Lesbians mourned Wednesday when it was announced they had lost what was, to them, an important tradition:
The 40th Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, to be held this August, will be the last, its founder announced today.
The storied women-only event, first held in 1976, has been the subject of controversy in recent years because of its exclusion of transgender women, with many artists and organizations deciding to boycott. . . .
[Founder and organizer Lisa Vogel] acknowledged, “There have been struggles; there is no doubt about that. This is part of our truth, but it is not — and never has been — our defining story. The Festival has been the crucible for nearly every critical cultural and political issue the lesbian feminist community has grappled with for four decades. Those struggles have been a beautiful part of our collective strength; they have never been a weakness.” . . .
The exclusion of transgender women from the fest has led performers such as the Indigo Girls, Antigone Rising, and Lea DeLaria to withdraw from the event, and last year several national LGBT organizations signed on to a petition from statewide LGBT group Equality Michigan calling on the festival to change its rule limiting attendance to “womyn-born-womyn.” . . .
You can read the rest. The aggression of transgender activists toward lesbians was one of the little-noticed aspects of feminist politics that caught my attention in January 2014 when I began researching radical feminism. At first, it appeared to me that lesbians like Cathy Brennan were the villains in that conflict. The more I researched the issue, however, the more it seemed that Brennan and her fellow radicals were actually the victims of a deliberate hate campaign perpetrated by some seriously disturbed individuals who have zero — I repeat, zero — respect for women.
“The transgender activists are trying to silence their critics. If they can silence a feminist like Cathy Brennan, guess what? Conservative critics of feminism will be next in line for this suppression of freedom.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Aug. 26, 2014
No one could accuse me of sympathizing with lesbian feminists, but on this issue, they were certainly right: Defining “woman” is a matter of science, not politics. Furthermore, as numerous examples have made clear, “transwomen” (i.e., males who pursue “transition” to female) very often have histories of violence toward actual women. More than that, however, there is the matter of whether women who with to join all-female organizations or attend all-female events have the right to insist that the institutions are only for women — you know, the kind of people who have XX chromosomes and vaginas?
All the liberal rhetoric about “diversity” and “inclusion” fails here. Beyond the obvious issue of civility — it’s rude to barge in where you are unwanted and begin yelling about your “right” to be there — whatever happened to the vaunted “right to privacy”? Have feminists forgotten their own principles? Or is this just further proof that liberals don’t actually have any principles? Behold the gloating headline at the liberal feminist site Jezebel:
Trans-Excluding Michigan Womyn’s
Music Festival to End This Year
Rub some salt in your enemy’s wound. “Sister is powerful,” eh? Liberal advocates of “inclusion” have won this battle, but if they expect radical lesbians to stop fighting the war, I’ll bet they’ve got another think coming.
Hell hath no fury, etc.
Conservatives ought to pay attention to this conflict, because there are important issues and principles involved. Much like the Indiana pizza parlor that was targeted by a hate-storm, the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival fallen victim to a dubious idea of “rights” that, in reality, involves the negation of liberty. The strange concept I have called the “Compulsory Approval Doctrine” is a dangerous ideological weapon. If a small-town pizza parlor can’t choose which weddings it will cater, why should an all-woman event be allowed to exclude men in dresses?
Sure, we can enjoy our conservative schadenfreude at the expense of a lesbian music festival, laughing to see feminists suffer the consequences of their own theoretical dogma. If “the personal is political,” after all, everything becomes political. So the question of whether people with penises must be accepted as “women” is to be decided by a plebiscite or (in reality) imposed upon us by a consensus of cultural elites.
Whatever Justice Anthony Kennedy says is a “marriage,” we will be compelled to accept as such, and who knows what the “Emerging Awareness” will next require? Democracy in the 21st century begins more and more to resemble dictatorship, except for the occasional eruptions of lawless anarchy. The Rule of Law is trampled under foot and our constitutional republic is but a fading memory.
“The fantastical project of yesterday, which was mentioned
only to be ridiculed, is today the audacious reform, and
will be tomorrow the accomplished fact.”
They call it “progress,” but you may notice an aroma of burning brimstone, as we near the destination of this road paved with good intentions.
