gender

KinkForAll New York City 2

by Viviane on 07/19/2009

in Events, nyc

08/08/2009
11:00 AMto6:00 PM

KFA KinkForAll New York City 2

PLEASE COPY AND CROSSPOST THIS MESSAGE FREELY.

KinkForAll is an ad-hoc informational unconference on sexuality for anyone and everyone. KinkForAll draws  participants from an astounding range of sexuality-related communities. Anyone with the desire to learn or with something to contribute is welcome and invited to participate.

Vitals
======

What: The second no-limits sex-positive gender and sexuality unconference of New York City.
Why: To inspire a creative, interactive and open environment where everyone feels comfortable talking, learning, and being inspired by all kinds of sexuality.
When: August 8th, 2009
Where: *The **LGBT Center**, **208 West 13th Street, New York.** *
Who: Everyone
How much: FREE (as in beer as well as freedom)

Details
=======

KinkForAll is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people of the kink, queer, sex-positive and related communities to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, presentations, and interaction from all participants.  (It is inspired by the BarCamp community.)

ANYONE WITH SOMETHING TO CONTRIBUTE OR WITH THE DESIRE TO LEARN IS WELCOME AND INVITED TO JOIN.  When you attend, be prepared to share with others. When you leave, be prepared to share it with the world.

A KinkForAll is a special kind of gathering because there are no spectators, only participants. Attendees must give a talk or a presentation, help with one, or otherwise volunteer/contribute in some way to support the event. This is called sharing and we like it. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen—there are no pre-scheduled presentations or keynote   addresses. The people present at the event will select the presentations they want to see.

Anyone can present, on any topic related to sexuality. You do not necessarily have to teach a new skill or idea. You might share an experience, review a product, or read a poem. The goal is to start a discussion, make connections, and exchange knowledge. Presentations promoting specific commercial products or companies are discouraged.

Learn more about what to expect at http://kinkforall.pbwiki.com/WhatToExpect

Learn more about the event guidelines at
http://kinkforall.pbwiki.com/TheRulesOfKinkForAll

Get Involved
============

We need your help in spreading the word. Please help by participating.

Here’s how:

1. Get excited by reading the ideas on
http://kinkforall.pbwiki.com/KinkForAllNewYorkCity2
2. Add your name or handle to the list of participants
3. Join the mailing list and introduce yourself by emailing
kinkforall@googlegroups.com

Still have questions? Read the Frequently Asked Questions at
http://kinkforall.pbwiki.com/FrequentlyAskedQuestions

or email kinkforall@googlegroups.com for more details.

Donate
===========

Financial contributions for KFANYC2 can be made through the “Donate” button at the bottom of the KFANYC2 wiki page:
http://kinkforall.pbworks.com/KinkForAllNewYorkCity2#Donate

KinkForAll Online
==============

Participate online before the event at your favorite social networking web site:

Homepage: http://KinkForAll.org
Google: http://groups.google.com/group/kinkforall
Twitter: http://twitter.com/KinkForAll
Identica: http://identi.ca/kinkforall
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/KinkForAll/40066342762
Fetlife: http://fetlife.com/groups/2962

All primary organizational efforts are being coordinated via the mailing list. Join for free and help turn ideas into realities!

http://groups.google.com/group/kinkforall

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Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation: Call For Submissions

by Viviane on 06/08/2009

in submissions

Call For Submissions
Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation
Kate Bornstein & S Bear Bergman, eds
Deadline: 1 September 2009

In the fifteen years since the release of Gender Outlaw, transgender narratives have made their way into cultural locations from the margins to the mainstream and back again. Today’s trannies and other sex/gender radicals are writing a radically new world into being. GENDER OUTLAWS: THE NEXT GENERATION (Seal Press) will collect and contextualize the work of this generation’s most forward-thinking trans/genderqueer voices—new voices from the stage, on the streets, in the workplace, in the bedroom, and on the pages and websites of the world’s most respected mainstream news sources. Edited by that ol’ original Gender Outlaw herself, Kate Bornstein and writer, raconteur, and theater artist S. Bear Bergman, GENDER OUTLAWS: THE NEXT GENERATION will include essays, commentary, comic art and conversation from a diverse a group of trans-spectrum people who live and believe in barrier-breaking lives.

*What we’re looking for*

GENDER OUTLAWS: THE NEXT GENERATION wants to collect work that represents a quantum leap forward in thinking and talking about gender and the gender binary, in the same way Gender Outlaw did almost twenty years ago. So blow us away. Bring the smart, bring the sexy, blind us with science, break the gender barrier, shine a bright light (or a disco ball) on the whole gender situation. Tell us about your future, what you imagine, how you want things to go and what you (and your friends) intend to do about it. Think big.

We’ll look at whatever you have for us – essays, graphic art, interviews/conversations, haiku, rants – as long as you’re thinking smart and fresh about sex and gender (and being an outlaw, of course). We will feel especially keen about your work if it adds to or advances the conversation about gender (as distinct from simply reflecting it, or lamenting it).

People of any identity are encouraged to submit work. This means you – yes, you!

We intend to privilege non-normatively gendered/sexed voices in the book but will include all the good stuff we can, regardless of current identifiers of the author.

*The Details*

Deadline: Sept 1 (early submissions are encouraged). Submissions should be unpublished; query if you have a reprint that you think we’ll swoon for. While we hesitate to list a maximum, please query first for pieces over 4,000 words. If you have an idea and need help writing it out, contact us to discuss an interview-style piece or other accommodations.

Submit as a Word document or black/white JPEG (no files over 2MB). Please include a cover letter with a brief bio and full contact information (mailing address, phone number, pseudonym if appropriate) when you submit. Submissions without complete contact information will be deleted unread. Payment will be $50 and 2 copies of the book upon publication in Fall 2010. Contributors retain the rights to their pieces. Send your submission as an attachment to genderoutlawsnextgeneration at gmail dot com.

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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Young and Kinky

by Viviane on 05/18/2009

in publishing

badfaggot CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Young and Kinky

Young and Kinky, edited by Matt Johnson aka Bad Faggot

We’re the present and future of a network of communities which are growing by leaps and bounds but which nonetheless feel marginalized and threatened. We’re either hailed as saviors of a sexual culture or framed as a problem that culture is forced to confront in order to survive. We’re often talked about in the abstract but only rarely are our individual voices setting the terms of the conversation. This book means to shift that balance.

Young and Kinky (working title) is an anthology of short nonfiction by people under age 40 who are participants in leather, BDSM, fetish, kink or related communities. This collection defines “community” as broadly as possible: from educational events to sex parties, from book clubs to social networking sites, from erotic businesses to charitable organizations.

Possible topics for inclusion:

– coming out narratives: finding communities, finding other young kinksters
– forming our own groups: TNG, boys/girls of leather
– integrating into existing groups: how to do it successfully
– bars, clubs, contests: are kink institutions still relevant?
– the generation gap: relating to our elders and our history
– youth leadership in kink communities
– where we live: physical and virtual gathering places
– what we do: is our kink different?
– naming: what do we call ourselves and why?
– why now? are there more of us than there used to be?
– is age just a number? when are we no longer “young”?
– talking across divisions of gender and sexual preference
– does young equal submissive?
– social bias (racism, sexism, ageism, biphobia, transphobia) in the scene
– out in the world: kinky at work, with family, friends, and children, in other communities

Contributions should range from 1000 to 5000 words in length. Please no fiction, porn/erotica, or poetry. This is a nonfiction volume reflecting our lived experiences as younger kinky people of all genders and orientations. Contributions from women, transfolk, and kinky folk of color are particularly encouraged.

Please submit a summary (no more than 3 paragraphs) plus a brief contributor bio no later than June 30, 2009. Initial submission of full articles should be no later than December 31, 2009. Electronic submissions strongly preferred.

Contact:

Matt Johnson
badfaggot at hotmail dot com

PLEASE REDISTRIBUTE WIDELY

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The second Sex 2.0: May 9th

by Viviane on 04/14/2009

in Events, sex

lips date sponsor 400 The second Sex 2.0: May 9th

Sex 2.0 May 9, 2009

Sex 2.0 will focus on the intersection of social media, feminism, and sexuality. How is social media enabling people to learn, grow, and connect sexually? How is sexual expression tied to social activism? Does the concept of transparency online offer new opportunities or present new roadblocks — or both? These questions, and many more, will be addressed within a safe, welcoming, sex-positive space.

The first Sex 2.0 was a year ago, which came about because Amber Rhea had a vision. Last year’s Sex 2.0 was really energizing – an diverse group of sex nerds, bloggers, sex workers and writers, talking to each other (and Twittering all the while). We have the run at a really nice venue in Silver Spring, MD. And like last year, the out of town guests will be staying at the venue, so there will be a lot of hanging out, before during the after.

I’ll be doing a WordPress open Q&A with MayMay, so bring your questions about WordPress and blogging and we’ll do our best to answer them. There will be even more attendees this year who will be Twittering throughout the weekend. I’ll try to post a list soon.

The discounted registration of $30 (which was to have ended today), has again been pushed back to April 16th, so you have two more days to register at the lower rate. It’ll go up to $40.00.

The website is here: sex20con.com/

The Sex 2.0 Google Group is where all the discussion and organizing of the event (and the events before and after) is happening.

groups bar The second Sex 2.0: May 9th
Subscribe to Sex 2.0
Email:
Visit this group

If you’re wondering what last year ‘s event was like, here’s lots of linkage:

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Kinkforall 2009

by Viviane on 03/12/2009

in kinkforall, sex

The inaugural Kinkforall was a smashing success!

I remember reading the Tweet worrying whether we’d get 40 attendees.  Turns out 100 people turned out for 45 presentations. Tremendous energy, lots of different conversations, lots of folks from different organizations and lots of new folks. I know there was was poo-pooing about this event and I was proud to have helped sponsor it.

Now there are other Kinkforalls being organized.  See the gallery below for my pics from the event. Kudo to MayMay, Sara Eileen, the timekeepers (who kept us on track) and all the volunteers who came out and made the event happen. I’m looking foward to the next ones.

The next opportunity for us sex nerds to geek out will be Sex 2.0 on May 9, 2009. Will you be there?

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A Transsexual Vs. the Government (Time)

by Viviane on 09/16/2008

in transgender

. . .Preece, who was 51 at the time, worked then — as she does now — for the Library of Congress, where she helps make hiring decisions for the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the U.S. Congress’s analysis agency. She had decided to recommend an ex–Special Forces colonel named David Schroer to be CRS’s terrorism specialist. Schroer was a dream candidate, a guy out of a Tom Clancy novel: he had jumped from airplanes, undergone grueling combat training in extreme heat and cold, commanded hundreds of soldiers, helped run Haiti during the U.S. intervention in the ’90s — and since 9/11, he had been intimately involved in secret counterterrorism planning at the highest levels of the Pentagon. He had been selected to organize and run a new, classified antiterrorism organization, and in that position he had routinely briefed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He had also briefed Vice President Dick Cheney more than once. Schroer had been an action hero, but he also had the contacts and intellectual dexterity to make him an ideal congressional analyst.

But now, about three weeks before Schroer was to begin work at CRS, he told Preece over a Chinese lunch that he had a personal matter to reveal: after years of cross-dressing in private, he was preparing to start living full time as a woman. He would also probably have sex-reassignment surgery. And so he planned to start at CRS as Diane Jacqueline Schroer, not David John Schroer.

The first thing Preece remembers blurting out at the time was something along the lines of “Why would you want to do that?” Later she stood outside her office, lit another cigarette and thought, I can’t believe this is happening to me.

Schroer did not get the job. Working with some other Library of Congress officials the next morning, Preece drafted a brief script and then telephoned Schroer. She told him that the Library worried his transition could imperil his top-secret security clearance; that his appearance in women’s clothing could make his contacts in the government less willing to cooperate with him; and that his impending surgeries (facial surgery to make him appear more feminine, possible genital surgeries in the future) could distract him from his job. She thanked Schroer for his honesty and said goodbye.

What Preece did that day became, not surprisingly, the subject of a lawsuit, one that was tried in August in federal court. Judge James Robertson, a Clinton appointee, is expected to rule any day. In deciding whether the Library unlawfully discriminated against Schroer, Robertson will have to rule on a much bigger and more elemental issue: How, if at all, is sex different from gender? And if you discriminate against a transsexual, is it “sex” discrimination under federal law?

Link

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