Skit: MBLGTACC'15

I have never been so sore after a conference. Now I know what you're thinking, J, you did something right at this conference if you are so sore. Or, J, you did something so wrong it was right at this conference. To both naughty opinions I say I wish. If only I that were the case. I think it must have been the heels and the swimming. And even if it wasn't that is my story and I am sticking to it. A day in the life of Skittles at MBLGTACC goes pretty much as follows:

• 6:00 am wake up and swim
• 6:45 shower and get ready
• 7:00 wake up the roommates
• 7:30 breakfast
• 8:00 depart for conference
• 8:15 workshop (consent)
• 9:30 workshop (sign langue)
• 11:00 back to the Hotel to change rooms and grab lunch
• Noon Find missing roommate and do a little work
• 2:30 nap/ relax/ recharge time
• 3:30 depart hotel for conference 
• 3:45 workshop (Ace/Aro)
• 5:00 workshop (are you queer enough)
• 6:30 Dinner with the crew
• 6:45 car trouble (I changed a tire)
• 7:45 back to the conference
• 8:30 back to the hotel to prepare for drag show
• 9:30 drag show
• 10:30 Dance
• 1:00 to the hotel to sleep?????

Every year I get pre-conference jitters. I know I have nothing to worry about or to be nervous about I never present a workshop or anything like that. But without fail every year I wake up on the first day of the conference bouncing off the walls. To calm down and get some piece of mind, I go for a swim. It's important to self-care during these conferences because it is really easy to get overwhelmed or burnt out. The last thing you want is to miss everything because your head wasn't in the right place. I start every day of a conference with self-care. Then I wake up the lazy bones that are my roommates. I am kind of controlling and I like to have a plan of action to face the day. I can't make a plan of action for my day without taking my roommates into consideration. In the morning we sing, dance, chat, and plan to split up room time. I love this part of the day. I get to bond with my roomies and we pick out fierce outfits together. By the time breakfast roles around we are strutting out the room, feeling good, and looking like divas. Breakfast is important, it is part of self-care and eating is generally a good idea. Think about it, I spend about 19 hours out and on my feet. If you don't eat and stay hydrated at these things it really take a toll on your body. To be blunt, your body would start to quit on you before you even got to the fun part.

My first workshop was on consent, a topic that really interests me. There was excellent material presented in the workshop that I would go on to use 24 hours later. Everything in workshop generally focused around asexuality and consent in different sexual situations. My take away from it was that we still haven't quite perfected the consent model given the fact that the current one requires full disclosure.

Second workshop was on queer sign language. If you don't know I have taken four semesters of sign language. I love the language, but not because of its aesthetics or anything like that. The presenter in the workshop was funny and great at addressing serious material in a comical way without taking anything away from the point they tried to make. One of the points they made was that people fetishize deafness and ASL. Yes, people who truly understand a language may think its beautiful, but most hearing people just like ASL for the way it looks. I am not one of those people and that is why I attended the workshop. ASL eliminates a lot of unnecessary words and has a very flexible grammatical structure. It is a full body language that, in my opinion, does a better job at conveying expression than "spoken" language. So I jumped on a chance to not only discuss disability, privilege, and the cultural differences between hearing and deaf, but also queer sign words that I probably won't learn in an academic setting. I learned fabulous, rainbow, bisexual, gender fluid, and coming out. They are pretty queer sign.  Plus oppression and sleep around. ;)

During the break I had to support my friend. There are some pretty tough workshops and there are defiantly a lot of trigging things that can come up. This is why I never go a conference alone. Things happen and you need people to support you. This is why I have roommates. I support and affirm my friends. That means different things for different people. For this particular friend it means silent walks back to our hotel. We dance and sing and care for each other. I feel for them and when they hurt I hurt too. I care about both of my roommates which is why went to find the lost one then we bonded as a room. It was great but by three because I didn't nap I was crashing.

I fell asleep in my asexual/ aromatic workshop. It wasn't boring it was well designed and funny but I was so sleepy. It got very testy at the end because the A in MBLGTACC currently stands for ally and the asexuals want their letter back which pissed off the allies. But the community includes the queer and allies aren't part of the community they support it, and stand up for the community. An ally doesn't need a gold star or a letter. They are happy just to be with the community they want to stand by the community no matter what. Whoever gets mad isn't a real ally. When the community say shut up because we are speaking the ally shuts up. Simple, just like that. 

The last workshop was about horizontal oppression, which I desperately relate to. I 

Am bisexual but I am either a lesbian or straight but nobody believes I am who I say I am. I am bisexual and somewhere between demisexual and greysexual. Then my romantic identity is hella complicated. My take away from this was something that Ms. Cox mentioned on the first night of the conference, Hurt people hurt people. The workshop forced me not only to look at what I was being horizontal oppressed about but what I oppress other people about. I know as a bisexual how awful it feels to have your identity questions so why do I do it to other bisexuals? It is not my job or my place to enforce my understanding of the identity on to others. There is no one right way to be Bi, there is no one right way to be any indemnity, but I think we forget that until we say it out loud.

The end of the conference was just general fun time. I think this is the part of the conference that everyone comes for, learning something is just icing on the cake. I got to meet more people from my old university and bond with them over car trouble, pro quo. I deeply miss my U of I friends and I get uncontrollably giddy when I get to see them. As debauchery ensued I knew that I would be able to look back on the conference, the ups and the downs and write it off as a positive one for the books. I think any Midwestern Queer extroverted college student should attend this conference at least once. I say extroverted because a lot of the great take aways from this conference come with interacting with students from other campuses. Introverts are welcomed to the conference I plan on writing an Introverts guide to MBLGTACC after 2016s’, which is taking place at Purdue. But is defiantly a different experience, and any introvert should have a plan for self-care and how to handle the amount of people in place before hand. I know I didn’t mention it but the other people I met at this conference, the discussions I had led to all of the deep thinking I do post conference. I don’t come up with this stuff on my own. I live it then I write about it in hopes too make you curious enough to check it out. Stop being envious of my life and go. I am excited for my fourth Mumble next year at Purdue and I hope many new faces join us.