Dr. Sé Sullivan

Dr. Sé Sullivan spoke to the class about their experiences with conversion therapy in the state of California as a youth, their work in academia and anti-conversion therapy, and their current endeavors to make a documentary film entitled "We Just Want To Be" about their life and the lives of other individuals impacted by conversion therapy. They teach within the discipline of gender and women's studies in California and did auto-ethnographical research into their own medical files as a means of exploring and deconstructing the methodology, negative impacts, and justification for conversion therapy performed on trans youth.

Learn more about the film "We Just Want To Be" at this link: https://www.wejustwanttobe.org/

Guest Speaker: Ali Mushtaq

Ali Mushtaq talked to us about how Womanism centered community knowledge and ways of knowing. He talked about how important intersectionality is and how it led to the creation of womanism. He put more of a focus on black feminists and how they are typically not represented in the feminist community. He put an emphasis on intersectionality since people have jus

t started to talk about it in the past 5 years.

He defined Womanism as a feminist philosophy developed through the experiences of black women. It is more about the collective in the community instead of the individual. Come together as a community to resist a problem, which allows them to combat colonialism. He stated that there are 3 key concepts with Womanism: community connectedness, empowerment, and spirituality. He said that Womanism is “combatting all social oppression, disidentification of feminism, spirituality, emotions and knowledge.”

Guest Speaker: Sister Unity

On Thursday, January 20th, Ryan’s and Tomas’ classes had a joint meeting with a very special guest speaker: Sister Unity from the Los Angeles Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The sisterhood which she and our Professor Ryan are part of, also called LA Drag Nuns, is an Order of 21st century nuns “dedicated to the promulgation of universal joy and the expiation of stigmatic guilt.”

Sister Unity told the students about her past experiences with the union, the drag universe and queer activism in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Stories of homophobia lived and brave fighting against prejudice were beautifully shared. You can access and watch the full recording of the zoom meeting here.