Alok Vaid-Menon is a South Asian artivist who has performed & organized with queer movements around the world. They are committed to building radical queer movements and bodies that resist white supremacy and imperialism and like making art that thinks about these, and other what ifs. You can read some of their work at http://returnthegayze.tumblr.com/andhttp://queerlibido.tumblr.com/.Janani is a South Asian electron spinning around the Bay Area making art and scholarship. They like thinking about apocalypse, decolonizing the food system, and making space for quantum queers everywhere. You can read some of their poetry at http://queerdarkenergy.posterous.com/. They’re also assistant editor over at http://blackgirldangerous.org/.

For more information, see their website:
http://darkmatterrage.wix.com/darkmatter

–1) WORKSHOP: Protect Me From What I Want

MAY 17TH @ 3:30 – 5:30 PM
Q CENTER,
IN THE UW HUSKY UNION BUILDING (HUB) ROOM 315
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

This workshop is a space for us to gather and discuss how we desire and are desired in the context of violent power inequalities.

Some of us have chosen romantic separatism as a result of racist trauma, personal-political enactments, or both. Others of us find ourselves fetishized and mobilize that fetish as a site of power and subversion. Still others find ourselves falling always for the white queers or other bodies that possess dominant power, wishing we could have more agency in the process, be more intentional about who we desire and how.

We begin with art: performances of two spoken word pieces on the mental gymnastics of anti-racist queer POCs attempting to politicize our desires. We continue with collective storytelling, and challenge ourselves and each other to explore the difficult questions. We are invested in generating a politics of sexuality that compels us to interrogate beauty as privilege and constructed by systems of white supremacy, ableism, capitalism, and heteronormativity. Awareness is not sufficient — we will focus on strategies we can implement to protect ourselves from what we want and envision our individual desires as part of a collective project of liberation.

Into what kind of relationships are we willing to extend our politics? What does it mean for each of us to politicize our desires? Is it possible to enact allyship in the bedroom or is intimacy designed to bring out unequal power? What are the boundaries we are each always negotiating? How do we desire in ways that are both authentic and nourishing to our psyches and bodies?

Both QPOC and white folks are encouraged to participate. We will break into POC and White caucus groups for a part of the workshop to unpack some of our specific experiences of racialized desire. This will be an intentional, anti-racist, and feminist space.

ACCESSIBILITY
**The HUB’s front entrance is ADA wheelchair accessible. The Q Center is on the third floor, accessible by elevators right beside the front entrance.

**The HUB is not scent free but we are asking people to refrain from wearing fragrances or essential oils the day of the event. We ask that everyone do this so that folks with MCS and chemical injury are able to attend the event. Smokers should wash their hands and mouths with baking soda before the event. We will provide baking soda and scent free soap on site. We will ask attendees to wash off with baking soda before entering the space.

To learn more:
http://www.peggymunson.com/mcs/fragrancefree.html
http://www.brownstargirl.org/1/post/2012/03/fragrance-free-femme-of-colour-realness-draft-15.html
http://billierain.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/MCS-ACCESSIBILITY-BASICS.pdf

**The third floor of the HUB has ADA accessible gendered stalled bathrooms as well as a single stall all-genders bathroom.

**The HUB is located on the UW campus, near Stevens Way and Benton Lane. To view it on a campus map: http://www.washington.edu/maps/?hub
For a list of buses that serve the U-District, go here: http://metro.kingcounty.gov/tops/bus/neighborhoods/university_district.html
To plan your trip to campus on King County Metro, go here: http://tripplanner.kingcounty.gov/cgi-bin/itin_page.pl

**The University of Washington is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation in its services, programs, activities, education and employment for individuals with disabilities. To request disability
accommodations contact the Disability Services Office at least 10 days in advance at: (206) 543-6450/V, (206) 543-6452/TTY, (206) 685-7264 (FAX), or dso@u.washington.edu.

**If you wish to request captioning and/or ASL interpretation, please contact the above.

**If you wish to request childcare, please email asuwomn@uw.edu.

2) Queer Youth Space, ASUW Queer Student Commission and Women’s Action Commission presents:BECAUSE YOU’RE BROWN HONEY GURL: A QPOC INTERVENTION ~*
FRIDAY, MAY 17TH @ 8:00 – 10:00 PM
QUEER YOUTH SPACE
911 E PIKE ST, CAPITOL HILL, SEATTLE, WA

FREE & OPEN TO ALL!

‘Because you’re brown honey gurl’ is a queer of color artistic intervention in the gaystream. How do we distinguish our ways of desiring, thinking, feeling, relating, and creating from the economies of white supremacy? How do we turn to sex, intimacy, and desire in response to histories of ancestral violence and contemporary violent racialization? How do we use art as a way to heal and decolonize from legacies of violence and actually re-imagine this violence as sites of resilience and fabulosity? How do we envision a (a)sexual praxis that is about solidarity and revolution rather than manipulation and capitalism? We’re not tryna get gay married honey gurl. We’re building solidarity outside those refracted beams of white light we call rainbows. And renegotiating ways of loving our bodies. Join us for an evening of poetry, discussion, and community. Decolonize//queer//repeat.

ACCESSIBILITY
get all our accessibility info at queeryouthspace.org (click “the space”)
or call (206)495-9963 during open hours
always free: near the 2, 9, 10, 11, 49, and 60 buslines
General Space Accessibility: Queer Youth Space is wheelchair accessible. Elevator is around the stairs to the right!
Bathroom Accessibility: There is an all-gender, single-stall bathroom in the space (no grab bars yet!), and multi-stall male and female restrooms (ADA accessible) down the hall.
Scent/Fragrance: QYS is currently a reduced fragrance/scent space. Please do not wear fragrances or essential oils when you come to QYS so that folks with chemical sensitivities can be here, too. Check out our website for more info!
Childcare: During open hours, kids are totally welcome! We provide childcare at our events by request.
Buddies: You can email us at info@queeryouthspace.org to get signed up with a buddy for your first visit to the space!
Interpretation: Unless otherwise specified, our events are presented in English without interpretation.
Accessibility or interpretation requests? Contact info@queeryouthspace.com