Whose Feminism is it Anyway?

The controversy publicly erupted in 1991, when organizers of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival expelled a transsexual woman from the campground, or "the Land," announcing that the festival is open only to "womyn-born-womyn." Next year, a small group of transsexual activists gathered in front of the Festival entrance to protest the policy. According to Davina Anne Gabriel, then the editor of TransSisters: the Journal of Transsexual Feminism , the "stated intent [of the protest] from the very beginning was to persuade the organizers to change the festival policy to allow postoperative -- but not preoperative -- male-to-female transsexuals to attend."