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Michigan Womyn's Music Festival

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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 welcomes all women-born-women. Although the location is not a total secret, it is common courtesy not to mention it in order to protect the safety of the over 4,000 women who attend and those who voluntarily work at the festival for up to a month each year.

As a response to perceived misogyny, sexism and homophobia, and also to create a place for women to gather in the midwest, MWMF was created in 1976 by 19-year-old Lisa Vogel, her sister Kristie, and Mary Kindig. All three were working-class women 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 place for living out lesbian feminist politics. The festival is completely built, staffed, and run by women; indeed, women build all of the stages, run the light and sound systems, make the trash collection rounds, serve as medical and psychological support, cook meals for 4,000 over open fire pits, provide childcare and facilitate workshops covering every known topic of interest to womyn in the US and abroad.

Further, in its commitment to living out lesbian feminist politics, community decisions are made through community meetings where the youngest members of the community are given as much access to participate as the oldest.

The festival has some of the best quality performances and creates a premium high tech production in an extremely rural outdoor venue. Three stages feature an eclectic selection of women musicians. Tracy Chapman began her career playing to the festival audience and many singer-songwriters before and since then have built loyal followings across the USA and beyond because of their connection with the festival. For a festival that is now in its 30th year, it is also important to note that there is absolutely no corporate sponsorship. Each festival pays for the next.

Built over a month-long period by a volunteer workforce, the festival land starts completely in its natural ecological state. After the week-long festivities, the workers tear down the entire operation and completely remove all non-organic materials from the land. The equipment is then stored in a variety of local barns and warehouses to be used the following year. By the time the last woman leaves the land, nothing remains to bear witness of the event; even the electrical boxes that power the festival are buried at each festival's end.

The festival provides an amazing range of services to its attendees for one low inclusive price. Three vegetarian meals are served to festival goers and festival workers, daily. There is "Women of Color"-only space, accesibility for women with physical disabilities, childcare, health care, and several categories of camping to suit most needs (including "Chem-Free," "Scent-Free" and "Over-50s," and even space for "Loud and Roudy" campers, to name only a few). Workshops, sports, movies under the stars, open mikes, dances, sweat lodges, drum gatherings, special events sponsored by the BD/SM Community and, of course, the concerts on all three stages make this one-week community vibrant and busy.

Contents

The Woman-born-Woman Policy and the Debate Over the Inclusion of Transsexual Women

In 1991 Nancy Burkholder was expelled from MWMF when her transsexual status was discovered and reported to organizers. Defending the action from public criticism, the festival organizers cited an unwritten and up to that time largely unknown women-born-women policy. Of the more than 90 women-only festivals in the United States, MWMF is one of only two festivals with a women-born-women policy. The organizers state that since its inception, "the Michigan Festival is and always has been an event for womyn, and this continues to be defined as womyn born womyn" (Lisa Vogel & Barbara Price) i.e. those women who were born and raised as girls and who currently identify as women. This controversial policy has gained notoriety for the festival, as it officially requests that the attendees be women-born women only. Supporters of this policy, including MWMF's primary organizers, believe that the particularity of women-born-women (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 the experience of being women born women in a place that honors that experience is vital for providing a sense of strength for attendees.

Opponents of the policy, including transgender and transsexual activists, believe that WBW is a false category created solely to legitimize discrimination against transsexual women. They argue for a less deterministic understanding of gender, insisting that "women's space is for all self-identified women," regardless of whether one was assigned female or male at birth. Trans rights activists claim that the festival's policy exerts non-trans privilege and establishes an atmosphere of oppression and discrimination by allowing some women in but not other women. Opponents view the policy as transphobic and there is an active protest movement including performers criticizing the policy from the stage, attendees wearing yellow armbands, and Camp Trans, an annual protest camp.

List of Performers from Past Years

See also

References

External links

 

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