Lesbian lessons from the deep south: My trip to the 12th Annual Gulf Coast Womyn's Festival

Off Our Backs, Aug/Sep 2000 by Myers-Spiers, Rebecca

Lesbian Lessons from the Deep South: My Trip to the 12th Annual Gulf Coast Womyn's Festival

April 19, 2000, Wednesday night 11 p.m. ...Just circled with my sisters.

Everyone from all different consciousness...

Many not pagan but willing to share culture and life experience with me.

Hard for me to do, a certain clumsiness in coming together...

everyone worn out from pre-fest work...

nevertheless an amazing experience...

Festival starts tomorrow...can't wait

This year I had the pleasure of attending the 12th Annual Gulf Coast Womyn's Festival in Ovett, Mississippi. The festival was held on April 20-24 during Easter/Passover Weekend. Festival grounds were one hundred and twenty heavily wooded acres, complete with a creek, a turtle pond and various nature paths. The land was purchased seven years ago with the vision of creating a Feminist Educational Retreat Center entitled Camp Sister Spirit. Despite homophobic attacks from neighbors in the area that vision was accomplished. Now the festival is held every year as a celebration of that space, of womyn coming together to create their reality and of triumph over homophobia.

At first glimpse, the festival isn't much. No more than two hundred women attended this year. There were no loud parties until three a.m. No looming controversies over the transgender camp outside the gate. No spending the weekend drunk or otherwise completely fucked up or arguing with your sisters. Instead a whole world of womyn's culture opens right before your eyes.

Being a college student on a low budget and somewhat familiar with camp's work since I have visited before, I decided to go as a worker. Ticket prices are cheaper that way and I figured that I would get to see the festival process from the ground up and to bond more with the women I met last year. I arrived on Wednesday morning the day before the actual festival began. I expected to go to work right away but since it is such a small festival some of the women recognized me from last year's festival which I also attended. They actually took the time out to sit down with me and visit. They asked me questions about school and work and to just get to know me as a person. No matter how busy the women were with pre-fest work it was still important to invest time in creating strong bonds with someone they would be working with.

The workers also had this floating joke about "processing" everything before we did it. While there was a genuine concern about each others' emotional well being, most of the women there were the kind of people that just wanted to get things done and not waste precious time talking about every move that was to be made. Some would say that we were following the radical feminist path of action. Workers meeting were short and usually consisted of women stating what needed to be done and women volunteering to do it. One woman who had been a worker at the festival for years said, "Once the same thing is said about three times, I'm outta there."

Kim snatched me up to work with her on the Decorations Committee that consisted of two people: her and me. As we traveled to the rented Porta-Jon's changing them to Potra-Janes with duct tape and a lavender marker she told me stories of her life as an activist and about how she learned to quilt. Kim stated "Sometimes I didn't feel like going to a march. I thought that it would be way more revolutionary to just stay home and quilt." With her talent she stitches the visual story of the Camp onto an annual festival quilt that is raffled off each year to raise money for Camp Sister Spirit.

Joanna, the woman who is responsible for making sure that quilt gets raffled also took me under her wing. I was also on the Raffle Committee which meant that I got to walk around the festival looking pretty and asking womyn to buy tickets. Once again it was only two to a team: Joanna and I. As we gathered up the items for raffle she told me the story of her divorce. Noticing her kids were unhappy she took them on a one-year road trip where they got to see almost the entire country. Near the end of the trip she began to realize that she didn't want to go back to her emotionally abusive husband. Later she realized she was a lesbian. She is still traveling around the country in her converted van attending womyn's music festivals like this one.

Thursday night I attended the 12th Annual Workers Talent Show where all of the festival workers get a chance to display their talents. When the festival bard Marideth got on stage and sang the song, "Who Will Watch the Homeplace?", my eyes filled with tears. Referring to the tool shed at the camp she sang, "In my grandmother's shed there are hundreds of tools/I know them by feel and by name/Like parts of my body they fix this old place/When I move them they won't be the same." With that song she made it clear that the young workers and festi-goers were expected to watch over the camp after she was gone. That night many stories were told and much poetry was read by festival workers who were both amazing the audience and teaching them that we all had a talent, or at least a story.