Michigan Womyn's Music Festival

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (MWMF) is an international feminist music festival occurring every year in August in Hart, Michigan.

1 Creation and purpose
2 Functioning, activities and services
3 Production and performances
4 "Womyn Born Womyn" policy and debate over trans inclusion
5 List of past performers
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Creation and purpose

As a response to perceived misogyny, sexism and homophobia, MWMF was created in 1976 by 19-year-old Lisa Vogel, her sister Kristie, and Mary Kindig, the We Want the Music Collective. 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.

Initially run on a smaller parcel of land, in the early 1980s, through donations, fundraisers as well as proceeds from former festivals, the collective purchased 650 acres of woodland in Hart, Michigan, and permanently preserved festival lands for women to gather.

In the mid-1980s, Vogel was joined by Barbara "Boo" Price, a producer in the Bay Area, as a co-producer. Price's last festival as a producer was in 1994.

[edit] Functioning, activities and services

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 various topics of interest to women in the US and abroad.

Further, in its commitment to living out 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 provides a wide range of services to its attendees for one inclusive price. Three vegetarian meals are served daily to festival goers and festival workers. There is "Women of Color"-only space, accessibility 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 space for "Loud and Rowdy" campers, called the Twilight Zone, to name only a few). Besides the concerts, there are also workshops, sports, movies under the stars, open mikes, dances, sweat lodges and drum gatherings.

[edit] Production and performances

The festival creates a premium high tech production in an extremely rural outdoor venue. 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.

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. The festival has absolutely no corporate sponsorship, with each year's festival paying for the next.

[edit] "Womyn Born Womyn" policy and debate over trans inclusion

[edit] History

Since its inception, "the Michigan Festival...always has been an event for womyn, and this continues to be defined as womyn born womyn" (Lisa Vogel & Barbara Price). This policy has gained notoriety for the festival, as it officially requests that the attendees be "womyn-born-womyn" (WBW) only, that is, those who were born and raised as girls, and currently identify as women. MWMF is one of only a few women's festivals with a WBW policy.

In 1991 Nancy Burkholder, who had attended the festival the year before without incident, was expelled from MWMF when she disclosed her transsexual status to festival workers who, in turn, informed the festival office. Ms. Burkholder was asked to leave the festival and received a full refund of her ticket. Festival organizers continued to advocate their support of the womyn-born-womyn policy even as criticism from some segments of the queer community mounted in response to Ms. Burkholder's departure.

[edit] Support

Supporters of the policy believe that the particularity of 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. Many attendees and workers remark on feelings of liberation they experienced while within the WBW-only environment of the festival: from a feeling of safety at being able to walk in the dark without fear, to a deep and sometimes virgin acceptance of their bodies. Supporters of the policy feel that the experience of being WBW in a place that honors the bodies, brains and braun of WBW (regardless of how they "fit" into mainstream culture), and rescripts the limiting experiences available for women and girls, is vital to unlearning a lifetime of internalized misogyny for both attendees and festival volunteers.

The festival has stated that it does not and will not perform "panty checks." Rather, it states that women must "self-monitor", and attend only if they can honestly state that they were born as girls, lived as a girl, and presently identify as a woman.

[edit] Criticism

Opponents of the policy believe that WBW is a questionable category created solely to legitimize discrimination against transsexual and transgender women. They point out that very little of the festival's content and language about itself centers around specific experiences of being "born and raised", but rather focuses on the idea that the festival is by and for "all women". Opponents 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 that it establishes and promotes an atmosphere of oppression and discrimination by allowing some women in but not other women. Opponents view the policy as transphobic. Since the 1991 incident involving Burkholder, an active protest movement has sprung up around the festival. Opposition has included performers criticizing the policy from the stage, boycotts of performers who have played at the festival and not taken anti-policy stances, attendees wearing yellow armbands to signal their opposition, and Camp Trans, an annual protest camp that takes place near the site of the MWMF.

In 1999, the then organizer of Camp Trans, Riki Wilchins, led an on-land protest of the WBW policy called "Son of Camp Trans." One of the protesters, Tony Barreto-Neto, a post-operative transsexual man, took a shower on the land to demonstrate that anyone who had "paid their dues" to the lesbian community was entitled to attend MWMF. In addition to Barreto-Neto's action, Wilkins called a highly charged community meeting regarding the policy.

Although Camp Trans now has different leadership, it continues to advocate for the inclusion of any self-identified woman to MWMF, regardless of the length of that identification, the perception of that indivual's gender in daily life, or whether that person has undergone surgery or uses hormone treatments. In 2006, following an erroneous press release from Camp Trans, Lisa Vogel reaffirmed her support of and the festival's adherence to the policy.

[edit] List of past performers

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../m/i/c/Michigan_Womyn%27s_Music_Festival_573e.html"

Categories: Folk festivals | Michigan culture | Music festivals | Transgender | Feminism and society