This Gather will explore what it is like for families who have at least two queer members. Panelists will include women who identify as lesbian and/or queer and have family members who are queer as well. For those of us who always wished we had a gay mom/dad or gay sister/brother, this is a discussion you don't want to miss!
If you haven't already, check out Susan Herr's excellent site, dapperq.com
Where do women stand on body image within the lesbian community? Do we have a body image problem? Are we body image free? Moreover, what are the body-type desireables for lesbians?
Happy Spring everybody! The next Gather will take place on Sunday, May 23rd from 5pm to 7pm at the famous LGBT Community Center in Manhattan. Since we have been talking about coming out, I thought it would be useful to have a Gather(ing) on married women who have come out or are currently in the process.
While the last Gather focused on coming out, we didn't get to discuss an important facet of this phenomena: coming out as a lesbian within religious communities and/or religious families.
Yay! The next Gather will take place on Sunday, December 6th at 5:15pm. Where? you may ask...the LGBT Community Center in Room 312.
On Sunday, October 4th from 5:15pm to 7pm at the LGBT Community Center (Rm 410), Gather will be delving into the second group within our lesbian identity series: FEMMES. We discussed butch women, now it is time to address the Femme Mystique. Again, be sure to come for the wine, good company, good conversation, and most importantly, to Gather.
Gather this weekend was absolutely fantastic, I've been pretty much speechless since then. We had over 60 people in attendance, and each of our panelists had something unique and thought-provoking to say about butch identities. Kate Roberts, Diana Cage, Emma Crandall, and A.J. Stachelek shared their thoughts on what it means to be butch, who they thought were butch "celebrities", why butch women are sexy, and discussed what they think is next up for the butch community. I learned something new from each panelists perspective, and I can only hope the folks listening did too. Here's some pix (much more to come) ....
The next Gather is approaching, and I've had a few impromptu discussions already about butch lesbians. With the news that Chastity Bono will soon be transitioning to become Chaz, it seems like it may be difficult to NOT talk about transgender men on this butch panel. It is interesting as the butch identity may arguably be the most common identity conjured when one thinks of a "lesbian," but the emergence and visibility of the transgender community may transform this thinking.
Howdy. I'm pleased to announce that the next Gather is set for Sunday, July 12th from 6pm - 8pm at the LGBT Community Center (Room 410, 208 West 13th Street, New York, NY). 
At the last Gather, I read one of Sappho's poems. Why Sappho? During the first season of the L Word, Jenny said how she was inspired by writer extraordinaire Anne Carson. Carson took a stab at translating the fragments of Sappho's texts in If Not: Winter.
We gathered on March 22nd, and I really wanted to give a hat tip to a great set of panelists and a fantastic crowd. While there was so much to cover as everyone has something to say about the L Word, I felt like I learned something new about the show and it's audience. 
First up, I wanted to name the folks who comprised this panel: Rebecca Kern, Communications Instructor at Manhattan College who recently received her Ph.d. (writing on the L Word!); Mik Kinkead, who runs a fantastic blog called Coffee and Gender, Kath Fidler, my new favorite NYU grad student; and Glennda Testone, my personal mentor and Vice President of the Women's Media Center. 
We gathered again in November at Mixx Lounge in Manhattan to discuss what life is like for the single lesbian in New York City. Our panelists Sherry and Elisabeth talked about who they were looking for, where they were trying to her, and told some cautionary tales of experiences gone wrong.
I shared a website with the group of a woman who was raising money to buy ad space at the Superbowl to make an appeal for her man. "What do you do when you’re over the bar scene, when singles events are reunions of guys you’ve already dated, and online matchmaking turns up only a parade of losers and liars?" Apparently, the SuperBowl Single Girl thinks that you turn to one of the highest forms of self-promotion by taking out a very expensive ad. ((I don't think she did succeeded, but I hope she did find her football lovin' wing-eating face paintin' man))
The lesbian community has always been a sort of an enigma to me. I've spent much of my life in two major cities, Chicago and New York City, and I assumed that if my community was anywhere, it certainly would have been thriving in either of those places. I'm not saying this wasn't the case, but I always left clubs or lesbian-themed events with, well, much to be desired. I was astounded by how many women would show up at drag king events in Chicago…so much so that my friends and I would get turned away at the door due to impending fire hazards. Same case in New York. There was always that one event that women would flock to, again, and the success of the event measured by how much time we would have to spend waiting outside…watching friends meet up in line or lovers decide that they should have stayed home to cuddle.
Where did these women come from? How come I haven't seen them all under one roof? Furthermore, how could I assimilate myself into my own community without having to wait at the door?
I wanted to create a space that didn't have a night-club vibe, rather a vibe of informal inclusivity…where we all could participate and share. I wanted a space where we could discuss our lives, throw our cultural scripts on the table, tear them apart, piece them back together, and create something new. I wanted women my age to hang out, laugh, have a good time and essentially....gather.
