More Than a Woman 
A local transgender protests the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival's 
less-than-welcoming entrance policy 
By Ren Spencer Saller 
Riverfront Times
February 13, 2002

Simon Fisher -- trans activist, drag king and sax player (he often 
plays with local avant-punk trio the Star Death) -- is a man on a 
mission. Scratch that: He's a trannyboy on a mission. Fisher, who used 
to be a member of the Chicago chapter of the Lesbian Avengers, doesn't 
consider himself male or female. He changed his name and prefers the 
masculine pronoun, but he retains his female reproductive organs and 
doesn't plan to undergo testosterone therapy or phalloplastic surgery; 
right now, he's comfortable being in-between. He's not complacent, 
though. For the past three years, the new St. Louisan has helped 
organize Camp Trans, an activist group that camps outside the grounds 
of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival to protest the "womyn-born-
womyn only"/"no penises on the land" policy.

Now in its 27th year, MWMF offers five days of music (last year's 
lineup included Jill Sobule, Le Tigre, Amy Ray and the Butchies, Bitch 
and Animal, Dar Williams and Lea DeLaria), workshops, sports and 
camping. Last year, nearly 6,000 women attended the event, which takes 
place every August on 650 acres of private land. Unlike Ladyfest and 
other gynocentric music festivals, the MWMF doesn't allow men -- not 
even boys over age 5, who are segregated to another camp, and not even 
recorded male voices (although an exception was recently made for Glen 
Campbell's rendition of "Rhinestone Cowboy"). Since 1978, MWMF 
organizers have also excluded transgendered people -- both female-to-
male and male-to-female -- although many of them attend anyway, thanks 
to the don't-ask-don't-tell clause, which means you're only busted if 
you waggle your dick at someone or loudly proclaim that your vagina's 
actually an inside-out penis. 

Fisher, who is 23, first went to the festival in 1999, when he still 
identified as a dyke. The next year, he went back to stage an action 
on behalf of Camp Trans. "They don't ask your gender at the gate; they 
just assume you're going to respect the policy," he explains. "We made 
all these signs with non-womyn-born-womyn identities on them -- 
'transguy,' 'boydyke,' 'intersexed,' 'M to F' -- and we went in during 
the lunch hour, where there are maybe 800 or 900 women eating at the 
same time. We just held up the signs in this silent protest. We had 
almost 300 women standing with us, which was really rad. So, 
basically, we said, 'Well, we're out, these are our identities, so it 
must be OK; the policy must be over.'" 

Well, not exactly. When a plainclothes security guard learned of 
Fisher's trans identity, his natural-born vagina wasn't enough to save 
him from expulsion. "I said, 'My gender doesn't conflict with this 
festival's purpose,' but I got kicked out anyway. I was sobbing. I 
mean, this is my community -- or it was." Fisher and his fellow 
activists were then paraded through the festival and forcibly evicted 
from the grounds. 

That's when Camp Trans really took off. Since then, some members of 
the trans community have organized a boycott of bands that support the 
MWMF's womyn-born-womyn policy. Fisher took a lot of heat from his 
peers when he performed with the Star Death during their brief tour 
with the Butchies last year. "I got called a scab," Fisher says, 
laughing. He says he talked briefly with members of the Butchies, who 
claim to be trans-supportive, but he's disappointed by their failure 
to address the issue of trans inclusion at the festival. "The Butchies 
are the biggest act at MWMF -- 3,000 people go to see them. They can't 
say one thing about trans people? If you're a rock star in the lesbian 
community, you cannot be pro-trans and not say anything." 

Despite what MWMF defenders argue, Fisher says that no one at Camp 
Trans wants to destroy the festival: "That's not what we're trying to 
do. But you can't imagine the passion people feel for that week in 
August -- it's like religion, this white lesbian feminist mecca, and 
they'll do anything to protect it. And who are we to come in and say 
it's fucked up? We're not interested in taking it away. We want to 
make it better. And trans inclusion is one way to make it better." 

Fisher doesn't want to attend the festival anyway: "It's my belief 
that Michigan should be a women's festival, and people who identify as 
women -- no matter what kind of women they are -- should be able to 
attend. But it's not my space. I don't have $350 to spend on a ticket, 
I don't feel comfortable with the way that race is examined at the 
festival and I'm not comfortable with the way S&M people are oppressed 
there. Even if Michigan had trans inclusion, it would be uncomfortable 
for me. But I'm going to fight like hell for people who want to go who 
aren't invited in yet." 

Fisher is organizing a midyear meeting on March 1-3 to create a 
mission statement. The Bent Boyz (St. Louis drag kings) and the Star 
Death are among the featured performers. To register, call 314-664-
8633 or e-mail camptrans@strap-on.org.