I've turned into a political queer.

[the_fantastic_ms_fox]

When you look at your dayplanner and see
Monday:
  - Out on Campus
  - Appointment with psychologist
  - Vigil (this involved me blocking traffic while walking backwards for about 15 blocks, staring at the cops for about 10)

Tuesday:
   - Go to P!RG to get intformation regarding a research exchange with labeled/unlabeled
   - See doctor for blood-test results
   - Phone COPE regarding donated software

Thursday
    - Bring Intersex information for friend's project
    - Go to LGBT centre planning forum

Saturday
    - Trans Alliance AGM

You know you've become a political queer


If you are one of the many who is worried about what Vancouver is doing to your opinion of Aboriginal culture, go see the Aboriginal Friendship Centre, near Commercial and Hastings. It's very petty and looks well-run - it should help fix you up. This is where we had the forum to build a new Queer centre (Read general info and do survey here).

The forum today was productive and saw some excellent ideas, but dragged towards the end.

I will be going to future sessions, if only to watch the facilitator in action. She impressed me with not only her general demeanor, but also how she handled the following incident. In the first half-hour, an Aboriginal wowan expressed in anger how she, and two of her friends were the only non-White persons in attendance - she was especially annoyed at what she felt was poor outreach to the non-white community. Her first assertion was, as far as my eyes could tell, simply false (15-30% of those in attendance were non-white), and I think the outreach was poor for pretty much everybody (I heard about the event just early enough to catch the bus to get there), but she had a point about the decidedly Euro-blooded character of the room, and the Queer movement in general (and non-Aboriginal persons calling themselves two-Spirited, but that's another story). A White man at the front objected to what he felt was her attack on the people in attendance, and that he thought gay men were being overlooked in the Queer community as a whole. I thought he was ill spoken, but later realized that anyone who has been in the gay community for any length of time has seen the sort of violence and plague that breaks civilizations. Much of the audience reacted poorly to the latter comment, I called out that "I'd like to hear what people have to say," but I think no-one heard me. Shortly thereafter, the Aboriginal woman left, then her friends left, then the man at the front took off, taking his friend with him.

The facilitator and some of the more diplomatically-minded people came to the conclusion that they would find, contact and speak with the people who left. This struck me as a counter-intuitive solution as I felt that to do so would send the message to the people mentioned above that someone would clean up their mess; do work for them that they refuse to do themselves; reward them for refusing to participate. That said, I now believe it was the right thing to do - to include as many people as possible in as civil a manner as possible, and avoid creating rifts that could grow over time.

That's facilitation: mature problem-solving is a real bitch.

That said, I still have a place in my heart for "Don't like how we're doing things? Thank you for volunteering!"