An unconference and a conference and a link

I'm speaking two places this month, and I encourage you to come to one or both if you want to hear me and some other people natter on about theory. The first one is this Saturday, and it's at KinkForAll Boston [0] which will be at BU from 10:30 to... 4? 5? The webpage describes it as "an ad-hoc unconference on sexuality for anyone and everyone, drawing participants from an astounding range of both sexuality-related and other communities. Anyone with the desire to learn or with something to contribute is welcome and invited to participate." It's basically based on BarCamp, which I've always thought was interesting --- which does something similar with tech people instead of sexuality people. I'm going to give a talk called "Why Gender Theory Matters To Your Sex Life;" I'll be cribbing some from Riki Wilchins's Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer and then disagreeing voraciously. Sadly I don't think I'll have finished Covering by then... If this sounds interesting, you should come! And talk about your relevant research or experience!

September 26th I'll be on a panel called "Race and Gender in Technology" at the MIT Women's and Gender Studies 25th Anniversary Conference, "Futures of Race and Gender." I'll be responding to Elizabeth Roberts (the anthropologist, not the RI Lt. Governor [1]) and I am very much looking forward to it. I'm pretty sure it is open attendance, but I can confirm that It is open to the public; if you're into issues of race and gender, and I know a lot of you are, I very much encourage you to sit in. The other two presentations are "Mentoring Women: Four Generations of Women Scientists at MIT" and "Genetic Testing: Gender, Race and Medicine." Ooooh, do I have opinions on the second one! I am looking forward to hearing what the panelists have to say. :) The room is 32-141 which I think I can translate into a handy-dandy link for people not familiar with the MIT campus. [2]

I hope to see some of you at one or both of these! If not, I should have writeups after they're done.

Oh and I promised a link! It's depressing, but David Neuwert's articles about Eliminationism in America are really, really worth reading. I don't know much about him or his politics other than these articles, but they seem very solid to me, research and citation-wise. He also reminded me to spend one of my Amazon gift certificates on Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James W. Loewen. You can read the first chapter in PDF format; if you haven't heard of this concept before, you should really click that link sometime you are ready for the sad-making. (Someone on my friends list posted this a while ago and I went OH MY GOD WHAT but then didn't buy the book. Remedying that now!)

And back to work.
( footnotes wheeeee )