DETROIT — In 1991, Nancy Burkholder was first thrown out of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival for being transgender. Since that time, several more transgender people have been asked to leave the event out of respect for its "womyn-born-womyn intention" which discourages transgender women from participating in the music festival held annually in Michigan and attended by women from across the United States. Equality Michigan has begun a petition encouraging people to commit to a multi-year effort to convince the event's owner and organizers to modernize their discriminatory policy.
Equality Michigan, the statewide anti-violence and advocacy organization serving Michigan's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and HIV communities, supports victims of anti-transgender discrimination, harassment, and violence, and tracks discriminatory acts against transgender people throughout Michigan. The group has been seeking reform on this policy since its founding in the early 1990s.
The event's co-founder and owner, Lisa Vogel, maintains that the event is open to members of the transgender community, and that their position on "womyn-born-womyn" is a feminist viewpoint. Equality Michigan has pointed out that claims of being open despite this policy were used by defenders of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and are publicly rejecting the claims that discrimination against transgender women in any form is a feminist view.
"The 'womyn-born-womyn' intention preached by Lisa Vogel and the organizers of Michfest is a policy of discrimination against transgender women," said Emily Dievendorf, executive director of Equality Michigan. She added, "Many of us are offended at the notion that anyone opposed to this discriminatory behavior is a traitor to feminism and simply not paying attention to the festival organizer's arguments. Equality Michigan has been listening to their side for over 20 years, and we remain unconvinced by what we have heard. Every day of those decades was too long to wait for love and support to emerge for our trans* sisters in the women's movement. We know why our community loves Michfest and the safe space that so many of us feel we find there for one week a year and we want to see Michfest be what everybody says that it is because that security and nurturing and empowerment is so needed - but I believe that if we value social justice we must want that for all women. This exclusionary policy is wrong and must come to an end before the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival will ever achieve its goal of creating a safe space for all women."
The organization has launched a petition which is now available online: http://eqmi.us/mwmf14
