Queer Collaborations redux: a response to SX
Jul 12th, 2008 by Rebecca
It’s been brought to my attention that my post on the Queer Collaborations conference has been referenced in an article in this week’s edition of Sydney gay press SX.
In an online post, feminist blogger ‘Burning Woods’ wrote: “The socialists wandered off down to the office of the Minister for Finance (because it was close) to do an impromptu protest for the not-especially-coherent manifesto of gay marriage, overturning VSU, and homophobia in schools, while the non-socialists fucked off into the city and went shopping. “Did it actually achieve anything besides giving the Trots an adrenalin high? Of course not. But hey, since when were we expected to try and, y’know, do something useful with the time?”
Firstly, I’d care to point out to Mr. Clacher that my blog is called “Burning Words“, and my name is Rebecca, two things which should be rather evident, seeing as they’re on every page of the site. Secondly, I’m a bit disappointed that he chose to cherrypick that one quote out of what was a particularly lengthy post, most of which was actually not about the role played by the Trots.
That said, at least in regard to the “action”, it was indeed nothing short of a joke. The justification given on part of the Trots was that it was “an exercise in practical activism”, despite the fact that it achieved nothing beyond making Lindsay Tanner’s office staff wonder “who in the hell are these people?” One might think that attempting to teach people lessons in practical activism might involve helping people learn practical skills and contacts by which they might return home and run more effective campaigns for social change. Unfortunately, the problem is that many of these “activists” can’t even write a fucking press release, and whose idea of making an impact seems to extend merely as far as the fun they have getting up behind a megaphone. And that does have a flow-on effect, making attending the political sessions far less inviting.
Burning Words’ criticism extended to the Conference itself, adding that an opportunity for networking and productive discussions were being hijacked by others with less peaceful motives.
It was the inclusion of this in the article bothered me - as that’s not what I said. Yes, Socialist Alternative do have a knack for buggering things up, and were something of a nuisance throughout the conference. However, a lot of what I was frustrated with were not so much deliberate disruption, as much as problems inherent in a lot of student political scenes (and from experience especially in queer circles), such as the tendency to navel-gaze and spend way too much time arguing about nothing much at all, often at the expense of time which could be spent doing useful things. These are by no means easy things to deal with for the conference organisers; indeed, much of that post was a way of outlining for me some of the challenges we’re probably going to face in organising the 2009 conference.
And that’s why I’m a bit pissed off by the way Clacher then seems to frame that as a criticism of this year’s organisers, despite my never having mentioned them in my post.
Nonetheless, Ahrens told SX there were over 30 workshops run by students and representatives from outside organisations on subjects as diverse as queer history, genderqueer and transgender issues and the Federal Government’s intervention in Northern Territory aboriginal communities.
See, had Clacher actually decided to ask me, rather than badly summarising what I’d written on my blog, he’d have found out that I’d have agreed with that: there were indeed some really interesting sessions - though as I said previously, they did tend to be of a more non-political nature. For the record, I think Bree and the other organisers did a great job in the circumstances; they held a conference without any major drama, for the first time in a few years, got numbers back up after a tiny conference in Hobart in ‘07, and worked their arses off trying to keep the conference on track as best they could. I was particularly impressed at the way they dealt with the trans/genderqueer caucus trainwreck, in which they were more than helpful, and helped deal with its aftermath in a way that did alleviate a number of the issues that emerged.