Michfest, and why you shouldn’t go
Published by Sabotabby July 26th, 2008 in For the ladies, Music, discriminationMichigan Womyn’s Music Festival is, strictly speaking, not really any of my business. It’s been a few years since any artist I particularly like performed there, and I have an allergy to alternative spellings of “women.” This said, as a feminist, I do feel it’s my right to criticize gender essentialism and transphobia and take issue with people who attempt to use feminist language to exclude already marginalized people.
As you know, Bob, MWMF has always called itself a women-only space. That’s cool; the world being what it is, there’s a place for women-only spaces, and POC-only spaces, and so on. But the organizer and many attendees get squicked when it comes to transgendered women. (Transgendered men, for some reason, are welcome to attend.) So they’ve set up a “NO TRANSWOMEN ALLOWED” fort and used the academically problematic term “womyn-born-womyn” to exclude certain undesirable sorts of women from the event. (I always wonder how they check these things, but anyway.)
Here’s a great post detailing why MWMF is problematic, and what you can do to fight transphobia there, and in your own life.
In the age of analyzing oppression and owning up to our own privilege, MWMF is an anomaly time-warped from the 70s. Defining a women’s space that excludes trans women in effect defines them as other than women. Denying their common experiences, challenges, struggles and triumphs as women serves to further limit their access to community, health, well-being and dignity. It creates a class of disposable women.
Go read the whole thing.
Wait… so biological women who identify as men are welcome, but biological men who identify as women are NOT? I can’t even see the logic in that (if there is logic to be found in discrimination).
biological women who identify as men are welcome, but biological men who identify as women are NOT?
Because transgendered men are “really” women, I guess. If I had the stick up my ass that they do, I’d kick the transmen out for denying their womanhood, but I guess all is forgivable if you were born with a vagina.
That they allowed trans men but not trans women makes it worse to me, because they’re being UBER gender essentialist and denying that transmen are men as well. Their invitation would seem to come with the caveat “but don’t expect us to think you’re men just because that’s how you identify.”
Rar smash.
I’ve just started Julia Serano’s book that was partially inspired by this, and her theory seems to be shaping up to be that feminists—the very people who you’d expect from—all too often fall into the sexist habit of assuming feminine is lesser than masculine, and therefore those who embrace their feminine selves are somehow repugnant in a way that people who embrace their masculine selves aren’t.