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KinkForAllDenverTopicIdeas

Page history last edited by maymay 12 years, 1 month ago Saved with comment

This page is a brainstorming space to flesh out presentation/session topics for KinkForAll Denver. If you are interested in leading a session at the event, first sign up on the pre-registration table, then come back here to flesh out your ideas. :)

 


 

Ben

 

Created a separate page for more in-depth conversation about what topics we want to talk about, and what we're excited to hear about from other people.  I'll fill in my own details soon.  I put myself on the sign-up table here.  I don't have time at the moment to make my link on the sign-up table point to my own specific section on this page, but here are instructions if anyone's motivated.

 

  • tension between feminist/anti-oppression politics and power-exchange relationships 

 

Maymay

 

I'm currently curious about the possibility of discussing a variety of things at KinkForAll Denver. Here are some of my presentation ideas:

 

Personal community mapping

 

We are each the locus of our own social networks. Literally mapping who we are connected to, why we choose to stay connected, and what that connection looks like can help us to understand the value other people bring to our lives, the value we can offer others, and it can help us balance the finite amount of resources (like time and energy) that we have to give to different people. In this session, I want to walk people through a couple of exercises I use to orient myself within my own social graph, show people what I do when I'm feeling overwhelmed by the amount of people who want my attention, and how to get really good at maintaining interpersonal ties while being true to one's own wants and needs.

 

"threads of attraction" relationship modeling

 

When people say "I find you attractive," what the fuck are they actually saying? Sometimes, "attraction" is not specific enough. To really connect with someone, I need to know why they want to connect with me. For a lot of people, "attractive" comes down to physical looks, but this is not the case for everyone. Personally, I find I can become sexually attracted to someone based on a number of factors that are not related to how well the other person conforms to society's standards of beauty. Examples include people with whom I have forged colleagueship relationships, people whose work inspires my own, people who display a competency in a particular skill (sexual or otherwise), and so forth.

 

In this session, I want to break apart "attraction" and explain what goes through my head when I think about my interest in other people. I hope to show why and how words like "friend" and "girlfriend/boyfriend" and even "partner" are problematic and contribute to a linguistic vagary that privileges sexual relationships over asexual relationships and causes challenges for sexual people that stem from misunderstandings of the kinds of value "attraction" offers. 

 

relationships as drag

 

Relationships are like gender in the same way gender is a performance. Relationships are therefore their own form of drag. What kind of performance are you putting on when you identify someone you have a relationship with as your "partner"?

 

TCP/IP as a framework for understanding consent

 

The Internet is a fantastic tool for communication and therefore it makes sense that the fundamentals of Internet connections are a useful analogy to human connections. In particular, the TCP/IP stack is a collection of precise protocols that define the methods through which computers interact with one another. These protocols have error checks to ensure a communiqué was successful, they have buffers to ensure the recipient can process what is being sent, and they have mechanisms for managing the connection itself. This mirrors a lot of the actions that are required for "enthusiastic consent" to be put into practice by humans. What can we learn from TCP/IP that isn't being taught in sex education in school? Turns out, quite a bit! You don't have to be an Internet guru to get something out of this session, you just need to have an analytic mind. :)

 

The Useful "Safe Space" Self-Deception

 

An idea inspired from mailing list discussion:

 

"I, personally, think safe spaces are a very useful self-deception, but they are extremely exclusionary by design and thus carry an inherent tension with public space. Simply ask yourself: Safe space FOR WHOM? "Safe space" is just the inverse logic of "dangerous to the community." We don't get to simply reverse the logic of oppressors and call that inclusionary. That's some lazy, uncritical bullshit right there, and in my opinion the extremely pervasive way "safe space" is misrepresented is a damn big problem."

 

Elaan

 

Somatic Experience of Boundaries

 

Many times when talking to people about consent, how to give it and how to ask for it, I hear the statement, "but I don't even know what/ where my boundaries are!". This experiential workshop, where participants do a guided visualization/awareness practice, is designed to help people recognize their own physical, mental, and emotional sensation of boundaries. We will touch in to healthy and unhealthy experiences of boundaries in a safe and supported space.

 

Comments (1)

Ben said

at 3:49 pm on Feb 9, 2012

maymay, you're probably way ahead of me on this, but let me anticipate a point of confusion on my own part. You assert that "gender is a performance" (under the potential topic "relationships as drag") -- you mean in the sense of a theatrical performance? (as opposed to, say, Judith Butler's claim that gender is performaTIVE, which is something else entirely)

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