Page 6 - C.A.L.L. #43 - Winter 2017

Coming out communal:

Being queer at Virginia’s

oldest commune

Communal life at Twin Oaks creates ideal conditions for liberation

Brittany Lewis, Richmond, VA; GAYRVA

The word “commune” conjures images of hippies and free love, and while the stereotype isn’t exactly
wrong, today’s rural counterculture looks a little different at the US’s oldest secular commune. Known
locally for their soy foods and hammocks, members of Twin Oaks Community in Louisa County are just
as likely to show up to the back door of a Richmond restaurant with a delivery of extra-firm tofu as they
are to come to the front door holding tickets for the latest queer music show. Because Twin Oaks was
founded in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement — with an acknowledgment of patriarchy and racism
as well as a mandate to oppose both, the community has been attracting social progressives “back to
the land” for the last fifty years. Yet when other communal living experiments quietly closed their doors,
Twin Oaks continued to build an alternative agrarian culture that welcomes home folks who find
themselves on society’s sexual margins.

Unlike the few queer land experiments that remain — Radical Faeries and the Landyke movement come
to mind — Twin Oaks is not explicitly a queer community. Founded in 1967 based on behaviorist B.F.
Skinner’s utopian novel, Walden Two, Twin Oaks has expanded to a 100-person membership on 450
acres. While the community’s behaviorist foundations were discarded, a commitment to egalitarianism
and income-sharing remains, and all members live collectively and work full-time in the community. In
addition to shared businesses, the community boasts extensive domestic supports–a vegetable garden,
a dairy herd, a community preschool, and guaranteed healthcare. Stay as long as you want and all your
needs are met.

Valerie, a 49-year-old queer Canadian
feminist, discovered Twin Oaks over
20 years ago.

“I was already involved in alternative
activist activities,” she says, “and when
I came to Twin Oaks, I realized it was
the closest to the Platonic ideal of
what alternative culture could look
like.”

Stephan, a 33-year-old genderqueer
trans-guy, moved to Twin Oaks three
years ago after tiring of living
paycheck-to-paycheck in West Photo: Brad Kutner

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