What do the Boy Scouts and the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival have in common? Let's scout it out shall we? They both have very well intended goals. They both have gender-specific references in their title. And they both discriminate against individuals who do not meet their arbitrary definition for "boy" or "womyn."

We all know discrimination when we see it. We all know that the Boy Scouts discriminated against James Dale because he is gay. But what was their criterion? That he was not "morally straight"? The Boy Scout oath contains that curious phrase. Does anyone think that when Baden-Powell founded the Boy Scouts at the beginning of the last century that the word "straight" had the same connotations that it does today? The word "gay" certainly didn't. So they are basing their discrimination on interpreting an antiquated phrase by current definitions.

"Morally straight" might be given an anti-gay twist today. Tomorrow it might be used against an effeminate boy. In another time, in another place, it might be given a racist twist, or an anti-Semitic twist. That's the way discrimination is. As long as one person is denied his or her rights, none of us can feel safe from discrimination.

Discrimination can crop up in the strangest places. A music festival in Michigan, for example. A place where happy women can go to be among their friends, unfettered by the chains of a misogynistic culture. A time out of time, a respite from an oppressive world. A place under the stars to breath the fresh air. And then discrimination creeps into it.

It starts with scouting out the words… womyn-born womyn only allowed here. Then with an over critical evaluation of what it takes to be a woman. Transgender women don't fit the mold because they have the tainted aroma of male privilege still hanging around them. No matter that they have lived for years as women. No matter that they battled their inner demons and faced society's ridicule just to be the women that they know they are. No matter that they identify as women, and in many cases have always identified as women. No matter.

An intriguing question was posed by Carol Queen from Good Vibrations, San Francisco, who presented the keynote speech at the Chicago Dyke March Rally this year. "If someone had his penis slit from end to end, turned inside out and shoved into his body to form a vagina, don't you think they deserve a second chance?" I guess the answer to that question is "No."

Last year the organizers of the festival declared that "womyn-born-womyn" was not enough to discriminate against the transgendered. They also needed the qualifier "no penises on the land." I guess that's because no one really knows what "womyn-born-womyn" really means. I don't know what it means. Neither do the festivalgoers. If you go to their website (www.michfest.com) the debate is seemingly endless as to who qualifies as womyn or not.

So this year, eight energetic genetic females, none of them with penises, were ejected from the festival. I was not there, so I cannot comment about the circumstances under which they were ejected. However, you have to keep in mind that none of them had home-grown penises of their own, and all of them were "born-womyn." At least they were born females, but most likely they were "born-babies." Nonetheless, they were certainly not there to oppress the other festivalgoers. It gets very arbitrary.

Photo by Israel Wright, Copyright 2000, Lambda Publications, Chicago

Discrimination is a funny thing. The closer you inspect it, the more you realize that it is rooted in sand. Its foundations are subject to the vagaries of the changing tide. Once you start you get caught up in the undertow, you just get sucked on down to the murky depths.

So, is there any difference between the Boy Scouts and the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival? I don't think so. Discrimination is discrimination. The Boy Scouts discriminate against gays; next it will be against sissy boys, then against boys who come from gay or lesbian households. Who knows where it will end? The music festival discriminates against transgender women today, then gender-variant women. Will they then start on those who are too butch or too femme? Who knows?

The Boy Scout's downfall may be the Supreme Court decision that allows them to go on discriminating. Hopefully there will be a massive withdrawal of funding from public sources and fair-minded corporations.

Likewise, there is nothing inherently illegal about the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival discriminating against whomever they want. But I think one year they will go too far, and that will ultimately be their downfall. Maybe not this year, but eventually the people who support the festival will realize that they are supporting a biased organization. They will realize that every dollar they pour into the festival supports discrimination which one day may be aimed at them. When that happens they will leave in droves, driven away by the rotten stench of decaying dogma.

Miranda Stevens-Miller
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MirandaSt1@aol.com