Last year, I left Woodhull’s Sexual Freedom Summit with some regrets. I wasn’t as social as I wanted to be, I felt really out of place and unintelligent, I felt like I was socially on the outs, and it brought up a lot of feelings from college where I had similar feelings for years. So this year, I vowed to make the most of the time I had there, use my knowledge of the previous year to my advantage, and tap into my inner socialite. And boy did it pay off.
Thursday
I arrived late Wednesday night, so Wednesday was pretty much a wash. I started out on Thursday by waking up entirely too late (#jetlag) and scooting on down to the blogger lounge. It wasn’t officially set up, but it was open with tables and couches and beanbags.
It wasn’t full-on blogger cackles yet, but it was close. I got to catch up and grab hugs from some of my favorite folks! And of course, stock up on snacks from the blogger lounge. There weren’t any panels that day, so it was a nice day to just relax and get settled in.
Friday
The first official day! I started out by attending Platinum Grade Sex Toy Myths: Material Safety Between the Sheets with Lilly and Kenton. It was a super great and informative talk, and Kenton even made some dildos during the talk! Even better, I got one in exchange for my now-famous wiggle dance. I live tweeted the session here.
During my lunch break, I got to meet some great folks that I hadn’t gotten to meet in person yet! I love getting to meet people in meatspace. It makes me nervous because sometimes I don’t always recognize people from their avatars, but everyone is always great about introducing themselves with names and websites, so it wasn’t much of an issue!
Later that day I went to Sarah’s talk: Using Sex Toys as a Tool to Heal from Trauma. This was a great talk, and emphasized a lot of wonderful points about how to get familiar with your body after trauma, how to map out your own pleasure using toys, and had some education on different kinds of toys as well. I also live tweeted that sesh! I really appreciated Sarah’s honesty and the way she tried to make everything as inclusive as possible without being overwhelming.
I wasn’t planning on going to another session after Sarah’s, but I heard rumblings of a few folks heading to a session on using kink to navigate trauma as well. It sounded interesting, so I tagged along. Honestly, I think this was my favorite session. It was a wonderful blend of humor, personal stories, psychology, science, and kink. Of course, I live tweeted too, but also had the pleasure of meeting the presenter Samantha Manewitz afterwards in the blogger lounge. She was so sweet and seemed genuinely happy when I told her how much I enjoyed her session, and recognized my live tweeting! This is my claim to fame, y’all.
Friday night was full of a big kumbaya circle in the blogger lounge, with only a brief change of scenery when the fire alarm went off. Some people were on the floor, others in chairs or beanbags, and Sarah was in the middle with her Big Black Bean. I stayed until nearly midnight, listening to everyone’s stories and chatter. Ian and I found celebrity doppelgangers, I protected The Bean, and then I went back to my room and ate surprisingly good mac and cheese from room service and fell asleep quickly afterwards. I knew I had more sessions to get to in the morning!
Saturday
Saturday started out with a great panel called Living Out Loud: Telling Personal Stories as Activism. It included Kevin Patterson, Dirty Lola, Kate Sloan, and the always effervescent Bex Caputo! Folks covered a lot of great topics with Bex moderating, and some of my favorites were some stellar quotes: Kate talked about sexual shame, Lola talked about how her very existence is political right now, and Bex reminded everyone that being so open on the internet is really taxing, and that we have to take care of ourselves. He always has good advice.
I finished up Saturday with an incredibly difficult, emotional, and important talk called Fat Empowerment. There were so many stories from the audience that resonated with me. There was a video about Poodle Science, which I highly recommend to anyone struggling with the idea that there’s no perfect weight for anyone. We also talked right upfront about decentering whiteness, especially since it was a very white crowd. There’s a lot of stigma with white women around thinness and eating disorders, but there’s historical and societal connotations with fatness for black women (and men, but mostly women) as well. There was a good discussion about that. We talked about fatness being an accessibility issue, critiqued various movements like Health at Every Size, and how to talk to doctors since body shame comes up a lot in doctors offices. It was an emotional session; tears were shed, stories were told, but ultimately I left the session feeling validated. Sad, but validated, and with more tools than I started with to fight fat stigma.
I think Saturday night was my favorite. I offered up my hotel room as a congregating point and a group of us ordered Thai delivery. The conversations ran the gamut from how hot Niles Crane is on Frasier (#lanksters) to funny sex stories to screaming about these horrifying fish that have teeth. Everyone hung out in my room for hours. Honestly, it was food for my soul. Eventually I had to kick everyone out around 1am (way past my bedtime!) but I went to bed knowing that these were my people.
Sunday
Sunday was slow. It started with a scrounged breakfast from the keynote speeches, and people started filtering out. I wasn’t scheduled to leave until Monday, so Sunday afternoon ended up being mostly in my room, since I got tackled by a migraine. I spent most of the evening watching garbage TV, which I don’t normally do at home. It was satisfyingly brain-rotting. I missed some goodbyes, but that’s how it went last year too. Sometimes schedules don’t always coordinate, but that’s the great thing about Twitter– you can always catch up there!
I left Monday afternoon to come back to Seattle, and while it was nice to be home, con drop hit hard and I was feeling low for a few days after arriving home. Luckily I have a wonderfully supportive partner who let me cry, made sure I ate, and then put me to bed for a nap. He knows what I need even when I don’t!
It was a great conference this year, but it wasn’t without its faults. It still seemed like a predominately white crowd (though I have no numbers to back that up). The bloggers can seem clique-y, and to an extent, we are, but we’re also mostly introverted socially-anxious folks, and that usually manifests as a clique-y feeling. It’s still prohibitively expensive for many people, especially those who have to travel. There were some companies around that I had problems with, like a company that had products meant for “female cleansing”, but seemed to equate female with vaginas and vulvas, when that’s not the case. (Also? Vaginas aren’t dirty. Stop trying to tell us they are.) But I think all this is more improvement for next year.
Overall, it was a successful conference. I brought home books from Red Emma’s, got to go to a live recording of The Dildorks, and of course, got some stellar writing ideas from the weekend as a whole.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my sponsors one more time. SheVibe, We-Vibe, B-vibe, (all the vibes!) Beyond Delights, Vibrant, Velvet Swing, and Peepshow Toys helped me get to D.C. and I wouldn’t have been able to do it without them. Thank you thank you thank you!