GenderPAC Dis-Invited Me from Conference

I would accept the invitation to present a workshop on intersex issues during the conference, but GenderPAC needs to stop this practice of asking for free services from any source without regard to who or what it is freeriding on.

An organization with a $800,000+ budget whose conference primarily serves middle-class college students shouldn't be asking those of us struggling to pay rent to sacrifice our time and energy to provide free contents for the for-fee conference. It's morally reprehensible and contrary to the GPAC's stated mission toward achieving social equality and justice.

It's not "unfortunate" that there is no money to pay presenters; it's the direct consequence of GPAC's deliberately set priorities, which, I'd argue, are wrong, immoral, and unethical. The thing is, if GenderPAC had prioritized properly compensating presenters (or at least compensating those who don't draw salaries from universities or big non-profits), it could have easily done so.

I appreciate the concerns you raised, and hope our answers provide at least some additional perspective. In any case, given your dissatisfaction with our policies and the depth of your disapproval, we would like to ask that we put the invitation on hold for the time being while we rethink things from this end. If we decide to move ahead we will certainly reach out to you.

The difference is that GenderPAC approaches speakers it wants to invite, or at least it did in my case, rather than speakers approaching GPAC to request a workshop slot. That's not the case with Creating Change, or NOW conference (I don't know anything about FMF conference). I can think of only one conference that I have been individually approached to present, which is True Colors conference in Connecticut, which does (did) pay workshop presenters.

Besides, I'd argue that the conference culture that is eating up the "activist" industry is wrong--that it keeps grass-roots activists from participating in national agenda-setting, allowing those with the institutional funding or those who are independently wealthy to determine the course of our movements.

Of course, paying the presenters won't fix that problem, but I fear that organizations such as GPAC are not even recognizing it as a problem in praising speakers who are privileged enough to be able to "agree to speak for free." How many Judith Butlers are we silencing and excluding from our movements just because they don't have highly paid academic appointments like she does?

It's this complete lack of class consciousness that I find problematic more than whether or not I get paid personally. I do present a lot of workshops with little or no honorarium, which I am willing to and able to do most of the time, but there's a matter of principle here. There could have been many ways you could have expressed sensitivity toward class issues while you explain why GPAC is unable to compensate speakers, but your response was defensive and didn't really give me the sense that GPAC cares about class issues or how it might affect activist movements.

I'm disappointed to find that GPAC cannot stand slightest of disagreements or criticisms from someone whose perspective it must have valued enough to invite in the first place. It has now taken one step further from simply excluding poor and working class people by upholding the middle-class conference culture: it is now actively shutting out someone for speaking out against it. I'm also deeply disappointed because I was looking forward to meeting the youth at the conference.