Battle of the Sexes
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This is maybe why I can't understand the tendency for people to separate themselves into neat, homogenized segments, where everyone in their immediate circle looks and thinks just like them. I get it that some people like to be around others who are like them -- birds of a feather and all that -- but I think sometimes, we carry it too far. Over and over, I notice that, at least in the area in which we live, our diverse group is pretty unique. Most of the cliques and circles I see others form tend to be almost all-male or all-female.

This separatist attitude is even affecting the way we talk and write. I recently read an article about the increasing use of the phrase "gays and lesbians" in the media. It used to be that the word "gay" was an umbrella term that included both gay men and women. Some women, however, felt that "gay" had come to be more associated with men and felt that "lesbian" needed to be included as well. Why? Do we really need more divisions within our community?

Why are we so divided?

To discover one possible reason behind our separatism, we may have to look back at our LGBT history. According to an article on glbtq.com, which bills itself as an encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer culture, lesbian feminists decided to create spaces over which they themselves had autonomy after encountering misogynistic attitudes and practices in the gay liberation movement and anti-lesbian discrimination in the women's liberation movement. These lesbian separatists subscribed to a "radical feminist" philosophy that views gender difference in terms of essentialism. Unlike the liberal feminists of the mainstream women's movement, who argued that gender was a social construction, lesbian separatists contended that the differences between men and women are rooted in nature. Thus, women naturally possessed a female energy characterized by its warmth, nurturing, and pacifist qualities. On the other hand, due to their male energy, men were hard-wired to be aggressive, competitive, and destructive. Because men could not, or would not, ever change their ways, lesbian separatists believed that it was necessary for women to exclude them from their lives.
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