The Trip to SC, Pt. 3

I missed the morning sessions given by Kelly James and Bernadette Barton (which I now regret missing) but knowing I had a train to catch at midnight encouraged me to shorten the day a little so I wouldn’t be cranky by dinner. As it turned out, it was a long day anyway; I got to the conference at noon and found Lisa who then found Ash who was the student who was going to introduce me. Lisa brought me to a table full of her students, who just turned and looked at me as if I’d sprouted an alien head, and I must have looked at Lisa bewildered, so she explained: “They’re having a fan moment.” I was just more bewildered. (Over the course of the day, I got to talk to all of them, and they are all so charming and bright and good-looking! I’m not kidding. & Like so many queer students, most of them smoked.)

After lunch Marilee Lindemann spoke about creating and administering her LGBT Studies program at U. Maryland and how she managed to ‘Queer the Turtle’. (It’s a long story & I couldn’t do it justice, but she did.) It was good to hear an administrator’s view of the current gender/sexuality/LGBT academic scene, though I can’t say it’s particularly good news for me: they got 200 applicants for 1 open position last year, mostly from people with backgrounds in English and an interest in gender. Sounds awfully familiar, no? *sigh*

Then I was on. First Ash introduced me, by talking about the books and the message boards and ending finally with “She’s cool.” & I did my thing: relational gender and gender diversity and gender anxiety and trans. I ended with the first couple of pages of Chapter Five: Wearing the Pants, because it’s Betty’s favorite & she would have told me to.

& After that I smoked some more with the students and Lisa bossed me around (in a good way), making me sit at a table to sign books, which I did.

Then the LGBT students themselves ran a discussion about the day’s speakers and the meanings they took away from the various presentations; it was nice to hear students respond to my writing and speaking about gender and queerness, and it’s a humbling feeling to be aware of your influence.

But the thing is: these kids are hip. One bisexual woman said she defines her sexuality as more “doing sexy things with sexy people” but also had to deal with being accused of being greedy on the basis of her being bi, and came to finally realize that she was “fine with that.” (It was being charged with indecision & all the other things bisexuals are often charged with that bugged her more.) A young butch talked about not identifying as lesbian since she doesn’t know what a woman is & doesn’t feel like one & thus can’t be a lesbian, and a trans identified genderqueer student who uses both pronouns for him/herself is fine with being described as a lesbian. It was great to hear the way these kids are forging their identities and standing up for themselves.

(More still to come.)