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Performers Shouldn't Be Too Surprised In Being Called Out For Tacitly Embracing Antitrans Hate

If a whole bunch of trans people tell you that your words are transphobic, they're right.
~Allyson Robinson

I'm often found quoting this statement by Allyson Robinson these days for a reason, which is to say that there are people who try to excuse themselves from having their words considered transphobic by self-proclamation. People don't like to have themselves or their words labeled as racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic...or even transphobic.

Well, the word transphobic comes to mind again for a specific organization; for a specific Womyn's Music Festival. There are some sincere lesbian and feminist folk with the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (MWMF) who seem sincerely misguided, and stuck in the feminist identity politics of the 1970's when it comes trans women's identities being fully included in the community of female identities.

In all but the first two years of the festival, MWMF has articulated a womyn-born-womyn attendance policy. The policy, stripped of all positively-phrased-negatives and euphemisms, is a policy that's designed to exclude all transsexual and many intersexed women from the festival. Excluding certain kinds of women from a women's cultural event seems to be identity politics at its worst; a product of poor reasoning and/or fear. The end result of this womyn-born-womyn policy of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival is a concept we have a highly charged word for: segregation.

This year is the 35th year of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (MWMF). In all but the first two years of the festival, MWMF has articulated a womyn-born-womyn attendance policy. Without sugarcoating, this womyn-born-womyn policy is a 33-year-old segregationist policy.

We live in a world where progressives want to be female positive, so we sometimes see a world where progressive women don't call out their peers for bad behavior, much in the same way that a number of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people don't call out transphobia when they see it within their own lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. In the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival's case, lesbian and feminist women of influence haven't been behaving as if the policies of the Michigan Womyn's Music festival are segregationist. So I ask: why are feminist and lesbian performers playing at this segregationist event? What are bands and artists doing performing at a festival that has a long running, segregationist policy that indicates all transsexual and many intersexed women aren't really women? Moreover, are they affirming this particular kind of segregation or do they not see it qualifies as such?

Late last week, the festival announced this year's line-up. Lesbian and feminist musical icons scheduled to perform at the festival include the Indigo Girls, Chris Williamson, Holly Near, Ferron, Bitch, and Toshi Reagan -- among others.

It needs to be stated harshly: when lesbian and feminist musical artists perform of note perform at a festival with segregationist polices, they are actively supporting segregation. The artists performing at the event cannot be blind to the long-running controversy regarding the festival's attendance policy -- in fact, the Indigo Girls have long been aware that the policy has been a bone of contention within communities, as Amy Ray has brought up the policy on the Indigo Girls website.

Festival director Lisa Vogel, who has been the key person at this event during the entire 35-years of the festival, has long embraced and defended the womyn-born-womyn policy. From a 2005 interview on the womyn-born-womyn policy of MWMF by Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls:

Amy Ray: Do you mind making a statement about the transgender issue and Michigan Womyn's Festival's "women born women only" policy?

Lisa Vogel: Not at all, well let's see, just off the cuff, here's what I would have to say about it. As a queer community we're all struggling around how we explore and expand gender definitions, and the women here who are creating this festival are part of that. And I feel very strongly that having a space for women, who are born women, to come together for a week, is a healthy, whole, loving space to provide for women who have that experience. To label that as transphobic is, to me, as misplaced as saying the women-of-color tent is racist, or to say that a transsexual-only space, a gathering of folks of women who are born men is misogynist. I have always in my heart believed in the politics and the culture of separate time and space. I have no issue with that for women-of-color, for Jewish women, for older women, for younger women. I have seen the value of that and I learned the value of that from creating this space for so many years. So the troublesome thing is, in the queer community, if we can't, not just allow, but also actually actively support each other in taking the time and space that we need to have our own thing, then to come together, in all of our various forms, is going to take that much longer. And I understand how certain activists in the Camp Trans scene only see this as a negative statement, and I think that there's a lot of connection that's getting lost. Because, I really think that folks aren't understanding how crucial this space is, as it is, for the women who come here. And, maybe that's just it.

One problem with this statement is that every year, Camp Trans is set up outside the gates of the Michigan Womyn's Music festival. Every year, a whole bunch of trans people are telling the organizers of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival that their words and their actions are transphobic. When the whole bunch of trans people tell Lisa Vogel and the other organizers of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival that their words and actions are transphobic, Lisa Vogel saying that the calling the words and actions of the of the festival organizers "misplaced" and not transphobic are...well, wrong. "If a whole bunch of trans people tell you that your words are transphobic, they're right."

[More on the segregationist womyn-born-women-policy below the fold, including Pam's take on the faulty logic behind the policy, and hate towards trans men and trans women that's hosted within the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival's discussion forum.]

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