The Man Who Led the Charge Against Michfest and Later Renounced Trans Activism

Davina Anne Gabriel had an unlikely change of heart

Cover photo of Issue #2 of TransSisters showing protestors at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival.

Davina Anne Gabriel was one of the most influential trans activists of the 1990s. He was the founder, editor, and publisher of TransSisters: the Journal of Transsexual Feminism, and he helped organize and participated in protests against the “womyn-born-womyn” policy at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival from 1992 to 1995.

Surprisingly, in 1996, Gabriel discontinued the journal and dropped out of trans activism altogether. By the end of his life, he rejected and denounced all of his previous activism completely.

TransSisters was launched in the fall of 1993. Gabriel had been inspired to start the journal after reading an essay by influential trans activist Sandy Stone titled, “The Empire Strikes Back: A Post-Transsexual Manifesto.” Stone had been at the center of a controversy in the 1970s when he was hired as the sound engineer for Olivia Records, an “all-women” recording company.

According to Jessica Xavier, a trans-identified man who also wrote for TransSisters, “Davina envisioned a journal that would extend Sandy's ideas, offering us a means of redefining ourselves in our own voices.”

Xavier continued:

So when Issue #1 appeared in the fall of 1993, transsexual feminists suddenly found something that crystallized our thoughts, focused our rage and gave us a voice. Rather than quietly acquiescing to the self-hatred implied by cultural feminists like Raymond and Daly, we could explore some ways and means of resisting them. Rather than seeing ourselves as enemies of feminism, it became possible to be empowered through articulating our own version of it.

However, he also admitted that:

TSisters came to embody our obsession with access to women-only space and particularly with Michigan's infamous "womyn-born-womyn" only policy.

In the very first issue of TransSisters, we get an origin story that sheds light both on how the T got stuck to the LGB and how the protests against Michfest began.