By Danielle Whitaker

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Lilith Fair, 1999. In the words of Sarah McLachlan, I will remember you.

As a deeply sheltered kid who’d grown awkwardly into a deeply sheltered adolescent, I didn’t have many friends, and my hyper-Christian mother wasn’t about to let me go to some wild, nineties version of Woodstock on my own (her sentiments, naturally). She insisted on tagging along, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to see Sarah McLachlan. I wanted to be around other women, other female musicians, speaking their truths and sharing their stories.

I remember at one point, my mother informed me in a hushed, mortified sort of voice, “I think this is some sort of lesbian gathering.”

Okay? I thought. So what?

Today, it is devastating to me that my mother, a fellow woman, could be (and still is) so repulsed by the idea of women loving other women. Even platonic love that ventures “too deep” is enough to set off her sensors. It is painful to observe how she has distanced herself from any strong female friendships as long as I’ve been alive. I can only wonder if perhaps she is afraid of what bonding with other women might force her to admit about female oppression, about patriarchy, about herself.

I haven’t been to a women-centric festival since then, partly because I am happily antisocial but partly because I spent a large chunk of my adult life fighting internalized homophobia. I attended Pride with my first girlfriend in 2003 (then known as Gay Pride), and once again with my second in 2006, but after that, “Pride” never made me feel particularly proud. To me it felt mostly like a male-dominated freak show, and today, most people I know who attend are straight.

I do remember, once, seeing a group of women preparing for the local Dyke March. I remember how defiantly unfeminine they looked, how proud and free they seemed: for a brief ripple in time and space, they were leading an event—perhaps the only one in the world—that was just about them. That was the kind of pride that “Pride” was meant to be about.

Much of that is gone, now. Dyke Marches, like nearly all lesbian and female-focused spaces, have been colonized, claimed, and controlled by men calling themselves not only women, but the most rightfully woman of them all. Woman has become an adjective and an identity—anything but an immutable reality.

The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival

I’d never heard of MichFest until I stumbled down the rabbit hole of radical feminism nearly four years ago. Though I’d never set foot on the grounds in all its forty years, the words of one attendee interviewed at the final festival confirmed what I already sensed:  “The world would be a better place if it was more like MichFest.”

The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival ran for four decades, welcoming tens of thousands of women over its lifespan—women who described the event as life-changing, transformative, and inspiring. For many women, it was the only time and place they felt fully accepted, safe, and empowered in a world dominated by men—the world we are all forced to endure every day of our lives from cradle to grave. MichFest was a place for all women of all ages, ethnicities, sexual orientations, backgrounds, and interests—a time of community, respect, connection, and celebration. A celebration of both the unity and diversity encompassed within our lived female experience.

This was intolerable to trans extremists, and the event came to a somber end in 2015 after extensive harassment and controversy over its so-called “exclusionary” premise, despite the fact that no trans-identified males were ever denied access to the event.

The message was clear: females are not allowed to request or even desire a mere few days of male-free communion with one another.

This became quickly evident as I began researching women’s festivals, realizing how many of them have succumbed to patriarchal pressure and explicitly declare their “inclusion” of men. SisterSpace Weekend Women’s Festival invites “anyone who identifies as a woman”; the National Women’s Music Festival welcomes “all genders”; and the Wild Woman Fest “absolutely” accommodates men who identify as women. I say this not to disparage these events or their intentions, as I am confident they still offer incredible experiences for women, but rather to cast light on the subtle yet sudden disappearance of female-exclusive spaces. In this subtlety lies the danger.

Sisters, all is not lost. We may be climbing uphill for the moment, but I believe the peak is in sight. Events and gatherings continue to develop and thrive across the globe as more and more women recognize the need to defend and protect female cultural spaces in the interest of building community. We will continue to gather, to connect, to organize. Our strength keeps us going—somewhat literally:

This September, a group of UK lesbians is organizing the Lesbian Strength March in Leeds. To the surprise of no one, trans extremists are hard at work to stop the event, antagonize the women involved, and threaten anyone who attends. You know—“activism” at its finest. Despite their protests and some totally factual and unbiased propaganda, the organizers are not backing down.

Women’s Liberation Front also took charge four years ago (as they often do) by developing an annual radical feminist summer gathering. This July, the fourth annual WoLF Fest took place within the beauty of the California redwood forest, offering several days of women-centric workshops, activities, and strategizing, explicitly free of male presence. WoLF Fest works hard to ensure the safety of its attendees, keeping the location of the event private due to the potential for harassment, threats, and infiltration by trans extremists—because as we know, women gathering without men and setting their own boundaries is a radically revolutionary act. But that’s nothing new.

Equally revolutionary, developed to honor the tradition of MichFest and keep its legacy alive, the Michigan Framily Reunion was born three years ago as an annual music festival “created by females for females,” offering a selection of workshops, performances, and a marketplace, where this year WLRN’s Thistle and Jenna set up a table to speak to women about our efforts here at WLRN. Earlier this summer, Thistle also represented WLRN at the Midwest Women’s Herbal Conference, a particularly unique women’s event centered around herbalist-based wellness and healing. Her personal account of the event is available here on our website.

We can clearly see that our community of womanhood, from a global scale to the smallest assembly in the heart of nature, is alive and vibrant with an energy that has kept us fighting for millennia. The magic that happens when women organize, bond, and forge relationships cannot be suppressed, no matter the state of society or feminism within it. No matter the threats we face, no matter our opposition. We are united in strength by our female experience, a connection that can never be broken.

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Tune in on Thursday, September 5 for our monthly broadcast as we speak with Dawn Smith, founder and organizer of the Michigan Framily Reunion. Also featuring the voices of Ruth Barrett, Nina Paley, Alix Dobkin and others, our 41st edition podcast further explores the magic of women’s festivals and gatherings. Also, be sure to follow us on Spinster, the revolutionary new social media platform for feminist discussion. Thank you for supporting our efforts in the world of radical feminist media, and please contact us if you are interested in joining our collective of volunteers!

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