The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival was an annual feminist music festival held every August near Hart Township, Michigan from 1976 until 2015. The festival maintained what producer Lisa Vogel refers to as "the intention" that only women who were assigned female at birth should attend. The festival's term for its intended attendees was "womyn-born-womyn" (WBW): that is, women assigned female at birth, raised as girls, and currently identifying as women. This intention was a point of contention among some people who felt that trans women should be allowed to attend.
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History
The intention first came to popular attention in 1991 after a trans festival goer named Nancy Burkholder was asked to leave the festival after several women recognized her as a trans woman, and expressed discomfort with her presence in the space. When approached by festival security and asked if she was, in fact, trans, Burkholder told her it was "none of her business" but that she "was willing to submit to genital examination in order to satisfy [security's] concerns about my sex." Festival producer Lisa Vogel maintains that this instance was the first and only time anyone was asked to leave on the basis of sex or gender. In August 2014, Lisa Vogel apologized for this incident, stating:
Over 20 years ago, we asked Nancy Burkholder, a trans womon, to leave the Land. That was wrong, and for that, we are sorry. We, alongside the rest of the LGBTQ community, have learned and changed a great deal over our 39‐year history. We speak to you now in 2014 after two decades of evolution; an evolution grown from our willingness to stay in hard conversations, just as we do every year around issues of race, ability, class and gender.
In a 2005 interview with Amy Ray, co-founder and owner Lisa Vogel discussed the intention within its informing political framework. Vogel stated that she "feel[s] 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." Vogel states that "[t]o 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." .
Criticism and protest against the WBW intention
After Nancy Burkholder was asked to leave the festival in 1991, a protest movement against the "womyn-born-womyn" intention developed. Opponents contend that the intention constitutes discrimination against transsexual and transgender people, many of whom identify as women, are legally female, and have to cope with the effects of sexism and misogyny in their daily lives. Transsexual activist Julia Serano provided her perspective on the issue: "Some of the women who travel from all over the country to attend Michigan think nothing of wearing their suspicion or hatred of trans women on their sleeves, and they will often make extraordinarily ignorant and insensitive comments about trans women in their attempts to justify our exclusion. . .[The] idea that the femaleness of my mind, personality, lived experiences, and the rest of my body can somehow be trumped by the mere presence of a penis can only be described as phallocentric." Activists for including trans women have handed out pamphlets to festival goers waiting in line for admission, protested at the gate, and boycotted performers who have played at the festival. They also established an annual protest encampment near the festival known as Camp Trans, which became inactive after 2011.
Several trans women have, since that time, attended the festival openly. Several artists who have been invited to and/or performed at the Festival have lost contracts or been forced to cancel appearances because of their support or their appearance of support for the intention. Other performers at the festival were physically threatened by pro-inclusion supporters, faced verbal harassment and bomb threats. In October 2013, the Bay Area Girls Rock Camp asked a Board member, whose Festival related team had raised funds for the organization, to resign her position for attending the festival without repudiation.
In 2006, a trans woman and Camp Trans organizer named Lorraine was sold a ticket at the box office. Supporters of trans women inclusion then issued a press release declaring, incorrectly, that the "womyn-born-womyn" intention was no longer in effect. In response, Lisa Vogel reaffirmed her support of and the festival's adherence to the intention. More recently, on April 11, 2013, in response to a Change.org petition organized by activist Red Durkin, asking performers to boycott the festival as a result of the WBW intention, Lisa Vogel released a statement again reaffirming the intention: "I reject the assertion that creating a time and place for WBW to gather is inherently transphobic. This is a false dichotomy and one that prevents progress and understanding.... Whatever spaces we carve out in our community to encourage healing and rejuvenation should be accepted, and we should support each other in this endeavor. Nobody should be asked to erase the need for autonomous spaces to demonstrate that they are sisters in struggle."