BY BTL STAFF
Photo Credit: Michigan Womyn's Music Festival Website
HART – Two weeks after national LGBT rights organizations pulled their names from a petition calling for a ban on the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (Michfest), founder Lisa Vogel announced the festival will be coming to an end.
The 40th and final Michigan Womyn's Music Festival will be held in August of this year. Since its start in 1976, the festival has been built, staffed, attended and run entirely by women but has been at the center of controversy for its exclusion of transgender women.
The National LGBTQ Task Force and the National Center for Lesbian Rights removed their signatures from a petition drafted by Equality Michigan in 2014 that seeks to: end the "womyn-born-womyn" intention at Michigan Womyn's Music Festival; have Lisa Vogel, as co-founder and owner, meet with leaders of the transgender community and LGBT leaders and agree that transgender women are women/womyn too; ask vendors and workshop leaders to publicly declare support of an end to the festival's antiquated and anti-business policy of exclusion; request that artists, attendees and vendors act in harmony with their equal rights values and not attend the festival until the transgender discrimination ends; and support other women's events which are creating a safe space for transgender women.
"We are writing to state clearly our commitment to the full inclusion and welcome of transgender women, as women, in the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (Michfest). We will continue to actively work to fulfill that goal," wrote Kate Kendell, executive director of the NCLR, and Rea Carey, executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force. "After a number of conversations, we do not believe the petition/boycott is going to be ultimately productive in achieving the goal of a fully inclusive Michfest."
Last summer, Vogel wrote in a letter addressed to the community, "Over 20 years ago, we asked Nancy Burkholder, a trans woman, to leave the Land. That was wrong, and for that, we are sorry. We, alongside the rest of the LGBTQ community, have learned and changed a great deal over our 39-year history."
The letter continued, "The truth is, trans womyn and trans men attend the Festival, blog about their experiences and work on crew. Again, it is not the inclusion of trans womyn at Festival that we resist; it is the erasure of the specificity of female experience in the discussion of the space itself that stifles progress in this conversation."
Over the past four decades, the week-long summer festival has been a place for women to celebrate their womanhood. The festival has seen performances from the Indigo Girls to Tribe 8 and has included performances from classical to hard rock. Vogel founded the festival when she was just 19; Vogel, her sister Kristie and their friend, Mary Kindig, planned an event similar to one held in Boston. Seven years after it began, the event moved to its current spot on a 650-acre plot of land, attracting upwards of 8,000 campers in the first year of its new location.
"It has been my honor and privilege to produce the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival for 40 years. It has been my life's work, my deepest commitment, my constant challenge and my most profound joy. Every single thing of value I have learned in the world I have learned in the process of being part of building this beloved community," Vogel wrote in a Facebook post announcing the decision.
"We have known in our hearts for some years that the life cycle of the Festival was coming to a time of closure," Vogel wrote. "Too often in our culture, change is met only with fear, the true cycle of life is denied to avoid the grief of loss. But change is the ultimate truth of life."
Vogel discusses the struggles the festival has faced, though she makes no specific mention. Instead, she describes each struggle as "a beautiful part of our collective strength; they have never been a weakness." She then urged the festival family to "take what you love about Michigan and use it to create something new and beautiful."
Those planning on attending the final Michfest Aug. 4-9 will see performances by C.C. Carter, Laura Love with Big Bad Gina, Skip The Needle, Round Robin, Marga Gomez, Elvira Kurt, Holly Near, Bitch, Mouths of Babes and many more, with a closing ceremony by Ruth Barrett.
"For those of us who will be gathering for our 40th anniversary this August; let's joyously hold up our incredible community and allow ourselves to be strong enough to consciously let go of this incarnation of her, with all the love we each hold in our beautiful hearts," Vogel wrote in a final goodbye. "Let us gather this August knowing that what we truly cherish about the Festival lives on in each of us, and more will come from this fertile ground. Let's do this up together — Amazon proud!"
