Femme Con 2012: A Recap

Hold me now, it's hard for me to say I'm sorry.

(You thought I'd start at the beginning? Please child, this is how I process & it's, like, on a continuum mmmk?)

My ass is on a hard table and my legs, crossed, are starting to lose their feeling. That pinchy numbness creeping up from my toes to my shins, is a sign that I shouldn't have offered up my seat so quickly. Or more aptly named this is my guilt. My middle class cis-girl white guilt.

You see, I'm fresh from the extended "Confronting Racism and Colonialism in Femme Communities: A Workshop for White Allies" panel and I've already logged 2.75 days worth of conference time. That translates to showing up with a carpet bag, Mary Poppin's deep, of emotions, experiences, assumptions, and phobias—dumping it all out—then having 400+ fierce femmes help you hang really big flood lights, sort, catalogue and apply search tags to your "shit". Hence the title of the damn thing "Femme Conference 2012: Pulling the pieces together” So I'm finding it really easy to identify that the pins and needles that have crawled up to my knees as more then just bad circulation.

It's 1pm in the Hubble room and we're all waiting for the panel titled "Beyond Classy: Working Class Femme Power" to begin. At first the room seems pleasantly plump. I'm on the table to make room but there are still some open chairs & this really stark opening of the chair circle. When the femme-in-charge asks for the doors to be closed and all the people hidden by the L shape of the room push closer, sit on the floor, lean against walls, & pile into the space, [name redacted] actually throws herself to the floor in a show of "fuck. this is scary."-ness that reverbs across my deadened thighs.

Fuck. this. is. scary. 

After the panel, for a solid hour (maybe 2?) I'm speaking, I'm seeing, I'm walking around. But honestly I am so far away in this itchy wool part of my brain I cannot remember details. Bevin is there holding my shoulders and her voice comes at me like it's on speaker phone in the next room, though she's RIGHT FUCKING there. I emotionally eat with [name redacted] ,  [name redacted] and Bevin. The sky is gray and pregnant with rain and I give no fucks about