Kate Abbey-Lambertz, Huffington Post
July 29, 2014
A music festival is facing increasing pressure to end its exclusion of transgender women, a practice that critics call discriminatory.
For the past 38 years, the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, often called Michfest, has served as an idyllic gathering in the woods for women to bond and celebrate. Thousands gather to briefly revel in a matriarchy, to eat and live communally and attend concerts and classes -- all conducted by women. This year's gathering begins August 5 on a piece of land in the western Michigan wilderness. But controversy has marred the fest and its founders, gathering steam in recent years, over its intention that only "womyn-born womyn" attend the event.
On Monday, LGBT advocacy group Equality Michigan released a petition calling on Michfest to end that practice, artists and attendees to boycott the festival until discrimination is stopped and for founder and organizer Lisa Vogel to meet with leaders of the transgender community. By Tuesday it had gathered 350 signatures. Equality Michigan intends to deliver the petition to the festival organizers, as well as vendors and performers who participate in it.
More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/29/michfest-michigan-womyns-festival-trans_n_5630726.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/29/michfest-michigan-womyns-festival-trans_n_5630726.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices)
Yeesh. I can't believe they're still spelling it "womyn". That, along with "wimmin" is so 1980s rad-fem. :-\
So these people who really hate being discriminated against and marginalized are doing what now?
I love the smell of irony in the afternoon.
Well, interesting , but reading the rad-fem literature and what their leader says about transgender I think that petition going to end up in the nearest campfire.