by Beth Cohen
Without the Men
Most interesting to all was how the women dealt with the fact that men were no longer part of their everyday — and their every night — lives. The issue of reproduction was not a real issue. The women themselves were raising the children they had already had. Both male and female children, raised in the Realm, were being taught how to treat each other, how to value each other, how to give, how to care and how to respect. They would learn from their new lives what equality is without having to take the lesson from books and hearsay and, most
importantly, without the influence of men dominance. Most had witnessed the war, including the pain and humiliation forced on their mothers. Even if they didn’t understand the deeper meaning of what had taken place — they bared witness to all that had happened leading up to and during the Split. It was real to them. Their mothers’ cry for equality, at first unanswered, had turned their very lives into an answer. That answer, the answer to take the equality without waiting for it to be handed over. This fact, this act of taking, doing and creating the Realm, became the essence of their lives. The hope was held — and it was indeed a widely held belief — ;8that children raised in the Realm would stay in the Realm and raise their children there...in a place that was created by the women...but ultimately for all, equality for all.
*** Then there was another factor, which was discovered early on... the women were able to satisfy each other in a much broader sense...no one was more surprised than the women themselves to discover a very special partnership developing between many of the women. That is to say, couples began to come together — openly, lovingly and affectionately...It soon became commonplace to hear a woman referring to another as My Woman; not that this didn’t exist before. In the Wideness, women often had sexual partners of the same sex. The men didn’t mind and most seemed to enjoy the idea, as long as the women did their duties, held their places and continued to answer their men’s needs.
The women in these relationships felt these connections naturally. The relationships developed so intuitively that these bonds did not seem unusual. Those who bared witness to their progression did not see anything peculiar or weird. These relationships were open — rarely intentionally hidden. They were there for all to see, imagine and dream about. In this new community where each individual’s actions so influenced the daily lives of all, secrets were hardly plausible. Experiments in various living situations, especially those with such obvious benefits, took place openly, never discouraged and always allowed to develop freely and explored.
Multies
While two women living together was a casual occurrence, the women began to notice that, surprisingly enough, the coming together of more than two women was also occurring. This was a situation of great promise of growth and sense of security, especially when children were involved. As a family, having more than two adults living together under the same roof worked amazingly well. These smaller families came together, combining in one household the children of these women and a rather interesting way of life. A whole new meaning to the word ‘family’ evolved. Since everyone was so busy doing and getting things done (building a new home is a great deal of work!), having additional grown women around just made sense. There was always someone in the home to receive the children at the end of the day. There was always plenty of food for the children of that household — and any others that happened by...clean clothes, laughter, a listening and caring ear...maybe a bit too much free advice. Everything has a price!
*** The ShElder giggled and sat quietly for a long while. She seemed lost in some happy daydream. When she roused, she continued exactly where she left off…
*** These new homes had come to be known as Multies. Multies had come to be highly regarded in the Realm. The rules in these homes were discussed openly and considered very carefully. The Daily Deed even had a say in child rearing. Whereas the families in the Wideness had total autonomy — that is to say, the men had absolute and totalitarian control of how their families functioned, families in the Realm had their elders to answer to. The women, having spent much of their earlier lives under the rule of the men, saw what a totalitarian rule could do to a family. They understood that with so many adults and the children of so many different adults being thrown together under one roof, there would be a benefit to having guidelines — a kind of safety net of rules. These families would do well to have some wisdom and guidance from the older and wiser women of the community.
All of these women had grown up in a patriarchal society — where their thoughts, opinions and general well-being was either predetermined by the men, or men haphazardly applied rules to govern their lives. These women, girls at the time, also had no real rights and were entirely dependent on the morals and good will of the men in their families of origin. Since it was a generally accepted belief that these females came into the world to eventually serve their adult families, it was not such a leap that these females as children, girl-children, were also made to serve their families from a very young age. Using the girls to serve the males, in many of the cultures, at the time was not only accepted, but was the norm. The female children had no real spokesperson, no one to speak up for them, to defend them from harm or abuse. As long as there were no visible marks or scars, what happened within these families was never questioned. The men’s authority was total. A girl’s well-being, and exactly how her well-being was defined, was left completely up to the judgment of her father — and sometimes brothers. This wellbeing ran the full range of her development and education, including and beginning with common behavior and punishment to scholastics and her sexual development and training. For a great many of these women who grew up with fathers whose belief in their servitude was so complete, their childhoods were no less than a daily nightmare. While many of these women tried to change the situations of their daughters — and while many were indeed successful —the women were keenly aware of the fragility of childhood. And so they openly welcomed the idea of an outside intervener, or adviser. They welcomed the safety net provided to their children by the newly formed committees who helped guide them in the ever-important task of raising this new generation of children — girls and boys, who they so fervently wanted to raise as equals.
And so it came to be. Since so many children were now being raised in a new kind of family, the Daily Deed had come up with a method meant to give a new sense of order and stability to the child’s life, without overtaxing the child with too much confusion. Acceptance and boundaries were the key message. A set of guidelines, strictly enforced by the women themselves, was written by a new special Committee for Childrearing of the Daily Deed.
For example, a crying child, sick or with a nightmare, was cared for in the children’s room, by any one of the adults in the family, although naturally this was most often the birth mother. There was an importance given to the understanding of the difficulties the children would face adjusting to this new way of life. But these households, the Multies, had so much more to offer that the children of the ‘regular’ single or double parent home were often quite jealous.
Multies began on a rather small scale and startled many. After all, these women had been raised to believe that a happy family contained a man and a woman and then children. The belief held in the Wideness was that it was the man’s job to make decisions and provide for the material needs of his family. The man’s decisions were thought to be absolute...ABSOLUTE. Even though the women of the Realm knew the way they had been raised and the resulting homes were far from ideal, and even though the women knew that in the lives they had left behind the woman was subservient, with no chance of that changing for their children, the changes taking place in the fundamental structure of the family was still more than a little hard to accept at first. While it seemed natural enough that the family core would change and evolve into a twowoman family, the Multies themselves seemed, at first, to be a bit too drastic a change and did startle some. But then, the women and children weren’t actually going anywh
ere else, so they did have plenty of time to adjust, as well as plenty of the new families, including Multies, around to prove their value and validity.
And Then, Lil and Joy
In the first months following the Great Split, the women were all busy with the intensity of what had transpired, of all that had happened to them as a society as a whole and to building a new society of their choosing. The women spent time working, building, talking, discussing and making sure that the basic needs of all were met. Very few of these women had the luxury of taking the time to think about themselves as individuals. They were all so intensely involved with making sure that they all had a roof over their heads, food and basic caretaking needs of the children that, all too often, when they finally did have some time to look around them and take stock of what they had built and where they were now, they found surprises under their own roofs.
Obviously, more than a few of the mothers in the Realm had naturally delegated many of the caretaking roles to the elder children. Two of these ‘children’ were the daughters of members of the Daily Deed, who seemed never to be home or have time for their families. Sara Hesa and Dally Blyth were two such women of the Daily Deed. In the Wideness, both Sara Hesa and Dally Blyth had been married — Sara to a member of government and Dally Blyth to a wealthy businessman. Both of these women were active members of the Daily Deed, and took their responsibilities to the Realm to a diligent extreme. They had known each other for years and, during this time, their eldest daughters had become great friends as well. They spent hours together, with and without their families. Sometimes it seemed to Sara and Dally that their friendship’s greatest gift was the friendship that had developed between their daughters. Dally Blyth was Joy’s mother and Sara Hesa was Lil’s. Once things began to settle down in the Realm, Dally and Sara found that their daughters seemed to be spending even more time together.
*** Both Lil and Joy were entering adulthood during the Great Split. They knew that if things remained as they were and if they were still living within the Wideness, they both would have been married off to suitable men. Lil and Joy had spent their whole lives watching their mothers work tirelessly for their families and their communities. They were old enough to bear witness and
understand the incidents leading up to the Great Split and to also share in the humiliation suffered at the meeting of the Heads. Joy was beside herself when she heard that both her mother and her friend Jane were so undervalued by the men that it didn’t occur to any of the men to at least feign respect when they entered the Great Hall to speak to the Heads of the Wideness. They both left the Wideness with the same fervor as their mothers.
Both Lil and Joy understood the importance of the work that their mothers did in the Realm and they took pride in their mothers, who worked such long hours and with such undying devotion.
It was quite natural, in the Realm, for both Lil and Joy to want to spend time together. Their families had been so close before and they both found great comfort in the newly emerging situation — the sudden absence of their fathers when they left the Wideness, the change from an easily attained abundance as provided by their fathers’ incomes to a steady stream of hard work and absentee parenting by their busy mothers.
When the women left to form the Women’s Forward Movement and life in the Realm became reality, Sara Hesa and Dally Blyth understood that the friendship that existed between their daughters could be helpful in their new situation. They both knew that the newly formed Multies would answer many of their families’ needs, as well as allow their elder daughters to remain close and rely on each other. Dally Blyth and Sara Hesa readily agreed that the best way to handle this new situation would be to combine their households. Their children knew each other well; their eldest daughters could indeed fill in the void of caring for their younger children. The fact that they had all been friends before meant that there would be few surprises and fewer awkward moments if they all lived under one roof. That was the thought.
So, Joy and Lil rose up to the task at hand. They understood the importance of this work that their mothers did with such undying devotion. Early on, they found that although they missed their mothers’ cooking and attending to their laundry and household needs, they didn’t mind doing these tasks together. Being together, for both Lil and Joy, seemed to make everything easier and almost anything enjoyable.
Joy and Lil found that the combined family home worked well for them. Although their mothers were not together as a couple, they realized the difficulty placed on their families and soon moved the two families together. Joy and Lil found themselves spending time together — more and more…time spent taking care of their younger siblings, sharing the housework and talking…relaxing and enjoying each other’s company. They were 19 and 20 years old. Before the Great Split, they had been great friends as well. Since their mothers worked together, they became used to spending time with each other and their siblings as their mothers sat and drank coffee together in the evenings after work. Lil and Joy had gone to the same school and were raised in seemingly traditional Wideness households. Their fathers both had high positions and were well respected in the community. Although their mothers ran seemingly traditional households, the girls bore witness to their mothers’ commitment to their jobs and were privy to the discussions that took place over cup after cup of coffee. Both Lil and Joy knew their mothers were strong-willed and, although their homes seemed fairly average, they grew up witnessing the frustration and the struggle their mothers faced on a daily basis…juggling their feelings and desires, keeping them appropriately silent in front of their husbands, but speaking freely with each other and in front of their children. This did not stop the girls from fantasizing about a traditional future in the Wideness, with respected husbands and a lifestyle much like their mothers had led. To Lil and Joy, as with the majority of the female children in the Wideness, the life they lived was the only way they had known…and to them, this was the way it would continue to be. It hadn’t occurred to them then that there was any other option.
However, when The Great Split happened, it was no real surprise to either of them. They had seen and experienced firsthand how hard the women worked and had witnessed how those same women, their mothers included, were overlooked and basically ignored. So when the time came and their mothers told them to hurry and get their things together, they did as they were told; they packed their things and left with the rest of the women and children.
*** And here they are…together in the Realm. Spending time together was a gift. After getting the kids fed and to bed…they loved talking and doing their chores together. As a matter of fact, they loved doing everything together.
One night, Joy and Lil fell asleep together. When Joy rolled over and found Lil next to her, she put her arm around her and held her through the rest of the night. Lil, for her part, woke in Joy’s arms and felt the warmth of her breath on her neck. Lil felt the heat between her breasts and then the heat between her legs. She didn’t know where the heat was coming from — it was so unexpected. Joy felt Lil’s heat as well. The two girls, women,
actually…were on fire with desire for each other. The first night of fire, they both tried to ignore the feeling…In the morning, they woke up and took care of their siblings as usual and went off to work. At the end of that day, they took care of their siblings; they did what had to be done in the house and then they went to bed. They got into bed together. They rolled into each other and held each other tight. The heat was there, but so was something else…there was …love…real love. Joy and Lil were in love. They held each other and began kissing each other, at first gently and then more and more intensity followed. They kissed, they hugged and they were passionate. They were passionately passionate in their newly found love and lovemaking, discovering each other’s bodies as they discovered their own pleasures.
That night, when their mothers came home, they found their eldest daughters in bed together, wrapped in each other’s arms. Their mothers looke
d at their daughters and then looked at each other and closed the door to the bedroom. It was a new era, a new time and love, when found and shared, was not to be held back or restrained…
*** In the morning, the mothers took their time and let their eldest daughters sleep in a bit. They got the younger children ready and sent them off to school. The Realm, with all of the pressures of beginning, took the children and all that they involved very seriously. As a matter of fact, everything that involved the children was considered with utmost importance and was not to be slighted or ignored in any way. So the children, no matter how young, or old…always took precedent over all else.
When Joy and Lil woke up, they were surprised to find their younger siblings off to school and most of their morning chores done…most surprising of all, their mothers in the kitchen, coffee pot full and mugs for four around the table. Joy and Lil looked at each other and then at their mothers. The color of both their faces turned red with shame. Lil felt faint with shame, but her mother approached her with a loving hug and they all sat down to talk.
Joy spoke first — “We are in love.” Then it was Sara who spoke. “We know. And we are glad that you have found each other…We, I just wanted you to know that we understood and understand. We want to help and make sure that this is what you both want.”
What followed was a long and rather intense conversation…Sex, respect, expectations and love. These were all topics that the mothers decided had to be discussed and understood from beginning to end. The mothers had seen enough in their lifetimes to know that sometimes circumstance could bring about the enactment of emotions that aren’t really there. They wanted to make sure that their daughters weren’t just acting out of necessity and desperation. That they weren’t falling together because they felt that they had no choice, that their love was not a case of total loneliness…Loneliness, both women knew, could bring about actions that would later be cause for regret. Joy and Lil sat and listened as their mothers spoke and spoke most of the day. The girls, at first, where extremely uncomfortable and, later on, they ran the gamut of shame to anger to joy to shame again and then fear. With time, the girls understood that their mothers were being completely open and protective of both of them. Joy and Lil understood from their mothers that they were afraid that they were vulnerable and felt lonely and didn’t want their desperation to lead to regret.
