Before I share my feedback on FFV, I gotta express my deepest appreciation for the faeries who organized, set up and CLEANED UP afterwards. I’m not naming names so as not to unintentionally forget anybody ;D

Special thanks to Bunni and especially Shadow Weaver who bent over backwards in encouraging me to sing on Saturday. And my apologies for not stepping up to perform or contribute in other ways to FFV. I was pretty low energy last weekend and if I were feelin better I would have loved to MC a little Know-Your-Talent show and facilitate some drumming and chanting on Sunday.

Anyway, this year was my first experience at FFV. My initial visit was late afternoon (around 5-ish) on Pink Saturday.

Upon entering the space, two observations overwhelmed me like having eaten too many ganja brownies:

1. Wow! This space is really bare-ass!! Where the fuck is everybody?!?!? Where’s the art??

2. Our Freedom Village is a Ghetto! Why are we walling ourselves off from the rest of the city?!??!

Now I can appreciate the desire to have a separate space where a few folks can run around nekked and where we can create a space that is relatively free of the banes of retail commerce and corporate sponsorship. And I realize that Pink Saturday is a busy day and faeries have lots to do.

My personal preference would be to give up the ability to be skyclad if it meant taking down the fences. Distinctions between “faeries” and “non-faeries” strike me as pretty arbitrary since most of the time many faeries don’t look any different to me than other folks. I try to see everyone as having faerie potential (which we can help nurture), instead of regarding being a faerie as something that only a few of us are born with.

So my feedback is best presented as a number of questions that the FFV experience raised for me.

What are our intentions for creating our little Temporary Autonomous Zone??

What are the pros/cons of having an enclosed space with only one entrance?

What might be the pros/cons of having a FFV at Pride without walls??

How can we encourage each other to contribute more time and energies to creating FFV??

How can we maintain FFV as a commercial-free zone??

Like many faeries I was also concerned about having a perpetual masturbation idol photoshoot as our welcome wagon. (perhaps next year he could set up his own stage sponsored by Viagra). For me, his presence and our reactions raise a number of questions:

How can we empower ourselves to step forward and take more responsibility for gatekeeping and maintaining boundaries?

How can we balance our commitments to individual autonomy and creative self-expression with our commitments to subject-subject ideals of consensuality and consideration for others in expressing our sexuality??

How do we maintain a space which embodies faerie cultural values yet is inclusive of those who do not share our values??

And how can we compassionately and clearly address “violations” of our shared values in our faerie spaces (e.g., psychic vampirism, violence, profiteering, etc…) while they're happening??