24 September 2000
I browsed through all the application essays for the NGLTF Creating Change conference that people handed in at the QU meeting today, inadvertantly comparing them to my own, of course. This whole conference business puts me in an uncomfortable position, actually. I'm the one who has made all the arrangements for QU to go-- everything from securing funding to reserving the hotel rooms in Atlanta. As co-chair of the group, that's my job. Still, I have to submit my application to the administrative committee just like anyone else who wants to go; not to do so would reek of impropriety. It sure would suck if, after singlehandedly making it possible for QU to go to the conference, I wasn't one of the eight people chosen. I'm hoping that good ol' Dean Bob and the rest of the committee concur.
So many of the applicants have compelling personal reasons for wanting to attend, from being raised by lesbian moms in a small town to having experienced the intersections of opression based on race and sexuality. When it comes down to it, I don't have any of that-- no coming out sob stories, no experiences of discrimination. I'm involved in queer activism less because of my own sexuality than because I simply think it is the right thing to do. The abstract nature of my motivation does nothing to lessen the intensity with which I work; if anything, I appear hyperkinetic in comparison with other applicants. Nonetheless, I have the irrational fear that the attraction of identity politics is too great, and that my hard work and solid credentials can't compete with a good story.