Late evening on the second conference day and my mind is working furiously to process the information provided to it, as well as to thaw itself out.
The morning began well enough with a 7 a.m. bus ride to the sprawling University of Indiana campus. Breakfast with eggs to order was available for a reasonable price along with an assortment of general snack food.
Granted, this was somewhat less fancy than Austin Peay’s Saturday fare, though I’ve been assured that had I known more about the campus and area, I could have achieved highly delectable food service. This certainly seems likely, as the 75 person cafe area could hardly be expected to be the main cafeteria establishment.
This writer chose to spend his morning in a session with Mr. Shane Windemeyer in his workshop entitled “The Impact of Hate.” This presentation explored the definitions used in common language and some important distinctions that need to be made. Mr. Windemeyer outlines just what exactly a bias motivated incident is and what a hate crime is. Even more crucial, this workshop spent a good amount of time dealing with the line between the two, a line which is very important in the presenter’s opinion. For, as he noted, being racist, homophobic, sexist, or just about anything else you want to come up with is not in and of itself a crime, only specific actions against person or property.
Mr. Chris Howard, GSA vice-president, attended a morning workshop entitled “Whips, Nipple Clips, and Candle Wax Part 1: Power Play and Relationship Between Violence and Sex.” This workshop was billed as an analysis of violence and/or aggressive behavior within consensual sex. However, the workshop, according to Mr. Howard, presented an inaccurate history of auto-flagellation, which is only a small part of the BDSM culture. The presenters pointed out that sometimes power play can become more than play and cross the line to abuse. Presenters, who admit that they have no experience in BDSM. seemed to be under a rather false impression of how BDSM is carried out, failing to take into account ideas and avenues such as safe words and actions dismissing the concepts as off topic when they were brought up by participants who had previously engaged in BDSM lifestyle.
Midday offered an opportunity to venture out into Bloomington itself to see some of the city surrounding us. Clarksville’s contingent chose to venture on foot down 4th avenue, which was found to be full of an extremely extensive variety of international cuisines, including such rarities as Turkish and Ethiopian as well as more traditional Thai and Indian offerings. In the end Moroccan cuisine was the choice of the day.
Meal choices at Casablanca were generally well priced and pandered by a knowledgeable staff. The food was delivered quickly and hot, and was of good quality. In terms of variety, there wasn’t a great deal of it, but there was enough to allow most people to find something suitable, and there are multiple vegetarian (but no vegan) options on the menu for those so inclined.
However, the real highlight of the day for this writer was an afternoon workshop presented by Mr. John Summerlot, a doctoral student at IU in Veteran’s Affairs. Mr. Summerlot presented “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: An Inconvenient Truth for the Military and Veterans.” This is a very difficult presentation to give a brief summary of, but in short, the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy is a dismal failure in serving our GLBT Veterans, often presenting them with an unpalatable choice of choosing a post service institution either friendly to veterans or one friendly to GLBT persons, as the two types of campuses are almost always always mutually exclusive.
