Gearing Up for Michigan Womyn's Music Festival

Beginning August 6, thousands of women will flock to Hart, Michigan for the 38th Annual Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, a five-day celebration of female musicians, poets, artists and performers camping out in nature. Out of a 650-acre plot of wilderness, women build, run and attend this feminist, clothing-optional oasis. Think of it as a Woodstock for Women.

"Michigan is a festival that brings together the artistic, political and personal expression of womyn from every generation, from urban and rural communities, from different cultures, ethnicities, countries and beliefs," reads their statement.

This year's performance lineup launches on Tuesday with an acoustic stage featuring artists CC. Carter and Storme Webber, with Lenelle Mo�se in "Womb-Words, Thirsting." Wednesday's acoustic stage will feature Winterbloom, with Antje Duvekot, Anne Heaton, Meg Hutchinson and Natalia Zukerman. On Wednesday night, Michfest will officially kick off with their opening celebration, featuring Gina Breedlove and the Indigo Girls.

Thursday's day stage will feature Round Robin and Big Bad Gina, with Mo�se and spoken word artist Staceyann Chin at the acoustic stage. The night will heat up with Hanifah Walidah, Emily Wells and JD Samson & MEN.

On Friday, the daytime hours will feature Lovers and Sick of Sarah, with Jill Sobule and Laura Love on the acoustic stage. Rockers BETTY, Melissa Ferrick, Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely will turn Friday night out.

The weekend rocks with Saturday's lineup of Aima the Dreamer, Reina Williams and THEE Satisfaction, and on the acoustic stage, Eliza Gilkyson and Hills to Hollers with Laure Lewis, Linda Tillery and Barbara Higbie. Saturday night features God-Des and She, Elvira Kurt and Chix Lix, and '80s Prom.

The festival closes on Sunday, with daytime comedy by Gloria Bigelow, Gina Yashere and Julie Goldman. Drummer and teacher extraordinaire Ubaka Hill will bring her drumsong orchestra to the acoustic stage, and Ruth Barrett will lead a candlelight concert.

The History of Michfest

Michfest was founded in 1976 by a 19-year-old Lisa Vogel, with the help of her sister and friend. The festival showcased a number of women musicians and speakers, and was modeled after the Boston Women's Music Festival. Early artists included Holly Near, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Alix Dobkin, Cris Williamson, Meg Christian and Ferron.

Later on, the festival added a focus on women's spirituality and goddess heritage. Vogel teamed up with Boo Price, who became her co-producer. Lesbian comedians like Kate Clinton began emceeing events, spoken word artists began to attend and specialized workshops offered attendees access to their favorite performers. Past workshops have included "Breast Casting for Women of Color" and "The Matrix of Oppression."

Several year ago, photojournalist Angela Jimenez began capturing the images of these women transforming the land into festival space, and eventually gathered them into a book, "Welcome Home: Building the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival."

The festival grew through the years via trial and error, but the focus remained on provided access to women-born-women. That eventually included providing American Sign Language translators, a Differently Abled Resource Tent (DART), childcare, sober support and a women of color tent and sanctuary.

"Built from the ground up by womyn's innovation and womyn's labor, filled with art, performance, play and discourse -- we live together for a week in the woods and create community as we know it in no other form," said Vogel in a recent letter. "There's freedom on that land that womyn living under patriarchy rarely touch; freedom to walk in the woods at night alone without fear; to be clothed or not clothed depending solely on comfort and personal style and without judgment; to move and work and play and love without the socio-cultural constraints that uniquely push down on all womyn, all the time."

Michfest has grown to attract upwards of 5,000-8,000 campers, and provides a performers village, a barter market, a Redhead Parade and a children's parade, dance lessons and a Cuntree Store. They create a village in the wilderness, and after the festival, they leave the land how they found it. The focus is still very heavily on 'green' policies in recycling, dishwashing and care of the land. And above all, women's land, for women only.

Trans Exclusion Policy Causes Controversy

After all these years, Vogel is still at the helm. And so is her intention that Michigan Womyn's Music Festival be for cisgender women only: women born female, raised as girls and who currently identify as women. Men and transgender women are excluded, much to the chagrin of transgender individuals who would like to find a place for themselves in the festivities.

In 1991, after transwoman Nancy Burkholder was asked to leave, protests began against the exclusion. Transpeople have taken to protesting at the gate in what has become known as Camp Trans, and more recently, the group Trans Womyn Belong Here. Some performers have joined the boycott; this year will be their last, said the Indigo Girls Emily Saliers and Amy Ray, unless organizers reverse this "women born women" only policy.

"We are in a time of struggle and rapid changes in our movement and we would be remiss to not recognize that many of the strides that have been made are a result of Trans Activism and the strength and perspective they have brought to the queer and feminist revolutions. We feel that if someone identifies as a womyn, they are a womyn and should be welcomed into our community with open arms. We will only be stronger for it," said Saliers in an April statement on their website.

Since the beginning, Michfest was constructed as a space for women to feel safe and recharge their batteries. But organizers also hold value in not questioning anyone's gender presentation. In 2001, they began circulating fliers outlining this policy.

"We ask all Festival-goers and staff to honor our commitment that no womyn's gender will be questioned on the land. Butch/gender-ambiguous womyn should be able to move about our community with confidence that their right to be here will not be questioned," reads the statement. "We also have a commitment to run the Festival in a way that keeps faith with the womyn-born womyn policy, which may mean denying admission to individuals who self-declare as male-to-female transsexuals or female-to-male transsexuals now living as men (or asking them to leave if they enter)."

The conflict reached a boiling point in April, when writer and comic Red Durkin, a lesbian trans woman, launched a Change.org petition calling on performers to boycott the festival until its organizers would "explicitly welcome all self-identified women." The petition now has more than 2,000 signatures.

"I respect the politics of separate space," said Vogel, responding to Durkin's petition. "What I am trying to address in my statement is that if you are born female, deemed female at birth, raised as a girl, experienced the rigid enforcement of gender hierarchy from the time that you are a baby, you have a certain shared group experience that is different from someone who was born, deemed male, and raised as a boy."

Some believe that the festival should be opened up to trans people, but other attendees have defended the position, saying that having women-only space allows for women to drop their cultural baggage and the social pressures of patriarchy. Others contend that trans women are informed by their boyhood and male privilege, and carry that with them, even if it is subconsciously.

The policy is dividing the lesbian community, and has become rife with accusations and threats from both sides: ironically, the exact type of behavior that Vogel sought to provide a safe refuge from by creating Michfest. In a recently published interview.

"I'm heartened that there are many women who attend the festival who have strong beliefs on all sides of this discussion and are able to have this conversation at the festival with respect for differences, and hopefully we'll come to a place where there is greater understanding -- where everyone has respect for the authentic experience of every individual," said Vogel.

Michfest admission runs on a sliding scale from $65-600, depending on how many days you plan to attend, and whether you are paying on a fixed income or flexible sliding plan. The voluntary higher-end payment helps organizers retain the ability to subsidize those at the lower end.