie describes how Beechtree’s residents checked in with each other and respected each others’ boundaries: "It was up to her to decide what was too much and what wasn’t. It was helpful for other women to check in with her during the day to see if she needed a hand, but confronting ableism was not about taking control for someone or setting that person’s limits." The women at Beechtree recognized that each other "knew what she needed and had the right to refuse [help] and figure out what to ask for. It was always up to the individual woman to decide if she needed to rest." Connie describes the nuances of living in a community dedicated to anti-ableism:

Like many Women’s Land projects, Beechtree faced challenges that prevented it from meeting its utopian ambitions, including external, systemic hardships and internal, interpersonal conflicts. Connie depended on continuous caregiving attendants to help her with daily tasks, and the conservative local Medicaid office placed increasing restrictions on who she could hire, how much they could work, and what they were allowed to do and required to do while caring for her. In addition to conservative attitudes, rural settings pose unique problems for disabled people, including the availability of transit, physically accessible homes, and sophisticated medical treatment.

Connie describes how anti-oppression work on the farm could be "fraught with struggle" among the women. As women came and went over the five years, Beechtree experienced financial strain while Connie sought to bring in new residents to share living expenses. As more women left the farm to pursue other opportunities or join larger lesbian communities, Connie fell behind on her mortgage payments, and when Barbara died in 1984, the executors of her will did not honor her verbal agreement with Connie about the terms of the property's sale and mortgage. Connie describes how owning the farm became an “emotional and financial burden.” Connie left Beechtree in 1984 to move to Boston, where she continued to fight for accessibility as the director of the Boston Self Help Center.

Through Beechtree, Connie and other residents envisioned a different set of shaping tenets for the lives of disabled, queer women: separatism, collective and collaborative work, empowerment, self-determination, and pleasure. For Connie, the dream of Beechtree and collective living was one of independence and de-institutionalization for disabled people. The independent living movement and deinstitutionalization of disabled people was ongoing, and Connie aspired to start a private practice as an art therapist and "build a facility on this land for disabled women, offering independent living in their own living units, not institutional living." As Corbman argues, these "world-making" projects have "continued relevance to feminist, queer and disability studies [and activism]." Corbman describes Beechtree as a "dyke worldmaking project" that "did not merely anticipate a more just future but attempted instead to provisionally inhabit their imagined future…blending pragmatic and utopian impulses… [and] mediat[ing] between their own lives in the present moment and the futures they want to inhabit." Connie Panzarino and the women of Beechtree envisioned a different world, where disability, difference, and queerness were celebrated and centered. For five years on a farm in rural New York, they brought their imagined world into existence.

There is little to no record of the physical site of Beechtree. Connie primarily used a post office box for correspondence while living at the farmhouse, but one archived source, an invitation to a party hosted at Beechtree, offers the site’s physical address: 372 Sackett Lake Road, Forestburgh, New York, 12701.  The parcel viewing website hosted by Sullivan County  classifies the address as “Abandoned” and offers a terse description of the building: “white hidden by trees, falling aprt [sic].” Purchase records indicate that the farmhouse and acreage seem to have been combined into a larger parcel, which was purchased by New Horizon Recreation in 1999 with this goal of building The Resort at Sackett Lake, a development project that never came to fruition. The entire parcel appears to be mostly trees, fields, and dirt roads. 

Over the past decade, the National Parks Service has increased its effots to tell queer histories and mark queer sites. The  NPS Heritage Theme Study "LGBTQ America " included a publication titled LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History and the demarcation of  ten LGBTQ sites as National Historic Landmarks . The NPS offers  a list of seven parks and 37 other LGBTQ Heritage Featured Places . NPS also sponsors the community-sourced project  LGBTQ America on History Pin , which includes over 1,000 sites sorted into geographic and thematic collections.  The Furies Collective  was listed on the National Register of Historic Places by the NPS in 2016, and is part of a larger series titled " Finding Our Place: LGBTQ Heritage in the United States ." 

From a preservationist perspective, telling the history of Beechtree is complicated and difficult due to lack of records that detail the building and property. I propose an alternative method of remembering Beechtree, Connie Panzarino, and the Disabled Lesbian Collective: let’s heed their call to make all lesbian events, which I would expand to all queer events, accessible to queer people with disabilities.