Five college queer gender and Sexuality Conference
Workshop Descriptions
FRIDAY March 5th
Workshop Slot #1 (2:00-3:30 pm EST)
Discrimination Community Care: A Needs Based Approach with Azariah Liron and Skyler Whittaker
ASL INTERPRETED
Zoom Link
Current methods of responding to discrimination faced by LGBTQIA+ and other marginalized and multiply marginalized groups range from inadequate to horrifically traumatic. By shifting the paradigm from punishment to focusing on needs we’re building a world that supports those who have experienced discrimination, provides accessible accountability to those who have committed it, and engages the community that surrounds them. This is a discussion and skill building workshop where we will use our collective experiences to imagine a future in which the harms of discrimination can be healed without inflicting further damage.
Reducing Kink Stigma: Using Media as a Tool for Sex Education with Maeve Driskill
Zoom Link
Pleasure and kink are two topics that are not widely discussed in mainstream sex education, or with young people in general. In this digital age, many are learning more from movies, songs, and TV shows than from their parents and classrooms, but media can only do so much. My question to you is: what's the difference between looking to Christian Grey to learn how to be a dominant and looking to James Bond to learn how to be a spy?
Workshop Slot #2 (4:00-5:30 pm EST)
Comprehensive Introductory Marxism for the downward mobile with Ianka Mitchell-Conway
Zoom Link
Marxism isn't a vinyl record, it's supposed to be relevant to your material conditions. Precariat refers to those who are precariously employed and lack social institutions of support. Learn about the ways queer identities and precariat status interact.
How to Become a Recovering Racist and Abolish "white" Nationalism with Anthonywash.Rosado
Zoom Link
This Legacy Learning Session is for “white” people who want to do more than neutrally be non-racist; who aim to be anti-racist. Since all people who identify as “white” benefit from systemic racism, it is the duty of “white” citizens to dismantle and abolish “white” nationalism (or “white supremacy”) in their families, neighboring communities, and USA legislation. For those of you new to the revolution, this session will provide you with the tools to ensure your activism to support and preserve Black lives is consistent and sustainable.
HELP! I NEED SOMEBODY: The Queer Art of Asking For (And Accepting) Assistance with Kelli Dunham
ASL INTERPRETED
Zoom Link
Oh queer and trans people- so many of us are the most devoted helpy-pants; when we see a need of any kind we immediately want to assist where we can. In this workshop we'll consider how our help receiving skills compare with our help giving skills, discuss why it's just as important to receive as to give, learn hands on skills for becoming more comfortable with asking for help, and consider what mutual aid has to do with it all.
SATURDAY March 6th
Workshop Slot #3 (2:00-3:30 pm EST)
Methodology of White Allyship with Kassandra Neiss
Zoom Link
This workshop explores how intersectionality and authenticity can enhance your ability to be a white ally in racial justice work. Through using data and storytelling, Kassandra will offer their approach to anti-racism work as a white person with intersectional identities. Through grappling with data and lived experiences, attendees will develop their own understanding of how racism operates and leverage that understanding to act in opposition to the system.
Closed QTPOC (LGBTQ+ and Black, Brown, Indigenous, People of Color Identifying) Chat and Connect with Vanessa Rochelle Lewis
Zoom Link
Description here.
Workshop Slot #4 (4:00-5:30 pm EST)
LGBTQ + FAFSA = WTF? Defensive Financial Aid for Queer Students and Allies with Dani Lopez and Katy Hutto
Zoom Link
Does “that small American bureaucratic tragedy known as the FAFSA'' strike fear in your heart? Fear not, two financial aid professionals are here to help demystify it by providing useful resources, context, and guidance especially focused on the unique needs of and obstacles faced by LGBTQ+ students!
Showing Up for Sick & Disabled People During COVID-19 with Cyree Jarelle Johnson
Zoom Link
COVID-19 has been hard on everyone, but sick and disabled people have borne the heaviest burden--especially those who are Black and brown. This workshop will provide, explore, and generate strategies for sick, disabled, chronically ill people and our accomplices to show up in solidarity, and create sustainable networks of community support.
Severe and Unresourced: Supporting survivors of trafficking, cultic and organized abuse within queer spaces with Ianka Mitchell-Conway
Zoom Link
Content Warning: Mentions of coersion, manipulation, abuse, trafficking, criminalization of survivors, and institutional neglect.
"Yeah that happens but idk what to do about it" is not enough. Let's explore ways society works to further marginalize survivors of coercive control and how to fight against that. We will NOT ask people to disclose personal histories due to the nature of this topic.
Evening Workshop Container (7:00-9:00 pm EST)
Bottoms Up: an embodied werqshop discussion on sex, intimacy, and alternative subjectivities of the erotic with Estrella/x Supernova
ASL INTERPRETED
Zoom Link
Bottoms Up will be an intimate container that will be part-discussion, part-rage room, part-dance party, and part-grief ritual for folks who are interested and get excited by discussing their relationship to sex, intimacy, the erotic, and pleasure in relation to and not related to the pandemic. As a survivor, I have always had to get creative with how I approach sex and intimacy and have found portals for activating the erotic in my everyday life that don't necessarily require other human bodies (I do miss their warmth though).
SUNDAY March 7th
Workshop Slot #5 (2:00-3:30 pm EST)
Undrown Your Writing: Building a Writing Practice with Memphis Washington
Zoom Link
This workshop will work with prompts derived from Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals. We will touch on connection, pods, and accountability as launching points for exploring our own writing practices.
Lessons of Disability from My Deafblind Dog with Hayden Kristal
ASL INTERPRETED
Zoom Link
Heartwarming and unique, this multimedia workshop address talks about the lessons to be learned -about love, trust, and how we define “ability”- from Hayden’s journey with their deafblind dog, Bitsy. Born completely deaf and blind, many recommended that Bitsy be euthanized as an infant, citing concerns about her ability to function and her quality of life. Could Bitsy adapt? Could she survive in a world that was not built for her? A year later Bitsy is not only surviving, but thriving; she does therapy work, participates in dog sports, swims, hikes, camps, plays fetch, and is an avid canoer. But how does what the world expected for Bitsy translate to how we perceive disability on a larger scale? How do we confront the ableism we’ve internalized, even as people with disabilities?
Abuse & Oppression, two sides of the same coin with JP Delgado
Zoom Link
It's not often that we talk about partner abuse/domestic violence in our communities. And, it's even less often that we make connections to homo/bi/transphobia. Abuse and oppression are linked, and we'll discuss more about it!
Workshop Slot #6 (4:00-5:30 pm EST)
Fat Liberation with Autumn
Zoom Link
Fat liberation is a crucial part of building radical movements for collective liberation. We will discuss how sizeism is heavily intertwined with capitalism, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and cisheteropatriarchy. The goal is for our movements and spaces to uplift and support fat liberation.
DIY GynEcology for Queer (eco)Feminist Liberation with Bárbara de Paula
Zoom Link
Come learn some radical sexual and gynecological health tools to use at home for yourself and your community! In this workshop, we will dissect the racist, capitalist and heteropatriarchal roots of the medical and farmaceutical industrial complex, and we will build upon self-awareness and self-care practices that promote autonomy and rooted connections with ancestry and the natural world.
Grief: You're Not Doing It Wrong with Kelli Dunham
ASL INTERPRETED
Zoom Link
Even before the pandemic, the LGBT community struggled with more than our share of grief. Now, in a health crisis that is becoming a grief crisis, how can we move forward? In this workshops we'll consider: what skills do we already have (as individuals and as a community) to support ourselves, our community and the greater world and what do we still need to develop? How can we process our own individual grief within the context of so much loss for so many and how can we stop feeling GUILTY for our own grief process?