WORKSHOPS
The following are descriptions of workshops sometimes offered to outside queer and trans communities about topics relating to the project. We are also in the process of developing a workshop on how to start your own correspondence project in order to share skills as well as respond to the growing number of penpal requests we are getting that is quickly exceeding our collective’s capacity. Get in touch if you’re interested in learning more about these workshops!
workshop on sexual ’safety’ inside and outside prisons
YOU IMPROVISE TO SURVIVE
A workshop / discussion featuring statements from gay, queer and trans prisoners across the US and Canada on what sexual “safety” means when condom access is restricted or when queer sex is criminal. The workshop and discussion following seeks to start dialogue about how we can support one another, and each others’ struggles for control over our own sexual lives, as trans folks and gays and queers across prison walls.
workshop on queer youth & criminalization
KINGS AND QUEENS AND CRIMINAL QUEERS
A workshop and discussion charting the ways in which queer and gender nonconforming communities continue to be criminalized. The workshop outlines the legal status of queerness historically, and the implications that these histories have for us as queers and trans people today. The workshop provides an opportunity to talk about our experiences of marginalization in the context of the current legal landscape in Montreal / Quebec / Canada. The workshop provides an overview of projects and organizations that intervene on this process of criminalization and discuss strategies for responding. This workshop can be geared for a youth or adult audience.
workshop on queers, sex crimes, & offender registries
TROUBLES WITH PROTECTION IN A PRISON NATION
A workshop focused on sex offender registries as one of the fastest growing components of the Prison Industrial Complex. It explores the cultural construction of the “sex offender” in order to examine state responses to sexual violence. It provides an overview of queer histories of surveillance and registries, and hte lived effects of these policies on queers living within the prison system.
workshop on sex panics, HIV criminalization, & tough on crime
CRIMINALIZING RISK & STRATEGIES FOR DECARCERATION
A workshop and discussion that explores (a) the criminalization of HIV transmission represented by recent legal shifts in Canada, (b) historical and ongoing sex panic and hysteria around non-hetero and public sex, and (c) touch on crime policies and politics in Canada, and how these three trends have worked together historically – and work together today – to secure gay/trans marginalization. The workshop will touch upon how we can understand these three trends within broader decarceration strategies.
Stay tuned for other workshop descriptions coming soon…
