Naked and dirty: rethinking (not) attending festivals

Abstract

This article draws together critical tourism studies and events tourism literature offering insights into the diverse motivations for, and barriers to, attending the predominantly lesbian and separatist feminist festival, Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. Augmenting the literature on lesbian tourism, the article deploys a conceptualisation of festivals, such as gay pride, that seeks to contest dominant codes and norms as parties with politics. Using the data gathered from 222 qualitative questions, 10 interviews and 1 focus group, it explores the intertwining of music, feminist politics and temporality in understanding womyn's motivations in attending a separatist festival. Distinctively, it demonstrates how barriers to, and motivations for, attending festivals can be paradoxically mutually formative. In this way, it becomes possible both to question tick-box motivational frameworks and to explore festival times and spaces as (re)making tourist encounters. Thus, the article opens up considerations and theorisations of festival attendee' motivations looking to the complexities of experiences, motivations and time–space interactions.

Keywords:

• critical tourism
• lesbian tourism
• feminism
• motivations
• qualitative research
• Michigan Womyn's Music Festival
• separatism
• sexuality

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to all of those womyn who took the time to complete the questionnaire at Michfest. I would like to thank all of those in the critical tourism turn for opening up the possibilities of this article. I would especially like to thank Irena Ateljevic for her support and her passion. I am also grateful to Nigel Morgan for his editorial support, the organisers of the Critical Tourism Conference where an early version of this article was presented and the two anonymous referees. Finally thanks must go to Donna Imrie for her inspiration and support, and thanks to Kat Marples for introducing me to Michfest and her research assistance. This research was made possible because of the British Academy grant number SG42582.

Notes

I will use gay and lesbian to describe specific identities that pertain to the sexualities described by the participants in the research. In particular, lesbian is used to describe lesbian and gay women; it can at times encompass bisexual and queer women – but where possible these are separated from this grouping. It also seeks to evoke the understanding that sexual identities are not fixed, but constantly in the processes of becoming, rather than fixed within a universal, homogenous category. In doing so, the article questions assertions that ‘lesbian’ and ‘gay’ are fixed categories that are always deployed in the same way and have assumed/shared meanings. It also questions the use of a broad range of categories, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, questioning, unsure, intersex, two-spirited, etc., when the study/research does not directly relate to or necessarily encompass these groups. The complexity of the possibilities of queer subjectivities is not discussed here (however see Oswin, 2008).

Michfest arguably has a particular appeal to womyn with particular socio-economic status and herstories. However, the festival does strive to maintain a ‘sliding scale’ of entry fees and offer scholarships to womyn who cannot afford to attend. Tents are also provided for those who do not have their own and a shuttle bus is provided to and from the site from the closest city. This article focuses on those womyn who attend the festival and therefore can only address their views, opinions and experiences. As the data collected are not verifiable as representative, it is not possible to draw conclusions regarding the demographics of festival attendees.

The data were collected over the period of the 2006 festival (8–13 August). Questionnaires were handed out and returned either to the researchers or to a box that was located in a central site. Interviews were held when individuals requested an interview rather than completing a questionnaire. These allowed for further depth and the exploration of particular issues. The focus group was part of the festivals workshop programme and consisted of five womyn.

The terms in the brackets were the ones the womyn used to describe themselves and are reproduced here where possible verbatim. They were asked about their age in specific age brackets, their work (which is at times anonymised), their sexuality, their ethnicity and how many times they have attended the festival. The quotes are reproduced with a spell check and words in [ ] added for clarity.