Date: 2008-05-26 02:03 Subject: Yawn.... 2am Wiscon time Security: Public Tags: cons

Which means 3am east coast time... no wonder I'm yawning.

Just came from the Gaylaxicon party. Gaylaxicon, the sf con for gays, lesbians, queerfolk of all kinds, and their friends, will be in Washington, DC in October and I might go... I also got to read a short, sexy excerpt of my fiction at another party, and had much fun.

But to recap from earlier, the Polyamory in Fiction panel went really well. Mary Anne Mohanraj, Katie Clapham, Moondancer Drake, Magenta, and I all turned out to be poly ourselves. (Sometimes you get a panelist who has a purely literary interest in the topic, but not this time.) The room was pretty much packed, and from the nodding heads in the audience I would say at least 90% of them were poly, too. Many of them shared personal anecdotes and things as we went along talking about representations of polyamory, good and bad, in things like Torchwood and Laurell K. Hamilton.

We started off talking first in the Green Room for panelists before the panel, trying to come up with some really recent examples of poly relationships in sf/f other than Torchwood and stuff in paranormal romance. ( Read more... )

Date: 2008-05-26 22:54 Subject: And so ends another Wiscon Security: Public Tags: cons

Now at O'Hare waiting to change planes and head back to Boston. Wiscon is over for another year and although I feel physically tired, I feel refreshed and recharged in so many ways. Science fiction is not dead. The book business is not dead. The reasons for writing and reading science fiction and fantasy are not dead. The convention was energizing in a way that I don't usually associate with science fiction conventions, but with activist conclaves like Leather Leadership Conference or the TrueSpirit conference.

Perhaps that's because activist energy does run through Wiscon and there is something sustaining about being part of a community made up of people who are not only like-minded on the world and issues but who feel empowered to DO something.

L. Timmel Duchamp, in her guest of honor speech last night, told the moving and horrifying story of her experience at university, in which she was barred from entering a program for undergraduate music composers because she was a woman. Despite having her pieces accepted to be played at various concerts, she was told by her advisor, as if he were doing her a great favor, that the only reason the young men were interested in playing her pieces was not because the piece was good, but because they were interested in going to bed with her. He then invited her out for a beer. (You may groan now.)

That was 1970. At that time I was only three years old. By the time I reached college, fifteen years later, "women's lib" was already seeming quaint, ( Read more... )