Camp Trans - History

History

Camp Trans was sparked by a 1991 incident in which a woman named Nancy Burkholder was ejected from the festival after her transsexual status became known to festival security guards Although the festival has maintained a women-born-women policy since its inception, as evidenced by posters from the first festival in 1975, the 1991 incident falsely led to the belief that the policy was only articulated as a means of preventing transsexual women from attending. Each year afterwards a group of women, both trans and female assigned at birth, protested the exclusion of trans women from the event. Initially these protests were small and sometimes carried on inside of the camp.

A more organized group of trans women and their allies began camping and holding demonstrations outside the gate. After a five-year hiatus, Camp Trans returned in 1999, led by transgender activists Riki Ann Wilchins and Leslie Feinberg, as well as many members of the Boston and Chicago Lesbian Avengers The events of this year drew attention and controversy, culminating in tensions as a small group of transgender activists were admitted into the festival to exchange dialogue with organizers and to negotiate a short-lived compromise allowing only post-operative trans women on the festival land.

In the early 1980s and in 1999, a stealth transgender musician who had transitioned 10 years earlier did perform in MWMF, and during 1999's Camp Trans event, a number of trans women purchased tickets and were admitted to MWMF. A similar claim of victory was published by Camp Trans that year.