7:00pm

Thursday, March 29, 2007

"From the Medical Gaze to Sublime Mutations: The Ethics of Re-viewing Nonstandard Body Images"

Ben Singer

Ben Singer is a PhD Candidate in English at Rutgers University working on an ethnographic dissertation: “On the Medical Margins: Transgender Risk Reduction in Public Health.” Since 1993, he has worked as a consultant and trainer in the public health sector, specializing in reducing health disparities through improving access to culturally competent care. He integrates academic tools, leadership building and group facilitation skills with evidence-based research, case studies, harm reduction philosophy and diverse experience in multiple communities. He has applied these techniques to projects ranging from HIV/AIDS prevention to threshold reduction for access to healthcare services in government, academic, community and private settings. He has consulted on local, state and national levels with the CDC, HRSA, Philadelphia Department of Health, AIDS Activities Coordinating Office, and other health and human service organizations. Ben has applied his knowledge to the successful design and implementation of government-funded projects that includes co-founding the Trans-health Information Project (TIP), a program of Prevention Point Philadelphia and the Gay and Lesbian Latino AIDS Education Initiative, with funding by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. From 2002-2004 he served as Director of TIP, contributing to program design, authoring a curriculum, managing staff, overseeing utilization of direct services, and presenting consumer based health information workshops, as well as technically assisting other local social service providers. In addition to presenting on transgender issues to government and community-based organizations across the country, Ben most recently taught Transgender Queries in Medicine, Law, Politics and Culture at Barnard College in New York City.

6:00pm

Friday, March 30, 2007

“Just Who Do You Think You Are? Outlaws, Rogues, Visionaries, and the Queer Next Door”

7:00pm

Friday, March 30, 2007

"What Kind of Man Do I Want to Be: Living Long Term, Creativity, and Digital Micropublishing"

Jay Sennett

Jay Sennett is a writer, filmmaker and the founder and publisher of Homofactus Press. 

Homofactus Press (www.homofactuspress.com) takes its name from the Latin version of the Christian Nicene Creed, which claims that in Jesus of Nazareth the Son of God "was made man": et homo factus est. By appropriating and, from one perspective, deliberately misusing this traditional language to describe FtM identities, Homofactus Press stakes its claim as a new space for the interpretation and criticism of longstanding beliefs about gender, transformation, and the limits of human possibility.  Homofactus Press thus seeks to emphasize the process by which human beings are made into what we are. We are all, in this sense (and to coin a phrase), Homofacts: "made people."  The broader mission of Homofactus Press encourages an active engagement with the process of gender-making and people-making in the world.

Jay Sennett jaywalks (www.jaysennett.com/blog ) is Jay's very popular blog, where cartooning, gender-making and activism meet.  He makes his home in Michigan with the lovely Ms. Gwyn Hulswit.

7:00pm

Friday, March 30, 2007

"Viewing Trans Experience Through a Mixed Heritage Lens"

Willy Wilkinson

Willy Wilkinson, MPH is a third-gendered writer and public health consultant from Oakland , and the recipient of a 2004 National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association award for outstanding opinion/editorial. Since the early 1980s, ze has organized queer and transgender communities of color, and has chronicled API queer movements in various media sources. Willy’s writing on race, gender, queer, and disability issues has appeared in numerous periodicals, including the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Bay Times, Bay Area Reporter, Asian Week, Curve Magazine, Sojourner, and the FTMI Newsletter. Willy’s work has also appeared in the anthologies Transgender Rights, Transgender and HIV, Stricken: Voices from the Hidden Epidemic of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, The Gender Politics of HIV/AIDS in Women, and The Lesbian Health Book.

Willy provides transgender and LGBT trainings, research, evaluation, and technical assistance for health and social service providers throughout the state of California . Ze has an HIV prevention background with two decades of service provision and consultation experience in marginalized communities, including Asians, Pacific Islanders, and other people of color, substance users and their partners, sex workers, queer and transgendered individuals, youth, and people with disabilities. Willy has worked on a number of public health research projects and community programs serving the transgender community in San Francisco , including two ground-breaking transgender studies out of the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Willy launched the Trannyfags Project in San Francisco , as well as a Berkeley support group for people of color on the FTM spectrum. In 2004 Willy conducted a needs assessment of FTMs of color and their partners, and launched the Health Care Access Project at Transgender Law Center in San Francisco .

7:30pm

Saturday, March 31, 2007

"Body Shame, Body Pride: What Can Trans People Learn from Disability Politics"

Eli Clare

Genderqueer poet and essayist Eli Clare has a B.A. in Women's Studies, a M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and most importantly a penchant for rabble-rousing. Among other things, he has walked across the United States for peace, coordinated a rape prevention program in Ann Arbor , Michigan , and helped organize the first ever Queerness and Disability Conference in 2002. He has spoken all over the country at conferences, community events, and colleges about disability, LGBT identities, and other social justice issues.   Eli is the author of "Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation." (South End Press, 1999) More recent work can be found in "GLQ: Desiring Disability--Queer Theory Meets Disability Studies," "From the Inside Out: Radical Gender Transformation, FTM and Beyond," and "Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving."   He lives in Vermont and works at the University of Vermont 's LGBTQA Services. When not otherwise occupied, you can find Eli having fun adventures with his sweetie, riding his trike, and hanging out with his dog.

7:30pm

Saturday, March 31, 2007

"Midwest or Cutting Edge? Transgender History and Milwaukee's Lou Sullivan"

Susan Stryker

Susan Stryker is a researcher, writer, queer historian, artist, and a filmmaker. She is the former executive director of the GLBT Historical Society of Northern California, and a former history columnist for Planet Out. She has written and co-authored books like Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area and edited “The Transgender Issue” of The Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Vol 4, No 2, 1998. She recently discovered and made a film about the Compton’s Riot - riots by transpeople in San Francisco that pre-date Stonewall - and turned that discovery into a documentary film, Screaming Queens.

12:00noon

Sunday, April 1, 2007

"Building an Anti-Subordination Trans Movement Infrastructure"

Dean Spade

Dean Spade is a trans attorney and activist, and founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP). SRLP is a collective legal organization providing free legal services to low-income people and people of color facing gender identity discrimination, and engaging in public education, policy reform, and community organizing support focused on issues relevant to trans, intersex and gender non-conforming people. Dean's writing has appeared in the Berkeley Women's Law Journal, the Howard Scroll, GLQ, the Harvard Lesbian and Gay Review, the Chicano-Latino Law Review and other publications. His essays have appeared in the recent books, "Without a Net" edited by Michelle Tea, and "That's Revolting: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation" edited by Mattilda Sycamore. Dean is also co-editor of the online journal makezine.org, and adjunct teaches law classes focusing on sexuality and gender and law at Columbia Law School and Harvard Law School.