Random Musings

Salon: Why is there an especially large number of lesbians in Antarctica?

Gretchen Legler: I think that one thing that would attract lesbians, and other women who might be on the margins of our culture, is that Antarctica is a place where I think that a woman can go to be herself, and can go to be relatively free of the constraints and difficulties that Western culture puts on women.

So, you go to Antarctica to work, and obviously you can't take your family with you, and you're not cooking for yourself. You're just responsible for your little tiny room. Your responsibilities for other people are very limited in some ways, and you also become part of a larger community that expects different things from you. It expects you to share the burden of the work of the community, so you're not sort of the sole nurturer. You're now part of a team where everybody is helping one another.


Then, there are a lot of non-traditional jobs for women in Antarctica, like driving big equipment or being an electrician, or being a carpenter, or doing hazardous waste removal, or fire-alarm technician stuff. And everybody is part of this community, and everybody matters equally, basically. So, the jobs aren't distributed in Antarctica, necessarily, based on gender.