I recently spoke at Allegheny College in Meadville, PA about the “grey areas” of gender and sexuality. The event was sponsored by the school’s FMLA student organization (a feminist leadership group), and we called the presentation, “Sex, Queers, and Finding Home.”
I mixed up the talk by telling my own story, talking about Genderfork, performing some spoken word pieces about queer identity, and answering questions. Thanks to Sheik (one of my Genderfork volunteers), I have some pretty decent footage from the event, which I’m excited to share. (This is also one of my first ever attempts at video editing, so forgive the amount of time it took me to get it to you.)
Here’s me answering some questions about where Genderfork came from and how it’s working…
More telling stories and answering questions…
- How do I approach someone when I don’t know their gender?
- About my queer identity
- Androgyny and attraction
- Talking about my gender and my sexuality with my mother
And here’s a spoken word poem that (sort of) clarifies my sexual orientation:
More spoken word…
- “My Uncle”
- “God Hunt”
- Reading selected submissions from Genderfork.com
- “Collision” (not safe for work, see below)
- “Chicago Blood” (not safe for work, see below)
The last two pieces on the list are marked “not safe for work” because they talk about sex. This means you probably shouldn’t play them loudly at your office. It ALSO means that if you would rather I didn’t tell you about my sex life, you probably don’t want to watch them at all. Family members and professional colleagues: I’ll let you make your own call here. I’m including them because they were relevant to the talk.
The night was a LOT of fun with a great audience that was so wonderfully engaged it was humbling. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
And speaking of which… if anyone else would like to lure me out to a microphone somewhere, please send me an email: info at sarahdopp dot com.
(note: if you don’t see two youtube videos embedded in this post, try reloading the page. thanks.)
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April 28th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
Hooray! I was wondering when you'd get this up. :)
-S
April 28th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
I had a LOT to learn about video editing software (and was horribly limited by the fact that i had to do it on a PC instead of a Mac). The quality dropped a bit in the process — it's a little blurrier than it needs to be. But I'll learn more next time.
Thanks SO much for shooting it — it's awesome!
April 28th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
oh yeah? what did you end up using? Corel has some pretty sweet software and I think it comes with a 60day trial. I'm on a mac usually though. >.>
:)
April 28th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
I tried a few and most wouldn't work with the .mov format my camera created (cuz it's for mac). Used Wondershare Video Converter to put it into .WMV before the other programs would talk to it. Tried a bunch of other formats and they all dropped either the video or the audio during the edit process, which was weird. .WMV was stable, but lower quality.
April 28th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
Yeah. .mov is a jerk to get to work on stuff. I do think I ended up finding a free converter, either that or Corel worked with it. I don't quite remember.
I think it looks fine enough for youtube. better than half the junk I pump out. :P
-S
April 28th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
Thank you — i needed to hear that. :)
April 28th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
:) anytime.
October 6th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Thank you — i needed to hear that. :)
December 13th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
[…] both of which serve sexual minorities and other beautiful creative weirdos. I also sometimes speak about gender and sexuality. It’s kind of a thing in my […]