Stories on the Square: Coming Out From Under/Stories of Emergence

Do you like passionate, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants story-telling? Come to STORIES ON THE SQUARE to witness great story-tellers doing what they do best.

STORIES ON THE SQUARE happens at the Square Cafe in Regent Square on Fri. Sept. 16th. Doors at 7pm, show at 8pm. Tickets are $45 and benefit the Initiative for Transgender Leadership

Hosted by Wendy Bell of WTAE. Featuring Brian Broome, Phat Man Dee, Vanessa German, Christina Springer, and more!

Check out the Facebook event page here and invite your friends!

Note: Donations made through PayPal will not result in ticket reservations.  To purchase tickets stop in Square Cafe during business hours or email TransLeadership@gmail.com.

Transgender 201 Training 8/4/11

At the beginning of August, Bobby and I had the opportunity to share our knowledge of trans issues with my co-workers: staff at Coro Pittsburgh as well as Public Allies and someone from the Allegheny County Dept. of Human Services.

We presented a PowerPoint, which was a combination of many efforts. In some ways the presentation was similar top the one Mad and I did in March for the Presbyterian Task Force on Ministry with Sexual Minorities. We encouraged participants to take a close look at all of our gender assumptions, how really--no (or very few) people we know actually fit the stereotype of what a man is or what a woman is. We went through the basics: binary vs. continuum, pulling apart gender & sex, pulling apart sexuality & gender identity. We did our best to define who falls under the trans umbrella and who doesn't (this isn't always so clear). We talked about issues that trans people face, and showed profiles of trans celebrities (mostly academic, artistic and/or politically active).

One of my favorite slides is for when we talk about the positives of the trans community--our assets. I can get bummed out talking too much about all the hardships trans folks face, even though sharing that info is very important. I like to show what's so great about us too.

The main activity at the end was breaking into groups to begin to figure out how to create structures in the workplace (policy, procedure, culture, etc.) that support trans inclusion. For example, the Coro offices are located in a large building with many other renters. How do we ensure the bathrooms that we share are safe places for trans folks? What resources do we need to successfully address the need for safe bathrooms? What roadblocks do we foresee and how are we going to work through them?

Overall, I was happy with how the presentation turned out. I'm excited to do more of these (any takers?) especially because of the conversations that get started around trans issues and 'cause we get the chance to lend value to our own experiences as worthy information to share.

Landmark Education Part II

Continued from the previous blog post: Landmark Education Part I

So, I decided to commit my 25th birthday weekend to something totally different: the Landmark forum. Full days on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, then back for a re-cap on Tuesday evening. In my view, it's like a weekend crash-course in getting-to-know-yourself and generating-a-new-life-philosophy. Putting things into perspective, getting a grip on patterns one keeps doing over and over again. I also described it to some people like an extended poetry reading or consciousness-raising session. Folks shared incredibly powerful stories and we were all witnesses to each others' transformations large and small.

I was thinking a lot about my fears of coming out, about integrity & accountability, about relationships and all that stuff that hangs over my head and never gets said. At every break you are given "homework" like, think about this or that decision you made when you were 5 or 14 or 24 that shaped what you thought you were capable of from then on. Or, call up someone in your life and have a totally unreasonable conversation with them, for example, have that conversation you know in your heart to be impossible and do it with urgency and courage and love.

It's very freeing, pinpointing the moment I decided for myself that I was going to make myself be "the responsible one" from then on because I couldn't count on anybody else, even though I didn't want to be responsible and raged against it. One snippet I like that came up a lot that weekend "what we resist, persists". Like we all know a parent's behavior we absolutely do not want to repeat but--there it is--and it seems even more prominent the more we try to fight it. So just making the decision to leave decisions we make about ourselves and other people (I'm too this, or not that enough) in the past where they belong, because otherwise, those decisions and resentments shape how we see everything in the future and squeeze out any possibility that we can do anything new.

I have more to say about this that I can't remember now. I did have some incredible things come out of that weekend. Met some really amazing people. Felt like I was in a really safe space. Laughed, cried, had some conversations with people I never thought were going to be possible, really got to the bottom of a distressing family mystery, and I think, became a much better listener.

I'm currently attending the Landmark 10-week seminar series "Causing the Miraculous" 'cause, why not? On a somewhat-related note, I just finished reading, again, The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies, a Canadian playwright with a magnificent beard. These three books are about how tiny decisions create entire lives of consequences, how the minor characters make all the difference, and how the world of the miraculous really isn't that far away. Plus it's full of magicians, circus freaks and brilliant weirdos.