By Michelle Tea

THE SAN FRANCISCO Dyke March is the most anarchic large-scale public event in town. Eschewing the legitimacy of the Pride Parade, with its police presence, proscribed route, and rules about the dykes keeping their damn shirts on, Dyke Marchers have retained the old-fashioned political fire that's fizzling out of the parade as the term "gay" comes to signify less of a call to arms and more of a complacent target market. The Dyke March is grassroots rawness at its best. When the march started several years ago, organizers didn't get permits or tell the police where they'd be marching, and this early spirit of civil disobedience still permeates the fierce and festive tromp through the Mission.

The rally that kicks off the outlaw trek has always favored the speeches of political activists over entertainment, reminding the audience that – even though we have a nice homo life here in the Bay Area Bubble – shit is still fucked up, and you'd better listen, care, and help do something about it. It's a badass event, righteous beyond reproach, for women by women. Dudes have to park themselves at the curb and let the women take the streets.

But this year organizers of the Dyke March had to ask themselves a hard question, one that more and more organizers of women-only spaces and events are having to ask. Although it might sound odd to those not familiar with the wild world of gender identity politics, the question was this: Just who do you mean by "women," anyway?

The criterion for marching in the Dyke March is not that you be a dyke but that you be a woman. This is a policy rooted in the feminist separatist politics that spawned the event 10-some years ago. Though the march takes place the same weekend as the fag-dominated Pride Parade, its origins have more in common with rural lesbian lands, women-only consciousness-raising groups, and the kind of political activists who insert ys and is into their spelling of "women."

Spell it any way you like, but the definition of "woman" is changing, as is the definition of "dyke."

"It's no longer gender-female meets gender-female," quips Judith Cohen, a longtime activist and member of the Dyke March's organizing committee. And any S.F. queer who gets out of the house much can attest to the changing face of the local dyke scene. It's a face just as likely to sport sculpted sideburns as it is lip gloss or multiple piercings. A lesbian gender spectrum that once jogged from femme to butch with lots of androgyny in between now sees its masculine end stretched further as increasing numbers of butch dykes find the term "transgendered" a more comfy fit. While lots of trannyboys don't feel a part of any lesbian community, there are many who retain aspects of their dyke identities and continue to be part of dyke groups after transitioning to male. Afraid that the "women-only" wording on the Dyke March's flyers might alienate a growing portion of the community, Cohen spearheaded a vote to change it to the more inclusive "women and dyke-identified folk."

"I wouldn't have had the balls to come forward if the continuum of what it means to be a lesbian hadn't changed," she says. "The gender equation has changed, and the Dyke March committee was not keeping up. That's when I decided to raise it as an issue."

The Dyke March Committee includes a transwoman (welcome to march under the existing "woman-identified" policy) and many pro-trannyboy organizers, but the vote was 7-5 in favor of keeping the march's official policy women-only. Cohen says trans allies who came to the meeting left frustrated, some in tears.

Lisa Roth, a founding member of the Dyke March Committee, says the issue wasn't about trannies in the march but about preserving the idea of a women's space. "We voted to keep the 'woman-only' wording in our description of the Dyke March because this is a celebration of woman-ness," she says. "But people who march are allowed to define their womanhood however they like. We're not the gender police. We won't kick anyone out."

"I believe the Dyke March belongs to the community, not the committee," says Cohen, who was frustrated by what she viewed as the older generation's naïveté and stubbornness. She claims one committee member wondered if the trannies in question even amounted to more than "100 in number"; another relegated them to the status of a "special interest group."

Roth didn't see it that way. "That's untrue," she says simply. "We've always had a policy of letting people define their own genders. A transman could march with us to celebrate the part of himself that he thinks of as still being a dyke. We just ask that marchers celebrate the woman parts of themselves while they are here. Above all, we want to keep our women's space. That's what feminism is about."

Cohen has not attended an organizing meeting since the vote was taken, but she has continued to work on organizing the entertainment stage for the pre-march festivities.

When word got out that the San Francisco Dyke March was struggling with how transmen fit into its woman-only policy, the reaction on the street was mostly surprise – who knew the free-for-all Dyke March had any rules at all? Wasn't this the same action that, during the height of the dot-com nightmare, included marchers fucking up luxury cars parked on Valencia Street by scrawling "Yuppie Go Home" in lipstick on windshields?

At the rally preceding Santa Cruz's Dyke March, local organizers prided themselves on their embrace of transmen both in their march and in their community at large. Many Santa Cruz speakers expressed disappointment with their S.F. sisters' policy. "It is a nonissue for us," says Valerie, an organizer of Santa Cruz's annual lezzie parade. "I simply refuse to discriminate, having lived for so fucking long with discrimination. Separation causes human suffering."

Cohen concurs. "The thing about transmen is, they were dykes once. Why should they be excluded from this community just 'cause they shifted to another gender identity? They are not bio-men. They do not have the ingrained insensitivity of bio-men. I do not see a reason to exclude transfolk."

Ultimately, it seems the S.F. Dyke March doesn't either. Perhaps in response to the growing furor the committee's rules were inspiring in the community, the phrase "transfolk welcome" was posted on the event's Web site. But rabble-rouser Cohen feels the words are too vague, sandwiched as they are between the "women-only" statement and a request for "brothers" to stand on the side. "It matters now more than ever what you say, how you say it, and who you include. And it's not fully inclusive yet," Cohen maintains.

And the debate rages on, within the Dyke March committee and in all woman-only spaces and events. Ivy Monroe, creator of the Wet Dream Lesburlesque Review, feels the only way to ensure a women-only atmosphere for both her lezzie strippers and the audience is to default to attendees' driver's licenses – F means you're in, M means you're not. Like most such policies that don't quite work, this one is based on misinformation: the false belief that people who change their gender on their ID have had transsexual surgery. In fact, surgery isn't required for a change of gender status on your ID, and any decision to change your DMV record is strictly up to the tranny in question.

The upcoming Ladyfest Bay Area celebration of all things good and girl nipped the "what is woman?" debate in the bud with its progressive "past, present, and future women" policy, which states that you count as female as long as you were female at one time, are currently female, or intend to become female in the future. The "past, present, and future" phrasing has been adopted by many producers of third-wave feminist events. Says organizer Bridie Lee, "Our collective dissatisfaction with male-dominated culture and passion to create an alternative drew us together, and it just seemed obvious to include trannies who are similarly alienated by the mainstream."

The mother of all women-only spaces, the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival has a woman-born-women-only policy (i.e., you're only female if you were born that way). Trans activists have been working to change this exclusionist rule by having their own outdoor event, Camp Trans, right across the road from the festival each year. Women who support the festival's policy have criticized Camp Trans for focusing its energies on crashing this party, rather than working to stop violence against transwomen and other, more urgent issues.

But for Camp Trans activist Simon Strikeback, granting transwomen access to feminist gatherings does make their daily life safer, as many of the festival's participants are providing health care, social services, and education to trannies. The Michigan debate has often been framed as a war of lesbians versus trannies, which Strikeback insists is misleading. Instead he chooses to place trans activism on a continuum beginning with the feminist activism that created the very women-only theories he is working to broaden. "These women created women's studies," he says of the old-guard feminists. "They created battered women's shelters. These women created what I'm doing. We just took it and twisted it a little so now it looks like something totally different. But it's not." Michelle Tea is the author of Valencia. She lives in San Francisco.

Join the transman action at the Dyke March

A group of trannies will be raising awareness of transmen in the dyke community at the Dyke March. They ask that anyone interested in the action meet at the swings at Dolores Park before the march and look for people handing out red armbands. These armbands are, according to organizer Storm Florez, for "all who support the inclusion in the S.F. Dyke March of transmen, FTMs, boydykes, drag kings, non-women-identified dykes, and all transgendered people who feel they are a part of the dyke community." The group will provide marchers with pens so they can write slogans on their armbands like "I support transmen at the Dyke March" or "Transmandyke." Florez says, "The goal is not for us to protest the Dyke March but to raise awareness and visibility of FTMs and our allies in the dyke community." Dyke March Sat/29, entertainment 3 p.m., Dolores Park, Dolores at 18th St., S.F.; gather for march 7 p.m., Dolores and 19th St.; party 9:30 p.m., Castro at Market. Free. (415) 241-8882. (Annalee Newitz)