This is an impassioned plea for people to not attend Michigan Women's Music Festival. (MWMF)

MWMF is a large, women's-only music festival that happens every August. It is a great party and a nurturing experience for many, but it is unfortunately founded on divisive and transphobic principles that harm women everywhere.

Most women attend oblivious to the fact that they are NOT attending a women's festival: They are attending an exclusionary festival that only includes some women. Other women are left at the gate wondering just how this feminist space could abandon them.

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.

The festival allows women to enjoy the party and reinforces how wonderful "women's spaces" are. Because there is no discussion, what is really a women-born-womyn space becomes a "womyn's" space in the minds of patrons. Trans women are made invisible and effectively erased from the landscape. Out of sight, out of mind. They become excluded from the category of women.

Some trans-women do attend MWMF, but they have to do so covertly for fear of their safety. MWMF is not a safe space for all women.

MWMF is a million-dollar festival and is able to create a wonderful environment for its patrons. Trans women, especially trans women in the U.S.A., have minimal access to resources to fight for their rights and stand up to this kind of discrimination. Cissexist attitudes affect Trans women in access to health care, job security, access to housing and limit the spaces where they can hope to feel safe from violence of all types.

The festival attempts to create a space where women can actively challenge oppression against women, the barriers and beliefs about ourselves that hold us back in our day-to-day lives. However, the act of excluding trans women amplifies the oppression experienced by trans women - transmisogyny - and thus becomes a uniquely oppressive space. Year after year, activists are forced to expend much energy to unravel transphobia, especially in feminist spaces that are supposed to be safe for all women. Many of the people that attend MWMF are often politically active, but yet maintain unaware of how their support hurts marginalized women.

In the age of consumer awareness, it can sometimes be daunting to spend money in an ethically conscious manner given the obfuscated nature of multinational controlling interests. With MWMF, the chain of command is cut-and-dry. The owner, Lisa Vogel, has stated that the festival will always exclude trans women. This is not something that will change. By giving money to her and her festival, you are using your consumer power to reinforce systemic transphobia. Out of all of the women's festivals, MWMF is the only one you can choose where your dollars will support a cissexist policy. Even if the policy was changed, many trans women would not feel safe in attendance due to the violent messages against trans women that are cultivated and left unchallenged online.

Please help spread the word. Supporting MWMF drains the energies of marginalized women that we all should be allying with. The policies of MWMF have major real-world repercussions for trans women. It is a shame that activists have to use all of their energies to undo the shockwaves spread by people that are actually fighting for ideals we all hold, but doing so in a destructive and oppressive manner. (unwittingly or not)

If you are attending MWMF this year, please...

• Be cognizant that the space does not represent all women. Talk about it, bring it up every day. Know that many amazing women are not allowed through that gate.
• Pitch your tent just down the road at Camp Trans as an act of solidarity.
• Hold workshops and caucuses to examine cis-privilege within the festival and within our lives.
• Network with your friends and find alternatives to attending next year.

Want to help?

• Attend and assist other women's music festivals to rise up to replace MWMF.
• Consider attending and/or supporting Camp Trans.
• There are alternatives: there are over 100 women-only festivals. MWMF is the only one with transphobia enshrined in its policy.
• Start using the words cissexual and cisgendered amongst your friends. It helps to break down oppressive assumptions that there are "normal" people and then there are "trans" people.

Be a part of the solution.

Help fight transphobia. Please do not attend MWMF.

Recommended Reading:

Argument for Stronger Trans-Inclusion

By The Lesbian Sex Mafia

http://www.circlesoffireproductions.com/cc4d/argument.html

Bending Over Backwards: an Introduction to the Issue of Trans Woman-Inclusion

By Julia Serano

http://juliaserano.com/outside.html#backwards

Michigan/Trans Controversy Archive

By Emi Koyama

http://www.eminism.org/michigan/faq-debate.html

Camp Trans

http://www.camp-trans.org/

Definitions: (taken from Julia Serano)

Cissexual: A synonym for non-transsexual.

Cissexism: The belief that transsexual genders are less legitimate than, and mere imitations of, cissexual genders. Cissexism is most typically enacted through one or more of the following processes: trans-fascimilation (viewing or portraying transsexuals as merely imitating, emulating or impersonating cissexual female or male genders), trans-exclusion (refusing to acknowledge and respect a transsexual’s identified gender, or denying them, access to spaces, organizations, or events designated for that gender), trans-objectification (when people reduce trans people to their body parts, the medical procedures they’ve undertaken, or get hung up on, disturbed by, or obsessed over supposed discrepancies that exist between a transsexual’s physical sex and identified gender), trans-mystification (when people use the relative infrequency or taboo nature of transsexuality to mystify, artificialize or to “other” transsexuals), and trans-interrogation (when people bring a transsexual’s identified gender into question by asking them to answer personal questions about their life story, their motives for transitioning, medical procedures they have undertaken, or when they obsess over what causes transsexuality - such questions reduce transsexuals to the status of objects of inquiry).

Cissexual Privilege: The privilege that cissexuals experience as a result of having their femaleness or maleness deemed authentic, natural, and unquestionable by society at large. Cissexual privilege allows cissexuals to take their sex embodiment for granted in ways that transsexuals cannot.

Traditional Sexism: Sexism that is rooted in the presumption that femaleness and femininity are inferior to (and only exist for the sexual benefit of) maleness and masculinity. It targets those who are female as well as those who are feminine (regardless of their sex).

Oppositional Sexism: Sexism that is rooted in the presumption that female and male are rigid, mutually exclusive, “opposite” sexes, each possessing a unique and non-overlapping set of attributes, aptitudes, abilities, and desires. It targets those who do not conform to oppositional gender norms. A number of previously described categories of sexism (e.g., transphobia, homophobia and cissexism) fall under the umbrella of oppositional sexism.

Trans-Misogyny: Sexism that specifically targets those on the trans female/trans feminine spectrums. It arises out of a synergetic interaction between oppositional and traditional sexism. It accounts for why MTF spectrum trans people tend to be more regularly demonized and ridiculed than their FTM spectrum counterparts, and why trans women face certain forms of sexualization and misogyny that are rarely (if ever) applied to non-trans women.

Gender Entitlement: The privileging of one’s own perceptions, interpretations, and evaluations of other people’s genders over the way those people understand themselves.

Gender Anxiety: The act of becoming irrationally upset or uncomfortable by the existence of those people who challenge or bring into question one’s gender entitlement.