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"Don't Tell, Don't Ask" at Michigan

selective enforcement is already in practice

Forum: Strap-on.org
Date: 06/26/2002

in all the documents on emi's site, and according to the people at the protest monday night, no one is allowed to do "gender checks". it claims that no one asks anyone what gender they are, and if they pay for a ticket, they are allowed in. how does this work? is it true?

Based on my conversations with people who volunteer at the michfest, it's true and not true. It's true to the degree that they generally do not ask if someone is trans even if they look like one: so long as the person participates in the "don't ask, don't tell" program s/he is not be denied admission.

On the other hand, I've heard that sometimes young men from the neighbouring communities come over and try to get in, who appear to be straight, non-trans men. I heard that fest workers routinely break their own rules and tell these people to leave even if they didn't say they were men or transsexual.

A concern I heard from one person is that if they openly admit transsexual people solely on the basis of their identity, these straight, non-trans men from the neighbourhood will come and claim to be transsexual and they would lose the ability to turn them away. This is ridiculous because they are already breaking their own rules by not letting anyone enter without questioning gender, and they can continue to keep out the same group of people without changing anything else.

As I always say, the womyn-born-womyn policy should not be modified to include transwomen; it simply needs to be repealed so that there would not be any "official" policy defining who is "woman" enough. The statement "this festival is for women" (duh) and the policy against gender checking should suffice.

By the way, there was a big party at MIT last week featuring Alix Dobkin where 40+ people (mostly lesbians from the 70s) gathered. My friend who was there started the discussion about Michigan/trans thing, and apparently a large number of them used to be big MWMF fans but they haven't gone back since 1994 because of the anti-transsexual policy. Yeay. On the other hand, I realize that the Women's Center in Cambridge still has "no penis" policy...

emigrl

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