There’s a woman-only village in Brazil that’s caught in a dilemma: the lack of men means it’s so nice they don’t want to leave, but the only way they can keep on going is if they draft some men in.
We’ll explain: way back in 1891, a Brazilian woman fled her hometown after being accused of adultery for leaving the man she’d been forced to marry. Maria Senhorinha de Lima and the next five generations of her family were excommunicated from the Catholic church, so she decided to set up her own homestead, in Noiva do Corderio. Other women cast aside by society – single women, single mums – joined Maria, though outsiders branded them prostitutes.
After decades alone as an isolated community, an evangelical pastor showed up in 1940. Anisio Pereira married a 16-year-old and founded his own church with pretty strict rules, banning alcohol, music, hair-cutting and birth control. We’re not sure if you’ve seen all of Game Of Thrones so we won’t go into great detail, but there’s a part that this reminds us of and it skeeves us out so deeply.
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Anyway, after Pereira died in 1995, the community swore that never again would they let a man be so controlling. Now, when boys turn 18, they’re sent away to work and allowed to return only at weekends. Same goes for the husbands of Noiva do Cordeiro, who can spend their weekends there provided they follow the women’s rules and fit in with their way of life.
There are now 600 women in the village, with the occasional weekend bloke, but how on earth do they find men to reproduce with? Rules prohibit male outsiders from just turning up, so to stop it turning into an incest-fest, women are encouraged to temporarily leave to find suitors. The only problem is that the village is so beautiful and idyllic that they don’t want to leave.
Nelma Fernandes, who is 23, said: ‘Here, the only men we single girls meet are either married or related to us, everyone is a cousin. I haven’t kissed a man for a long time.
‘We all dream of falling in love and getting married. But we like living here and don’t want to have to leave the town to find a husband.’
She added: ‘We’d like to get to know men who would leave their own lives and come to be a part of ours.
‘But first they need to agree to do what we say and live according to our rules.’
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What makes the village so perfect? Well, Rosalee Fernanes, 49, told MailOnline, it’s because of the way women get shit done: ‘There are lots of things that women do better than men. Our town is prettier, more organised, and far more harmonious than if men were in charge.
‘When problems or disputes arise, we resolve them in a woman’s way, trying to find consensus rather than conflict.
‘We share everything, even the land we work on. Nobody competes with anyone here. It’s all for one, and one for all.
‘The whole town came together recently to help buy a huge widescreen TV for our community centre so we can all watch soap operas together.’
As far as separatist women-only tribes goes, and seeing what happens to women’s management style when they live separately from men, it’s definitely more interesting than nights in with girl mates and half-ironic tubs of Ben & Jerry’s. But will they find men willing to enter into their matriarchal enclave?
Now that it’s got international press, probably. Anything to undo that sour memory of Without Men, that heinous Eva Longoria film about a clueless sect of hysterical, cock-obsessed faux-lesbians, right?
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.