Queer Week

There's a big conference going on here on glbt issues. It's been wonderful. I heard Leslie Feinberg speak last night, and I must say, I was ready to go out and start changing things right afterwords. Now I clearly need to read Stone Butch Blues. The women who introduced Feinberg last night said that it was life-changing for them, and frog of the frogblog has often listed it as one of her favorites. I need to read it.

Bella gave a beautiful presentation this morning on visibility, human rights, and the Pride parade. It was fascinating, and a lot of the people she interviewed came to see her, which I thought was extra neat. She is off in the wild blue yonder now (actually she's probably just landed), on her way to check out a graduate school in a different city. I'll miss her this weekend.

The film festival portion of the conference starts tonight, and I'm way excited. I look forward to the queer film festival all year. It's kind of like Christmas in that way, that and Pride both. This time I actually broke down and bought the whole series of tickets. I normally work at the door during the festival, so perhaps I will show up early and see if they need any help tomorrow and Saturday. They shouldn't tonight because it's not on campus.

I am still haunted by one of the short films they showed last year, called "A Different War," which is about a young boy growing up in Israel right next to the wall between Israel and Palestine. His school is putting on a play of the story of David and one of his wives, and the boy loves dancing the part of the wife rather than any of the male parts. He also spends a lot of time wearing dresses and makeup. His brother is clearly ashamed of him and is constantly trying to get him to "be a man" by standing on top of the wall and yelling insults at the Palestinians, basically daring someone to shoot him. All of the other boys do this during the movie. In the last scenes, the brother catches him dancing the part of David's wife, grabs him, and drags him to the wall. He shoves him up the ladder. The young boy stands there for a moment and then instead of yelling, begins to dance on the wall. It was beautiful. I cried. I hope they show something as moving as that this year, as well.

Oh, and I actually get to sit on the other side of the Village approval committee this weekend because Rennick is bringing a girl to one of the movies and then to the poetry reading. Very exciting :)