Burning Man LGBTQIA+ and our Allies
Getting ready to head to Burning Man? We’ve put together a detailed guide to all the LGBTQIA+ events on playa – at least all the ones we know about! It comes with a map of the Queerborhoods, a guide to your favorite camps, and all the events we could find. We even know where BAAAHS is going to be!
Download your free guide here:
2023 Queerburners Event Guide – Download PDF (29.6MB)
Print it out, bring it with you, and share it with your friends.
Tonight we opened a forum for any member of the community to join us and learn a little more about Queerburners. We also had doped to recruit some interest in participation in the board and inspire the community to help us in our mission. Where could Queerburners go with new leadership at the helm?
| Document referred to in the video include: – Roles and Responsibilities Document (PDF) – Emails: info@queerburners.org, toaster@queerburners.org, matt@queerburners.org | Please take your time and let us know if you see yourself taking a role in the future of Queerburners. The next Board meeting will be October 2nd to install the officers for 2024 and start planning for the next season. |
In my fifteen years of burning, I tried a lot of channels. My position has always been to be a person who contributes and supports my community. As you might have noted from previous posts, I talk about my fellow burners a lot. My community focus is the LGBTQIA, but my network and community extends far beyond that. And, also noted in a recent post, I set a clear intention to develop better relationships with women, which I feel successful at. The bonus is, I met and became close to a lot of wonderful humans from all kind of walks of like that became very important to me as well.
The positive side of rangering, from my point of view, is you someone can feel like you have become a co-host for the party. Honestly, you walk around and get to watch people having a great time and when someone is being a jerk, you get to help them walk themselves back into the party in a btter place. Well, hopefully. There are times when people are just going to be assholes and that is not really your problem in the bigger picture.
As a Ranger you are a volunteer on vacation and you get to hang out with like minded people. There is a dizzying amount of ‘kinds’ of ranger you might see at Burning Man, but the most common you might see is the Dirt Ranger who is wandering the event in pairs. They are level one ambassadors and have built a lot of trust. That trust is called “Social Capital” and its really important. Bottom line, Rangers are there to help make things run smoothly.
Let’s go back to Social Capital. I learned a lot about leadership from this model. I wish I learned this in the beginning, like before I started leading camps, because my world might be very different from today. Part of rangering is about learning to listen and not reacting to a situation. Often that means doing nothing. Social Capital lets that happen because very often just being around a Ranger makes people want to do better. As a neighbor or as a citizen of BRC.
Volunteering is what makes Black Rock City tick. It is the major line that defines Burning Man as a cultural event over being a festival. Anyone calling it a festival is missing the point. There are rewards that come with giving your energy and time that make it worth while. Rangering is, IMHO, one of the best things leaders in our community could take on and find themselves much better evolved because:
Is it too late to jump on ship? Check out the Volunteering form through your burner profile today. There are several layers you have to go through to be a ranger to start off with. Do this with intention.
This is very much worth it with what you will walk away with.
The only negative side of this coin is that there are still some jerks that ruin that social capital that is hard to unsee. Ranger really value that Social Capital and those remaining salty old fuks are a dying breed. Like the Ranger Manual says, sometimes do nothing and move on. Hold on to the intention we talked about in a previous paragraph and use these tools to make you a better leader, community member, and participant. Community is more important than ever these days.
IMPORTANT NOTE: It seems to be too late to become a ranger for 2023. Can’t stop you from learning about it and getting to know some cool rangers. Maybe 2024?
ALERT!!!! Burning Man Placement has removed the LGBTQAI option on their events submissions and replaced it with “Diversity…” which sounds great on paper, but that step backwards in the promotion of queer events is not going to deter us. In the interest of Radical Self Reliance, please edit/add #LGBT in your event writeup to guarantee (as much as we can) being placed in our own version of the What Where When for Queer Camps as a focus. AND it will help the person writing the Time to Burn Ap as well. Otherwise, we no longer have a way of noting specific LGBT events that we might not already know of… our first source for sourcing queer camps will be the Queerburners Directory at www.queerburners.org/directory
Like, c’mon… who are they talking to on decisions like this? It’s like adding Queer to the census and suddenly every hippie on the playa wanted to be queer to be a part of the story of the outsider. Flag waiving is not cutting it anymore. Actions over words. This change was a bad choice.
https://playaevents.burningman.org/playa_event/create/
The people that end up really screwed are people new to the burn looking for their tribe and might feel really alone when it comes to getting a gay fix of human interaction. I’ve seen this so many times. It is not always obvious where the queers are. And, there are still a lot of clueless people who have no idea that the Queerborhood is there. Any way you look at it, Burning Man is still a very hetero streamed event and diversity is still lacking in many many ways. (Rant completed)
We are in the heat of the season for festivals and preparation for Burning Man. Next week is EDC is Vegas, the BAAAHS Campout is coming up. So much happening all at once and it is so exciting, especially after 3 years of being trapped in our caves. Our organization became a non-profit during that same down time in 2020 and we have been working behind the curtain to develop what we could with the welfare of our community one-hundred percent in the focus of that goal.
When we wrote the vision statement for our organization, it was Nexus who helped us create that where we said essentially: our mission is complete when the community no longer needs what we are working for. Some might say, well, what have you been working on? Our primary mission is creating safe and accountable spaces and providing access for people from all walks of life. We almost always us NOTAFLOF (No One Turned Away For Lack Of Funds) when we talk about pricing and always make every effort to make sure all of our community is represented.
Last year we were able to produce an amazing series called the Rainbow Leadership Series in 4 parts that was held on Zoom. We gave away Grants for the first time to some great projects. When we wanted to do a camping event, it seemed that people were not ready for that so we decided to wait a year.
This year (2023) we tried to repeat that progress. Either our voices (meaning me and the board) are not reaching people through our Facebook Channel, Twitter, Insta, and Mailchimp, or people have moved on and don’t need what we are doing anymore. At the end of May 2023 we had two events planned that no one responded to. I ran into one of the biggest voices of this community this week amd when we spoke they did not know anything about it, so where did we go wrong?
The only way Queerburners works it through it’s participants. Everyone has a voice here and those of us on the board are very good about keeping things balanced. Why? Because all of us see the world from different places and do not always agree, but we have a common goal and work together well. If a person is disruptive to that, they made their own exit. But, we work well together with a collective process of sharing and having the safety of expressing an opinion or feeling.
As the current chair and founder of Queerburners, I have not always been an ideal leader, but I hope people can always feel safe talking to me and carrying the banner that was initially raised in 2008 and accomplished so much! If you want to contribute and help us develop programming for the community that supports all across the rainbow, please send us an email to info [at] queerburners [dot] org
Supporting our diverse, intersectional queer community, including trans, non-binary, and people of color, through Radical Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity at Burning Man.
Where: Online only
When: April 21, from 8pm to 9pm or later as needed
How: Register for direct access on Eventbrite
Who: As of 4/10 leads from BAAAHS, C&J, GlamCocks, Camp Beaverton, Gender Blender (Queerdome)
I invited select leaders in the community from some of the most known camps to speak about the Queerborhood in recent history and share ideas for the new age we have entered post covid (an assumption and maybe an unrealistic view). How can we help open a path to better collaboration and presentation without curating ourselves into a corner away from intrinsically inspired content that is spontaneous and inviting.
The Queerborhood in 7:30 has gone through a lot of evolution over time and continues to shapeshift. The splitting of Queerborhoods in 2019 was the first major change.
The 4:30 Queerborhood anchored by BAAAHS was not the only Queerborhood that emerged over the years. Users have often generated spaces grown and fostered out of a need for safety and community. This includes Burner Buddies and others over time.
On Thursday on April 21 8pm, I am inviting a panel to talk about Burning Man 2022. What are the needs of th Queer community and how do leaders in those sectors want to inspire, enrich and mentor our community into more enriching and accountable space.
On March 26 we do a Zoom meeting with Placement and OSS as the headliner. (1.5 to 2 hours)
Queerburners presents a series of programs to prepare for return to the playa in 2022 and to make our Queerborhoods shine by inspiring collaboration, resource sharing, and community and culture building together.
– 13:00 We start at 1pm with Toaster welcoming people to the Rainbow Leadership Series
– 13:05 Level: Placement and the Queerborhoods
– 13:20 Q&A
– 13:25 Galaxy and President talk about OSS and a new program for reducing our impact on the playa with new power solutions
– 13:40 Q&A
– 13:45 Farmer: to talk about storage and other services available in Gerlach and Empire that he wants Queer Camps to be aware of
– 14:00 AJ from Gerlach: Wants to talk about Gerlach Gay Pride
Farmer will talk about a growing Queer Culture in Gerlach
We are asking everyone to register through Eventbrite so the we have a an accountable audience and limit potential spammers and disruptors. We will have someone monitoring and stacking hands for Q&A.
– April – Queerborhoods
– May – Queerstory w/ Harley K DuBois
– June – RiDE the Rainbow, a RIDE initiative
Hi its Ariel (Trixie) and I’m inviting you to Gender Blender on March 25 in Oakland!
Details here – After two long years of being six feet apart we are thrilled to be making our Cumback!!! You waited so patiently, and we’re DELIGHTED to invite you to Gender Blender’s long-awaited CUMback play and dance party! This party is for people of all genders with a priority on creating a safer, consent-focused space for trans, genderqueer, GNC + questioning folks to get their groove on. Our play parties offer a sensuous space to explore, indulge, and celebrate what turns you on. It’s gonna be hot, intimate, & kinky!
Chill in the BYOB bar, get down on the dance floor, enjoy performances by trans and genderqueer artists, meet new friends, or kink it up, well, anywhere! All levels of play are welcome, from first-timers to sexperts~
DOORS OPEN 8 PM
OPENING CIRCLE 8:30 PM
PERFORMANCES PLAY SPACES OPEN 9 PM
~PLAY! DANCE! REVELRY!~
DOORS CLOSE MIDNIGHT WRAP IT UP 2 AM
Private event. 21+. BYOB.
Proof of vax + negative PCR test <72hours or rapid test <24hours.
To attend you MUST arrive with a “PAL”. PALs are pairs/groups of 2+ guests who can vouch for each other, and will be responsible for each other for the night.
Safer sex supplies provided, and our lovely house caddies will be on call to deliver them to you, or fetch you a toy from our party stash.
How to get in on the action:
Check out Gender Blender CUMBACK Party! on the Bloom Community app: https://bl.ooo/m/gender-blender-cumback-party. Don’t forget to invite all the cuties you just can’t wait any longer to see… If you have something special you’d like to share at this event, need a low-income discount, or have any questions, please contact one of the event hosts (Alex or Trixie/Ariel)
The vision of the RLS has always been to create a platform for queer leaders and our allies to collaborate and meet the needs of our community on the playa for Waking Dreams: Burning Man 2022. What special needs? Among them are safety and security of our camps and participants. Our voice is as unique as other special groups on playa, and our special sauce is bigger and better now with 2 Queerborhoods and more are self manifesting.
We are going to present the same content in smaller doses over time before the big event in the Black Rock Desert. Stay tuned as we prepare this new channel that can be received around the world.
I am so grateful for how much we have done on the 1.5 years it took to get where we are today. We became a nonprofit exactly a year ago and in that time we have worked hard to set the groundwork for our future. Queer Burners has been around since 2008, but the non-profit is a better, leaner and more structured animal. I can tell you that I am not the same person. This project has taken me on a huge journey with amazing people I am so proud to have walked this path with.
It’s hotter, fiercer-er, and hungrier. Meow.
This thing started off to be a place to create an intersection for LGBTQAI burners. It’s not so much that there was no crossroads for that out there, but people were generally very tribal and like any group of humans we stayed in spaces that were safe and familiar. Queerburners has only sought to help expand that and try and create a safe and conventual path to collaboration
The results of ALL OF US in 2017 and 2018 felt like the peak of success. Since 2019 there have been a lot of reasons why the brakes had to be put on the progress that we had achieved. Do we go down or do we keep climbing? I will keep climbing with some ambitious and exciting ideas ahead for 2022.
I expect to be able to announce 3 major events for 2022 produced by Queerburners and our community. We only succeed with collaboration. What we are doing is driven by volunteers and participation. Yes, a few people get paid too! Our creative people have to be paid for their work.
All that is coming. I am so excite for it. I can share hints from the blog, but am waiting to get the okay from the Board and our committees to share more. I am just – that – excited about it.
Fuck yeah.
Here are some other important notes!
Toaster