This past weekend was Q-Me Con, the largest gathering of cliterati this writer has ever seen. From keynote speaker Rose Troche to grandmother of avant-garde cinema Barbara Hammer, it was a wall-to-wall lesbian brain trust.

Q-me Con panelists: Sarah Schulman, actress Heather Matarazzo, NewFest's Kerry Weldon, and Rose Troche

The Q-Me Conference started two years ago as an annual gathering of queer media, but this year's gathering focused specifically on queer women. Queer media is marginalized, but queer women's media is doubly so. And this conference proved to all of us that if we want to see accurate images of ourselves it's our responsibility to create and distribute them. Ilene Chaiken did it with The L Word and the bloggers, commenters, photographers and videographers are doing it here at OurChart. I admire the community created on this site. And the power that stems from that sort of unity can and should be focused on creating change.

Grace and I spoke on a panel moderated by Amy Lesser of GO Magazine. Our fellow panelists were Michelle Sewell, founder of Girlchild Press, activist and journalist Sarah Schulman and award-winning journalist and Advocate news editor Kerry Eleveld.

We were a pretty varied panel and a lot of interesting ideas stemmed from the mix. Moon explained to the audience that the discussions that take place amongst the OurChart commenters are one of the most important community-building aspects of the site. When we learn from each other, we grow as a community.

Schulman, who participated in ACT UP and founded the direct action group The Lesbian Avengers in 1992, has fought the good fight since the '80s. She made a call to action amongst us writers — telling stories of shutting down the New York Times for its lack of coverage of the AIDS crisis. My favorite tale involved faxing the Times 25 feet of black paper when they had only one fax machine. We teased poor Advocate editor Kerry Eleveld mercilessly from that point on. Too bad no one faxes these days. We'd have to clog her inbox with PDFs. Schulman has a good point — we should kick more ass. But I believe we're in our nascence as activists right now. One step at a time; let's become a force and then we'll bring down the man.

Lesbians being lesbians, it was when the drinking began that the fun really started. Moon and I dragged filmmakers Katherine Linton and Elaine Epstein, Sarah Warn from Afterellen, Kerry Eleveld, Michaline Babich from Logo's Gimme Sugar and a few other dykes to the Duplex, my favorite West Village hangout. The bartender shrieked "There's a lesbian takeover," and called me a diesel dyke for ordering Jim Beam on the rocks.

Gossip ensued. Who's answering the lesbophone at 3 a.m.? It has clearly been ringing off the hook. There were speculations about my love life, stories from Dinah Shore, admissions of crushes and a group attack on one Hollywood filmmaker who'd been baiting everyone else. Oh, I think the best snippet of bar conversation was Warn telling Eleveld how touchy lesbians are about Tibette. Eleveld, the serious journalist amongst us pop culture whores, looked shocked. She asked Warn why Tibet was such a hot topic with lesbians. There was a pregnant pause before anyone realized we were speaking different languages. Kerry responded with, "and I was fitting in so well up to now!"

Later, we made plans to spend more time together as a group. We'll be hitting the Duplex on Saturdays as much as everyone's schedule allows. If you're in the neighborhood, stop by for a beer or 12 and plot world domination with us.