Joint statement about our participation in The Embodiment Conference 2020
Hello,
Some of you may have already read evidence of The Embodiment Conference (TEC) organizer Mark Walsh’s white supremacist and misogynistic statements. If you have not, you can find more information in the open letter that Tada Hozumi wrote on October 18th (https://tadahozumi.medium.com/public-letter-to-mark-walsh-and-the-embodiment-conference-ab9319ee4b69), the one that TEC volunteer Gabbie de Lara wrote on October 30th (https://medium.com/@gabbiedelara/a-volunteers-open-letter-to-the-embodiment-conference-6a99fcfbb55a), and the most recent letter asking for Mark to be de-platformed written on November 8th (https://notomarkwalsh.medium.com/we-need-to-de-platform-mark-walsh-and-the-embodiment-conference-59f5addf943). There is also a shareable drive of information and evidence that can be found at https://drive.google.com/drive/u/2/folders/1mh-GkayjCWC77JiX6ApIUh7-pPW5XdJN
As well as responding to the invitation of co-signing the letter to de-platform Mark, we wanted to make our own statement about our involvement with TEC in 2020.
Background information:
We co-presented at TEC for an hour on October 17th. Neither of us had any direct contact with Mark Walsh as we interfaced with a different organizer who had extended the invitation, Matthew Carratu, who was personable and kind in our direct interactions. They had asked us to present more material but we declined given that this was our first time being involved in this conference. There was also no payment attached to our presentation or any other financial gain from participating. However, we have a book coming out in January and, as many authors are aware, promotion of publications falls mostly on us as authors and we thought this might be a good opportunity to promote our book to a larger audience than usual. We asked to retain ownership of our presentation and released a recording of it through Alex’s podcast, Gender Stories, on October 19th (http://genderstories.buzzsprout.com/156032/5973766-hell-yeah-self-care-a-dialogue-between-meg-john-barker-and-alex-iantaffi). We included a link to Tada Hozumi’s open letter in our episode description to provide useful context to listeners given what had come to light between giving our talk and releasing the episode.
Current position:
We apologise for not doing our due diligence on this occasion to find out who was behind TEC, and for not honoring our gut instincts and first reactions to the invitation. We have asked the conference organizers to withdraw our content from the conference. We are responsible for not having done more work to explore what TEC was about, who else was being platformed, and to find out who would be profiting from our work, and the work of other providers with marginalized identities and experiences. We apologise for having contributed our work to the conference and, by doing so, being complicit in the growth of Mark Walsh’s platform.
We’re grateful to Tada Hozumi and Gabbie de Lara for bringing so much useful information to light over the past few weeks. We’re directly benefiting from insights gained through their labor and transparency. Thank you.
We’ll strive to do better moving forward when accepting speaking engagements, whether paid and unpaid, and we remain accountable to our communities when we make mistakes. As part of this process, we’re attempting to find a better balance between surviving under capitalism as disabled, trans, queer, people with white privilege, and having more time and energy in our lives to be able to address matters such as this one more promptly.
If you have presented or bought content from TEC, the letter mentioned earlier gives you some ideas of what to do, should you want to also take action. (https://notomarkwalsh.medium.com/we-need-to-de-platform-mark-walsh-and-the-embodiment-conference-59f5addf943).
Should you have any questions about our participation in TEC or this statement, please do not hesitate to contact us. Thank you.
Alex Iantaffi & Meg-John Barker
