QPOC Conference Keynote: UCSB

QPOC Conference Keynote: UCSB Originally written for May 15, 2015 Kay Ulanday Barrett (bio) I would like to thank QPOC Conference here at UCSB, the organizers, the students, the late nights and missing meals, the gas money and the delusion it takes to create social justice and critical and party space all in one dreamy QTBIPOClandia is a feat. If you get new ideas, get new crushes, have new protest chants, it’s because of those who’ve brought you here. Thank you to everyone who brought us here, the people who clean and care for this building, the earth that feeds us, the native and indigenous, Two-Spirit communities whose land we are occupying, specifically the Chumash community. Gratitude to those who, like my mama, a motel worker, are globally exploited, forced migration, for this clean air, and my own witty remarks uninterrupted by military or police. #americandream? To honor those who brought me here, politically and spiritually: I want to uplift the femmes of color whose labor is deemed invisible. Y’all feed us, critique, protest, create this world, and you deserve the most high. I want to hold the trans femme women of color who raised me, whose politics are true salve but aren’t booked to many conferences unless they are super fancy and look a kind of way that makes us comfortable on realness or womanhood. For Bamby Salcedo and for my Tita Alby who did my makeup and made sure I was fed, made me do my homework as she got ready for beauty pageants and flagrant cop searches. I am thankful to my Sick and Disabled Trans and Queer People of Color who lead movements even when they are abandoned or have to be kept in secret to be considered “functional,” who cannot afford travel, aren’t given the space to travel, you deserve to be here. I do this work for you and for this universe we build to believe that all bodies are valid. All bodies are intrinsic to building a future. [End Page 292] Let’s begin with this: Being exceptional isn’t revolutionary, it’s lonely. It separates you from your community. Who are you, really, without community? —Janet Mock Fifteen Plus Things I Wish I Knew in College as a Poor-Ass QTPOC from an Immigrant Household (the REMIX) Originally performed at University of California, Santa Barbara, for the Queer People of Color Conference 15. fuck the word “uppity.” you do not have to choose any community over the other, academic, of color, queer, chronically ill, political, mixed, poor, refugee, transgender, from the hood. if possible, embrace and let them all live, inform, and complicate one another. You are beyond formula or standardized confines. 14. odds are you will be forced to study mostly white, straight, skinny, cisgender, european/anglo, possibly rich people’s discourse. read it to read it, to unlearn it. I know it is so boring. find the work that really calls your skill and passions. As Calloutqueen, trans femme of color mark aguhar said: “LOL Reverse Racism.” 14.5 when a friend of privilege calls you or intros you as their _______ [insert race, ethnicity, sexuality, identity here], back fist them. no wait, don’t. hmmm, well maybe. no, don’t. talk it out and if that doesn’t work out, dump them. 13. take advantage of the fancy gym membership if you can. P.S. you are brilliant. You deserve to be here. Don’t let anyone question that. [End Page 293] 12. all the “free” food in the cafeteria isn’t really free. it’s actually money you are going to owe well beyond your diploma plus interest and by then, you’ll actually need real free food. 11. you may wake up late to your classes because you’ve shacked up with a new lover. don’t forget the diploma. studying before sex. hey are you listening to me? STUDYING BEFORE SEX. Yes, yes, examine polyamory, precolonial relationships before monogamy, but seriously? 11.99 we know that queer sex is the shit. always practice safer sex: communication, consent, gloves, dams, condoms, etc. sexy and kinky times is our liberation song from...