Workshop Descriptions

Beehive Collective: Plan Colombia

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Chix in the Stix: life on a commune

Tired of life in corporate, patriarchal, consumerist culture? Communal living is another option. Come hear how we strive to eliminate sexism, classism, heterosexism, and other oppressive ways of living. At Twin Oaks, we are over 100 people sharing our lives: income, cars, food, houses, cows, and emotions. What's great about it? What's hard? Come meet two wimmin members, see slides, and ask questions.

DIY Drag Kinging

We would like to do a "How to" on the topic of drag kings and feminine masculinity in general. We are a new group of kings, and I think that the workshop would be informative for both the participants and the presenters. We would like to take a few volunteers from the group and "transform" them into their inner Drag King! We will provide an opportunity for everyone to try the techniques after the presentation, so we may need to book a room for two sessions (in case anyone wants to stay afterward and dress up). We may want to have a mini performance at the evening event....????

DIY Healthcare

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DIY Make Your Own Cloth Pads

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Freeing Our Minds: Women Resisting Psychiatric Abuse

This workshop will examine women's relationship to the mental health system. First, we'll give an overview of psychiatric oppression: what's wrong with psychiatry's medical (illness/chemical imbalance) model, the truth about drugs and electroshock, the role of pharmaceutical companies, and the trauma of forced treatment. Second, we'll look at some specific gender issues: how psychiatry treats post-partum depression, abuse survivors, and self-harm (eating disorders, cutting); the construction of disorders (PMDD, "Hurried Woman Syndrome," sexual dysfunction); the push to diagnose girls as "ADHD." Finally, we'll provide a safe environment to discuss personal experiences in the system, strategies for helping each other, the psychiatric consumer/survivor movement, and the necessity of putting psych issues on the activist agenda.

Girls Rock Forum

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Grassroots campaign planning

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How to Organize an Abortion Fund in YOUR Community!

This workshop will give you the nuts and bolts needed to start an abortion fund in your community. We will talk about the need for funds, how to involve the local community, and how to get the fund up and running. Local abortion funds provide direct financial assistance to low-income women and girls seeking abortion services. The National Network of Abortion Funds, provides support and technical assistance to member funds across the country and educates the public on issues of economic barriers (which fall disproportionately on young women and women of color) to reproductive health services. The voices of Southern girls and women are underrepresented within NNAF, which is one of the organizations on the frontlines of the national abortion access movement, and the only one focused primarily on abortion funding.

Isms, Schisms & Capitalism

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Odd Girl Out: Women of Color and Inclusion

This is a space for women of color and RESPECTFUL allies to honestly discuss the ways in which activism and feminism have inadvertantly excluded women of color.

Planned Parenthood: International Family Planning

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Progress and Prospective on Women's Rights to Abortion

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Radical, Cooperative Parenting

I facilitated this workshop at the SGC in Alabama in 2001. Taren Hill (that's me) and Jessica Mills, two mama's of three year olds as of this year, post-breastfeeding and currently cooperative parenting with a dozen families in our hometown. We'd love to come again with new ideas and talk with folks about the real application of radical parenting theory and advice to childrearing in the South. What does it mean that we are "radical parents" in a not-so-radical world? Nutrition, (Un)Schooling, (non)Gendered Parenting, class/race/gender and childhood lessons, and so on - nothing is outside of the bounds of discussion!

Recycled Rubber Crafts: DIY bracelets, belts, etc. using bike tubes and such

Landfills are too much. We need to reuse all the rubber around us, and it's a great resource to work with. I'd like to share ideas and patterns that me and my buddies have come up with to create beautiful hand-crafted belts, bracelets, neckleces, CD cases, and bags. You can make your own and wear it proudly.

Run, Girl Run: Women in Office

This workshop is designed to encourage girls/women to run for elective office. The interactive discussion will support participants to examine who we do elect, why they should run and what does it take to position ones self to run and serve in elected positions from the local to federal level.

Sexxxing Up the South

i would like to have a group discussion about how growing up in this infamously religious region has affected our gender expression, our sexuality, our girlness, feminism, etc.; how to break away from strong religious upbringing as it pertains to gender, feminism and queerness.

SpeakUP: Page to Stage; Protest & Prose

Ami Mattison and Karen G. of Cliterati will do a workshop including group discussion, presentation, and a little how-to. Now more than ever, spaces are necessary for us to exchange information, vent, rant, and hone our performative skills. Writing and performing what we write is both cathartic and political.Getting comfortable on an open mic is empowering. Recently, Cliterati co-organized Poets For Peace protests and readings in Atlanta (as part of an international movement of readings against the war), which was a great way to build community, exploding the Poet-as-Quiet myth.Bring material to share and we'll open it up

What's a boy to do?

Boys working for social justice usually recognize the need to support the feminist struggle for women's liberation. However, we often don't know what to do. At best, "anti-sexist" or "pro-feminist" men's groups remain at the level of intellectualized abstractions about masculine psychology or social theory, or else are mired in support-group environments where men talk about their "feelings" in a private setting rather than taking serious action to undermine male supremacy, whether in themselves or in the surrounding society. After a brief discussion of some of the traditional pitfalls of men's activism, I want to open up a discussion about moving beyond these limited and limiting roles for boys in their attempts to undermine male supremacy. The emphasis will be on brainstorming practices for changing both the individual boy and the culture around him, with a view towards a comprehensive attack on the institutions of patriarchy. In order to support this much needed progress, we will prioritize:

• Concrete, simple action over intellectualized analysis or psychologized "feelings"
• Changing both the boy himself and the culture around him, over purely private or purely "activist" work
• Every-day progress over one-off grandstanding activism

Finally, I hope to build from this brainstorming by strategizing collective efforts that we in the workshop can begin to work on in order to further our progress and coordinate efforts of anti-sexist men.

Women in Copwatch

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Women's History

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