WisCon panels

[bcholmes]

Here's my preliminary schedule:

Who owns the spoons?

Moderator: BC Holmes. BC Holmes, Andrea Chandler, Magenta Griffith, Criss Moody
How appropriate is it for able-bodied people to use the metaphor of "spoons"? Does anyone (trans people, people of color, etc.) own the concept of "passing"? What happens when terminology used by one minority gets adopted by a wider audience?

I confess that when I saw that on my list, my first reaction was, "Really? I signed up for that?" I suspect that I glommed on to the part about passing. I've been trying to think, over the last few days, what my neat idea for the panel was (I usually have an idea that I'm interested in raising in most panels I sign up for.) I'm not sure, but I suspect that it might have had something to do with cultural translation. But in any event, I'm moderating, which means that I facilitate interesting conversation -- I don't have to be responsible for all the good ideas.

Untangling class

Moderator: Jess Adams. Jess Adams, BC Holmes, Alexis Lothian, Chris Wrdnrd
What do we mean when we talk about class? Is it about how much money we have? How much education? How we grew up? Our position with respect to a global capitalist world system? There have been a lot of WisCon panels in the past focused on speculative fiction that "does class well"––but how can we know whether something's being done well if we don't even know what it is? This panel brings together WisCongoers with expertise and experience in talking about class to hammer out (if not actually decide upon) some definitions.

I'm very much looking forward to this panel. I mean, look at those awesome panelists, for starters! The scariest part is that Anne Robinson might point me out and say, "You are the weakest link! Goodbye!"

Last year, I started to think through the multiple markers of class in many of the same terms that one might think through the multiple markers of gender. And I'm starting to believe in a notion of class panic that's in some ways similar to gender panic when those markers refuse to be congruent.

Dispelling Trans Myths

Moderator: Rachel Kronick. Rachel Kronick, BC Holmes, Elliott Mason, s.e. smith
Trans women think about things other than make-up! Not all people who have penises are men! Hormones are often more important than surgery! Some people don't even want surgery! Some trans people have non-tragic lives! Come and have your mind *blown*.

In many ways, this panel sounds like Trans 101 (or maybe Trans 201). Me, I'm interested in the part of the panel description that involves blowing people's minds. Like, seriously: I soooo don't want to talk about bathrooms. Can we get into some of the really "out there" aspects of trans experience? Mind-blowing! That's my target.

Comments

[wrdnrd]

I'm starting to believe in a notion of class panic that's in some ways similar to gender panic when those markers refuse to be congruent.

!!! Intriguing! Gonna spend the next 6 weeks rolling this around in my head, but this definitely feels familiar to me.

[redbird]

That does sound like Trans 101, and not just from the title.

[wordweaverlynn]

As someone who doesn't fit most of the class categories, I'm particularly interested in your idea of class panic. Alas, I won't be at Wiscon. I hope someone takes good notes.

[egret]

Also loving the class panic notion! Feel free to write more about that any time! :)

[firecat]

Yeah, I was hoping it would focus on mind-blowing. :)

spoons for everyone (metaphorically speaking)

[adrian_turtle]

Some ways of talking about the disability experience might need to be limited to people with disabilities, but the spoons metaphor itself seems designed for wider use. Everybody, disabled or not, has finite resources. That's the point of talking about limited spoons. There's a continuum of ability levels, a continuum of physical and emotional resources, just as there is a continuum of need for those resources, but the experience of not having the resources to do what you want is nearly universal. That's what makes the spoons metaphor so valuable.

Between depression and chronic pain, there's relatively little I can do before running out of spoons. But I want my experience, of needing to do more than I have spoons for, to be understood by as many people as possible--it disturbs me to think of non-disabled people being told, "you can't possibly understand. This is completely alien to your experience of being pregnant and exhausted and unable to do more than a small fraction of what you needed." I can be othered without going to the trouble of trying to explain.

The other value of the spoons metaphor is somewhat more political, but that also works better if it's applied more generally. There's an idea floating around that a person ought to be able to do any ten-minute task in any ten-minute interval. These are just little things to do, why on Earth can't you do them? The spoons metaphor is an acknowledgement that everybody runs out of stamina, everybody has finite resources. I worked for several businesses that cared a lot about the notion that you must have something really wrong with you if you had finite resources--that's not right. (It's factually wrong, and morally destructive.) Widespread use of the spoons metaphor helps push back against it.

[jiawen]

Let me know what kinds of mind-blowing stuff you'd like to talk about. I'll start an email conversation about this later, but it can't hurt to brainstorm here, too.