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beetigerThe folks at Transcending Boundaries have finally gotten their act together enough that I'm willing to plug the con. October 4-6, New Britain, CT. The schedule isn't posted yet, but at least you can register and get lodging information.
The idea of this conference, now in its second year, is to get together the "queer queers", the less mainstream gender and orientation and identity outlaws. Specifically, it's trying to build some sort of interaction between the bi, trans, and intersex communities (insofar as any of those are actually really communities, a topic I'm going to skip for now.) Unofficially, it's got moderately high contingents for BDSM and polyfolk as well. Last year, it had a mix of academically oriented stuff (biology, sociology, etc.), discussion group stuff (comparing personal experiences of people as bi coming out in the 60s vs. in the 90's), general education (Poly 101), and just plain fun stuff (how to plan sex parties).
I managed to tempt Julia to go to this thing last year, as our first weekend away together, by being charming, fascinating, and paying for the hotel. Someone was selling buttons on which you were supposed to check off the labels with which you identified, including bi, queer, trans, intersex, BDSM, Poly, and Furry. We both checked Furry off, though no one else did, and ended up getting a lot of questions, including from the person who made the pins, who it turns out did not know what Furry was except that some people identified as it.
By the end of the convention, we were asked if we'd run a panel on Furry the next year, and although I was extremely dubious at the time that Julia would still be hanging around with me, we tentatively agreed. We are in fact running this, and it will probably come out as some mix of Furry 101, Dan Savage debunking, musing on the nature of anthropomorphism as both exploratory and core identity, and discussion of the power of virtual communities as vehicles for exploration of the gender, orientation, and speices of individuals independent of actual physical constraints. We're probably going to do it in full costume, depending on scheduling.
It would please me oh-so-much if some of you were there! I'm driving from Boston Friday afternoon, returning to Boston after the con Sunday night. If you can fit in my car, I'll drive you. I'll even clean out the back seat! You know who you are....
The idea of this conference, now in its second year, is to get together the "queer queers", the less mainstream gender and orientation and identity outlaws. Specifically, it's trying to build some sort of interaction between the bi, trans, and intersex communities (insofar as any of those are actually really communities, a topic I'm going to skip for now.) Unofficially, it's got moderately high contingents for BDSM and polyfolk as well. Last year, it had a mix of academically oriented stuff (biology, sociology, etc.), discussion group stuff (comparing personal experiences of people as bi coming out in the 60s vs. in the 90's), general education (Poly 101), and just plain fun stuff (how to plan sex parties).
I managed to tempt Julia to go to this thing last year, as our first weekend away together, by being charming, fascinating, and paying for the hotel. Someone was selling buttons on which you were supposed to check off the labels with which you identified, including bi, queer, trans, intersex, BDSM, Poly, and Furry. We both checked Furry off, though no one else did, and ended up getting a lot of questions, including from the person who made the pins, who it turns out did not know what Furry was except that some people identified as it.
By the end of the convention, we were asked if we'd run a panel on Furry the next year, and although I was extremely dubious at the time that Julia would still be hanging around with me, we tentatively agreed. We are in fact running this, and it will probably come out as some mix of Furry 101, Dan Savage debunking, musing on the nature of anthropomorphism as both exploratory and core identity, and discussion of the power of virtual communities as vehicles for exploration of the gender, orientation, and speices of individuals independent of actual physical constraints. We're probably going to do it in full costume, depending on scheduling.
It would please me oh-so-much if some of you were there! I'm driving from Boston Friday afternoon, returning to Boston after the con Sunday night. If you can fit in my car, I'll drive you. I'll even clean out the back seat! You know who you are....
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no subject
Date: 2002-09-23 07:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-09-23 08:53 am (UTC)You do know who you are!
Date: 2002-09-23 11:05 am (UTC)