Philly Trans Health Conference & other updates

Hello all!

I haven't posted since before Memorial Day and I'm thinking about all this beautiful weather we've been having--with the exception of today's black skies and thunderstorms. Mem day weekend was spent attending the Justice for Jordan Miles protest downtown--http://justiceforjordanmiles.com/--where I saw Jen and her son; and biking almost 50 miles on the 29th. My partner Ocean read part of her as-of-yet unpublished novel at Fleeting Pages on the 30th.

Last week was crazy leading up to the Philly Trans Health Conference and I haven't had the chance to update in a while. A couple friends and I performed in a band called Gutter Glitter on June 2nd. So much fun playing for that crowd full of friends! We opened for Kaia Wilson, former lead singer of Team Dresch and The Butchies. She sang a bunch of songs that she wrote 15 years ago and totally charmed the crowd. Here's a pic of our band!

 

So the morning after our performance, Ocean, two friends and I loaded up the car and drove to Philly. We arrived around noon on the second day of the conference. Unfortunately missed Chaz Bono's Q&A. So much fun to pack a convention center with the trans and queer community and allies galore! I attended some okay workshops and some great workshops, and one lame workshop. But each taught me a lot about leading a workshop: the presenter/attendee dynamic, pacing & organization, keeping questions and comments on track, etc. I wish I could have gone to more workshops. It seemed that for every one I attended, I felt like I was missing 2 or 3.

On Saturday 12:45pm I led a workshop called "Bringing Our Whole Selves to Work" for about 25 people. Adorably, the parents of a trans youth introduced themselves to me and said they wanted to know more about what their child could expect in employment. There was a range of folks in attendance--some in the corporate world, some in the non-profit sector, some unemployed, even one outspoken Republican. Bobby was there to give support (thanks!) and one of my friends too. 

First I started off with introductions and describing what the workshop was going to be like. Then I allowed the attendees to introduce themselves to each other, and everyone was enthusiastic. Then they filled out an "Identities Worksheet" with 20 categories like gender expression, class, communication style and I asked a couple people to read their lists out loud. I was trying to get at the idea across that there are lots of identities we each have, some of them may give us a lot of grief in the workplace, others we may never think about. Next I surveyed the group in regards to the parts of themselves they feel like they can and can't bring to work. We picked that apart for a while: What is it about where you work that allows you to be out about being a liberal? What is it about where you work that makes it difficult to come out about your sexuality?

Then we got into categorizing workplace barriers into three groups: POLICY, PHYSICAL and CULTURE. This got tricky because a dress code may fall into all three: the dress code may be part of a policy, it affects the physical environment of the workplace and the workplace culture may affect what is and isn't appropriate to wear.

We ended with sharing strategies for solving problems at work; some people shared success stories too. I hope that people left with a new or modified framework for thinking about their problems at work and how to solve those problems. Additionally, in hearing other peoples' stories of workplace discrimination and difficulties, perhaps we all came away with a greater sense of what our community members are dealing with.

After that, I networked a bit and attended one of the plenary lectures on global transgender issues (really putting things into perspective--check out http://www.transrespect-transphobia.org/ for more info) and watched the movie Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria which was AMAZING. All in all a great weekend in Philly.