Aug 18, 2006  |  By: KATHERINE VOLIN  | COMMENTS     

Holing up in the Pocono Mountains for a weekend with hundreds of lesbians was a popular event for two decades for participants in Lesbian Feminist Weekend, a three-day music festival that began as a self-defense course in 1975.

But then in 1998, plagued by slumping attendance, the weekend was canceled.

“In the late ’90s, there was the recession, which made it a lot more difficult for women just to afford to do anything and then we had a real change in the social structure,” says Cynthia Savage, who has attended and helped plan the weekend for 20 years. “Being gay, you weren’t going to get killed, necessarily, every time you said that you were gay and you were a lesbian.”

Prior to that, the Lesbian Feminist Weekend had provided a safe haven for women living in an otherwise unsafe world. By 1998, lesbians’ needs for sisterhood had changed.

“Women did not have that angst, that need,” says Savage, 46, who identifies as queer. “We felt a sense of being able to be who we were more than we did in the early ‘80s and ‘70s. I think it was kind of a natural transition.”

But women still wanted a weekend to celebrate community, so in 2000, the weekend, renamed Sisterspace Weekend, was back. Numbers that once ran up to 1,200 now hover between 450-500 and the camp is now in rural Maryland instead of the Poconos, but the importance of lesbians gathering together remains.

“In some ways because we are so much more integrated into the world than we used to be there aren’t as many opportunities as there used to be to identify one another and be in the space,” Savage says. “I think there is some value to being with others that identify, at least in some ways, in the same way.”

Lesbian Arlene McCann, 27, who has attended for two years and will go to this year’s Sisterspace Weekend, held from Sept. 8-10 at Ramblewood Camp in Darlington, Md., agrees.

“I haven’t been attending that long, but I probably will be attending from now until forever,” McCann says. “It’s one of the most fun experiences I’ve ever had. I know that I can go there and be accepted for who I am.”

WOMEN WHO ATTEND Sisterspace Weekend stay in cabins or tents and can attend workshops, play sports, hike or just relax. The 40 workshops include topics from bird watching and car maintenance to partnership rights and relationship issues. Sisterspace Weekend is also a small music festival. This year’s slate includes six musical acts and a comedian.

“We look to reflect the diversity of our community in the women that perform onstage,” Savage says.

Katie Sawicki, a bisexual indie folk musician who just released her third album, says that she got her start by listening to gay artists like Ani DiFranco and Melissa Ferrick.

“I’ve done a lot of queer events, but this is the first real festival that’s totally devoted to sisterhood that I’ve ever played, which is kind of exciting,” Sawicki, 27, says. “I think that it’s exciting for me to play in front of a queer audience because I was part of that audience.”

Other performers will include musicians Alix Dobkin, Nedra Johnson, Judy Barnett and Shaynee Rainbolt, Voices of Africa, The Non-Domestiks and comic Michele Balan (who is also one of the Queer Queens of Qomedy, see related story on Page 31).

MCCANN FIRST CAME to Sisterspace weekend as a performer — she plays guitar and sings — but now has stayed as facilitator of the open mic during the Saturday night bonfire.

One of her favorite parts of the weekend, McCann says, is observing the reactions of younger women enjoying themselves in the company of a large group of lesbians for the first time.

“You can just tell that they’re feeling very safe and happy there, especially some of the younger ones — 18 to 25-year-olds — baby dykes, you could call them,” McCann says.

Jessica Robbins, 52, also notes the happiness of young lesbians as a weekend highlight.

“There’s always some women who are experiencing women’s community for the first time,” Robbins, a lesbian, says. “And they have this completely blissed-out look, which is completely entertaining.”

Perhaps one of the reasons why so many notice the younger women is that their numbers are increasing. It’s a trend Carole Smith, 60, who has attended the weekend since 1991, is glad to see.

“One of the things that I’ve noticed over the past few years is that there is a younger crop of women coming, which is good because I don’t think the women’s community is going ...