Like Pride, only Better!
“This was a really anti-establishment movement when it happened. It was separatist. As women, and as gay women, it was a move to create a space that valued women, and that valued being a lesbian, that mainstream society didn’t.”
MichFest is VERY gay-friendly. I know I was hyper-aware of this ’cause of my cousin — actually, everyone assumed she was a lesbian. I admit this über-gayness is one of my few criticisms of the festival. My cousin didn’t have a problem with it, but I felt that if the purpose of the festival is to provide a community representing all womyn and if the festival is billed as an inclusive environment, that needs to include straight womyn’s voices too.
Here’s the thing: straight women have an important direct link to influencing the patriarchy in a way that most queer women just don’t.
I met a handful of straight womyn but many of the workshops, all of the comedy acts and most of the musicians were lesbians. ‘Cause here’s the thing: straight women have an important direct link to influencing the patriarchy in a way that most queer women just don’t, and if straights don’t see themselves reflected to some degree here, they won’t feel welcome, and they won’t come, and we’ll miss out on their important perspective.
But I can’t lie, I did love the lesbian environment too. It’s like all the best parts of Pride but without the frustrating commercialism or naked men … and plenty of partying & music & fun! Anyone looking for alternative lesbian culture would find it here and you’ll also see every type of womon imaginable. 
(That’s the first time I’ve spelled out womon, I’m making a concerted effort to integrate “womyn” into my vocabulary, but “womon” is still a struggle.)
As further proof if you don’t believe me that MichFest is truly inter-generational (I am openly trying to recruit you to the festival next year, and figure that many of you have the same prejudice as I had before going) consider that I saw nine of the 100 Hot Butches of 2009 there! It would have been ten, but Daniela Sea had to cancel for some reason. [ed.note: DS is a chronic canceler]
Here you have my list: Amy Ray (#7) Hanifa Walidah (#25) Julie Wolf (#28) Toshi Reagon (#32) Angie Evans (#37) God-dess (#39) Kaia Wilson (#43) Melissa Ferrick (#51) Daniela Sea (#72) Elvira Kurt (#95). There may have been more, but those are the ones I noticed.
So to summarize, MichFest was a place for magical music, beautiful womyn, like Pride only better: Straight, lesbian, butch, femme, big, small, Latina, women of colour, white, single, couples, girl children, young womyn, middle-aged womyn, older womyn, tattooed womyn, rural womyn, urban womyn, womyn with disabilities, naked, clothed, topless, leather, hippie, and the list goes. I am already planning to go back next year. Go write the date on your calendar now, the first week in August 2010, the 35th Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.
“If someone tries to tell me [Michigan] is transphobic, I tell them to stuff it. There’s so many trannies there. And it’s not trans people being marginalized. It’s people who were born as men. The festival is for people who suffered a girlhood. That’s all it is.”
-Bitch (of former band, “Bitch & Animal”)
Don’t Believe Everything You Read on Google
Soooo, if hypothetically you were gonna google MichFest, you’d find a ton of info about the trans policy debacle from a few years ago. I found this interview with Bitch of “Bitch and Animal” to be similar to my own take on the issue. I mention this debate even though I have reason to believe that the issue has died down despite the Google results; I only noticed a single mention of the topic the entire week and I met many people who I assume might have been FTM (or passing as male in the outside world) and whom were accepted unconditionally at the festival. 
WELCOME HOME
“This was a really anti-establishment movement when it happened. It was separatist. As women, and as gay women, it was a move to create a space that valued women, and that valued being a lesbian, that mainstream society didn’t.”
Coming home was hard. I felt so relaxed by the end of the week but I also felt a deeper affirmation of my feminist bent that left me ready to tackle the mainstream patriarchy with renewed strength. Also, it took a day to readjust my mindset to recognize that the men I saw around me were actually men and not mannish women.
The festival blew away my preconceptions of what might happen there, and my mind was opened to new ideas and to a deeper affirmation of my own feminist bent.
Yesterday my cousin asked me, “Is your life changed?” I said it was, and she said her’s was too. And we both hope that an annual injection of festival will chip away at our preoccupation with how others judge us or how the patriarchy imposes limits upon us. So maybe by the time we’re 60 or so we’ll have amassed a strong enough sense of well-being to be as comfortably outrageous as the incredible older womyn we met in Michigan.
The first words I heard upon arriving at the gates of the Festival were “Welcome Home” by a gal in a fantastic super-womon outfit, and now I extend the same greeting to you: WELCOME HOME!
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18 responses to “How the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival’s Topless Womyn Changed My Lesbian Life Forever”
I went to the festival three times in the 1990′s and then I’d had my fill. It really is something to behold.
I wish I had been you in the 90s instead of me.
I have to say – saying the fest is not transphobic then denying trans people their gender really does strike me as completely ass backwards.
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.
“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.
I wonder why women at these festivals are often completely naked or topless, but never just bottomless.
I know there is a serious need for Vadge Pride
When i was there, there were naked women too.
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.
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?
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!
“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.
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.
I’m not sure I’m up for a full on debate about the Fest Policy, though I do agree with it. I did want to comment on a small thing you said.
“I think it sends totally the wrong message to allow trans men and not trans women.”
1. Fest works on an honor system. There is no pantie checking. So, the word “allows” gives a flavor that is not present at fest.
2. All the trans men I have had the occasion to have discussion with about “women’s space” say they would not attend, as they do not identify as ‘women born women’.
I always think that debating an experience you have not had is like commenting on the taste of food without having eaten any. There is inherent flaw in judging your taste by others taste buds.
And I won’t even go there on those who took a stand to comment on what someone should have included in her writings about her personal experience.
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.
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!
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.
I wondered when I would get to some extreme end gender question.
Have you ever prepared a dinner for friends?
You invite 10 people and you then try to choose a menu to suit everyone. It’s hard.
Try inviting 50 people and then covering their food issues.
Now try 1000 or 2000.
Individuals who personally identify as women, but believe that their chromosomes might be reason for them to not be welcomed, should get in touch with fest and have a conversation. They can decide after having it if they feel fest is a good match for them.
It’s the same as if I had some food issue and was attending the very large dinner party and needed to know if there were going to be enough foods I could eat to satisfy me. I contact the hostess.
Trish