One of the most hateful things disguised as righteousness I know of is the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, which since its inception in 1975 has considered itself a ‘women-born-women only space’. That is to say, it is their policy to deny access to anybody who has changed their gender, is in the process of changing their gender, intends to change their gender, or does not meet whatever are the narrow criteria du jour for ‘womanhood’. It’s not enough to identify as a woman—you have to have been born female to ‘count’—and the definition of ‘born female’ is a tricky enough issue that transgender people are simply excluded. Much of the rationale behind this exclusion comes from the belief that transwomen (that is, people who are genetically male but who identify as female, at whatever stage of transitioning) are really expressions of the patriarchy, men trying to deny a women-only space to women who have been oppressed for thousands of years, and that allowing women-not-born-women (whatever that means) into the festival would destroy the sanctity of the space for the participants.
Of course, this goes much deeper than mere desire for their own space on the part of those who support this policy. Transphobia is one of the root causes here, and among lesbian, gay, and bisexual cisgender types (cis- is the opposite of trans-), there can be some pretty nasty transphobia. One of its most instructive manifestations is in the so-called ‘radical feminists’, my (least) favourite example being the noxious blogger Heart of Women’s Space, which I won’t link to, but you can find pretty easily if you really want to. Once upon a time she accused the really excellent blogger who goes by the pseudonym ‘little light’ of plagiarizing sentiments from the feminist author Robin Morgan without giving credit, but the discussion thread very quickly degenerated into bashing of transpeople, beliefs that transwomen were really men trying to ‘colonize’ women in yet another way, claims that ‘men think they can be better women than women’, and so forth. All little light had said was that ‘It is time to create a feminism of the monstrous’, and for expressing a thought that I’m sure Heart and her commenters agreed with, she got a whole heap of transphobic abuse dropped down on her. (She responds to these claims here, in one of the most delightfully snarky bits of prose it has ever been my pleasure to read.) The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival has message boards where, I’m told, many similar sentiments about transgender people can be found. I haven’t checked it out myself because I have far better things to do with my time.
The reason I bring this up right now is not simply because this issue has been remaining latent in the LGB community for far too long, and whatever exposure of it I can provide to the dozen or so people who actually read my blog has been judged necessary for me to try to give this morning. Demanding more immediate attention is an essay by Cicely, reposted on Questioning Transphobia and originally posted on the aforementioned Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival message boards, detailing how she changed her mind on women-born-women-only spaces. It is truly wonderful to see such a thought-out and detailed consideration of this issue—worlds away from ‘transwomen are men colonizing women’. I also recommend Holly’s reaction to it over at Feministe.
The conclusion of the essay says it all:
It’s my opinion that if you accept that trans women are women, it’s not good enough to say trans women are too different, they make you uncomfortable, so you don’t want them in any particular women’s space. Anti-discrimination legislation isn’t designed to pander to people’s feelings of comfort. It’s designed precisely to challenge and even override them when they deny other people their equal rights. Asking or expecting individual trans women or all trans women as a group to agree to participate in discrimination against themselves (or agree that what they experience as discrimination actually isn’t), is not a reasonable request, and one which can never in practice be satisfied. Either this conflict will go on indefinitely, or it will be resolved by removal of the boundary.
I live in hope that the festival will go on, and become welcoming of trans women.
I have nothing to add beyond a heartfelt (as it were) ‘amen’.
