Burning Words

I’ve recently returned from a week at the national student queer conference, Queer Collaborations, and while I wound up having a pretty awesome week, I’m a bit disappointed to say that not much of that had to do with the actual conference. It illustrated so much of what winds up trashing so many attempts at student political organising, and I dare say left a fair few people not too keen to come back. It’s a challenge for us next year, as we were the winning bid to bring the ‘09 conference to Canberra, but I think we’ll have a fair way to go.

The first day was the scene of many of the issues. Most of the day was taken up with navel-gazing issues around conference procedure that were really quite unhelpful. The womens’ caucus was the scene of a vicious two-hour long argument between the anarchists and the noiser normal people about just how much they hated the police, as people moved to take out a section of conference policy stating that law enforcement were not welcome/should not be cooperated with during the conference. This occurred despite the fact that none of this actually had anything to do specifically with women’s issues. The political pissing contest continued on for another hour on conference floor in the afternoon, with the offending section ultimately taken out, largely on the grounds that shaming people who’ve been assaulted is, y’know, kinda shit and all.

This meant that the better part of the entire first day - and the entirety of the women’s caucus, had been pretty much wasted. From what I heard, the culturally and linguistically diverse and disability caucuses at least functioned, although were also entirely dedicated to issues surrounding the running of the conference. The trans and genderqueer caucus, on the other hand, was a complete and utter fucking trainwreck.  Cispeople who didn’t get that it was supposed to be autonomous outnumbered the genderqueer and transpeople present combined, and the trans delegates in particular got swamped. Most of the session was spent doing trans 101 stuff, and I wound up storming out after one of the genderqueer delegates made some blatantly transphobic comments. No actual issues got discussed, either before or after I left, and I was pissed off enough to out myself to the entire conference so I could make an angry speech to conference floor later in the afternoon.

I’m not entirely surprised that such a big part of the day wound up being spent on internal issues, considering the conference’s history. Last year, some sort of misunderstanding, which turned out to be wrong, led to a vigilante group going to the hostel of one of the gay delegates accusing him of sexual assault, resulting in his attempting suicide and the entire conference feeling very, very unsafe. The previous year, Socialist Alternative plonked a stall blocking the fire exit at a public venue, refused to move, and nearly had the conference organisers call the police on them. A couple of years before that, the entire non-socialist section of the conference walked out and held sessions at a pub down the street. It’s had a history of crazy and often bullshit drama, and this year, for once, there was none of that. I suppose that’s an achievement, but it still doesn’t make the conference any more useful.

I was so fed up with the first day that I wound up missing most of the second. This did mean, unfortunately, that I missed Nix Williams, who I’m told showed up to the “how to be a trans ally?” workshop. The more non-political sessions, I’m told, went well; however, the more appealing a session was to the socialists present, the worse it got was the general vibe. The socialist delegates repeatedly disrupted the conference in the sessions I saw, basically trying to browbeat dissenters into submission, and even pre-scripting and arranging Dorothy Dixers in the plenary session to try to steer the discussion to their ends. It’s not as if I haven’t seen this sort of thing before: opposing some sort of socialist motion at the Queer Space NUS policy conference in 2006 basically saw threats of physical violence made against the independent delegates present. Still, it’s so fucking unhelpful, and does such damage to the prospect of anything actually useful coming out of the conference in terms of campaigns or networking, or fuck, even educating people there.

The consequences of this could be seen in the “action” on Thursday afternoon. The socialists wandered off down to the office of the Minister for Finance (because it was close) to do an impromptu protest for the not-especially-coherent manifesto of gay marriage, overturning VSU, and homophobia in schools, while the non-socialists fucked off into the city and went shopping. Did it actually achieve anything besides giving the trots an adrenalin high? Of course not. But hey, since when were we expected to try and, y’know, do something useful with the time.

The conference did wind up being a good opportunity to meet some queers from around the country and hey, to that extent I had the best week I’ve had in ages, but politically, it could have been so much more.

You’ve got a really rare chance to get a big group of lesbian students, of queer students of colour, of disabled queer students, and trans students together, in person. It’s such a great opportunity to actively network and attempt to share resources and foment potential campaigns. And instead, that time gets spent pissing about with conference procedure. You’ve got a great chance to get interesting speakers in to talk to a bunch of queers to learn from and be inspired, and instead these wind up being persistently hijacked by the bloody socialists and anarchists. You’ve got the best chance you’re going to get to give queer students from all over the country the chance to network with each other, and it perennially takes a backseat to drama and bullshit. Hell, you’ve got such an opportunity to make it a fun, inspiring, and insightful week, and half the time people just walk away feeling pissed. If it wasn’t for the people I met during the conference, that’s about all I’d have come away with. I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to try and make for a better conference in 2009, but god we’ve got a long way to go if it’s going to be a useful one.

Tags: queer collaborations, queer issues, student politics, trans