I’ve been having an intense amount of anxiety writing this guest post for Chronic Sex. Partly because I think it’s impossible for to keep the flow of topics coherent… partly because, while I idealize having a more constructive and tangible approach to accessibility, I also find myself grappling with useful application versus itemized fetishization of accessibility. The anxiety also stems from feeling overwhelmed by what is going on in social media lately regarding accountability, call-outs, call-ins, privilege, and marginalization. I started writing this post at work last week during a double shift after just meeting my newborn nibling. I was optimistic, energized, and ready to write. I want to continue this post from the position I am in now: confused, jaded, anxious, and exhausted…

The following exercise requires flexible and consensual execution. Take what you want from it, throw away what you don’t:

Exist for a moment. Try to be present in your body if you can. If you can’t, try to take some time and think about what is keeping you from being present. If this amplifies stressors to an unmanageable level, I take responsibility and am prepared to be called-out for that at some point. I’m writing this post to a rhetorical “everyone and no one” through a medium which doesn’t allow for immediate communication. It puts me in a position of power I am not comfortable with, yet I continue to press on with the risks of making harmful mistakes. I am ready to learn, and it is sometimes unfair that a stationary “one-sided” blog post is how that process catalyzes.

If you are not present in your body, if you do not want to be present in this post, try to find an awareness of what that feels like, how it is named, how it manifests through sensation. If you have become so unbearably frustrated with this exercise and my ramblings that you’re ready to click off this post altogether, confront that very real possibility. I believe it can be infuriatingly difficult to pay attention to ourselves at varying levels, especially in unknown environments.

The world is composed of infinite shifting variables, each carrying their own risks and challenges, some easier to face than others. Like a raindrop, one at a time may be manageable, but a downpour by the gallon can destroy worlds. I’ve been in therapy for almost two decades and am still trying a “foldering” method of CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), a strategy to chunk my stressors in ways that don’t induce or aggravate mania, paranoia, depression, panic, or defeat. It’s fucking taxing and unrealistic, only effective in about one out of ten attempts.

Right now, in this moment, I am grinding my shoulder into the back of my chair at work, massaging a knot that will never untie. I anxiously chew away at the inside of my cheek, clicking my TMJ which dually contributes to the back pain. Fibromyalgia, like many other disabilities, is a moving target, influenced and influencing the environment within my body and surrounding me. It is my blown-out discs, my sciatica, my interstitial cystitis, my locked jaw, my knotted shoulder. But for something so entrenched in the body, it is also my thoughts, my emotions, my mental stasis, my cerebral relationship with existing. Having multiple disabilities means that I often don’t even realize how they are affecting one another. How today I’m holed in a cubicle at work NOT actually working because I’m anxious and over-caffeinated from a shit night’s sleep and my job requires a LOT of positive affect as a support group leader.

Smiling, listening, and counseling people requires me to be honest with myself. Frankly, sometimes I just can’t do it. I tap out until the caffeine kicks in. I run my immune system ragged while I cling to a very fleeting rush of stimulants. Self-care becomes a lesson in hypocrisy. I dip into the bathroom to pee every ten minutes, clicking through social media on the toilet hoping for sanctuary when, really, I’m just stressing myself even more. And this is just me, right here, right now. Thinking about environments like conferences, particularly conferences like Woodhull, I’m absolutely amazed I even go.

I can’t Cost-Benefit Analysis that shit because nothing positive is guaranteed. Most of the time the things I think are going to be positive turn negative and vice-versa. Conferences are the epitome of unpredictable terror for me, and I don’t think that’s a dramatic claim in the least. Conferences specifically based in the field of sexuality are even scarier because they concentrate so many passionate folx together in very vulnerable ways. I have yet to meet someone willing to shell out huge dollars for a conference like Woodhull solely on a whim. People coming to these conferences are committed to some degree of intensity to what they do, what they want to do, what they want to gain or experience, how they want to exist in that time and space.

My years in the varying fields of sexuality have taught me the inextricable value of critical universal access in order to fulfill my identities within many spheres of sexuality. Being a sensual human in the most literal ways is powerfully complex. When one or more of my senses, in the broadest “sense” of the term, becomes invalidated through a lack of access, my holistic sense of sexual self also shifts. The shift attempts to accommodate, to adapt to this lack of accessibility, sometimes as an involuntary reflex, sometimes with intention, but never with enough anger.

I need to be more angry. I need to see accessibility as more than a right but a requirement. I am not nearly angry enough because I have been taught through normalized ableism that my requirements are illegitimate, less important, or disposable. That I can have one or two things, but somehow I am asking too much for a physically printed program, a more affordable means to eat, unfragranced bath products, an on-hand counseling room with mental health professionals, and a volunteer staff who are permanently stationed to one location so sources of information become more identifiable and stable.

Asking this from a conference like Woodhull based in sexuality, bodily autonomy, critical thought, equal rights, and advocacy is NOT asking too much. An accessibility panel or task force should be the ENTIRE conference’s responsibility. Every organizer, founder, volunteer, sponsor, speaker, honoree, photographer, attendee, and hotel employee should be accountable to raise the standards on how we think about accessibility for EVERYONE.

I imagine a scenario where someone metaphorically pats themselves on the back because they booked a hotel with more than three elevators speeding to high floors as though that’s all there is to it. Now tell me, during my two minute elevator ride to an unfamiliar room, when my leg gives out, kidney stones stabbing me in the gut, anxiety mounting, the whiff of someone’s cologne reminding me of an abuser, AND I’m trapped in a high altitude tin can, what do I do? Is that still deserving of a pat on the back? Because people TRIED? Because at a conference, all that matters about fragrances are the visibly allergic reactions, that something like unpredicted olfactory PTSD is too abstract?

How is it that at Woodhull, our afterparty play space had more conscious, communicated, and enforced ground rules than the very conference it followed? How was aftercare at the forefront of all stages of said play party, and yet the conference got a sponsored “Bloggers Lounge” that managed to exclude the majority of its attendees?  I will not accept numbers as an excuse.

I am not a number.

You are not a number.

We are all fucking people, sometimes even “fucking” people, and just because a conference is highly attended does not mean our needs get lost in the mix of dollars, hashtags, and statistics.

Yes, I believe there is a fine line between the specificity of need and general application to all needs. It is a line akin to spidersilk, blowing and shifting, intertwining, sometimes hard to see or touch, sometimes unavoidably felt and still ignored. But it is a strong line, enduring confrontation, breakable and reparative. Some folx are scared of the spidersilk conversations around disability and access when it comes to monolithic conferences like Woodhull. These conversations are often capable of bringing entire communities together. The underpinnings of a shifting discourse on disability and access are full of snapped threads, unwoven knots, and disjointed connections. That does not make them less worthy.

Like this post, discourse surrounding accessibility can be dense and painfully verbose, but that doesn’t invalidate the efforts. How can I reduce the trauma created during this individual blog post? Should comments be opened, reviewed, private? Should it be discussed on open forums of social media for folx to respond? What would make this post more accessible? These are some questions I sincerely wonder if people consider when organizing conferences.

Should a workshop on trauma be had in a windowless room? Will closed doors help folx feel more protected? Would windows be too exposing? Would a physical portal provide a means to mentally break from difficult moments? Would a window let in too much migraine-inducing sunlight or heat to already heated discussions? Should folx be seated in a circle? Do folx in the front feel more vulnerable being close to the speakers (human and tech), away from the door, visible or audible to the rows behind? How conferences prepare their spaces is an ongoing discussion that needs to be had across the board.

These discussions need to be had before, during, after, and long after the actual workshop in order to process, learn, and synthesize. Where are the discussions of accessibility on a conference website? On their social media? And if they ARE there, why are they so hard to find?

Conferences can be traumatic by nature, sometimes necessarily so. But, I’ll be damned if I’m not experiencing some of the worst PTSD I’ve had in years due to ongoing tension with several established Woodhull figures, many of which who have still not taken responsibility for their ongoing harm to an increasingly vocal number of individuals and communities. Is it just assumed that someone quotably sex-positive, declaratively feminist and intersectional, neurodiverse, trauma-informed, or whatever flavor qualification du jour is incapable of inflicting abuse, bullying, or otherwise being an irrefutable asshole? How can sexuality conferences create new spaces with a mindful chronology of who has historically dominated them?

“I know the biggest crime Is just to throw up your hands Say This has nothing to do with me I just want to live as comfortably as I can.” — Ani DiFranco, “Willing To Fight”

Complacency versus self-care. Advocacy versus preservation. Fuck the “call-ins” is what I say. Folx with marginalized identities don’t get to skate around their own privileges and continue their brand without taking some fucking accountability. And when conferences and sponsors stay silent, they shut out spaces for people to feel safer, to feel braver, to be ready to challenge one another with less fear of how bureaucracy depletes a supportive atmosphere.

I appreciate being sponsored as a “Marginalized Blogger” for Woodhull this year. However, I will NOT go to Woodhull next year until I know measurable actions have been taken. I am tired of feeling isolated because of my social status in the blog world. I am tired of folx hiding behind a curtain of their own disabilities as though that makes them completely ineligible to own their shit. We are all fucking part of it, day in and day out, and we are all fucking scared. We are all living in an increasingly hostile world and we need to navigate it together without equating disagreement with impasse.

I don’t get to end this post here and not worry about the repercussions of my speaking out. I don’t get to end this post here and feel like I’ve done something of value and that somehow absolves me from my own privileges. The work is hard. Why are you doing it? Why are you avoiding it? Why did you get into this field and WHY are you reading this post?

Avery Heimann, M.A., M.Ed. has a Bachelor’s in Arts from Skidmore College and Master’s in Arts from Rutgers University, both in Women’s and Gender Studies with a focus in Sexuality. They have a Masters in Sexuality Education from Widener University. They have been a board member and youth educator for over a decade at the Masakhane Center in Newark, NJ. They have spoken at numerous events in the NY/NJ/PA tristate area and counseled Trans and Gender Non-Conforming individuals at the NJ Center for Sex Therapy in Chester, NJ. In addition, Avery has created a Holistic Wellness group therapy program for Genesis Healthcare. You can find their writings at www.ThePalimpsex.com.