If you were curious about the workshops during the conference, we are very happy to have these wonderful workshops on Saturday. Hope we will see you there!
Session A (12:20-1:50 pm)
Session A (12:20-1:50 pm)
Perspectives from Feminist Generations / Waves in Texas
Rocío Villalobos, Glenn Scott, Alice Embree
Gender & Sexuality Center, SAC 2.112
We will lead a conversation with two feminist activists from the Second Wave of the 1970’s and two young feminists currently organizing on reproductive justice, immigrant justice and anti-racism. These four facilitators will build a conversation around the following questions: What drew you to activism? What was the historical context? What are the challenges you face(d) in your activism? What can others learn from your experience? Throughout the workshop, the discussion leaders will promote active dialogue with participants around the above questions and others that arise.
Building Accessibility Into Your Intersectionality: Combatting Ableism in Progressive Movements
Jessica Mitchell
Executive Conference Room, SAC 3.114
Progressive movements have often excluded the needs of disabled individuals, creating divisions between disability activists and other progressive causes and furthering barriers to intersectionality. These barriers are often thought of as physical, yet frequently transgress corporeal bounds into mental and emotional spaces to create psychologically toxic environments to those with medical, physical, emotional, and neurodevelopmental disabilities.
This workshop will address the details of these environments, the causes, and how they are maintained. We will learn how to build environments that areaccessible, safe, and welcoming to disabled individuals physically, mentally, and emotionally and learn how to respond when disabled needs are not met. Areas covered will include language, physical spaces, organizing and event planning, protests and demonstrations, and inclusionary practices.
Muted Voices, Botched History
Kate Lemley and Aja Rodriguez
Student Government Office, SAC 2.102
Our interactive, group discussion-based workshop aims to discuss the history of silencing voices in US History. We will examine privilege and power and the effects these concepts have had on public education and what is thereby perceived to be "general knowledge" in the United States. Texas State Graduate Student Aja Rodriguez and UT Undergrad Kate Lemley plan to facilitate these ideas in both historical and modern lights.
Session B (2:00- 3:20 pm)
Humans Cosplaying Robots: Exploring Vulnerability Through Art Making
PLUMP
Gender & Sexuality Center, SAC 2.112
Our goal is to hold a media and art making workshop that incorporates, highlights, and draws from our identities and experiences as fat queer femme people both as a collective and as individuals. We will hold a conversation about the ways in which personal identities and proximities to privilege and marginalization inform the media that we create as well as the media that we see and are surrounded by. During the course of this workshop we will accomplish this by presenting writing prompts we have gathered about bodies and how bodies inform experiences. We will hold space for those who feel alienated by or uninterested in using writing in their art-making, and speak about our experiences creating FAT: the play as well as FAT: the play: the zine.
Doing Feminism in Austin: Intersectional Feminist Praxis at Work
Women’s Community Center of Central Texas
Student Government Office, SAC 2.102
Jobs in social justice organizations are coveted and hard to come by. But those organizations can sometimes be surprisingly unjust places on the inside. Employees deal with low pay, little or no benefits, long hours, minimal flexibility, little power-sharing, and few opportunities for professional growth or development, all with the expectation that you’re grateful to be able to work for the cause. Systems like fundraising often clash with feminist values. The presenters on this panel will talk about how they work to create feminist space within and around the non-profit industrial complex. We’ll talk about what feminist workspace can look like, sustainability, accountability, what professionalism means in a feminist context, practicing intersectionality, practicing solidarity rather than charity, and more.
What Is it That We’re Talking About Here: An Exploration of (Some) of the Basic Components of Sexism
Ana “Ixchel” Rosal
Executive Conference Room, SAC 3.114
This workshop is geared toward those who are new to and/or curious about the work of the women’s movement and feminism. Through this workshop, participants will examine some of the basic mechanism of sexism. What does sexism look like? How do we experience it in our daily lives? What are the institutions that uphold sexist oppression and how do they do that? Come with your questions, and an open mind, and together will build a shared understanding of how sexism works.
Session C (3:30-4:50 pm)
Sex Work and Feminism
Texas Sexes
Multicultural Engagement Center, SAC 1.102
A collective of Austin area Sex Workers will hold a panel made up of current and former sex workers. We will speak about our work and answer questions, as well as discuss how our work intersects with feminisms and other issues.
Trigger warning: we will be talking about many different types of sexuality, BDSM, trauma among other things
What Goods Are We Really Being Sold?
Shane Whalley
Executive Conference Room, SAC 3.114
