What the heck is up with Wyoming Equality? From their front page:
An equality group is promoting The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival? For those that don’t know, the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival is a “womyn born womyn” event that specifically excludes transwomen. In recent years they’ve softened their “no transwomen” policy from “DO NOT ENTER,” to “WE TOLD YOU NOT TO ENTER, BUT YOU CAN BUY A TICKET.” If you don’t believe the politics behind Michfest is transphobic, just take a look at one of the scheduled events, a screening of ““The Gendercator”
Susan Stryker described the film this way:
“The ideas in the film echo the rhetoric of Janice Raymond’s Transsexual Empire (1979), which goes so far as to claim that Nazis invented transsexual surgery, that transsexuals are agents of a patriarchal conspiracy to replace biologically female women, to accuse all transsexuals of being rapists (because they represent an “unwanted penetration” of women’s space), and to argue in a eugenic fashion that transsexuals should be “morally mandated out of existence.”
Raymond’s book, and the film, engage in the paranoid fantasy that what transsexuals do to their own bodies is somehow a threat to the bodies of nontranssexual women, that the very existence of transsexuals will somehow “force” a nontranssexual woman to have her body violated through some sort of compulsory and unwanted transformation–it’s the same structure of fantasy that imagines that all black men want to rape white women, that gays are predatory pedophiles, that communists are secretly infiltrating our government, that terrorists are swarming across our borders, that drug pushers are constantly trying to hook our kids, and so on ad nauseum. The film projects fear onto an “alien other” and then condemns that other for reflecting back that fear to the person who has projected it there in the first place.”
I can’t understand how any group that espouses “equality for all” could support Michfest. Their anti-trans policy is nothing short of separate but equal.
- Excited
- Fascinated
- Amused
- Bored
- Sad
- Angry
Related posts:
The Gendercator is a “feel good” movie for a certain mentality. I’m glad to see audiences react to it with disbelief and disgust to the film, and hopefully in the long run, that mentality.
I actually want to see the film. I’d like to be able to discuss it in detail, and show how wrong it is about transpeople.
As for MWMF, it’s in my backyard, just 3 hours away, but I am trying to do my best to keep it out of my life. Which is too bad, because I think I would love the atmosphere, sans the transmisogyny.
Interestingly, I have met many L (and non-L) women in Michigan who are appalled by MWMF’s policies, even with the little semantic trick regarding admission of transwomen. To think that a vitriolic minority of attendees have the power to dictate whom the rest of the Festival may not associate with in peace and equality is galling to them.
I think there is something to be said for day to day activism…living out your life as the best person you can be, and making a difference in other people’s lives, is the most convincing answer you can give to your own question of “Ain’t I a woman?” *
* With profound reverence given to Sojourner Truth, a woman whose dignity inspires me to no end!
The Gendercator is a “feel good” movie for a certain mentality. I’m glad to see audiences react to it with disbelief and disgust to the film, and hopefully in the long run, that mentality.
I actually want to see the film. I’d like to be able to discuss it in detail, and show how wrong it is about transpeople.
As for MWMF, it’s in my backyard, just 3 hours away, but I am trying to do my best to keep it out of my life. Which is too bad, because I think I would love the atmosphere, sans the transmisogyny.
Interestingly, I have met many L (and non-L) women in Michigan who are appalled by MWMF’s policies, even with the little semantic trick regarding admission of transwomen. To think that a vitriolic minority of attendees have the power to dictate whom the rest of the Festival may not associate with in peace and equality is galling to them.
I think there is something to be said for day to day activism…living out your life as the best person you can be, and making a difference in other people’s lives, is the most convincing answer you can give to your own question of “Ain’t I a woman?” *
* With profound reverence given to Sojourner Truth, a woman whose dignity inspires me to no end!
Eeeeww . . . . that means they’d let me in!!
And don’t you just love the way Wyoming adds the “T” on at the end of its GLBT Equality crap?
Btw, Marti – good to see you here!
Eeeeww . . . . that means they’d let me in!!
And don’t you just love the way Wyoming adds the “T” on at the end of its GLBT Equality crap?
Btw, Marti – good to see you here!
They aren’t refusing to sell tickets to anyone, but they are still asking that only womyn born womyn attend.
You an read the whole thing here:
http://eminism.org/michigan/documents.html
I googled “MWF transwomen” and saw that they claim to have had a change of policy since 2006 and now admit transwomen to the festival. Is this true? And if so, given their past, who’d want to go??
I googled “MWF transwomen” and saw that they claim to have had a change of policy since 2006 and now admit transwomen to the festival. Is this true? And if so, given their past, who’d want to go??
“Well, one might say that the MWMF is not “about” transphobia, and that it is an event of interest for the community.”
Well, it would be the same as saying that the Masters golf tournament at Augusta isn’t about sexism… but most people think that’s complete bullshit.
Well, one might say that the MWMF is not “about” transphobia, and that it is an event of interest for the community.
But, while i do think that those who run a private festival should have the right to say who is and who isn’t welcome there, that does not mean that other groups, especially political activist “equality” groups, should support and promote a festival with a policy of discriminatory (“i know one thing only about you and i base my entire judgment of you on that one thing”) exclusion.
So, yeah, if the purpose here is to promote the event, then they should stop, since they claim to work for transpeople.
Well, one might say that the MWMF is not “about” transphobia, and that it is an event of interest for the community.
But, while i do think that those who run a private festival should have the right to say who is and who isn’t welcome there, that does not mean that other groups, especially political activist “equality” groups, should support and promote a festival with a policy of discriminatory (“i know one thing only about you and i base my entire judgment of you on that one thing”) exclusion.
So, yeah, if the purpose here is to promote the event, then they should stop, since they claim to work for transpeople.
“Well, one might say that the MWMF is not “about” transphobia, and that it is an event of interest for the community.”
Well, it would be the same as saying that the Masters golf tournament at Augusta isn’t about sexism… but most people think that’s complete bullshit.
They aren’t refusing to sell tickets to anyone, but they are still asking that only womyn born womyn attend.
You an read the whole thing here:
http://eminism.org/michigan/documents.html