"A Fest in Distress"
Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture
Issue 17
(Summer 2002)

Robin Finkelstein, Emi Koyama, and Grover Wehman discuss the politics
of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival and its inflammatory entrance
policy. Moderated by Lisa Miya-Jervis.

FOR MORE THAN A DECADE, controversy has been brewing over the Michigan
Womyn's Music Festival, the mother of all women's festivals, where gals
have gathered for performances, workshops, and same- sex fun every
summer since 1976. The best maintains its all-female space through a
policy admitting "woman born womyn only"--which is where the
controversy comes in. Transsexual and gender queer activists began to
raise awareness of the gender prejudices inherent in the policy in
1991, when one attendee was evicted from the festival after identifying
herself in a workshop as a male-to-female transsexual. In 1994, a
contentious and growing activist force known as Camp Grans set up shop
across the road from the festival's main gates. They returned in 1999
and have been a yearly presence ever since, leafleting and protesting
with the hope of drawing support for a revised policy that includes all
self-identified women. While at first the fight over grans inclusion at
the festival was mainly between organizers and male-to-female
transsexuals (MTFS) who wanted to take part, it has now expanded to
encompass FTMS, intersex folk, and genderqueers who identify as neither
men nor women. It has also attracted the attention of folks who
otherwise wouldn't give a second thought to a large group of women
camping in the woods, enjoying live music and vegan entrees. Artists
who play the festival-- and their record labels--are being boycotted;
petitions, open letters, and statements abound.

Throughout its existence, the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival has often
served as a microcosm of feminism itself, with heated debates over a
number of issues--childcare, disability inclusion, lesbian SM--that
reflected and were reflected in similar debates within feminism more
broadly. The questions raised by the fight over grans inclusion at
Michigan-- What makes a person a woman? How and by whom is gender
determined?--are vital ones for feminism's future, and have
implications well beyond the Michigan land.

So Bitch invited some folks with no official connection to the
best--but plenty of opinions about it--over to the office for a
discussion. Robin Finkelstein, 34, is a five- time festival attendee
and self-identified butch lesbian. Writer/activist/educator Ami Kama,
27, is "a multi- issue social justice slut synthesizing feminist,
Asian, survivor, dyke, queer, sex-worker, slut, intersex, genderqueer,
and crip politics." "My interest is how the discussion in this case is
about transsexual people officially, but often it's more than that,"
she says. "And to have a conversation about it brings us to think about
the differences among women, between feminists." Nineteen-year-old
Grover Wehman is a two-time festival attendee whose gender identity is
"fluid and often changing [and includes] cranny boy, dyke, and butch,
and [is] basically a masculine expression of some form of a woman," he
explains "I came into feminism and out as a lesbian in rural Ohio, and
it was the Utopian goal to attend the festival. And so as soon as I
turned 18 I went there with my girlfriend and it changed my life; I had
a really strong connection to it. When I started going to Michigan, I
was like 'Lesbian woman all the way! I love my cunt!' and now I have a
different relationship to my body and my gender."

On the importance of women-only space EK: I've never attended Michigan,
but I've attended several different women-only events. I've also been
to different spaces for queer people of color only, and places that
were for people with disabilities only. There's something really
positive to it. I think anybody who criticizes the policy needs to come
from the acknowledgment that there is something going on that is really
valuable.

GW: Woman-only space is important, but it's the "woman" part that's
complicated. There are things that happen in women-only space that
can't happen in other spaces. I mean, violence [still] happens between
women, but in an age [embracing the concept of safer things like] safer
sex, there is definitely a safer element in women getting together on
the premise that we are all women. Women-only space is for the people
who are in it, as opposed to the people who are outside of it. The real
question is: Who belongs inside?

RF: The only thing I've been to that's women-born- women-only is
Michigan. I've had different experiences in environments like Yosemite
Women's Festival--it was very known that they were trying to be the
festival that was not Michigan. There were people there who were
obviously pre-op [transsexuals] and it made for a very different feel.
I mean, for all intents and purposes, I saw them as men. They were big.
They were hairy. Not that there aren't hairy women--it was just very
different.

EK: What do you mean, pre-op?

RF: Okay, I shouldn't say that. Maybe they weren't ever gonna have
operations. But they were men, for all intents and purposes.

EK: But you didn't talk to them, so you don't know how they identify.

RF: I talked to them in passing. I talked to one in particular and
he--well, she--told me that she was pre-op.

EK: She told you she was a woman.

RF: No. She did say she was born a man and was gonna have a sex change.

GW: She identified as a woman?

RF: I guess so, because it was a women's festival.

EK: That's a good guess.

RF: To me it felt just like I feel when I'm at other queer events; I
just felt pride in the queer family. I didn't feel as comfortable [at
Yosemite] as I do at Michigan, being naked or whatever--there was a
different feeling. For me, women-only space is for women born as women,
lived as women, and self-identified as women.

EK: So do you feel that your experience is more similar to a woman
whose life is different racially, economically, nationally, sexually,
and everything else, than to a man who otherwise shares your
background?

RF: Yeah. When it comes down to it, 1 feel like I have more in common
with [women]. I mean, there are definitely women I wouldn't have a lot
in common with or feel comfortable with, but we're still women.

EK: To say that gender division is bigger than racial, national, class,
or disability boundaries--I think it is true of some people's
experience, usually the most privileged women. But this is the same
debate that happened in the '70S. And [lesbians of color] said, This
doesn't work for us, because we need an alliance with black men who are
fighting against racism. It's a really old controversy. There's a
difference between who we personally feel allied to vs. using that as
the basis for an institution.

RF: But for a music festival--there are many women's music festivals
other than Michigan. I don't see it as an institution; it's not being
forced all around the world.

EK: By this logic, you allow white upper- and middle- class feminists
and women who are privileged in other ways to basically discriminate
[against] and alienate people who are different from them. We can have
a women's festival, a women's studies department, and we can say, Oh,
this isn't an institution; this is just friends getting together. And
basically give them permission to do whatever they want, and that
includes focusing solely on their oppression while not doing anything
about people with other oppressions.

GW: Almost all institutions or groups start out with people who have
something in common. No matter how small it is, eventually it becomes
institutionalized. Given the volume of women that the festival brings
in and [the fact that] they have people at the top who write

the policy and then hand it to people at the gates who then hand it to
people who drive in--that is definitely an institutionalized action.
Michigan isn't 10 women sitting around a campfire talking. There is a
structure, there is money changing hands.

If you were making the rules... RF: I am actually happy with the policy
as it is. At first, when I became aware of trans issues, I [thought],
What a sucky policy, because there are people who are women who weren't
born women--what about them? But what I like about the policy is that
[it says] that there are many gender identities at Michigan, including
people who identify as transgendered. [Festival founder/organizer Lisa
Vogel] wrote a [statement] saying there will never be questioning of
somebody's gender. There are no canty checks. You could be walking on
the land with a full beard or whatever, and you'd never be questioned.

LMJ: Have you found that to be the case?

RF: Two people were questioned in 2000. A group of people came in from
Camp Trans--some were trans and some weren't, and some said [they were]
male-to- female or female-to-male, and it was only at that time that
they were handed the policy and told to please respect this as a
women-only space.

LMJ: Grover, have you also found that people don't question gender on
the land?

GW: I feel as if that's not true. Women have been questioned. I know a
woman who's been on testosterone and has facial hair and appears very
masculine, who went to buy tickets last year and the girl selling
tickets just stared at her. And she was like, "I'd like two tickets,"
and the girl turned to the person next to her and was like, "What do I
do?" And she was [told], "Give her a ticket." And the girl was like,
"But I don't want to give her a ticket." And my friend said, "Give me a
ticket, I'm a woman, I belong here." And the ticket girl goes, "I don't
want you here." And my friend said, "It's not really your decision.
It's not about you."

My ideal policy would be women-identified women only. It's classist to
say that [transwomen] must have an operation before they can come on
the land 'cause I don't want to see [a penis] in the shower. It's
important for anybody who identifies as a woman, in any expression or
capacity of what that is to them, to be welcome on the land. I
personally feel that transmen should not be allowed on the land because
they identify as men. I know in the trans community this is a huge
debate, and I have many friends who e-mailed me saying, "I can't
believe you are going to this magazine and taking this stance, because
it's not right. I should be able to go." No, you should be able to go
across the street [to Camp Trans].

EK: I take some knowledge and wisdom from Latina feminism and theories
about the politics of borders. Any time we try to draw a clear boundary
around gender we end up cutting somebody's flesh. It's not that they
are in the borderlands, it's that the borders are arbitrarily drawn on
top of their bodies. I am not one of those people who wants to get rid
of women-only space, but I think any attempt to draw a clear boundary
and legitimize that boundary as the official one would be problematic.
I may not feel comfortable with somebody who has a penis; I may not
feel comfortable with some body who has white skin. But I don't have
the entitlement to eliminate whatever makes me feel uncomfortable. I
want to have fluid boundaries. Yet there will be intruders if we do
this. There will be intruders even if we don't, because they don't
question gender at the gate. I think it's really wise not to question
gender at the gate, [because] if you do, you end up harassing people
whose femininity is different from mainstream society's femininity.

RF: But what would you do if some dude that lives in Grand Rapids
walked into the festival? How would you handle that?

EK: If [someone says], "Hey, I'm a guy. Can I come in?" then he can be
told no. But you just said that they don't question anybody's gender.

RF: They don't question gender when you're buying your ticket. But
there have been yee-haws coming in off the road because they want to
see the tittles, and there's security all over the land to make sure
that doesn't happen. How would you deal with that?

EK: But that's not really a question that arises because of my
proposal. I think the security at my festival would do exactly what the
security at your festival would do. Which is probably that they would
end up questioning gender. And I don't like it. But I think that
regardless of whether there's a women-born women policy, the situation
arises.

GW: I don't think most guys who want to come in and see tittles would
go and read the policy and then say, "I'm a woman, let me in." But [if
they did], once they go in, there's 6,000 really-happy-that-ifs-women-
only-space women there, and if there's a guy--or a woman--who's being
offensive, or oppressive, or disgusting, they're going to say
something. That guy would have to be pretty darn brave to take on 6,000
dykes. There is a self-policing that does and will go on at Michigan if
people are being inappropriate.

EK: The understanding in this society is that there are two sexes, male
and female, and we pretend that's really clear-cut. But it's not. And
what I'm saying is, let's not deny this: Drawing one line as the
official policy is inherently flawed, because we will always end up
drawing on somebody else's body. So I want to avoid that and create
fuzzy boundaries.

RF: I see where you're coming from, but it's okay to have clear
boundaries.

GW: At the time the festival was founded, women didn't have a concept
of what the debates would be 27 years later. The discussions are so
much more complex now that grans people have visibility and voices
within the feminist community. Emi's right in that when drawing lines
somebody's going to be cut up somehow, but I feel like it doesn't have
to [be that way]. Lines may be set, but identities don't have to be. If
the only term that we're using in the policy is "woman," if [there's]
someone who lives as a transman but part of their identity is that of a
woman, who am I to say that they're not a woman?

A lot of heated debate in the trans community is about, "Who are you to
say who I am? Who are you to draw boxes around me?" But if we don't
make a distinction and we just say "fuzzy boundaries," the reality is
that once word gets out that guys can come and look at titties and sex
workshops in a women's space, the energy and the festival will change
and will not be [about] women anymore. Some people say feminism is
inherently about there being a time when none of us is either a woman
or a man. But the festival was founded around being women.

Michigan and the problems within it can't be addressed without looking
at everything Michigan has been historically. It was founded primarily
by lesbians and dykes, [people who] had no safe spaces--when they tried
to organize safe spaces, they had to do it in clubs and bookstores that
were owned by men, and so to be women-only meant to them no men. But
what we're talking about [now] is enhancing the festival, as opposed to
shutting it down or infiltrating it. There is no simple fix to this
issue. But I feel like it's a challenge for the entire feminist
community, and feminists should look into the history and the
intersections of oppression and how they have played out in other
instances. I feel like Michigan is a really important and powerful
place, and we should really talk about the ways in which it can be
important and powerful for all women.

What's the policy really saying? RF: [I interpret it as saying that]
you can be a woman even if you were born in a male body.

LMJ: That's a new interpretation to me.

GW: All the people I've talked to who support the policy [understand]
woman-born woman to mean that you were born a girl, that it says "F" on
your birth certificate. Robin's interpretation is very different. I say
"woo-boo" to that, but I've never heard anybody interpret it that way.

RF; You can't define what a woman is. If you feel you're a woman and
you live your life as a woman and identify as a woman--even if you were
born a man-- you're a woman-born woman. That's the interpretation that
I have for it and that most people I've talked to have. And that's what
everything [Lisa Vogel] has been writing about the policy has been
saying. [Vogel comments: "No, that's not how we would define, it.
Everyone in the community is struggling with language and how to define
things.... Here's what we say: What womyn-born womyn means to us is
women who were born as women, who have lived their entire experience as
women, and who identify as women."]

EK: I think you are actively reinterpreting the policy, or misreading
it. The policy is really clear that [the festival] doesn't want
transsexual people, male-to-female or female-to-male.

RF: It says here [reading from the policy], "Michigan has been home to
womyn-born womyn who represent every point along the continuum of
gender identity: from butch to femme to beyond butch and femme,
including many who consider themselves transgendered."

EK: Right. And there are many people who identify as transgendered who
are not trans sexual. A butch woman might call herself transgendered,
but she's a woman. If somebody walked in and said, "I was born in a
male body but I have identified as a woman all my life," do you think
that they won't kick her out?

RF: Well, not in the way it's written, no, they shouldn't. That would
be the way I would interpret it, that they wouldn't. How [the official
policy] backs it up is women-born women, lived your life as a woman,
and currently identify as a woman.

LMJ: Right. And I don't think that includes transsexual women or
intersex people.

RF: It does if they identify as a woman. If they come in and say, "I'm
a transwoman," or they make a big deal about it, then it becomes a big
deal. But if they identify as a woman--

EK: That's like saying if you're a Jewish person willing to pass as
Christian, and not talk about your Judaism or your culture, then you
can pass and you will be okay. You are advocating that system.

GW: No one's going to walk up to me and say, "Grover, are you trans?"
But if I was a transwoman and I walked on the land and didn't get
questioned when I walked in the gate, I could not sit in a workshop
with everybody talking about how when they were little girls they felt
like this, and say, "Well, when I was born with a boy's body but was a
little girl...." I would be kicked off the land. In 1991, Nancy
Burkholder came out in a workshop as a transwoman. And they said, You
have to go. You can't be here. That was the policy interpreted: She was
born a man.

On the nature of identity GW: I identify as a boy and a dyke and a
tranny and all those things. One of my friends said, "If you feel like
you belong on the land"--and she felt like I didn't-- "why isn't
'woman' in any of those?" Times are changing, the nature of identity
and identification is changing. I'm 19, and the people whose gender
most matches mine identify as transgendered and as transsexual. That
wasn't an option [before]. And [now] I can say that my identity as boy
is an expression of woman-ness. I don't experience myself in the
language that the dominant community at Michigan does, but I had to use
their language in order to be able to be included. I had to use the
word "woman."

RF: What people are calling "boys" or "bois" now is often what were
[called] baby dykes before. There are so many different things to call
yourself. But when it comes down to it, I am a woman. It doesn't hurt
me to admit that or to identify as that even though I don't normally
embrace it. I think some people at Michigan are upset and saddened--all
these years, they've fought to have "woman" be a good thing, and to
mean all of these things, but now some people are saying, "I'm not a
woman." "Woman" is becoming a bad word.

EK: So you see how hurtful that is to have "woman" taken away. How do
you feel about forcing that on transsexual women, to give up their
identity as transsexual?

RF: I don't want to force anyone to give up their identity.

EK: So that they can pass, so that they can get into Michigan, so that
they can go to this festival with their friends--to do that they have
to hide part of themselves, similar to how some people are pressured to
give up "woman"--

RF: Who's pressured? People gave it up because they could, because they
got to a place where there were other things they could call
themselves. If I was 18 right now, I probably wouldn't identify as a
woman. All I'm saying is that I was ambiguous in gender, and being at
Michigan made it okay to be who I was.

EK: And good for you, [who you are] happened to be okay at Michigan.

GW: Lisa Vogel can use the term "transgender" in her statement, but the
woman in the tent next to me says that I shouldn't be there. I can only
imagine if I were a transsexual woman who had to be silent about my
entire history.... I can still speak about my history and the people
who are defining the words at Michigan can call it butch.

RF: I have no problem with MTFS coming on the land. There was a time
when I would have, because I wasn't educated, and I thought. Oh, they
have male privilege, they were a man. Now I see the struggle, and [the
policy supports that]--there are MTFS on the land and no one's
questioning them.

EK: But they can't come out as transgendered. They have to hide it from
other people. It's like a woman of color being told that she can't talk
about racism if she wants to be in feminism. It forces people to cut
off part of their identity or their history. You can come in, you can
talk about being a woman, but you can't talk about being a transsexual
woman. How come we can't conceptualize a transsexual woman's childhood
as a girlhood in hiding?

GW: People from the outside see it as: These women have grown up as
boys, period. And people in the trans community say they've grown up as
a very different kind of woman. [Changing the policy is] just a way to
open up what it means to be a woman.

But in trying to make a space safe, I'm still kind of torn [about] at
whose expense this safety will be. To force a space open is problematic
to me. I don't see a transwoman coming into the festival gates as male
privilege, but [other members of the Michigan community do]. So whose
view is more valid, I don't know...

RF: Michigan isn't this huge thing that makes or breaks rules in
society or whatever. I mean, it's a women's festival. It's not makin'
the rules, it's not makin' the law.

LMJ: To play devil's advocate, you could use that same logic to argue
the other side: It's just a festival, so why not let everyone in?

EK: I think this discussion is reproducing a history of white feminists
saying that women don't have actual social power, therefore we can't be
racist like white men can. And that's the argument that's been made
repeatedly to excuse women who are marginalizing other groups of women
to get away with what they do.

RF: I don't think they're trying to get away with anything. I think
they have been trying to have a space for women to go. They're not a
big, powerful majority in the world.

EK: That's exactly what I said. That's the argument that white women
have used to evade responsibility for their racism. I think that it's
time to historicity our [arguments], and learn how we continue to
support the structures that create greater divisions among women, that
create greater inequality and imbalance of power. I no longer think of
this as just a transsexual issue.

RF: What I know is, as "wrong" as Michigan might be for having a
women-born-women policy and as "oppressive" as it is, it's because of
Michigan that many, many women have actually changed from female to
male. It was in that space that they realized who they were. And now
many don't even go, because they now identify as men.

On the privilege of safety EK: We push the idea of safety too much.
It's become threatening to me, as somebody with multiple identities. I
am told I'm safe in a women-only space, and if I experience racism
there then I'm not safe anymore but I can't even say that I'm not safe.
Outside of women-only space, if I say I don't feel safe, I have a whole
bunch of friends who will sympathize with that. But if I say I don't
feel safe in the lesbian community, that's much more difficult. The
paradox is that when it's acknowledged that [these spaces] are unsafe,
that they're not equal for everybody, they suddenly become somewhat
safer for me.

It's in the name of safety that we are locking up Middle Eastern people
in this country. It's in the name of safety that antigay people are
saying that we need to protect our kids from those evil gays: We can't
let them adopt, we can't let them be teachers. When we talk about
safety, I see it as more often about entitlement. Whenever [people]
feel uncomfortable, whatever they want to hate, they can label it
unsafe and lock it up. This huge sense of entitlement is felt by many
Nona transsexual people.

RF: This goes back to the whole question of, Why have women's space at
all? All [the policy] says is that we don't want men on the land. We
want a women-only festival. We want to kick back with the women and
hang out and do whatever we do.

LMJ: But that assumes there are only two categories, women and
men--which obviously is not the case.

GW: People fighting for trans inclusion are saying--I myself am
saying--it's not safe to go on the land as a trans person and have to
be closeted the entire time. It's not okay. But I also have to step
back and say, Is my safety at the expense of somebody else's safety?
And who gets to call the shots in this discussion? Women who have a
certain experience view XY chromosomes, or penises, as violent.

EK: There are people who see black skin as violent, too. [In this
situation,] the dominant group is often pushed to the center and that's
what we care about. [It becomes about] the comfort of the group, rather
than comfort for the people who are marginalized. It puts the
responsibility on a minority group, rather than questioning the
entitlement of the dominant group to be able to remove what makes them
uncomfortable. And when you say women-born women, you mean non-
transsexual women, and that is a privilege: being non- transsexual in a
society that hates transsexuals, that kills transsexuals. I think the
people in the dominant group need to feel uncomfortable. When they feel
uncomfortable, perhaps marginalized people will feel safer.