Women's Declaration International Debrief, Part 1

Why You Should Go to a Women's Conference

I meant to get to this sooner, but I caught the ‘vid and had to take the other ‘vid (paxlovid), so I have been out of commission since a few days after the conclusion of the conference. Presumably because it has been so long since my last booster and there is a new variant going around, this time I was actually sick for the usual amount of time. Initially, I developed severe laryngitis, and was quite afraid I would be stuck like that because of how COVID causes these problems. Fortunately, the laryngitis reversed rapidly when I began the paxlovid, however this medication made me feel woozy and dizzy. My voice is still slightly hoarse but not the bear eating a frog while fighting a lion situation I had going on last week. I was warned Paxlovid would alter my sense of taste, but I was unprepared for the 5 days of continuous hand-sanitizer taste that was inescapable except through the power of snacking. I seem to have avoided long-COVID, which as long-time readers may know, I experienced in 2020, prior to the advent of the vaccine, and fortunately I did eventually heal from it. I would do quite a lot to avoid that experience again. I am now on the mend and back at it.

My ‘fit for the first night of the Women’s Declaration, International USA chapter conference is as follows. I had a good time getting ready.

Dressing up always helps with the latent agoraphobia trigger represented by entering a large open room full of many people I do not know well, who nevertheless are likely to recognize me and want to interact. I love the interaction - do not get me wrong and do not avoid me at these events, please! But I have this quirk when it is time to transition, and it can take some extra effort to make going downstairs right now to enter such a situation seem like a good idea. I am often fashionably late for this reason. I am fortunate that this is just a nagging awareness of the possibility of the trigger and that the actual reactions I have are minimal these days, thanks to the same years of intensive counseling that helped me overcome gender gremlins and realize that the real pattern here was not that I needed to look like a man but that I needed to feel dressed up and ready to go.

My dress was a bit long for me since my beefcakery has redistributed in the wake of Swolehalla, so I happily wore my Japanese geta for some extra height. Geta is an onomatopoeia for the sound the wooden sandals make on the ground as you walk (“ge ta ge ta,” they say), and the design would have advantaged Burning Man attendees as the point of them is to walk in deep mud without getting stuck.

The food is my favorite part of any conference, and what was provided by Hilton’s catering was amazing. My biggest regret for the weekend was oversleeping both mornings, due to staying up late chatting with

Laura Becker | Funk⭐God

until like 7 AM or having a karaoke party with several other attendees in my room until almost as late. Here is the one picture I did snap of my Steak Tart Tart.

The first night of the event, I went out with Laura and another attendee to The Mint in San Francisco, one of my favorite pre-COVID haunts when I was just your normal everyday party person. We signed up to sing “Just a Girl” by No Doubt, and began to wait, and wait, and wait. While waiting, we discussed how another attendee had made a rude comment about Laura’s dress. I remarked on this to a woman who randomly told Laura how beautiful her dress was, and this woman, who seemed to be in an altered state, became very emotional and wanted to hug us both and bond over the cruel world we live in that was fortunately, shut out of the club for the evening. After waiting for multiple hours, it was finally our turn. This is the result.

On Saturday, we had some uninvited guests protesting our event. They fully believe in “human right” of all people, including children, to have healthy body parts removed, but they do not believe women have the right to speak to each other at a private event if they do not approve of the subject matter. One of them, a 33 year old white Oakland-based man named Casey Goonan, who reportedly has a PhD in African American Studies, allegedly brought a weapon with him - a hammer - and decided to vandalize the sign and assault hotel staff and police until he was finally arrested by something like six officers.

Casey has reportedly been charged with multiple crimes including felony vandalism and resisting arrest. Much of his online footprint relates to issues of incarceration, and one has to wonder whether this tomfoolery was pursued with the goal of being arrested and getting to experience the inside of a prison firsthand, now that he’s done with his education and presumably has minimal job prospects to protect.

Prior to this, I had wandered outside to take some body camera footage of the protests. We had been instructed by Kara Dansky and Women’s Declaration International to not engage with the protestors directly. Despite this, some of us who were outside were engaged by protestors and police, and one in particular, K. Yang, held her own in a heated exchange. We were then asked by the conference to return to the hotel, which we did. Kara Dansky reiterated that we would be asked to leave the conference if we were seen engaging with protestors, as this reflected negatively on the conference. Given the extremely bad behavior of the protestors outside, any engagement risked our future ability to book such facilities to hold future conferences. To the best of my knowledge, we all cooperated.

The protestors mostly had predictable signs, but this dude (whose basement needs to be checked yesterday) showed up with a sign calling for millions of dead women. Yes, jumpsuit guy standing back and to stage right has panties on his face.

Shortly after lunch, K. Yang and Meghan Murphy went were out on a pedestrian bridge overlooking the street where the activists had shut down traffic, when several protestors reportedly climbed over the locked, high gate and attempted to enter the conference floor via this bridge. Conference attendees quickly returned to the interior of the building, people were ushered from the common spaces into meeting rooms so the doors could be locked, and police came up at the presumed behest of hotel security and repulsed these activists. They proceeded to guard the bridge.

This happened right as my talk was scheduled to begin. You can view my talk, which begins with a 5 minute introduction and a brief discussion of the “evolving security situation” outside, here on Substack and at Exulansic.com (Odysee) and Rumble.com/c/exulansic.

Please see Part 2 for the rest of the write-up!