By Kristen G.
Wednesday, September 18, 2019. I’m heading to my friend’s house to pick her up and start our trip to the Ohio Lesbian Festival! I’m super excited because this is my first women’s festival. Even though I have been out as bisexual since my twenties, I had only recently plunged into the lesbian scene in the last couple years of my thirties. This year, as I turned 40, I gave myself two overnight trips to Provincetown over Memorial Day (aka “baby dyke weekend”) and Women’s Week in October, in addition to this trip to Ohio to celebrate four decades on Earth and my burgeoning lesbian lifestyle.
It’s been a lot of fun to be a part of a huge group of women where we share something in common: the fact that we are not straight. Sometimes the lesbian community feels like one big sorority. I never really was comfortable around a whole bunch of straight women because I knew I was different, but here I find myself getting into the most intimate of subjects with women I hardly know! And given that I already love camping and live music, I was naturally pumped for a women’s festival that embraces these aspects.
This year marked the 30th anniversary of the Ohio Lesbian Festival (OLF). I had heard awhile back about the Michigan Womyn’s Festival but never managed to fit in a trip before its final year in 2015. Going to OLF helped me feel like I was catching up on lost time. My friend had been to “MichFest” many times, starting with its second year in 1977, as well as a few times to OLF. As she put her stuff in my car, my friend tells me she brought CDs of some of the women who used to play at MichFest who would be performing at OLF this year. The long drive from Massachusetts to Ohio doubled as a great way for me to hear about my friend’s experiences through the years. I was very grateful to her.
My friend and I haven’t known each other for very long, just since June, and we both knew taking a trip together that involved a 11-hour car ride was risky. Whenever the topic of trans and festivals came up previously, she would let me know that she would abstain from talking about it. She knew I had dated someone who had transitioned to a woman and didn’t want to rock our new relationship. We only lived a town apart and both valued having another lesbian friend nearby in our suburban area.
However, during the car ride she was more outspoken, and I thought it was a great way for me to finally hear her perspective. I listened respectfully and picked up on the new-to-me jargon of “gender critical” as my friend labeled herself, sharing her belief that gender should be defined by our chromosomes. Now I understood why she kept her opinions to herself for so long! I passed it off as a generational difference since she was the same age as my parents. I could have explained the mental and physical pain and suffering my ex went through to shed her masculinity to finally be the woman she felt inside. I also didn’t want to welcome any arguments that could ruin our long car ride. Anyway, this weekend was going to be about me and my exploration into the lesbian world, and my friend was helping me get there.
We arrived at OLF! With the current political climate and movements such as “Black Lives Matter” and “#MeToo,” it was encouraging to see dedicated spaces for Women of Color (WOC) and so great to be around a campground full of women. Seriously, when do we get to just hang out with 1500 women for a few days? Some of the performances any woman could relate to, such as personal stories stemming from our misogynistic culture and rallying to get Trump out of office. However, it didn’t take me very long to notice that there likely were very few trans women there. Any signs of the bisexual community were practically non-existent. There was a trans-dedicated space that flew the transgender flag but usually no one was there. I camped near that space and saw the bisexual flag there crumpled on the ground, the only time I saw the bisexual flag at all.
With so many wonderful choices of workshops at OLF, you couldn’t attend them all. I was glad to catch the one led by Bonnie Morris, author of The Disappearing L, where she talked about her research covering women’s festivals through the years. It seemed that the wax and wane of women’s festivals nationwide and their decreasing number of attendees correlated with diminishing lesbian spaces in general. The air had a mixed sense of nostalgia and sadness, mostly from those “festies” who attended MichFest back in its heyday. Despite this, it was encouraging to see that I was far from the youngest person there. Across the festival, there were many attendees in their 20s to 30s, even some groups coming from colleges. The older festies were happily noticing that OLF this year didn’t show “a sea of gray hair” like in recent years. Some of the younger attendees spoke up in the workshops that they need lesbian space and will be fighting to protect it at their colleges and community centers.
I had heard that MichFest shut down in part because of excluding the transgender community, but I didn’t know much more than that. I figured it was because they wanted to hold the space just for lesbians. As someone who identifies as bisexual, I am grateful for inclusive spaces but also appreciate having bisexual-dedicated gatherings to discuss topics unique to us. There are times when we need our own space and times when we include everyone to bridge all colors of the rainbow. I was encouraged to see at the top of OLF’s website “All Womyn Welcome, Always!” When I went to purchase my ticket for OLF, I had to first acknowledge their Anti-Oppression, Anti-Racism, and Anti-Bullying statement to drive home that all women were welcome here.
After seeing the lack of trans individuals at OLF and only one trampled bisexual flag amidst a sea of labrys flags, I decided to go to the “Difficult Dialogues: lesbian feminist, queer, trans, and…” workshop. This was really the name of it, ending with ellipses. By a long shot, this was the largest workshop attendance I experienced. There must have been more than 100 people sitting in a large circle, and you could already feel the tension in the room. It was at that moment that I realized the atmosphere was very incongruent with OLF’s “all womyn welcome, always” statement. The workshop started with us all introducing ourselves and the leader started us off to demonstrate how she wanted us to go about it. She said she was a woman born woman, a feminist and a lesbian, and a Latina, from Mexico. This was very different from how we introduced ourselves at home in Boston: no mention of cisgender, no mention of pronouns. Then almost everyone after her introduced themselves as a radical feminist woman-born woman, with the remaining comprised of trans women and a couple of trans men. The way some introduced themselves with such steam, you would swear someone really ticked them off. Halfway through the circle they reached me, and I interjected into this unstated war between the radical feminists and trans women by introducing the unwanted Switzerland in the room: “I’m a bisexual woman.” I was hoping this would encourage the other fifty-plus women after me to label themselves differently, thinking that perhaps some of the younger ones were going along with what everyone else said. Sadly, only a few after me said non-binary, bisexual, or transgender, with most keeping with the radical feminist woman-born woman label. I didn’t feel any progress in understanding across groups after that workshop, and instead felt rather disheartened and disgusted by the lack of a long shot, this was the largest workshop attendance I experienced. There must have been more than 100 people sitting in a large circle, and you could already feel the tension in the room. It was at that moment that I realized the atmosphere was very incongruent with OLF’s “all womyn welcome, always” statement. The workshop started with us all introducing ourselves and the leader started us off to demonstrate how she wanted us to go about it. She said she was a woman born woman, a feminist and a lesbian, and a Latina, from Mexico. This was very different from how we introduced ourselves at home in Boston: no mention of cisgender, no mention of pronouns. Then almost everyone after her introduced themselves as a radical feminist woman-born woman, with the remaining comprised of trans women and a couple of trans men. The way some introduced themselves with such steam, you would swear someone really ticked them off. Halfway through the circle they reached me, and I interjected into this unstated war between the radical feminists and trans women by introducing the unwanted Switzerland in the room: “I’m a bisexual woman.” I was hoping this would encourage the other fifty-plus women after me to label themselves differently, thinking that perhaps some of the younger ones were going along with what everyone else said. Sadly, only a few after me said non-binary, bisexual, or transgender, with most keeping with the radical feminist woman-born woman label. I didn’t feel any progress in understanding across groups after that workshop, and instead felt rather disheartened and disgusted by the lack of compassion and ignorance there.
Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist ideology had finally reared its ugly head in my exploration of the lesbian world. It posed to me a challenge to understand it better, but to also keep a distance. This was not an ideology in line with my inclusive values. Here I thought my friend who came with me was the outlier, but it seemed I was surrounded by women at OLF who think just like her. I now know that the “womyn-born womyn” line originated at MichFest. I also found out that many of the workshops, dedicated spaces and other components of OLF organization were introduced and refined through the years at MichFest.
Lisa Vogel, the founder and organizer of MichFest performed one of the nights and the crowd went wild. It was great hearing Lisa tell stories about MichFest, just like I heard from my friend during our long drive. On the other hand, I also wish OLF had set itself apart from MichFest by holding true to its inclusivity statement. It’s not enough for it to be printed on the website and the festival program; the attendees need to collectively agree and work towards it, too. With OLF celebrating their 30-year anniversary this year, I wonder if it will ever build that inclusive identity for itself independent of MichFest.
Kristen lives in the Boston area and enjoys exploring what she wants to be when she grows up.
Featured Image: Credit: Elvert Barnes from Baltimore, Maryland, USA [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]