Edit: This post was written on the traditional territory of the Coast and Straits Salish nations, and here at UVIC: “The university sits on the site of an old Lekwungen village” [2]
Edit2: The publication of info on the archival research is on hold while permission from the archives for such info to be published is waited for. I will be posting over the next few days about the conference I am attending, Moving Trans History Forward 2016.
I am overwhelmed. Despite all that I know, despite all that I hear, and despite all that is staring me in the face, I still always felt as if the trans community is small and dispersed. Part of this is from the overwhelming citation of epidemiological estimations of population stating figures such as Gates (2011; 1) who states that in the US “0.3% of adults are transgender”. [1] This conference, however, has so many from the community that I am beside myself with some feeling that is nigh indescribable. Wondrous, joyous affirmation? No, not quite; perhaps more of a joyous sense of existence is at play here.
A list of sessions I attended today:
- Deneige Nadeau: “queering the cut/a genealogy of scars” ◊
- TJ Gundling: “The Trans* Experience: A Bio-Cultural Dialectic“
- j wallace skelton: “The first! The very first! Well, the very first legally male, heterosexual married trans guy to be pregnant!” ◊
- Harrison Apple: “Dante ‘Tex’ Gill: Dubious Man of the Year“
- Keynote: Jamison Green (WPATH President)
- J. Ari (Ariadne) Kane: “Doing an Oral History (The ‘T’ Version)“
- Sean Waldbillig: “Trans Organizing The Right(s) Way?: Tensions Between Trans Identities and Activisms” ◊
- Aleta Gruenewald: “On which knowledges count in trans* and GNC communities” ◊
- Jana Funke & Jen Grove: “Trans* History Meets the History of Sexology: Interrogating the Past, Engaging Communities” ◊
- Kimi Dominic: “Genealogy of the ‘Wrong Body’ Discourse“
- Rev. Moonhawk River Stone: “The Genderization of Sex“
- Ali Blythe: “Twoism” Poetry reading. [LINK] ◊
I have marked the ones I found most interesting with a “◊”.
[1] Gates, Gary J. “How many people are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender?.” (2011). [LINK]
It should probably be noted that I have yet to see an epidemiological study of the LGBT2SQ+ community that I am happy with in terms of methodology and ability to deliver. In addition to this, the very idea of an epidemiological study of such is problematic due to the inherent pathologisation of our identities that comes with such a type of study.
[2] http://www.uvic.ca/services/indigenous/
