Saturday, August 23, 2003
Bicon 2003, Day 2: Fuck but it was hot today. Despite getting about eight hours sleep last night I still felt knackered this morning and, if the journey in on the Northern Line had been bad yesterday it was worse today as it was properly hot. It was a partial relief to get on to the DLR again, only Plums insisted on sitting at the front so she could pretend to be driving the train. We were talking about Harry Potter and I was alarmed that without any conscious recollection I knew the train station was 9 and 3/4s, I just worry that HP information has slipped into the part of my brain for important instant recall information and that if I read another novel it will push out something inportant, like how to move the left side of my body. That would be a novel selling point: "Read Harry Potter and become a quadraplegic".
At the Beginners Meeting yesterday we were all told that if we were going to write anything about our Bicon experiences we shouldn't name names without their permission. No problem there, I have a terrible memory for names so didn't even remember them five seconds after leaving the room. I went to three sessions today, and they were really The Good, The Bad and The Average. The Average was first, on Fitting and Non-Fitting. Labels a go-go, it was all about how we define ourselves and there were several exercises such as speaking for a minute on our self-definitions and what we felt about the Bi-community. It was average because it was rather assumed that we were all involved with the Bi-Community ourselves, so as I'm not it was a bit difficult to answer questions trying to define the Bi-community. I left the session wondering what we'd actually achieved from all that.
After lunch was definitely The Good session. 'Coming Out as Bisexual'. I probably talked too much in this session as many of us talked about our experiences and evaluating how successful or indeed useful they'd been. In recent years I've belatedly realised that I've been probably rather bad about it, as I told each of my parents and then left it for them to deal with and even now some seven or eight years later I've never once asked them how they feel about it, whether they're okay with it or thought to get them a Parents of Queers helpline number (not that they'd ever use it) in case they needed someone to talk to about it. The fact that they've never turned me away since says something but I didn't make it easy for them.
Then finally The Bad Session. 'No Gender'. Now, possibly I misinterpreted the leader and heaven knows I know next to nothing about the subject, but ze seemed to be using 'gender' as a term to cover 'how society defines you' AND 'your biological sex'. Ze gave the example of when a baby is born a doctor picks it up and looks at it's genitals to see it's gender, which they don't. Gender is what the doctor imposes on the baby normally decided by it's sex. But when I queried this ze said I was wrong. But no-one else seemed to pick up on this so maybe I was in the wrong in my interpretation of what ze was saying. But although she did get a discussion going between everyone in the room everything that anyone said started hir off on them talking for about whatever it was for about five minutes each time. A lot of people got no chance to share their opinions. And this person has apparently written websites and campaigned on gender issues. A truly amazing achievement if ze believes there's no difference between sex and gender (if so, I wonder how ze discriminates between a m-2-f transvestite and a m-2-f transsexual? Surely they must be equal in hir world?).
Hung around with some really cool people, all of whom's names have gone down the memory plughole. But looking forward to the last day tomorrow.
At the Beginners Meeting yesterday we were all told that if we were going to write anything about our Bicon experiences we shouldn't name names without their permission. No problem there, I have a terrible memory for names so didn't even remember them five seconds after leaving the room. I went to three sessions today, and they were really The Good, The Bad and The Average. The Average was first, on Fitting and Non-Fitting. Labels a go-go, it was all about how we define ourselves and there were several exercises such as speaking for a minute on our self-definitions and what we felt about the Bi-community. It was average because it was rather assumed that we were all involved with the Bi-Community ourselves, so as I'm not it was a bit difficult to answer questions trying to define the Bi-community. I left the session wondering what we'd actually achieved from all that.
After lunch was definitely The Good session. 'Coming Out as Bisexual'. I probably talked too much in this session as many of us talked about our experiences and evaluating how successful or indeed useful they'd been. In recent years I've belatedly realised that I've been probably rather bad about it, as I told each of my parents and then left it for them to deal with and even now some seven or eight years later I've never once asked them how they feel about it, whether they're okay with it or thought to get them a Parents of Queers helpline number (not that they'd ever use it) in case they needed someone to talk to about it. The fact that they've never turned me away since says something but I didn't make it easy for them.
Then finally The Bad Session. 'No Gender'. Now, possibly I misinterpreted the leader and heaven knows I know next to nothing about the subject, but ze seemed to be using 'gender' as a term to cover 'how society defines you' AND 'your biological sex'. Ze gave the example of when a baby is born a doctor picks it up and looks at it's genitals to see it's gender, which they don't. Gender is what the doctor imposes on the baby normally decided by it's sex. But when I queried this ze said I was wrong. But no-one else seemed to pick up on this so maybe I was in the wrong in my interpretation of what ze was saying. But although she did get a discussion going between everyone in the room everything that anyone said started hir off on them talking for about whatever it was for about five minutes each time. A lot of people got no chance to share their opinions. And this person has apparently written websites and campaigned on gender issues. A truly amazing achievement if ze believes there's no difference between sex and gender (if so, I wonder how ze discriminates between a m-2-f transvestite and a m-2-f transsexual? Surely they must be equal in hir world?).
Hung around with some really cool people, all of whom's names have gone down the memory plughole. But looking forward to the last day tomorrow.
