IM on Friday:
hedy: i havehedy: the best quotehedy: my mother was asking what i was doing tomorrow and i was like activism conference with elizabeth and she goes "I was wondering, since I thought she was an English major"hedy: I think she meant it like you should have normal interestshermionesviolin: lolhermionesviolin: (Also, your mom remembers the majors of your friends? I can't remember the majors of half my friends.)hedy: yeshermionesviolin: I am impressed.hedy: my mother makes your stalking look unprofessionalhermionesviolin: *is deeply wounded*Anyway, i got up around quarter past six on Saturday morning to take a shower and get the bus toSafe Colleges (which
hedy called Homocon). Was nice of the rain to cease for the entire day. (Also because Smith was hosting equestrian regionals.)Davis Square is interesting. Harvard and Central you emerge from the subway in the middle of the square, but Davis we got out and started walking towards Tufts and immediately it was family dentistry and churches and houses. When we came back for dinner we found that all the restaurants and stores and stuff were on the other side of the station. I decided i liked Somerville, in large part because i didn’t feel like i was taking my life into my hands crossing the street.
hedy and i decided that i’ll get an apartment with lilithchilde in Northampton after i graduate and then we’ll both move into an apartment in Somerville with hedy after the two of them graduate the following year. We also elaborated on this plan: hedy will work at the adolescent social work place we passed on our way to Tufts, lilithchilde will work at a comic bookstore and i’ll be a secretary at a gay place. The two of them will both have girlfriends who we are all linked to each other sexually and clearly as the only bi-girl i’ll be the one with the male-bodied lover. We can’t have any cats ‘cause my mom’s allergic, and lilithchilde will end up vegetarian, at least when eating at the apartment. We haven’t figured out what compromise i’m going to have to make.I don’t think i’ve ever been around so many gay men in my life. A better looking bunch on the whole than being at UMass Amherst [the only other place i’m around college-age males en masse], in part of course because people make some attempt to look nice for a conference and don’t when they are just on their home campus going to class and stuff.
There was a cool girl in my “Out in the World” (queer people around the world) session, but i noted a “Drop Bush Not Bombs” button on her jacket, so clearly it would never have worked. (Because clearly, none of the people i’m currently good friends with would have similar statements on their garb.) And of course the two really cool girls in “What They Tell Us, and What We Have To Tell Them” (representations of queers in the media) were dating each other.
We caught the last 20 minutes or so of the keynote speaker, who was okay. She said something about how you shouldn’t want to annihilate those who are different than you, particularly when you are part of the group in power. I asked
hedy, “Are you allowed to want to annihilate the opposition when you aren’t in the dominant group?”Barbara Smith, the keynote speaker: “It is a radical act to be out a college in the US.”
Me: “Not at Smith it isn’t.”
We got “We <3 corporate sponsorship” goodie bags when we arrived but hey, they had to pay the speakers and all. Unless anyone wants the Damron Accomodations book on gay friendly/owned lodging around the world, i’m donating it to the library. Also, i have no real desire to keep my black size Medium SiriusOutQ t-shirt that says "bias_OFF fabulous_ON" on the front. (This reminds me: I got the Ani render DVD for Christmas and watched it and will not be watching it again. Anyone want?)
Lunch was from City Girl Café and was pretty good. During lunchtime we also looked around the “We <3 corporate sponsorship” room. GLAD doesn’t have any internships i’m interested in, but it would be really cool to volunteer on their legal information hotline once i’m out of school. Also, The Theater Offensive has a dead website, but i wrote to them asking about interning over the summer. I’m definitely thinking i’m gonna end up a retail bitch this summer, but at least i did send follow-up notices to the places i’ve already applied.
hedy: “It’d be a problem if a girl had better nails than me.”me: “You’re such a femme it’s almost funny.”
me to
hedy on coming out to her parents: “They will still love you. They will not stop buying you purses just because you like girls.”The three sessions i went to were queerness around the world, representations of queerness in the media, and queer theory/queer activism. None of them involved the “I need to be affirmed in my gayness” that Joe found to be a problem when he went, but i didn’t really learn anything new. Certainly there are things i still need to educate myself about (and i did enjoy picking up lots of information from GLAD) but most of the stuff at conferences like this are, kinda by definition, at a rather introductory level, and i would much rather educate myself about specific stuff and have one-on-one discussions with people and be the one doing the educating about various things (like talking to high schools).
hedy got pissed off about the transphobia within the lesbian community (as evidenced in the Butch/Femme session, see her entry on the day for more information).Quote from that session:
“People think I’m only gay until graduation.”
“Do you go to my college?”
-Kid and
polymexinaQuote from
hedy talking about said session: “I like cunt. If cunt has a male pronoun, so be it.”“Maybe being normal is queer.” -someone in the Queer Theory/Queer Activism session
The independent film shorts weren’t bad.
I had actually already seen Junk Box Warrior at the UMass queer filmfest, but i got more out of the film this time around, having seen it before, because this time i knew what it was about, whereas the first time i saw it i at first had the wrong idea about what the film was about.
Boychick was cute.
I was totally channeling BtVS a couple times during D.E.B.S., because i have a one-track mind, and the archnemesis seemed familiar, but i figured i’d seen her in V.I.P. or something and was watching the credits so i could IMDb her when i got home. Turns out, Clare Kramer. Her hair was straighter and blonder than it was in BtVS, though.
The Favor was also cute, though afterward
hedy and i tried to figure out what exactly its intended point was and whether that was problematic.We had to go home before Jim in Bold> which is supposed to be really good. (Apparently it’s the first LGBT film to be screened on Capitol Hill. Woot?)
Went to Diesel Café for dinner.
The bus ride home was mostly uneventful except for the screaming baby on the Boston-Springfield bus and the gay illustrator on the Springfield-Northampton bus.
I missed the beginning of the conversation, but he was talking with this guy who was randomly sitting next to him on the bus and i got sucked into listening to the conversation and gleaned enough information to be able to figure out thanks to Google that it was Brian Selznick (whose work i am almost wholly unfamiliar with, but really, how many children’s books published in the last decade am i familiar with?).
hedy thought he sounded pompous, but i didn’t think so. However, he definitely said he had won a Caldecott, and he’s definitely not on the list.He talked about turning 30 and “6 months later i met David, and that was 7 years ago. We celebrate our anniversary in 2 weeks.”
I would have forgotten to change my clocks if the bus driver hadn’t reminded us when he dropped us off in Northampton around 11.
