“The Cathedral Hill Hotel is more than just a conference location… Within a few blocks of the hotel you will find movie theaters, a drugstore, a hospital, a grocery store, and eateries of various price ranges. For those with a sense of adventure, the Mission District (great food and local shops), Union Square's shopping area, Fisherman's Warf [sic], and the historic Castro District are a quick cab ride away.”
– femme2006.com

WHERE IS THE TENDERLOIN
IN THE femme UNIVERSE?

Femme 2006, which claims to highlight “the intersection of queer Femme identity with issues of race, class, age and body,” willfully omits any mention of the Tenderloin, the vibrant neighborhood in which the conference is located. The Tenderloin is arguably the neighborhood where femme identity intersects with race, class, age, and body in the deepest and most dramatic, desperate and defiant ways. In this neighborhood, transgender women, queens, strippers, hookers, masseuses, brothel workers, waitresses, psychic readers and seniors prance, dance and romance. In fact, a central place for these fabulous femmes to strut and stroll is exactly one block from the Cathedral Hill Hotel… Polk Street, a legendary meeting ground of femmes, drug dealers, runaways, freaks, welfare cheats, hustlers and homeless people deliberately left off the Femme 2006 map.

There’s a conference happening everyday on Polk Street—no registration, plane ticket or cab fare required. Here people plan strategies for survival and celebration without the resources to stay at—or even attend a workshop—at the Cathedral Hill Hotel. The $20,771 spent to hold Femme 2006 might have been better used to foster femmeininity on Polk Street. Instead of connecting the conversations at the conference with the conversations in the neighborhood, Femme 2006 perpetuates cultural erasure.