“Bring the best of who you are—you will recognize yourself everywhere.”
It’s an inclusive, inspirational quote, dripping with the honey that will herald in the flies. So they come buzzing in with excitement and hope for revelation: womyn seeking the feminist values and community of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. Yet the above statement silently weeps vinegar, and internalizes the bitter taste of hypocrisy.
If the women who are running the festival are bringing the so-called best of whom they are, then the best they have to offer certainly does not include the best of all women, does not embrace the fluidity of sex and gender.
Looking at the Michigan Womyn’s Musical festival through the perspective of Julia Serano in her manifesto “Whipping Girl,” a discrepancy is revealed: men who identify as women are excluded from the festival, while women who identify as men are welcomed with open arms. Hmmm, I don’t think exclusion speaks to feminist values…
“Womyn born womyn only” is the criteria in Michigan. What a statement. So clear cut and cold and lacking any insight into the broad spectrum that is WOMAN. “Women are no longer defined based on their legal sex, appearance, or self-identification, but on whether or not they were born and raised a girl” (237).
When thinking about this whole “women born women only” rule, I’m reminded of the Aretha Franklin song “Natural Woman.” Franklin bellows, “You make me feel, you make me feel like a natural woman.” By way of birth, I am a “natural woman” as I’ve got the parts and I’ve got the looks. Then, there are the women that “feel like natural women” but lack the parts and lack the looks. So, they may not be “natural woman” in biological terms, but there is more to womanhood than that. There are the physicality’s, the emotions, the identification, and the experiences. I think that being a woman is an understanding not a standard.
My question for the organizers of the festival is why not open up the dialogue of what it means to be a woman to the range of experiences that it encompasses?
“Each year brings together the most amazing cross-generational multi-cultural group of womyn to live as friends, lovers, neighbors all.”
Let us look at the word all. There is an implicit irony there, because as Serano points out not all women are included. I think it would be more amazing to attend a cross-generational multicultural festival that allowed the diversity among women, among sexes, among genders to blossom into a fragrant flower of womanhood.
Serano mentions her experiences to end trans-exclusion with Camp Trans. I was excited by the rebelliousness that Camp Trans incites, a counter counter-culture. The movement exists as a thorn on the side of the festival, setting up camp across the street and providing alternate workshop and information. As the years have progressed, the rebellious spirit has flourished and expanded.
Tristan Taormino writes for the “Village Voice” of the shake up that has occurred within Camp Trans:
“Many of them fit the "woman-born" criteria; it was the "woman-identified woman" label where things got a little sticky. You see, these Gen Xers don't identify as women, but they don't necessarily identify as men either…when lesbian feminism starts constraining women instead of liberating them, we have lost our way.”
And that is exactly what the festival is doing; it’s envisioning itself as an environment founded upon women’s liberation and ignoring the movement’s still shackled. By ignoring the needs of transgender and transsexual people, feminists tie themselves down as oppressors.
I’d much rather envision a truly liberated environment, one that includes a celebration not just of women-born-women but also of the very identity of women.
I agree completely with your argument.
ReplyDeleteIf these feminists believe that they are representing all women everywhere, they are mistaken. By excluding self-identified women who were born male, they are excluding a great deal of perspective and a great deal of diversity in what it means to be a woman.
Being a MTF transgender gives a whole new insight of what it means to be a woman. Not being raised as a girl, but wanting to identify as one brings up many issues that should be understood to all woman...to all people for that matter.
I think that what it means to be a woman, is whatever it means to you.
I agree as well - not only women, but every gender to should have the freedom to express themselves sexually in whatever way they choose.
ReplyDeleteWith that said, your blog post speaks volumes to the themes we spoke about in class. What makes a woman a woman? Is it only their physicality that defines them, or the way they behave? I remember talking about this in class - what if they want to associate themselves as a woman but like men... are they more women or men in that case?
Either way, our society should be conducive enough to allow any sort of sexuality, even though they may stick out. We live in a very litigious society, and sometimes it is a struggle to fully express yourself.
"Society" (aka us!) is "supposed to be" inclusive by democratic standards and philosophy. The troubling aspect of the Michigan's Womyn's Music Festival is that (1) I think it represents an older generation of womyn--those who excluded men to the point of changing the English language to represent it, and (2) it's not a democratic space, but a safe one. Devil's advocate: if someone feels unsafe by have a MTF in "their" space, it is what it is. Who is going to intervene and change this long history of MWMF?
ReplyDelete