Program & Schedule

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE FINALIZED PROGRAM AND SCHEDULE HERE.

FULL PROGRAMME BOOKLETS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT THE CONFERENCE

UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED, CONFERENCE IS AT PETERBOROUGH DOWNTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY - 345 AYLMER ST. N - WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBLE
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::: Friday, November 7 2008 :::

Trans 101 | 2.00pm to 4.00pm

A Workshop with Alex Thompson

Trans 101 is a basic introduction to the issues that transgender, trans(s)sexual and genderqueer people face in their daily lives. The workshop will look at language-terms you may have heard but might not have understood. We will examine some of the best practices for showing respect for trans people and their bodies, and for making the spaces we live and work in more inclusive. The workshop format is handout-facilitated discussion, with some small group discussion. It is primarily directed at non-trans people, but will also be informative for people who are questioning or just coming out. The workshop was developed by trans and non-trans students of the Trans/Gender Alliance, a group based out of McGill University in 2002-2003, Montreal.

Alex Thomson was involved in the Trans/Gender Alliance from 2003-2005 and the Union for Gender Empowerment both based out of McGill. She also leads workshops about anti-oppression, white identity & white privilege and environmental & social history in Temagami. She is studying at Trent's Frost Centre for Indigenous Studies and Canadian Studies and hopes to get into anti-discrimination education work full-time in the future.
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Passing Workshop | 2.00pm to 4.00pm

A workshop with Gill Lamon

This is a passing workshop for FTMs with tips and ideas and how to use different supplies for a hands-on approach to passing.

Gill Lamon works with Come as You Are, Canada’s Canada's co-operatively run sex toy, book and dvd store.
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Trans Access Panel | 6.00pm to 8.00pm

A panel covering issues of trans access regarding health, sex workers, prison systems, homelessness, shelter access, and psychiatric survivors.

Speakers: Spain de Madrid, Amardeep Kaur Gill, AJ Withers, Harvey Katz, and ander reszczynski

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FRIDAY EVENING EVENT
Bodies of Dissent: Poetry and Social Night | 8.00pm
Location: The Sapphire Room (137 Hunter St. W)
Cost: $5
Appetizers & Snacks Provided
Also features poetry reading by Colin Kennedy Donovan

This location is not wheelchair accessible. Conference organizers have made arrangements of implementing temporary ramps for wheelchair use and access. Please contact us regarding any questions or concerns

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::: Saturday, November 8 2008 :::

Accessible Bathrooms | 10.00am to 11.00am

A Presentation by Jeremy Dias

The Accessible Bathrooms started when a trans woman, a person in a wheel chair and a woman talked about their challenges accessing and finding safe bathrooms. They discovered that their problems were not so different, and decided to do something; they stared the Accessible Bathroom project. The project looks for and helps organizations/business improve their facilities.

Jeremy Dias is the executive director of Jer’s Vision: Canada’s Youth Diversity Initiative that provides youth with tools and resources and works towards fighting different forms of discrimination
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Bending the Binary: Sex and Gender Expression at the Workplace | 11.00am to 12.30pm

A Workshop with Judy Robertson and Wade Stevenson (Rainbow Alliance)

Heteronormative practice in the work environment negatively impacts the lives of LGBTQ people every day. It takes everyone in the workplace to speak up and challenge the systemic practices that allow these practices to continue. What happens when a person or people decide to step forward in the workplace with identities outside heteronormative stereotypes? When you decide to step forward and have your human rights in the workplace upheld, you have overcome the first challenge, believing in your inalienable right to be your authentic self. Then the ‘who, what, where why and how begins’. The facilitators will lead you through a discussion about accommodating gender variance within the workplace. From coming out to finding support, resources and putting a plan of action into motion.
Judy Robertson is a longtime labour activist within OPSEU, and chair of the Rainbow alliance.

Wade Stevenson is a Crossdresser and member of the OPSEU, Rainbow Alliance. Recently, Wade came out at as crossdresser in the workplace and now challenges an environment where gender binary heteronormative practices are overwhelming present, by freely switching back and fourth between gender roles and expression on a daily basis.
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Access to What and Ability for Whom?| 11.00am to 12.30pm

A Workshop with ander reszczynski

How can we fight for survival - access to learning, healthcare, loving, and living - but at the same time resist the situations where we’re told who to be and how to act before we can access them? Where we have to decide what pieces of us have to die before we have access to life? Resisting the pressure to be normalized in state institutions also means linking up our struggles with other oppressed folks and also means refusing to leave anyone behind in our fight for access.

This is a collaborative workshop using story-board/comic visuals to tell a story of how we can think about building radical access to a better world. That world isn’t drawn out yet in the comic. So this workshop will be a space for people to strategize about how to actually change the situation of inaccessibility by figuring out what are the resources we already have access to and what we need to create.
It seems to me that state institutions (schools, psychiatric/medical institutions, family, work) have incarcerative characteristics in common but also hold us close to their guts and resources. We will learn from some of the historical divisions made between above/underground social services, and transgender/transsexual tensions so that we can
move against and beyond them.

ander reszczynski is currently involved with the Sudbury Against War and Occupation group that organizes against both continuing colonization and war and sees them as inseperable aspects of imperialism. Drawing from earlier work with the Sudbury Coalition Against Poverty and Myths and Mirrors Community Arts, they continue to try and figure out how to creatively transform boring research into work that is useful for collective struggle. As an Advisory member of Upping the Anti: a journal of theory and action, the struggle against the separation between thinking and doing continues.
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Trans People and Immigration | 12.30pm to 1.00pm
A Presentation by Diego Macias

This presentation uses personal narrative about the challenges with the immigration system as a transitioned person. The presentation recounts stories of precarious employment, complications with name changes on travel documents and the feelings of being othered.

Diego is a young Trans Man Refugee from Mexico who has undergone a great deal of change in the past five years and who has experienced the ways in which young immigrants and refugees of colour navigate systems that are often white and not accepting of different genders and sexualities. Diego current works in the social service sector and believes social change must come from within the experiences and voices of folks who have been silenced.
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Trans Masculinities of Colour | 1.00pm to 2.30pm

A Workshop with Diego Macias and Kenji Tokawa

In 1995, J. Philippe Rushton, a white professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario published a book of his research entitled Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective. Concluding that all races can biologically be generalized along a spectrum of "mongoliods" "caucasians" and "negroids", Rushton measured the skull sizes, genitalia and IQ of men to put caucasians as intermediate in intelligence, likely-hood of persuing intercourse, and brain size, with 'mongoliods' and 'negroids' in their stereotypical positions within these categories.

How far do we let stereotypes go in producing gendered racialized bodies? How does exoticification create our identities as gendered bodies - genderless bodies? What are the consequences for our queer youth of colour in dominant white queer culture? What does this mean for trans people of colour trying to pass? When is enough enough?

kenji tokawa is an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, the program coordinator of an arts-based radical Asian history and activism program for pan-Asian youth, a trans activist and a grandson. He is currently studying Equity Studies and Diaspora Studies. If you ask him, he may also give workshops on do-it-yourself silk-screen printing with a focus on empowering race and gender identities.
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Is that Gender in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? | 1.00pm to 2.30pm

A Workshop with Colin Kennedy Donovan

This workshop will use interactive theatre and dialogue to explore the various ways each of us embodies gender. How do we see ourselves, and how do others see us? What have we been taught about “real men” and “real women”? What’s the difference between sex and gender? Are you trans, genderqueer or questioning? Or just want to learn more about gender issues? Come ready to jump in, and be prepared to be surprised!

Colin Kennedy Donovan is an anti-racist Irish/English/German/Spanish "white" physically (dis)abled genderqueer trans activist, performer, educator and writer. Combining a sharp sense of humor with an astute analysis of politics and culture, Colin is the author of the radical (dis)ability zine Fuck Pity and the creator/performer of the Handi-Capable-Bi-Queer-Slut of the World, the in-your-face (dis)abled advice columnist.
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SOFFAS: Parallel Transitions | 2.30pm to 4.00pm

(for SOFFAS only - Significant Others, Friends, Family, Allies & Supporters)

A Workshop with Jennifer Robertson

This is a closed workshop for the Significant Others, Friends, Families and Allies of trans-identified people. This workshop is designed to give SOFFAS the knowledge to know what to expect along the journey and the skills to live through it successfully while supporting a loved one who is transitioning.
Jennifer Robertson is a family therapist in private practice and family clinician that works with families of people living with mental health issues. Most importantly, she is the proud mother of a trans-identified young adult.
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Our Bodies, Our Lives | 2.30pm to 4pm

(for trans i.d. folks only)

A Workshop with Rebecca Hammond

This workshop explores concepts of ‘healthy’ sex and the barriers that we experience as trans individuals to achieving healthy, meaningful sex and relationships; strategies that we (can) use to overcome these barriers will also be discussed.

Rebecca Hammond is a former co-facilitator of Trans Youth Toronto and currently works as a sexual health counsellor at Hassle Free Women's Clinic. She is a health researcher and trans health advocate, a co-investigator in both the Youth Gender Action Project (Y-GAP) and the Trans PULSE Project and a member and organizer within the Canadian Professional Association for Transgender Health (CPATH). She regularly facilitates workshops and lectures to community groups, health and social service agencies, and academic audiences on a variety of topics including: trans people and HIV, trans oppression and cis privilege, trans sexual health and trans sexuality, and trans health care needs and trans health access.
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POC genderTalk: Decolonizing Gender | 4.00pm to 5.30pm

(for people of colour only)

A closed discussion for people of colour put together by Decolonization and Anti-Racism Coalition (DARC) in Peterborough to explore issues of gender that we experience as people of colour, indigenous people and racicalized communities.
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Trans as a Disability | 4.00pm to 6.00pm

A workshop with AJ Withers

People in trans communities often have the debate about whether or not trans identities should be considered disabilities. However, this conversation is often offensive and oppressive as it typically assumes that the label of disability is fundamentally negative and one which trans people do not wish to associate with. However, people often begrudgingly accept this label for the purposes of getting surgeries funded. This workshop will give participants a framework to think about disability from a radical perspective and then have a meaningful discussion about the medicalization and labeling of trans identities.

A.J. Withers is a disabled, genderqueer/trans person who has been doing radical organizing for over a decade. This work includes anti-poverty organizing with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty and anti-ableist organizing on their own and as a founding member of DAMN 2025.

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Film Screening: Tomboy | 5.30pm to 6.00pm

Tomboy (2008) is an animated 14 minute video based on the book Are You a Boy or a Girl? by Karleen Pendelton Jiménez. This book was a finalist in the Lamda Literary Award 2000 (U.S.). Geared to 5 to 9 year old girls, Tomboy looks at an incident in Latina-Canadian girl’s life where she is bullied for her tomboy ways. The story reflects the scriptwriter Karleen’s own childhood experience, growing up with a self-identified “Hispanic” mother, along with the nurturing she offered her daughter’s baby butch body. Tomboy builds on Director Barb Taylor’s previous visual art and music practices, seeking to push the boundaries of how women are represented in popular culture. Tomboy expands what gender can mean as well as recognizing the specific ways children conduct themselves as gendered beings in the world.

Karleen Pendleton Jiménez is a writer and assistant professor in the School of Education at Trent University. Her recent publications include the co-edited (with Isabel Killoran) collection “Unleashing the unpopular”: Talking about sexual orientation and gender diversity in education, and book chapters, “Teaching to the learning deficiencies of the privileged,” and “‘Start with the land’: Groundwork for Chicana pedagogy”. Most recently she wrote the screenplay for the award-winning animation short “Tomboy," based on her children’s book Are You a Boy or a Girl?.

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SATURDAY EVENING EVENT
Gender Waves: Performances & Dance Party
Doors Open 9pm, Show Starts 9.30pm
Location: The Red Dog* (182 Hunter St.)
Cost: $7 or PWYC

Featuring Sheesha, Athens Boys Choir, Kay Pettigrew, People You Know ,… and more

A variety show with drag performances, poetry readings, spoken word, music and more by queer and trans identified folks followed by a dance party with DJ Sheena.

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::: Sunday, November 9 2008 :::

Brunch and Centre Membership Presentation | 11.00am to 3.00pm

As part of the Trans Conference, the Trent Women’s Centre is hosting a special Annual General Meeting as it works to expand it mandate to become a service- and space- provider to trans-identified folks. The membership meeting will feature a presentation from Kira Alleyne on her community-based research project involving a Trans Needs Assessment of the Trent and Peterborough communities and the ways in which the Centre can become more trans-inclusive. As well, Lindsay Adams will be presenting an excerpt from her Masters Thesis. The meeting will include a brunch and discussion on trans and genderqueer issues in relation to the Centre and the new approach to feminism and gender politics we wish to take and have approved at the membership meeting. All are welcome to this important AGM.