Michigan Womyn's Music Festival
|
|
The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (MWMF) is an international feminist music festival occurring every year in August in Michigan. It is mostly attended by lesbians and lesbian-separatists. Although the location is not a total secret, it is common courtesy to not mention it in order to protect the safety of the over 3,000 women who attend and those who voluntarily work at the festival for up to a month each year.
As a response to misogyny, sexism and homophobia, MWMF was created in 1975 by 19-year-old Lisa Vogel, a working-class woman from Michigan who had seen female musicians and stage hands demeaned and repeatedly harassed at festivals and venues run by men. MWMF created a feminist alternative and response for lesbians in the music scene and continues to create an annual space for living out lesbian feminist politics.
Of the over 90 women-only festivals in the United States, MWMF is one of two festivals with a womyn-born-womyn policy. Since its inception, MWMF has defined the festival as a separate space for "womyn-born-womyn," i.e. those women who were born and raised as girls and who currently identify as womyn. This controversial policy has gained notoriety for the festival, as it officially denies entry to transwomen. Supporters of this policy, including MWMF's primary organizers, believe that the particularity of womon-born-womon (WBW) experience (separate and apart from a woman's experience) comes from being born and raised in a female body, and see the festival as a celebration of that experience under the oppression of patriarchy. Supporters of the policy feel that transwomyn have not had the experience of being born and raised female, and thus should not attend the festival. Opponents of the policy, including many transgender and transsexual womyn and allies, do not recognize the particularity of WBW experience and argue for a less deterministic understanding of gender, insisting that "womyn's space is for all womyn," regardless of whether one was raised as a male or female. Opponents view the policy as transphobic and have created Camp Trans, an annual protest camp, in response.