Questions Raised at the Black Solidarity Conference

(by myself and others)

1. What does it mean to be a Black sexual being? 
2. How are people given the opportunity to be engaged in their sexuality?
3. Do people engage in sexuality differently according to access to various resources?
4. Why are today's young people, especially young women, being so miseducated about their own bodies?
5. Why is abortion what we leap to when talking about sexuality? Why single-motherhood? Why monogamy and marriage? What narratives are being ignored when our conversation centers itself around these topics? How can we refrain from institutionalizing sexuality?  
6. What is the difference between talking about sexual practices and talking about sexuality?
7. What are the everyday ethics of Blackness that determine who can or can not be in the community?
8. What is the impact of geographic region on gender presentation?
9. How do we work against the sociohistorical pathologization of Black bodies?
10. If Black women have never really fit into the definition of womanhood presented by dominant (White) society, what are our goals in the redefining of gender roles? What does that redefinition mean for us?
11. Why can't Brothers see themselves in women the way Sisters can see themselves in men?
12. How do we disaggregate criticism from "haterism"?
13. Why is the "walk of shame" a female-specific term?
14. Why are Black communities so obsessed with "presentability"? Why is who we are not enough? What are we overcompensating for?
15. How much experimentation with gender presentation is internal, having fun, and expressing ourselves, and how much is in response to our expectations of others' reactions to our presented selves?
16. How do we get rid of the idea that to participate in Blackness, we have to debase ourselves?
17. How do we reconcile promoting cultural criticism with promoting solidarity and/or the presentation of a unified front?
18. How does harkening back to our African past influence, isolate, and/or negate the experiences of people living in Africa today or who came to America from Africa recently? 
19. What does the phrase "I see you" signify in Black communities?
20. When can we, as Black peoples, OWN our sexuality?

 Despite all the "rachetness" and the existence of Travis Porter in my personal space and the heteronormativity I had to deal with and the freshwomen crashing in my room and not letting an old person like me sleep and all the other minor annoyances, this is why I go to the Black Solidarity Conference every year. Questions like this. The conference makes me think. The things I don't like about the conference make me think even harder. 

...New Haven also has some great places to shop. I'm not gonna lie.