I’m going to Eugene this Friday to present at Beyond Patriarchy conference. I was originally planning to do two workshops (one on intersex activism and another on sex worker feminisms) but due to my schedule (I’m hosting Good Asian Drivers‘ stop at In Other Words bookstore in Portland on Saturday) I can only do the latter. That said, I thought you might enjoy reading the description I wrote up for the intersex workshop:
Title: Intersex People are from the Earth
Description: Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and yet they act like the Earth belongs to them. This workshop is for anyone who wish to learn about the Earth’s native species, intersex people, and their struggles.
Obviously, this is all tongue-in-cheek… Most intersex people identify and live as men or women just like most non-intersex people, so it’s not correct to assume that intersex people are somewhere between men and women… See “What is wrong with ‘Male, Female, Intersex’” at Intersex Initiative’s website.
Since I’m posting the information, here’s the description for the workshop I’m actually presenting:
Title: Class and Sex Worker Feminisms
Description: Sex industry and sex work have been sites of fierce contention within feminism. But too often, the discussions revolved around anti-prostitution feminists who depict poor and working-class women as voiceless victims (thereby silencing them), and pro-sex feminists who neglect them altogether (thereby silencing them) and focus on sex workers who are relatively better off. This discussion attempts to complicate the analysis by introducing class-conscious pro-sex feminist positions.
The workshop will be held at Century Room A, Erb Memorial Union at University of Oregon at 3:35pm on Friday.