Eating Our Own

The unfortunate queer politic surrounding the end of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival

Please, have a seat and pour some tea. My name is Hanifah Walidah. I am an artist. I have performed at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival for 7 out of the 9 years I have been blessed to know it. In all that time, I have never been harassed, threatened or blacklisted, at least not to my knowledge. I haven’t experienced any personal verbal or physical assaults. For this I am grateful and by default rendered some responsibility. I am writing the following for my comrads, my community of artists who have experienced some or all of the above by attending. I am writing because of my love of history/herstory and my share of responsibility to the generations who follow me. And I write for my elders who have sheltered me through many storms and whose shoulders I proudly stand. So lets begin with them.

I love my elders. Those who have seen and experienced what I still have yet to dream. What a privilege it is to talk, laugh and listen to womyn 20, 30, 40, even 50 years my senior. I have never experienced this kind of love, their keen understanding of the nuances of life, to such an incredible degree until I started going to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival in 2005. Their knowing is not about political correctness, it is about the politic lived and learned.

You poke holes in your own revolutionary bubble when you diminish the revolutions had before your own.

For those who think nothing of The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival and celebrate in its ending, allow me to put this attitude to question. I often hear you dismiss Michigan as a place with all them ‘ancient lesbians’, them ‘antiquated feminists’ or the worse “old ass TURFs”. Is that how you speak of your grandma or aunties, ancestors? Just curious? My point is not about competing politic, my point is about the destructive energy harnessed from an absolute dismissal of your elders. You poke holes in your own revolutionary bubble when you diminish the revolutions had before your own. These precious human beings, these spiritual reservoirs just an arms length away who, for decades, have been navigating their humanity through the same muck you are just now becoming acquainted with.

Did you ever think about what they might have seen and experienced that would help you through the pains of what you are experiencing today? The personal ones? The political ones? The heartbreaks? Aren’t you curious how they survived the relentless numbness of bigotry, racism, homophobia, patriarchy when it ran free on the frontier? Half of us are numbed by just reading our Facebook timelines.

How can we access their blueprint of how to get shit done?

Aren’t you in the least bit curious how their souls stay intact or for some fall a part? What motivated a group of self-identified lesbians in the 70s to go into the damn woods with no hot water, no amenities, no nothin? Doesn’t your left hand itch a bit and wonder about how together they were able to overcome NUMEROUS political, race, class and logistical disagreements, drug abuse, violence, major infrastructural challenges and cultural clashes within the space they dared to create for themselves? Do you not think ego, self-righteousness, racism, classism weren’t present through it all? So how did they survive 40 years? How do we access their blueprint of how to get shit done? And know to define ‘done’ by maintaining and sustaining what you’ve created. That is the hard, unyielding, sacrificing work that is taught to the young by their elders. So then how serious are you about ‘your’ revolution? Because in the end, these womyn have no value, no right to exist unless they adhere to the aggressive demands of those who have lived or done a fraction of the same work, if any? That literally does not add up or balance out my young, brilliant but misinformed revolutionaries.

So let me ask you this? You speak about the necessity of an all-inclusive community. What exactly do you mean when you say that? All-inclusive of what? By default the word all-inclusive connotes difference? Perhaps it is how community is housed within today’s queer politic that contradicts inclusivity. Are you vertically or horizontally inclusive? Better asked, are we trying to fit everyone under the same roof or build out in respect to many houses? I would suggest we’re stronger with the latter. What many of you have failed to understand is that Michigan is one house among others that constitute the queer community. Yet by the efforts of a longstanding boycott we are left with less real estate.

(Elders) possess the time you assume to have and knowledge of the mistakes you are destined to make.

Community can be made of those you love and those you don’t. Community is self-defined. Community is a choice. Community is action. Community is forgiving. Community grows from its own mistakes. Community extends beyond one week in the woods. Community will drive miles to pick you up if your stranded in a town you don’t know. Community takes you in if you loose your home. Community calls in the calvary if you are in danger. If you need food. Community bares its teeth when defending its home. If you need a voice on the other end of the phone. Community supports your business and mishaps. Community checks you when you fall short. Community is never perfect. Community is not made over night. Community takes time. That is why you don’t dismiss your elders. They possess the time you assume to have and knowledge of the mistakes you are destined to make.

It will read as a sad chapter in the queer narrative where we ate our own in pursuit of the feast.

Since when is a movement strengthened by the dismissal of its elders? Is that some new technology or hack for revolution? The unfortunate reality about Michigan is not that this is the last year, but that history will have to be told. And this history will tell a story of division and a greater queer implosion. It will read as a sad chapter in the queer narrative where we ate our own in pursuit of the feast. Those of you who are feeling some obnoxious sense of victory, here is a reality check. You couldn’t dismantle 40 years of memory and affect with the entirety of your life force, boo; though your political ego tells you otherwise. What’s time is done is done. We already won.

One thing that many overlook with their dismissal of its herstory is that Michigan is not for all womyn. Yeah, that’s right. Its not. Michigan is for womyn who identify as feminists. PERIOD. The transwomyn who have been coming to Michigan for years are feminists and not those looking to judge or spew misogynist opinions about the people and culture found on the land. All transwomen are not the same. MichFest is feminism in a state of constant experimentation. Whether you be lesbian, straight, bi, trans, gender non conforming or abracadabra, if you ain’t down for that then save some money, honey and stay home. You wouldn’t bumrush the door to the home of someone you don’t know. You wouldn’t enter, put your feet up on the kitchen table and tell them they need to do their dishes. But that is exactly what was done here. Michigan is no institution, it is home. So, didn’t your grandma teach you any damn manners?

Progress is not gained by working with everyone who thinks exactly like yourself.

So what happens when we disagree on what feminism is? We find new labels to separate us. We put the word radical in front of feminism. I always found that the word radical is often used to demean the actions of those we disagree with. But ok, I’ll play. Yeah, there are radical feminists on the land and their are marginal feminists and some who just read their first book by Audre Lorde. But this is not feminism in theory. Michigan is feminism in action. It is a working experiment in feminism. Sometimes the womyn of the festival get it right and sometimes we get otherwise. But the work put in at least provides the space, our space, a safe space, to work our shit out. Progress is gain by friction and difference. Progress is not gained by working with everyone who thinks exactly like yourself. History will tell you that. Elders are always there to remind you of that perplexing reality when building anything.

Do you know what else is perplexing? Try feeding yourself with both fists in the air. Michigan has been blessed with fiercely incredible artists who have been rocking for 40 years despite boycotts, financial loss, harassment and death threats. Now that, my dear, will be the historical footnote of those who fought so vehemently to destroy Michigan. Your revolution against womyn who wouldn’t fall in line has economically disempowered queer women and in particular womyn of color who more recently have consistently defied the boycott in leu of their own mental and spiritual health. Yes, we chose ourselves. How dare us. But still we have to eat.

You have disempowered mothers and their children. You have threatened artists who have both changed and saved lives. And here some of you all stand arrogantly dismissing them as some new brand of evil using a white patriarchal tactic like economic boycotts. You shout at Michigan from the leather armchairs of racist and patriarchal institutions that you will be in economically enslaved to for most of your life. Institutions that teach critical thinking but stifle imagination and communication outside of its halls. You plot or support acts of vandalism and raids on private land, our home, from your citified perspectives. Meanwhile Michigan has been a pilgrimage of sorts, a haven for lesbians who come from places like Uganda, South Africa, Russia, where their lives are threatened on the daily. Or from small American towns where even in 2015 lesbians have to hide behind lies.

You have been arrogant and narrow visioned in your revolution in regard to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. And that indeed is what will be written and I hope realized over time. But on the other hand, 40 years… count them:

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39…40

is cause for one hell of a celebration!