Alix Olson 03.19.04 I have recently heard it said that the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival may, in part, set the political tone for how other 'womyn-centered' systems and institutions operate (ie: there are homeless and/or domestic violence shelters that will turn away trans-womyn, following Michigan's cultural example of "what it means to be a woman". This argument has hit me most provocatively, as an artistic/emotional/political week-long shelter seems just as important as emergency physical shelter. (in some ways, each provides both). Because I would never advocate for excluding anyone seeking emergency shelter, and yet I choose to attend and perform at the aforementioned Michigan Womyn's Festival, I have embraced a number of questions. To begin, and to be honest, "woman", as a term, though I embrace it as a 'fuck you' to the Patriachy (ies) that have scoffed/suffocated/sinistered my similarly genitalia'd comrades out of HIStorical existence, is a difficult identity for me, because I do believe that gender is an artificial and divisive mockery, designed to universally propogate the power of one set of genitalled humans over the other (nevermind all those whose genitals fall somewhere organically in between and areregarded as a scientific nuisance to the convenient unnatural bipolarity used to enforce this hierarchy). I have friends who, for that reason alone, don't identify as any gender; they believe that, for them politically, even"F to M" or "M to F" re-enforces the binary. I also have friends who care less about the politics than about something (orthings) psychically deep within them pleading for/demanding physical alteration. I have friends who feel that to embrace "vagina-born womanhood" is necessary, politically significant, as a category that has been HIS-torically defiled, violated, viled. I know people who struggle with the challenge of living with all of these truisms, simultaneously. I admire being a part of a community that struggles with this. We are intelligently and emotionally non-symbiotic with Saidau-natural gender regime. We ache, we argue, we think. Thus, the piece of the Michigan Womyn's Festival policy I currently struggle with the most is snuggled within its title: "Woman-born Woman". Partly because I don't know what that means: to be 'born' a woman. After all, as Monique Wittig warns us: "one is not born, but becomes a woman", and I spend much of my life and a good portion of my career attempting to break that definition into pieces and to support the struggle of unique re-building. As far as I can tell, what "womyn" at the festival have in common is: rallying, singing, discussing, poeting, gossiping, work shopping around being a part of a legacy of vagina-d people who have fought their way towards well-being, self-declaration in a world hell-bent on oppression, celebrating, admiring, de-constructing a vagina'd past that has been sanded over by Patriarchy's anti-abortionist, dyke-homo-hating, witch-burning Madness. Maybe this sounds simplistic, even callous,- it doesn't feel so, being a part of it- But... If the radical feminists of the Festival believe in "self-identification", what else could "woman-born" possibly mean, if not "vagina'd"? This is only my vernacular interpretation. And, what then, is the category of "womyn", in general, if not simply "the mass political/sociological group identification result of past and present enforced biological determinism regarding vagina-ism?" If not based on enforced treatment of "vagina'd people", would there even be sucha thing as "woman"? If so/ if not, what does it mean to be a trans-woman? To call myself a woman? (or even, to toy with that word, togive it my own power as "womOn")? So, then, what of a festival that celebrates these particular womyn, these 'vagina'd people?' Biological determinism (as I understand it, the sociological assumptions and enactions- and oftIN-actions -surrounding one's presumed genitalia) has only rendered ALL people on the circular spectrum devastating past and ongoing physical andpsychological harm. Is the Michigan Festival, then, proudly recognizing and simultaneously exposing the genital foundation of "constructed womanhood"? Or, is the Festival negatively re-inforcing binaries by enforcing vagina as the cornerstone of what it means to be a woman? Or, is the Festival simply helping to heal this past, individually and collectively, a la Eve Ensler by celebrating/embracing "the vagina", for once? And, I know there are issues, as well, surrounding Eve Ensler's "Vagina Monologues" and the lack of trans-monologues. Given that, is there any place, anymore, for the "vagina", "vagina-space"? If not: Do we head, unfailingly then, towards gender-bending political progress, without the band-aids of ourpast/present socialized gendered identities? Do we tear them off, because that's how healing division begins? Because a messy blur of gender re: the end of gender, (a la Leslie Feinberg, Riki Anne Wilchins, Kate Borstein) are what many of us grew up as feminists knowing was the most challenging to the Patriarchy? But: what about those who are not near to healing? How about those who are "very happy with my biologically assigned sex determining my gender and don't consider it healing, but finally celebration, thank you." What if Michigan is not the place to fuck with gender, but to redress the harm done to "sociologically-defined woMEN"? Alternatively, what if it is THE most important place to re-dress the category, in all new garments entirely, to obfuscate the categorical rhetoric of "vagina" and embrace a more confused and liberating sense of gendered womanhood? What if that is the free-est any of us will ever be, and we have yet to learn that? Most importantly how do/which feminists figure out who gets to decide? (and I mean this, on a political level, because only the owner of the Festival gets to decide, whether she prevails, or goes down with her decision; the rest of us get to have a voice only in the dialogue, in support, withdrawal, or confusion.) Logistically, if the policy were to change, I ponder how it would be re-written to include self-identified womyn, and yet protect the space from socialized and self-identified men? Though I understand there may not be streams of beer-swilling stereotypes heading towards a small camp in the woods, it does seem incredibly important to not underestimate this issue. Also, there are people within our community who think the festival should be open to "ALL." Thus, the debate seems to extend beyond "definition of woman" and "trans-inclusion" to what it means, the harms and benefits, of having a self-defined, and resulting exclusionary space, in general. Is anybody, including "vagina'd people", entitled to re-claim space,as they have been denied space throughout time? Or, are they/we recycling the harm of exclusion? What about gay men, who have little access to homeless/ domestic violence shelters, as well? Will they be denied a"womyn's" space? How "open" does one "open up" a festival? These are the questions on my mind, as I ponder Michigan 2004. I will be performing at the Festival, this year, if only because it is the one place in the world I see at least a portion of womyn free(d). I have spoken to passionate, articulate people with good intentions all around the circle of answers. It seems to me that a live forum would be a good idea somewhere, within a space free of ridicule because, in this case, the non-feminist ridicule all around this debate sounds to me like it enters from fear: of being hurt, rejected. of having eyes challenged open to new identities, new times, a less secure sense of identity. fear of the penis. fear of not having a place in the world. fear of not having allies. fear of others stalwartly claiming an identity some are trying to eschew. fear of being boycotted. fear of being exposed asshort of progressive and cool. fear that we don't, for once, have an intentional and definitive radical answer. fear that there is, indeed, no enemy in this case, but only each other's battered, belittled fears. fear of each other- that makes me the saddest. these are the feelings, including my own, I surmise I have collected in my travels. On the topic of boycotting: I think it has always been significant for a movement to choose an example and, it seems, the Michigan Festival has become that example in this aquarium of the gender emporium struggle. I don't agree with the perspective of "hey, quit picking on Michigan! There's so much bigger/else to boycott." We do have to start a dialogue somewhere, and it does seem logical, if not just the way it is, that this dialogue has begun within a community so many of us love, feel beholden to, feel betrayed by, feel like it should be open to concerns of identity and social constructionism. Just like I know the problem with "Nike" isn't "Nike" per se, rather the whole global capitalist conglomerate that promotes sweatshop labor. But I still boycott Nike. We pick and choose our battles to make a point and this point, whether I like it or not, has begun within this/its/our/my community. I understand the frustration of people who have definitive answers to all of the questions I have raised and I'd be on the picketlines, probably, myself, if I were sure of the answers. Picketing/boycotting is one tool that our radical ancestors passed to us, in order for us to express our lack of allegiance with a perceived harm- to ourselves and to others. It is a common denominator between ultimate lack of power and expression of ultimate power. The problem is, I don't have the answers. Only a series of colliding questions that fight with each other, the fierce curiosity surrounding how so many good people can create such a plurality of conflicting solutions, the very real piece of me that does not want to hurt people, to restrict or constrict self-identification, the knowledge that Michigan provides an unparalleled and authentic sense of hope, home, and guidance for so many womyn, and the desire to see a community of radical feminist thinkers and activists engage in compassionate, strong dialogue. There is nothing I enjoy being around less than an intellectual wuss: someone who lets passionate judgment water itself slippishly, in favor of a "nuanced" (read: bland) philosophical rendering of the question. But, is it possible to get to passion without the philosophy, in some cases? For me, selfishly, in this case, anyway, I can't foresee that. I also don't favor ignoring issues within our community and I appologize if I have been read as such regarding the Michigan Festival. It has taken me some time to understand my questions. I take my position as a performer and my role as an activist seriously. I understand that peoples' identities, all around, are at stake, and that seems more crucial than ever. The current Administrationis out to detain the identities, and to undermine the struggles, of most of the people this issue engages, surely including my own. In Solidarity, Alix