Facilitated by Badly Licked Bear, this is a space with the purpose of building connection, skill, and resources for 2SLGBTQIA+ people.
Badly Licked Bear loves death. As a transsexual person, as an Indigenous person, as an adoption survivor, as someone who works with the knowledge of the body and of bodies, death is a constant companion in her work.
Participants will be held in exploring psychic deaths, what it means to be "once dead and twice born," and how our sexuality often skirts, confronts, plays with, or outright embraces death.
What does it mean to bring death and the process of death consciously into one's daily life and practices?
Badly Licked Bear (she/they) is or has been a student, an educator, a writer, an artist, a labor leader, a sex worker, and a mutual aid worker. She writes and tells circle-shaped stories and teaches others how to do the same. Her work is rooted in cinema-as-experience, worlds ending, identity and representation, clownery, BDSM, and her lived experience as an Indigiqueer transfemme.
Currently, she is President of the Board of Directors and an educator for the Pelvic Sanctuary, a member of the sex worker collective Sunday Faire, and the Witch Queen of Wrestler4Wrestler. She currently serves on the steering committees for both the Los Angeles LGBTQ+ Art & Culture Coalition and Circa: Queer Histories Festival, the first of its kind in the United States. She is a voice for Queer community, trans and 3rd gender culture and politics, and sexual liberation, and has a deep passion for mentoring and community learning of all kinds.
Badly Licked Bear also works as an independent sex, kink, and BDSM educator, often working within the leatherdyke community. She is a Founder of the Council of Indigenous Leather, the recipient of the 2024 Unabashed Forefister Award, and currently serves as Mx. Strap Sucker Los Angeles 2025.
Formerly, she served as the Logistics Super Auntie of the Auntie Sewing Squad, an 800-member, national network of mutual aid workers who provided PPE and other material aid during the COVID-19 Pandemic. She has put two careers behind her, one a curator and arts administrator, and another as a professor and administrator in higher education.
Follow Badly Licked Bear on Substack and Instagram
Agreements for participation:
We are curious, open, and respectful - We assume good will, ask questions, and allow space for different experiences and points of view
We take care of ourselves - We stretch, take a break, eat, mute for a bit, drink, use restroom, connect with a friend, rest, call it a nights, etc.
We keep confidentiality - We speak from personal experience and take home learnings while taking care not to identify anyone other than oneself.
We use inclusive language - We speak using plain language and ask clarifying questions when we aren't sure what someone means. We take effort to use gender-neutral language as appropriate.
We are all here because we want and choose to be here - We are free to leave at any time, for any reason.
We respect each other - Anyone engaging in prejudice towards another group member will be subject to immediate removal.