Scene Report: Provincetown Women's Week
Moonifesting at the Seaside Drum Circle
Hello sisters (gender inclusive)! I’m calling you that because today I am delivering a scene report on one of the most “hello sisters” events on Earth: Women’s Week in Provincetown. The other week, Clover and I went to Ptown for three nights, where we stayed with our friend Agnes, an incredible painter who’s currently a resident at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. (Agnes has a Substack studio newsletter, btw, which you can subscribe to here!) We intentionally timed our visit to coincide with Women’s Week, one of the small handful of lesbian gathering times in town (the others being Baby Dyke Weekend over Memorial Day, Womxn of Color Weekend in May, and Girl Splash in July). We expected Women’s Week to skew both older and old-school, which it certainly did. We came into the week with open minds and hearts, ready to connect with older dykes and revel in some pure, unadulterated second-wave lesbian culture. And oh boy, was there culture to be had, and I’m excited to share it with you. Agnes and Clover both also generously chimed in with their own observations and experiences, so read to the end for what they had to say!
To set the scene a little: Women’s Week is mostly attended by older lesbians. Nearly all of the people there were over fifty, most by a substantial margin. There were a small handful of other youngish people there (and by small handful I mean you count them on one hand). I spotted a cute dorky butch-femme couple and there were two random hotties who I saw once. There was also a small number of women who looked to be forty-ish. But by and large we were the youngest people everywhere we went, and conspicuously so. The main demographic, as I said, was gray-haired older dykes. They came from all over the place. A disproportionate number of women seemed to be from Michigan and, while it obviously requires resources to go to Provincetown, most of the women did not seem super rich — the vibe was not that of a monied Boston-and-New-York set. The women were mostly white, and most wore the fleeces, short haircuts, and Merrills that you’d expect from an older lesbian crowd. There was a long and non-centralized list of events for the week, including a shocking number of comedy shows. We later learned that the only place, online or in real life, where you could find the complete schedule was on a printed-out daily itinerary taped to the wall in the public library.
We stumbled across our first Women’s Week event, and it turned out to really set the stage. Clover and I arrived in Ptown and, after demolishing a pricey gluten-free pizza, we set out to wander the town a bit with Agnes. We walked down Commercial Street and then looped around to walk back down the beach. In the distance, we saw a cluster of people. “Are those women?!,” Agnes asked. “I see purple fleeces,” I said. As we got closer, it was clear: these were the women, and they were partaking in an opening drum ceremony and sound bath.
The ceremony was being led by a group of women that included one younger (40ish) femme and three gray haired older dykes, including a captivating long-haired butch in a cowboy hat. We quickly gathered ourselves to the outer edge of the circle and watched as the drummers drummed. Emceeing the ceremony was Dee (not her real name, because I never want her to see this post lol), who kept interrupting the drumming to make various announcements. She eventually introduced the femme as a professional sound bath technician, and we were then treated to a guided meditation as the femme made soothing sounds with a big cymbal. Agnes, Clover, and I all laid back on the sand and let the sounds of the quiet drums and lapping waves wash over us. It was honestly beautiful — Agnes later revealed to us that she cried twice.
After the sound bath, Dee once again seized the mic. She addressed the group of older dykes, encouraging them to honor their memories of the past but live in the present — to search for hope in what Women’s Week is now, rather than mourn what it once was. This speech seemed to resonate with the women. It was clear that longtime Women’s Week devotees have ambivalent feelings about their aging cohort and the fact that the event hasn’t really drawn in new younger participants. Dee then mentioned that the Powerball was at a billion dollars and joked that we should all buy tickets and then take over an inn in town when we won. Iconically, she beseeched us to “Moonifest it!” It was then announced that the drum circle was being opened to all. Clover and I each took drums from a lesbian who had a Subaru simply packed with them, and chilled out and slapped our djembes. I realized that I had not ever actually joined in a drum circle before — it was nice!
That night, we swung by the Waydowntown, a bar/restaurant that was the headquarters for a bunch of Women’s Week events. We bought overpriced gin and tonics and approached Dee, who, we could tell by now, was essentially the mayor of Women’s Week. She was holding court by the bar rail, and seemed delighted to be speaking with (if I do say so myself) the youngest hotties in the bar. One of the first questions she asked us was how we were affording the cost of being there, lol, and we were like, we’re crashing on Agnes’ floor. She quickly began regaling us with a list of other lesbian festivals that we simply had to go to, including Fernfest, a trans-inclusive women’s music festival that takes place on the land where Michfest used to be. She also told us about her forthcoming podcast, which she will be co-hosting with a younger transmasc person, with an “old-school versus new-school” bent. She clearly was interested in talking with us about the fact that Agnes and Clover are trans women, but she didn’t really know how to raise it or what she wanted to say. Still, it was apparent that she was happy we were there. We went home delighted with our day, high on the burgeoning connections we had made.
The next morning we moseyed over to Womencrafts, the women’s bookstore in town. Dee had told us that this was the place to be, and all throughout our visit we heard people talking about the store’s importance to the community and the need to support it. Womencrafts is plastered with enormous painted portraits of female authors who have written banned books, and they sell little ceramic butts made by a woman named Connie. What more do you need to know? When Clover and I visited Womencrafts on a previous Ptown trip, we didn’t connect with it. This time we decided to post up, a decision that was reinforced by a sudden downpour. We perused for a long while, and made chitchat with a few patrons and the owner, who eventually told us to watch the shop while she went to make us coffee. We bought copies of The Call-Out by Cat Fitzpatrick, as well as a heap of intriguing books from the $2 pile. We wound up chatting for a while with a woman with a gentle Southern accent and a long braid who was also posted up. She told us that she was a science-fiction writer. When I asked what her book was about, she had me scan a laminated QR code clipped to the side of her conductor’s cap which linked to a chapter online. Her day job is as a scientist working to develop the technology to produce a fetus from two eggs. I honestly don’t know if I think this technology should exist but I must admit I was intrigued.
Then we bounced to go on a whale watch. I won’t go into too much detail about this but I will say it was magical. Also lesbians love whales. I have four pieces of evidence: me, Clover, Agnes, and Dutch. Dutch is a butch we started talking to toward the end of the ride, after the whales had been watched. She had a camera with an enormous telephoto lens. This was her second whale watch that day and her 30th in like five years. What I’m saying is she’s addicted to whale watches. With close to zero provocation, she began to regale us with her middle-aged dyke drama: she snagged her girlfriend, a romance writer, on the rebound from her ex-wife, the ex now hates them, and she was also at Women’s Week. Sometimes a butch’s only respite is on a whale watch.
That night we went back to the Waydowntown, where we had been told there was a “tribal techno dance party.” It turned out this meant there was both a DJ and a live drummer playing a conga. More drumming? Ok. Anyway, there was a futch in drop crotch pants with long gray hair who was boogying her heart out and a couple other women bopping around. We knew immediately that we could not rise to this occasion, dancing-wise. We went over to the bar to schmooze a bit. At the bar, we noticed a woman who looked to be in her fifties loudly complaining to a woman who looked to be about ninety about the profusion of online sexual micro-identities. The 90-year-old, Bobbi, clearly had no fucking clue what the other woman was talking about. Clover, unsurprisingly, beelined her way straight into this conversation, and Bobbi began giving her advice like “just live your life.” Dee was there again, too, and Agnes and I went to go pay our respects. This time, she was drunk. She told us that we had really made an impression on her last night, especially the fact that me and Clover were a cis-trans lesbian couple. This, apparently, had made it into her standup set that day. We MUST come see her standup, she said. She then made some remarks, the details of which I’m not going to get into (but Agnes decided to, so keep reading for the goss), that made it clear that she really, really did not get what was going on with Clover and Agnes gender-wise. Agnes and I were both a bit gobsmacked, and Agnes quickly bounced. Clover and I dipped over to A-House, which was basically empty, to have a drink and make hasty love in the bathroom. On our way home, we passed Dee, wasted, dancing her face off in the late-night convenience store. We scurried past.
The next day we hoped to attend a panel of older lesbians sharing memories of the Ptown of yore. Unfortunately, the printed schedule someone had given us had a list of events tethered by neither location nor time. By the time we learned about the schedule posted in the library, it was already too late — we had missed most of the event. We sneaked in late to find that there was a Q&A section that was running way over and consisted largely of women encouraging each other to support their local high school’s Gay-Straight Alliances.
We took a respite to shuck oysters, which Agnes taught us how to do. Those god damn Wellfleet oysters are unbeatable. Then we headed over to Gifford House for 5:00 Dyke Disco. Sidebar: Clover and I stayed at Gifford House in 2022 and it was cheap by Ptown standards and pleasingly dumpy. It’s since been flipped by some gay and now rooms are like $350 a night. A damn shame. Anyway, Dyke Disco was adorable. We walked in as a club remix of “What’s Up” by Four Non-Blondes was playing: a top blissed-out dance floor moment of the year! The butch from the drum circle was back, feathers dangling from her cowboy hat, playing some sort of metal percussive instrument with a whisk on the floor. For some reason, everyone really went crazy for “Like A Virgin.” We were surrounded by gray-haired couples grooving out. Clover kept dancing her way up to various older dykes and making little dance floor connections. I was like, wow, my wife <3.
This was our final night, and we had bought tickets for Women’s Week Idol, which we’d told was a must-see event that always sold out. We filed into a cavernous theater packed with dykes at the Crown and Anchor. Women’s Week Idol was, in a word, chaotic. The judges were introduced: three different dyke comedian types, one of whom was dressed as a nun and one of who went on to make the joke “this song always makes me cry” for every song. The fourth judge was a purple-haired former America’s Got Talent contestant named Yoli Mayor. Yoli opened the show by belting the everloving fuck out of “God is a Woman” by Ariana Grande. I hate to be rude, but I did not like her vibe, which I would describe as breathy. Eight (I think) women had signed up that day to perform, and the performances were all over the place. There was an earnestly pretty performance of “Tennessee Whiskey.” There were two separate a capella performances of women’s music folk songs, one of which the singer herself had written. There was a mediocre performance of "Poor Unfortunate Souls” by a woman in overalls and a scare wig, which made the twink bartender go wild. There was a charming rendition of “Uptown Funk,” during which the singer yelled “I got my knee done!” while botching a dance move. In response to this performance, Yoli said, “You better funk. My. Up.” Then, after the other judges had spoken, Yoli seized the mike to say it again. “You better funk. My. Up!!” The crowd went wild.
Of course, it wouldn’t be Women’s Week if Dee didn’t perform. Her performance was a peak chaotic moment of the night. She stormed onstage as a drag king with a thick Latin accent, and began performing “Seventeen” by Janice Ian and humping the nun judge. Halfway through the song, she declared that she was done and stormed back off the stage. She marched down the aisle all the way to the back of the room where we were sitting, leaned in, and yelled “You didn’t come to my show! I’m SO MAD AT YOU!” Indeed, we had not gone to her comedy show. It would have been simply insane for us to attend a comedy show where she discussed her misinterpretation of our genders. Anyway, we shrank back in our seats, laughing hysterically. Agnes, driven away by the performance of “Poor Unfortunate Souls” that followed Dee, ran into her outside, and they had a sweet moment of connection. Dee had wanted us to come to the show because she’d worn a painted leather jacket that she had told us about. Agnes was like, “well, cool, it was great to meet you.” Not all generational gaps can be bridged, even at Women’s Week.
Clover and I were leaving the next day, but we decided to catch one last event: a morning storytelling event, in the style of the Moth, called the Beaver. It was pretty cute. One woman told a story that ended with her throwing adult diapers into the audience. She’d gone over time and the hosts tried to herd her offstage but she wouldn’t stop throwing diapers. Another woman told a sweet story about meeting her wife, and there were just, like, a bunch of sex jokes from older dykes. Satisfied, we headed back to our car to hit the road. But Women’s Week had one last surprise for us. A small woman in leggings with bright red hair was posted up outside a taffy shop, yelling about a Betty show that evening. Clover was like, that’s her…that’s the woman from Betty. The woman who wrote the greatest TV theme song of all time. The woman who stole the heart of Ilene Chaiken. We stopped to talk to her. Clover told her we were about to leave so we couldn’t catch her show, but could we take a picture? Betty, with much feeling, said “oh DAMN! I’m BUMMED you can’t make it!!!” And then we took a really bad selfie together. Just like that, our time at Women’s Week had reached its end.
I won’t lie: Women’s Week took it out of me. We didn’t really go hard partying like one often does in Ptown. Rather, we went hard connecting with older lesbians. After three days, I was ready to leave, but being there was a special experience. Queers famously like to talk a big talk about their desire for intergenerational connection, but in reality making connections across chasms of age, experience, and cultural context takes energetic work; work that (if I’m being shady) a lot of young people aren’t looking to actually do. But if you put yourself in the way of these connections, they can be so meaningful. Older women, by and large, were really, really happy to see us there, and we were really happy to see all that they had created, creations that in some part made our lives possible. They built lesbian cultural spaces, campaigned for women’s rights and gay rights, paved the way for lesbian parenthood, created works of art and new ideas. Here we were, enjoying and appreciating all these things, understanding how they continue to shape us. Knowingly or not, the women moonifested us, and for this we remain grateful.
And now…..
CLOVER’S CORNER
Hello everyone, it’s infrequent Substack collaborator and love of Julia’s life Clover here for a segment I’m calling Clover’s Corner where I add some details of the trip from the woman’s perspective. Julia said most of it pretty well [editor’s note: she actually said it really well] so I’ll just pop in some notes:
Bobbi the 90-year-old lesbian was straight up 90 years old and I will remember her forever. I actually completely missed Dee’s wild comments because I was so locked into conversation with Bobbi. I asked her when and where she came out, she said “in the 40s in Syracuse.” I asked “how was that?” and she thought for a moment then said “Well, there were three of us.”
The other dyke Bobbi was talking to was some sort of professional lesbian-festival organizer and she was beyond relieved to hear that I also thought excessive micro-identities were unhelpful bullshit. She was also part of organizing Fernfest — when we brought up MichFest, she guardedly tested us by asking what we knew about it. She was clearly ready for us to say “We know it’s transphobic!” but I read her hand and talked about its historic significance and details about how it functioned. Part of the psychic drain of Women’s Week was having to navigate this tension — these women want younger generations to keep up the banner, but also feel a defensive ideological impulse, partly earned and partly understandable. While connecting is rewarding, it also requires flexibility, which can be a little tiring.
Bobbi was drinking some kind of obscure Italian bottled beer that she for sure brought to the bar herself. She’s a legend and I love her.
A huge percentage of the festivities which we did not attend was women’s literature events, with author readings, signings, and Q&As, and this literature was almost ENTIRELY romance and erotica. It is a cottage industry I did not expect to see so represented. People are out here reading these!
Dee also told us about a different woman she dubbed “The Night Mayor of Ptown”, who ran the late-night convenience store Essentials. This woman was almost the opposite of Dee – she looked a bit like a fuzzed-out Lisa Kudrow, spoke with a tranquilized low timbre and slackerly self-assurance, and was wearing a shirt that said “OWNED BY A LESBIAN” on it. We were not sure if the words referred to the shirt or the woman wearing it. We bought hot dogs from her store while loudly discussing what we should eat before going to bed. She said “A dog’ll do” and we’ve been saying it ever since.
The impact of MichFest on nearly all of these women was palpable. There is a real stark difference in atmosphere between younger queers who know of MichFest solely as a trans-exclusive historical object and these women who found real liberatory practice in attendance. Most didn’t call it MichFest but “Michigan”. Nearly everyone had been there at least once it seemed like. There was a larger culture of these types of “retreats” beyond MichFest, a need to escape to these women- or lesbian-centric spaces outside of society at large that I don’t hear as much about in younger circles.
So many of these older lesbians could be divided into two basic types: semi-separatist hippie-generation types who fit the regular stereotypes we all know and love; and women who were basically my mom, a loud-mouthed, outgoing, Reba McEntire-loving Philadelphia nurse with terrible oral hygiene and a big mouth but bad manners. During the Beaver hour, one of these exact women told a story through a thick Long Island accent about how a PYT hit on her at a women’s dance while her fiancee was in the bathroom, and the moral was basically “I got game.”
I would love to go again one day and be much more interactive at events – there were times I wanted to tell stories but decided I more wanted to observe than join in. I stand by that choice and I’m glad that I kept my interacting to unofficial moments, but next time I’d like to really step in and be a part of things.
ALSO, AGNES
Hi everyone! I’m Agnes– friend of Julia and Clover, aforementioned painter, and longtime Dyke Domesticity subscriber. A few more memories and reflections on our first Women’s Week:
Per the opening ceremonial sound bath/drum circle: I must also point out that right before the audience participation section of the drum circle, the facilitators had the whole group listen to a very important song on a tinny bluetooth speaker in extremely high winds. I was able to make out the lyric Amazon women rise, weaving rainbows in the sky. Julia and Clover later explained to me that they immediately clocked this song as the lesbian folk classic and unofficial MichFest anthem, “Amazon” by Maxine Feldman. The song, which was a kind of remix featuring a cringey reggae breakdown bridge, eventually crescendoed into a chant, which in turn begat the start of the drum circle. [Editor’s note: the chant was “Amazon women gonna riiiise again!”] Despite the objective silliness of the entire scene, or maybe because of it, I found myself extremely moved, lol.
At one point during the drum circle, Julia and Clover both turned to me at the exact same time, each of them smiling and expectantly offering me her drum to play. It was really cute and made me laugh really hard.
When whales blow their blowholes in sunlight, the vapor makes rainbows!!!
Since we eventually hugged and made up, I don’t mind airing out the Dee situation a little. When we ran into her for the second time, she was telling us that we had made a big impression on her the night before, and she effusively explained some of the things she had just said about us in her show a few hours earlier: how great it was to see young lesbians interested in intergenerational connection and keeping the spirit of Women’s Week alive, how much we have to learn from each other, and then, bafflingly: how amazing it is that we are so clearly lesbians, living lesbian lives and participating in lesbian community all without needing to take hormones or get surgery (personally, not the case!). I immediately heard the Drag Race rattlesnake sound in my head then took a second to realize that while this revered elder was indeed kinda calling me clocky, it was in a strange ill-informed alignment with her second wave values about, like, body hair and antidepressants. I corrected her and told her my hormones are important to me and she went on a tangent about big pharma, which, okay. I deflated and changed the subject, and we talked about lesbian painters for another few minutes until I left. I was pretty bummed about the interaction for a while, feeling like I had confirmed a fear I had about this week: a fear of some form of TERFery lurking behind otherwise wholesome interactions with lesbian boomers, feeling a little weird about how often they bring up MichFest to us, occasional questionable vibes and unspoken scrutiny. I never confronted Dee again or had a real reconciliation, but I kept running into her. She was always thrilled to see me and we chatted amicably: she showed me her friends’ paintings on her phone and regretted not having time to see my paintings in my studio. My cynicism melted away and we were able to coast on our excitement and good intentions, and we promised to keep in touch. I left this week grateful for a clearer picture of what it looks and feels like to encounter surfacings of transmisogyny in elder lezbos. My worst fears were obviously disproven– there was never going to be a “man-on-the-land” exile chant like I had heard about in MichFest lore– it felt more like affectionately shrugging off the conspiracy theories of a crazy aunt, then moving on to quality time. I resonate a lot with what Julia and Clover each wrote about the flexibility, effort, and reward of these relations!
After Julia and Clover left, I went to a screening of a documentary about the history of Women’s Week– I learned that Women’s Week originated with the Women Innkeepers of Provincetown. At the group’s inception, they had about a dozen members, each of whom ran an inn in Provincetown. At one point, there were over 30 members, and someone told me that as of 2023 there are only 2 inns left owned by women, and most former members are no longer in Provincetown. Perhaps unsurprising but still sad!
One of the best parts of Women’s Week for me was befriending lesbians who live in Ptown year round: I now have a regular masseuse, a consistent yoga class, and a billiards mentor!
Later in the week, I stopped by the Women Innkeepers temporary storefront to check out the scene and buy a Women’s Week 2023 hat. The woman working the merch table immediately told me I have a nice voice that reminds her of her ex. She signed me up for an Olivia Cruises raffle and gave me some free swag, most notably a rainbow beer koozie that says “Here’s to Women Loving Women #beautifultogether”
There you have it, folks. Thanks so much to Agnes and Clover for their funny and insightful contributions to this post, and for sharing this special time together! And if you won the Powerball and want to open a lesbian inn in Provincetown with your newfound riches, please hit us up. Let’s be #beautifultogether <3
Loved this! Can’t believe you ran into one of the Bettys.
Also I can co-sign that lesbians love whales - I am also a lesbian who loves whales. (I have multiple non-fiction books about whales, it’s true.)
This was so captivating!!