Ed. note: Autostraddle reader Lindsay wrote us to say she was going to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival this year and asked if we wanted coverage of the event. Obvs, YES! However, because of MichFest’s emphasis on being a safe space for womyn, no photography is permitted. So we found visual aids elsewhere: 1. Some stunning photos by Angela Jimenez via The New York Times – actually, Angela turned her MichFest photojournalism work into a book called “Welcome Home”, 2. Google Image Search! and 3. We got our master cartoon recapper Stef to do some homespun cartoon-rcap art for the piece. Without any further ado, here’s Lindsay, our Canadian roving reporter! And Stef’s cartoons! 
“It was nothing I expected, and it was everything I expected.”
-Staceyanne Chinn, “Michfest: Nature, God and Free-Roaming Vaginas“
Welcome Home
During the six days I spent with about 10,000 other women camping out on 650 acres of Western Michigan woodlands, I was asked multiple times how I’d heard about the Michigan’s Womyn’s Music Festival to begin with.
My answer to that is the same as my answer to why it took me so many years to actually attend the event; the Festival was part of the intrinsic Lesbian Folklore I’d been hearing about since I started coming out ten years ago. Therefore, I thought MichFest was for old lesbian hippies who like folk music, not younger womyn like me. I was wrong. Not only did it defy all my (admittedly unfair) expectations … but it felt like coming home.
In fact, it was a lot like how I felt returning to my homeland of Canada after a year studying abroad in Norway. Despite how adept I’d become at Norwegian culture and language, I hadn’t realized how little I’d been myself there ’til I was back in my comfort zone with friends & family. Similarly, the womyn-only “home” of MichFest made me feel more like myself than all the years I’ve spent living in a patriarchal society.
The sense of safety, well-being and complete Freedom I felt at the festival, which I attended with my cousin and her three young daughters, caught me by surprise. In the best way possible.
Returning womyn know the magic of Michigan is as much what happens off the stages as on them. Everywhere you turn – from the womon-built stages to the outdoor kitchen serving thousands to the follow-spot operator up high in the scaffolding – Festival is living evidence of what womyn are capable of creating. The tangible creative energy that is everywhere on the land explodes into spontaneous woodland parties, parades with outrageous costumes, and performance art on every path. Healthy food, clean air, green woods, art and music will recharge batteries you didn’t even know were fading.
The Michigan Womyn’s Festival celebrated its 34th year in 2009 and is completely built, staffed and run by women. Women cook meals, provide childcare, facilitate workshops, build stages, run the concerts and provide security and medical support for between 3,000 to 10,000 women (many lesbian-identified) each year. It was founded by three working-class women from Michigan in response to the misogyny they experienced working at festivals & venues run by men.
In addition to the music performances, the festival offers Intensive Workshops (titles include “Breast Casting for Women of Color” and “The Matrix of Oppression.”) There’s also a film festival, an artisan/craft show and a full roster of workshops, parties, dances, networking events and full-service childcare.
Those Legendary MichFest Topless Womyn:
Right before we left for MichFest, this conversation happened:
Littlest Cousin (once removed): But mum, who will drive the tractors?
Cousin: Womyn will drive the tractors.
Honestly I don’t think she believed it ’til she saw it with her own eyes. So yeah, let’s get it out there: there’s a lot of nudity and topless ladies at the Festival. Many of these women are driving the tractor-drawn wagons that shuttle people across the land from the camping areas to the stages and kitchen, and some of the drivers are a little smoother on the clutch than others … as my eight-year-old cousin (once-removed) observed …
Little Cousin: Lindsay, don’t you think she’s a good driver?
Me: Yes, I do.
Little Cousin : The ones without their shirts on are the best drivers!
Me: Umhmm…
Interestingly, the promise of tractor-driving shirtless womyn were one of my cousin’s reasons for taking her daughters to the festival. She wanted to expose them to empowered womyn capable of anything.
Littlest Cousin: “Did you see that man on the tractor?”
Her Friend:“That’s not a man, remember — all the boys are girls here this week.”
To be honest it took some getting used to — all the topless womyn. I had to stop myself from staring (especially at the extra-beautiful ladies) but eventually I got used to it. In fact, it had an incredible effect on my self-esteem. For one thing, it was a relief to be in the woods far far away from all those unrealistic images of womyn in magazines, on television and in advertisements. But also, being exposed to hundreds of normal topless womyn of all shapes and sizes for an entire week was remarkably healing. Perhaps for the first time ever, I felt comfortable with myself.
Our Cunts Go Marching On, Dildos, and Butch Struts
There was no such thing as a typical day at Michigan and I wanted to try a little bit of everything. At the Lesbian Tent Revival with Carolyn Gage, we preched radical feminism while singing, “Our cunts go marching on.” Two womyn put on one of Gage’s plays about being mistaken for a man in a womyn’s bathroom, which was followed by a conversation about identity, safety and rape in our culture.
Though I didn’t attend any, there were more workshops about anal sex and choosing the right dildo than I ever thought possible. There were three parades: the Butch Strut, Femme Parade, and Gaya Girls Parade (for girls aged 5-12). You could learn to walk on stilts, hula hoop, salsa dance, or do archery.
There were more workshops about anal sex and choosing the right dildo than I ever thought possible.
One morning I spent four hours at an African Dance workshop under a tent. At the beginning of the morning there were 3 drummers and about 20 dancers plus Queen, our fearless leader, an African American woman with bright green eyes wearing dreads with bells woven into them that jingled to the beat of her dancing. Four hours later there were around 10 drummers, 40 dancers, and a crowd of 20 womyn watching.
At a Toe Reading workshop I learned I have “juicy Priestess Toes.” There were also impromptu activities, like the naked revelry in a giant mud puddle after a rain storm, and the drumming I heard late into the night.
Womyn-Entertaining-Womyn, With Extra Fisting:
In addition to comics like Elvira Kurt, Gloria Bigelow & Poppy Champlin, this year’s festival featured musical performers including God-Des and She, Sia, Amy Ray, Issa (formerly Jane Siberry, her song “Love is Everything” played in The L Word episode 211 while Shane was telling Carmen about her hamster), Girl in a Coma and Jen Foster. 
Every stage performance had an ASL (American Sign Language) interpreter on hand (get it?! HA!), and though I’ve never learned much signing beyond the alphabet and numbers, I got hooked on watching the interpreters. They added serious depth to the performances and so I wasn’t surprised when Amy Ray mentioned that the interpreters actually attend rehearsals and speak with the artists to ensure that the signing reflects the musician’s true lyrical intent.
This was especially obvious during my favorite performance of the week, Melissa Ferrick. First of all, I should say that Melissa Ferrick’s not your typical folk singer. Her songs are hot & fast, her voice is throaty & raw, and she tells hilarious pre-song stories. As the festival program adeptly put it, Melissa “has the kind of relationship with her audiences that few performers are blessed with. Her firey live shows are compelling experiences that exhibit her magnetic personality, quirky sense of humor and outstanding musicianship.”
So clearly by the end of her 45-minute set, Melissa had the audience in the palm of her hand. When she says her next song was written when her girlfriend challenged her to write something sexy, we were all ears.
Though the literal lyrics were relatively innocent, one particular section is clearly about making her girlfriend come. Then out of the corner of my eye, I see the interpreter wildly elaborating on the lyrics. ASL interpreter Pam Parham, who is clearly a genius, is doing a SERIOUS FISTING GESTURE with devilish delight all over her face.
Ferrick’s playing for all she’s worth and she amps it up when the audience goes wild for the interpreter. Because of this response we get ten more minutes of the song. It was the best performance I have ever seen in my entire life — and I wasn’t alone in that assessment: my cousin, who couldn’t go to the Night Stages ’cause her girls needed to be in bed, said the audience response she heard from the campsite was the most enthusiastic of the week.
Honestly before the festival the only performer I’d heard of was Amy Ray (also one half of the Indigo Girls), but I ended up being totally impressed by the variety of great acts and diverse sounds I saw, including nervous but excited, Hanifa Walidah and her band Black Patti and Po’Girl. and Sia.
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Comments
How the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival’s Topless Womyn Changed My Lesbian Life Forever
(16)
August 30, 2009
10:01 pm
I went to the festival three times in the 1990’s and then I’d had my fill. It really is something to behold.
August 30, 2009
10:34 pm
I wish I had been you in the 90s instead of me.
August 30, 2009
10:17 pm
I have to say – saying the fest is not transphobic then denying trans people their gender really does strike me as completely ass backwards.
August 31, 2009
11:50 am
Just being devil’s advocate here — I wasn’t at the festival and never have been, so all I know is what I’ve read about it — but why does the festival have an obligation to be 100% trans-inclusive? It’s a private event for “womyn-born-womyn,” and aren’t there other spaces that exclude or hurt transpeople in more damaging ways which are more worthy of our time & protest? Like why protest the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival when the more pertinent battles are with like, THE US GOVERNMENT and the court system and the medical system?
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If someone is trans and ‘decides’ to alter their physical self to match their mental/emotional self, isn’t part of that identity an awareness that just as some male-only spaces will now be open to them, some women-only spaces will no longer be?
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Again — not claiming to be an expert on the situation by any means, but these are questions that I have about it for real. I like what Bitch said in the interview that Lindsay linked to as well.
December 13, 2009
8:03 am
“It disappoints me when the feminists that I admire don’t get it. Like the musician Bitch, who recently defended Michigan’s entrance policy in an interview with Lesbian Life, saying “…it’s not trans people being marginalized. It’s people who were born as men. The festival is for people who suffered a girlhood.”
To Bitch and others who agree with her, I ask you to imagine what it could be like to “suffer a girlhood” while also being forced to play the role of a little boy. While many of us suffered through the indignity of being a girl in a patriarchal world, those of us lucky enough to be born into bodies we’re comfortable with need to recognize our privilege, and check it at the door. Or at the gates of any music festival.”
-Ariel Troster
She says it better than I ever could.
August 31, 2009
10:32 am
I wonder why women at these festivals are often completely naked or topless, but never just bottomless.
August 31, 2009
4:08 pm
I know there is a serious need for Vadge Pride
September 1, 2009
11:36 am
When i was there, there were naked women too.
August 31, 2009
10:47 am
No mention of Camp Trans? The transphobia of Michfest still goes on….I would have liked to see more discussion of that on here. Did you consider interviewing any trans leaders or visiting Camp Trans?
Also, minor point, it’s in Western Michigan, not Eastern Michigan.
August 31, 2009
11:13 am
Lindsay’s essay is just about her experience at the festival. It’s her first-person piece about how she felt there, though she does address the trans issue briefly and link out to an interview with Bitch. I feel like an article about Camp Trans and the transphobia at MichFest would be a whole different article or a much longer piece, deserving of more space, more reporting and more interviews.
Lindsay’s article here doesn’t claim to be about anything more than her own first-person experience at MichFest. IMHO?
August 31, 2009
6:04 pm
I just saw that the article was up, yay!
There were just two things in the commments I wanted to comment on, Riese’s take is right, I tried to write from my own perspective. I stayed in the family camping with my cousins and therefore didn’t have any experience with Camp Trans, or the Over 40s Camping, or anywhere else – that’s why I didn’t write about it. If I go next year I think it would be fun to do some interviews too, but this year being my first I was too overwhelmed with everything else going on and it just didn’t happen.
Speaking of vadge-pride, I did see two womyn dressed up in giant vagina costumes!
September 1, 2009
2:49 am
“And it’s not trans people being marginalized. It’s people who were born as men.”
So… it’s just half of trans people being marginalized. The half that actually identifies as women. Huh.
I’m not trying to be snotty, I just genuinely don’t understand Bitch’s logic here. Why does she believe the meaningful criteria for admittance is “people who suffered a girlhood?” And more importantly, don’t most MTF’s think of themselves as having a girlhood? Just one that was denied and disparaged (and apparently continues to be so?) Aren’t we being inherently transphobic when we deny them that, and tell them, essentially, sorry, nope, you were totes a dirty boy, no matter what you thought you were, and you’ll never be enough of a woman to join us? And what is gained by excluding them? Do we seriously believe they’re deep cover covert men just waiting to sneak into women’s safe spaces?
I feel like I’m being Snotty McSnotterson here, and I want to emphasize that I really did enjoy the article. But honestly, this whole discussion is throwing me for a loop, because the festival sounds so otherwise awesome and progressive and queer and it’s causing crazy cognitive dissonance to try and reconcile this transmisogyny with that.
September 6, 2009
1:49 pm
I am a little upset about the trans policy as well. It’s not trans men being excluded, it’s trans women.
Bitch’s quote assumes that trans women have never “suffered a girlhood”. But they have: they just had a boy’s identity at the time. From the people I talked to, in childhood many trans women were drawn to girly things but suffered a backlash because they were expected to be “boys”, ie something they weren’t really inside. These women have gone through more challenges to be women than I can even imagine. We should accept that and not get hung up on trans women being some kind of “threat” because they used to be men. I mean, wtf? They never really were, and they certainly weren’t happy with their old gender identity or they wouldn’t have taken the hugely courageous step to live their true lives and become one of North America’s most marginalized and attacked groups in the process.
I think it sends totally the wrong message to allow trans men and not trans women. It should be the other way around in a woman-defined space.
October 15, 2009
8:51 pm
I suggest looking further into what the older generation of womyn have to say about the reasoning. I’m not of that generation, and I cannot claim to know the nuances. So, I will just share this in the hope that you will look into it further before passing judgement after one link.
I do know there’s plenty out there for readers willing to hear the whys. All of this has been thought out ad-infinitum long before any of us were even thought of. Many arguments are worth attention, even if you later decide you don’t agree with them. This is not the kind of topic that can be addressed in a 5 minute blog reply.
For example, one interesting point involves a consideration of the inherent nature of living in a patriarchy. Male children are considered privileged in a patriarchal society. Even males who later transition were raised with this baggage. It is difficult to abandon once ingrained into a person, and that does change the dynamic of any interaction.
December 10, 2009
1:38 pm
Well you have me convinced. Been wanting to go for awhile and this is more than reason enough to get me planning. Out of curiousity where in Canada did you travel from? Southern Ont is where i’m at, would be cool to carpool or something. Thanks again!
December 29, 2009
1:47 pm
While I understand the prohibition against women born as men who choose to change later in life, what about women born with male chromosomes and go through a regular girlhood but are not genetically female. I’m talking about women with conditions like Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, who are XY, but since their cells don’t respond to testosterone, they develop morphologically and psychologically as girls; the estrogen that their bodies put out is able to feminize them naturally just like XX females. But, since they don’t have a uterus, they don’t menstruate (that’s usually how they find out that they are AIS), and, of course, can’t have babies. These women didn’t choose to be females; they were born that way, and go through a girlhood just like other XX womyn.
That said, to those trans males to females that don’t like MWMF’s transphobic policies, just start your own festival. The same is true for men. If womyn can have their own festival, then so can transfolks and so can XY males. Exclusivity is not a monopoly held by womyn.