Subject: IYF-Camp Trans 99 at MWMF
From: "Clare Howell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 18:20:22 -0700

MEDIA ADVISORY - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Editor: Clare Howell, [email-masked]

'NO PENISES ON THE LAND': MICHIGAN WOMYN'S
MUSIC FESTIVAL EXPANDS POLICY
=========================================

[Hart, MI: 18 Aug 99] IN FOUR DAYS OF INTENSE
confrontation, dialog, and negotiation, a dozen gender
activists from Transexual Menace, the Lesbian Avengers,
and Transgender Officers Protect & Serve (TOPS)  last
weekend successfully challenged the Michigan Womyn's
Music Festival's (MWMF) exclusionary entrance policy of
'womyn-born-womyn-only.'

    MWMF, the nation's largest festival of its kind and the
second oldest, adopted the policy in 1991 to exclude
transexual women. It was first used to eject Nancy Jean
Burkholder eight years ago. The first Camp Trans was
held in 1995 as an educational event across the road from
the festival's main entrance to protest the policy. Thirty
activists staged two dozen workshops for festival-goers,
hundreds of whom came out to hear speakers including
Leslie Feinberg, Jamison Green, and Minnie Bruce Pratt.

    At this year's event, 4 openly trans-identified activists
approached the main gate Friday morning, identified
themselves, and asked to enter. All were sold tickets, and
3 MTFs and one FTM entered the festival.  Faced with pre-
operative transexuals and at least one post-op FTM, festival
coordinators enhanced their vague "womyn-born-womyn only"
policy to include "no penises on the land," and the FTM and
MTF voluntarily left. To the festival's credit, owner Lisa Vogel
put out a statement saying that there would be no "panty
checks" to enforce the policy, and encouraged attendees not
to question any woman's right to be there.

    But the stars of Camp Trans this year were the Chicago
Lesbian Avengers who, in support of an inclusive MWMF,
went toe-to-toe with angry lesbian-separatists intent on
harassing the trans-contingent out of the festival grounds.
The Avengers provided moral and physical support of the
activists, escorting them through the grounds and engaging
in group shouting matches with indignant separatists.

    Said Camp Trans organizer and attendee Riki Wilchins,
"The big change was that five years ago at the original Camp
Trans it was transexuals struggling with the Festival. But this
year it was young, radical lesbians struggling with other
lesbians. After one shouting match, I thanked one of them for
her outspoken support, and she responded, 'I wasn't
supporting you. If you're not welcome, I'm not safe here either.
This is my issue, too.'" Her sentiment was echoed by a
growing chorus of women who took up the cause as their own.

    There were no fewer than four different interactions. The
first, an intense, spontaneous 3-hour confrontation in the
packed food service area Friday at supper-time began with
the Avengers surrounded by angry separatists and ended well
after dark. This was followed by a meeting of festival staff and
gender activists at Camp Trans Saturday morning, an
impromptu workshop Saturday noon, scheduled on-the-fly,
which drew over 200 women, and finally a workshop held in
Camp Trans by the popular lesbian punk-rock group Tribe-8, 
whose members are renowned for cutting up dildos and 
openly identifying onstage as gender-queer .

   In a show of support, over four dozen festival attendees 
donned black Transexual Menace tee-shirts, wearing them 
all over the festival. Many were verbally harassed by 
separatists who assumed they were transexuals. On the last 
day, three young festival employees were fired by manage-
ment for wearing their Menace Ts while on duty at the main 
gate.

    For an in-depth interview with Ms. Wilchins on Camp
Trans and this year's event, see www.CampTrans.com

                        ###

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