I’ve heard a lot about MichFest and none of it good. However, most of the articles I’ve read are pertaining to the discrimination of woman born transex by this event. Very simply we’re not allowed to attend yet the event is open to all womyn. The official title is the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival and this year runs from August 5th to the 10th.

If you check out the website it’s more than a music festival. They have a number of workshops which appear to be very informative. The event is one that every woman should have the opportunity to attend and by that I do mean EVERY woman. The website, by-the-way, makes no mention of it discriminatory practices. The comments to the article “Michfest Urges Attendees to Rally Behind Its Performers” seem to come in two classes – women born transsex are really men or women born transsex have lived as males and have experienced male privilege. The first ignores the scientific evidence that some who were born appearing male have been born with physical characteristics within the brain that are female. The other ignores the fact that male privilege is meaningless to someone who has to live a life as someone they are not and the internal turmoil is so intense that a significant percentage have attempted suicide. Thankfully this percentage is dropping as treatment and surgery becomes more available.

One thing I have noticed as I’ve transitioned and now completely live my life as a woman is that most women who haven’t had this experience are perfectly accepting of those of us who have come to womanhood by this route. They sympathize with us over what we had to endure to get to where we are and can understand the struggle we’ve had to undergo. I doubt the majority of the women who attend the MichFest event feel any different from the women I’ve just described. I doubt it’s even a significant percentage who show this hatred towards women born transsex. In the feminist community there is a very small group known as RadFem who have this attitude towards women born transsex. They are VERY vocal! They are of the first category where they deny that we are female. They will also use the argument that we’ve experienced male privilege as well but it’s more a secondary argument.

Why am I writing this post? I don’t know. Many women born transsex already know about MichFest and its bigoted policies. Maybe some who reached womanhood the way the majority of women have could understand the bigoted underside of what MichFest is about and maybe add their voices to ours. It seems like a really fun event so I won’t say the word boycott because you’d only be hurting yourself. Oh, when it comes to entertainment groups such as the bands who have decided to pull out, please continue to avoid this event. You don’t want to tarnish your good name. Those who haven’t pulled out might want to think about it. Consider this, recently someone was appointed CEO of Mozilla and had to resign became he once made a donation to the organizers of Prop 8. What could the repercussions be to a group/person who entertained at a bigoted event like MichFest be? Think about it.

Teresa