MWMF, Bulletin Boards and Trusting

I just spent the past few hours reading some of the posts on the bulletin board for Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. I’ve been avoiding them. Mostly because I think internet anonymity gives people protection to spew disjointed venom. But also because I told myself it wasn’t the place that warranted my attention. But now I’m sure there’s also something there about how I still, after all this intention, didn’t want to deal with the hurt and hate directed towards trans womyn. Talk about privilege. I could avoid it if I wanted to. Sigh.

I’m getting ready to go. I’m packing. Trying to sort through clothing and what I’m gonna do when it rains, cause it’s gonna rain. My mom is loaning me her tent, my grandma’s picking me up from the airport, Alex taught me to drive stick, Victoria got me a bed. It’s all lining up, and in less than a week I’ll drive out of Ohio in a bright red pickup towards a land of unknown.

And today was the first day I actually felt scared, felt how that fear pales to the anxiety that others will and do navigate. Which means I actually felt the importance of this work. I was ready for discomfort, expected challenge, but this level of aggression, of pain, of grasping, of feeling…I had side stepped that. It is an interesting thing to have a foot in two worlds. I can hear the pain and intention under some of these reactions. I can feel the desire for safety and community. And, also, my guts churn for how horribly misguided it all feels. And it is a challenge to not be condescending or ageist or brush it off as ‘ignorance’. Because ignorance is such a loaded word. It is a weapon that has been used against poor/working class people, communities of color and places in the country/world that don’t move according to the costal regulations set by New York or San Francisco. It is dehumanizing. And in this space it negates a person’s emotional intelligence and the need they are actually reaching for. And maybe, maybe, there is a way to honor that, help meet those needs in a way that shows people the wide abundance of support, solidarity and connection that is possible.

But fuck if I know how to do that. So it comes down to trusting. Trusting myself, other peoples humanity and the truth that so much hostility is just resistance, is just fear, is just grasping. And I know, we know, how to speak to that.