TRANSforming Gender Conference
2016
Jennicet Gutiérrez
Jennicet Gutiérrez is a transgender Latina activist and organizer from Mexico. She currently resides in Los Angeles and is an organizer with Famílía: Trans Queer Liberation Movement. Jennicet believes in the importance of uplifting and centering the voices of trans women of color in all racial justice work. Her recent interruption of President Obama at the White House has brought visibility to the torture and violence that undocumented trans women are facing inside detention centers. Jennicet will continue to organize in order to end the deportation, incarceration and criminalization of immigrants and all people of color.
2015
Amos Mac
Amos Mac lives and works in New York as a photographer, writer and publisher. His images have been featured in The New York Times, Interview, Vogue Italia, BUTT Magazine, Capricious, Randy and Out, amongst other publications. In 2009 Mac and Rocco Kayiatos co-founded Original Plumbing: the seminal quarterly publication documenting the culture of transgender men. Informational and entertaining at once, OP has featured interviews with, and portraits of, Geo Wyeth, Margaret Cho, Ivan Harvie, Austin Bjorkman, Kate Bornstein, Silas Howard, and many others. In addition to editing and publishing, Mac has photographed the majority of Original Plumbing’s content. Recent notable ects include a collaboration with Los Angeles-based performance artist Zackary Drucker. Initiated by Mac, a series of portraits taken in Drucker’s upstate New York childhood home formed the content of the first issue of his publication Translady Fanzine.
2014
CeCe McDonald
In June 2011, CeCe McDonald, a Trans African American woman, fought off a racist, transphobic attack. She was sentenced to 41 months in a men’s prison for 2nd degree manslaughter despite clear evidence of self-defense. CeCe was only able to receive her hormone treatments after an online petition was circulated and submitted to the State Department. Since her release CeCe has become a national leader in the transgender movement being named to the Advocate’s 40 under 40 list, the Trans 100 list, and being awarded the Bayard Rustin Civil Rights Award. A new film, Free CeCe, to be released in 2016, is being produced by Laverne Cox and Jac Gares, and confronts the issue of trans misogyny and the epidemic of violence surrounding trans women of color. http://www.freececedocumentary.net
Mattee Jim
Mattee Jim is one of the Zuni People Clan and born for the Towering House People clan, this is how she identifies as Navajo. Mattee has been active in the HIV field for the past 15 years, she has presented at several Conferences such as the International AIDS Conference, united States Conference on AIDS, and the National HIV Prevention Conference, and many more. Mattee currently is employed with First Nations Community HealthSource as a Supervisor for HIV Prevention Programs. She is also a decision making member for the New Mexico COmmunity Planning and Action Group which addresses HIV Prevention within the State of New Mexico, Co-Chair for Transgender People of Color Coalition, Board Member for Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico, Planning COmmittee Member for Circle of Harmony, Transgender Advocate, Trainer, Consultant, and Extraordinary Person. Mattee’s Journy has been a Blessed one since she started her sobriety several years ago.
Tiq and Kim Milan
Tiq, a Black trans man, and his wife Kim are both activists in the LGBTQ movement. Tiq is a national spokesperson for GLAAD and has written for Ebony, BET, New York Times, and the Huffington Post, addressing issues such as educating students about transgender issues, national visibility of trans celebrities, street harassment and supporting LGBTQ elders. Tiq is one of the Trans 100, was the recipient of the Audre Lorde Founders award and the Monica Roberts Black Trans Advocacy award. Kim is a writer, artist and activist facilitating radical community dialogues. Her work has been featured on NPR, Out Magazine, the Huffington Post and CBS Radio. She is the co-founder of The People Project, a movement of queer and trans people of oclo and allies aimed toward empowering through alternative education, art and collaboration. She is one of the 100 Black LGBT women and was a finalist for the LGBT person of the year Inspire Award. http://www.tiqmilan.com http://www.kimkatrinmilan.com/#home-1-section
Hinaleimoana “Hina” Wong-Kalu
Mahu (Two-Spirit) activist, star in the movie Kuma Hina and cultural preservationist in Hawaii.
Thea Hillman
Thea Hillman is an award-winning author and communications specialist. She is passionate about working collaboratively to make the world a better place. Thea considers herself lucky to be able to combine her professional work with her activism of love and language. She is a poetry slam champion with a Masters in English and Creative Writing. She dedicates herself to projects that advance social change and environmental justice - from saving harp seals to abolishing the death penalty to convincing people it’s easy to recycle things as it is to throw them away. Thea has performed her work at festivals, bookstores, and reading series across the country. She has produced many performance events, including the sold-out Intercourse: A Sex and Gender Spoken Word Recipe for Revolution for the 2001 National Queer Arts Festival. http://www.theahillman.com
Esmé Rodriguez
Esmé Rodríguez is a Minneapolis-based, queer-identified, scholar, artist, and designer, originally from NYC. She has a Masters Degree from Boston College and studied her PhD at the University of Minnesota. She is a self-taught seamstress and designer. Much of Esmé's academic and creative work exhibits themes of non-binary gender identities, the deconstructions of femininities and masculinities, and innovations of histories and pop culture. She has taught at the university level for 12 years and is currently touring national colleges with her "Gender Show and Tell Panel," which engages in the discussion and performance of fashion and gender expression from non-traditional cultural perspectives.
http://first-avenue.com/performer/esmé-rodr%C3%ADguez
Kortney Ryan Ziegler
Kortney Ryan Ziegler is an Oakland based award winning artist, writer, and the first person to hold the Ph.D. of African American Studies from Northwestern University. He is the director of the multiple award winning documentary, STILL BLACK: a portrait of black transmen, runs the GLAAD Media Award nominated blog, blac (k) ademic, and was recently named one of the Top 40 Under 40 LGBT activists by The Advocate Magazine and #29 of the most influential African Americans of 2013 by TheRoot100. Dr. Ziegler is also the founder of Trans*H4CK--the only tech event of its kind that spotlights trans* created tech and trans* led startups.
http://drkrz.flavors.me
2013
JAC Stringer
JAC Stringer, also known as Midwest GenderQueer, is a trans-genderqueer femme, (dis)abled, mixed blood Cherokee-white radical activist and performance artist. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, JAC strives to create visibility, community, and resources for trans and queer communities, particularly in the Midwest. He has lectured and performed across the USA and Canada with his work focusing trans and queer education, social justice, femme identities, accessibility/(dis)ability, and trans/queer artistry. JAC is a life-long dancer, poet, musician, and rabble-rouser seeking to generate unity, action, and empowerment in trans and queer communities through education, art, and many other forms of revolution. JAC describes himself as “a student of grassroots activism,” acquiring the majority of his knowledge through his work on the ground. Coming up as a trans activist in a conservative area lacking any visible trans community, JAC describes his process as “learning how to swim against oppression while trying not to drown in it.” He now uses his academic background to assist him; a Bachelors in Psychology, Gender Studies, and Sexology and a Master’s in Social Work with a specialty in counseling, education, and group work.”
http://midwestgenderqueer.com/about/
Ryka Aoki
Ryka Aoki is a writer, performer, and professor who has been honored by the California State Senate for for her “extraordinary commitment to free speech and artistic expression, as well as the visibility and well-being of Transgender people.”In 2012, Ryka was named an Outstanding Volunteer by the LA Gay Lesbian Center’s Child, Youth, and Family Services. In 2013, Ryka was honored as a member of the “Trans 100” list as one of 100 groundbreaking trans advocates from around the country, and named as one of “11 Trans Artists of Color You Should Know in 2013” by the Huffington Post. She was a charter member of the Transgender Advisory Committee for Asian Pacific Islanders for Human Rights (APHIR). Ryka appears in the recent trans documentaries “Diagnosing Difference” and “Riot Acts” as well as the anthologies Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation (Seal Press), and Transfeminist Perspectives (Temple University). Ryka has as an MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University and is the recipient of a University Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her chapbook, Sometimes Too Hot the Eye of Heaven Shines won the RADAR’s 2010 Eli Coppola Chapbook Contest.
http://rykaryka.com/about-ryka/
Eli Clare
White, disabled, and genderqueer, Eli Clare happily lives in the Green Mountains of Vermont where he writes and proudly claims a penchant for rabble-rousing. He has written a book of essays Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation and a collection of poetry The Marrow's Telling: Words in Motion and has been published in many periodicals and anthologies. His newest work, Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure, will be released early next year. Eli speaks, teaches, and facilitates all over the United States and Canada at conferences, community events, and colleges about disability, queer and trans identities, and social justice. Among other pursuits, he has walked across the United States for peace, coordinated a rape prevention program, and helped organize the first ever Queerness and Disability Conference. When he's not writing or on the road, you can find him reading, hiking, camping, riding his recumbent trike, or otherwise having fun adventures.
http://eliclare.com/background/bio
2012
Judith “Jack” Halberstam
Keynote on Gaga Feminism
Jack Halberstam is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Gender Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. Halberstam is the author of five books including: Skin Shows: othic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (Duke UP, 1995), Female Masculinity (Duke UP, 1998), In A Queer Time and Place (NYU Press, 2005), The Queer Art of Failure (Duke UP, 2011) and Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal (Beacon Press, 2012) and has written articles that have appeared in numerous journals, magazines and collections. Halberstam is currently working on several projects including a book on Fascism and (homo)sexuality. Halberstam has co-edited a number of anthologies including Posthuman Bodies with Ira Livingston (Indiana University Press, 1995) and a special issue of Social Text with Jose Munoz and David Eng titled “What’s Queer About Queer Studies Now?” Jack is a popular speaker and gives lectures around the country and internationally every year. Lecture topics include: queer failure, sex and media, subcultures, visual culture, gender variance, popular film, animation.
http://www.jackhalberstam.com/gaga-feminism/
http://www.jackhalberstam.com/
Emi Koyama
Keynote: Transgender Youth and the Sex Trade
Emi Koyama is a multi-issue social justice activist and writer synthesizing feminist, Asian, survivor, dyke, queer, sex worker, intersex, genderqueer, and crip politics, as these factors, while not a complete descriptor of who she is, all impacted her life.Emi spends her time giving presentations, creating original buttons and 'zines, reading and sending e-mails, making web sites, among other things. Oh and she runs Intersex Initiative. Emi used to identify as this gender and that gender, and even the neither gender--but nowadays she's tired of it all. "Genderqueer" used to work just fine when it was a non-identity, but now that there are communities of genderqueer people who identify with the label "genderqueer" it no longer quite applies. Today, Emi does not identify with any particular gender, but she does not so strongly identify with the state of having no gender to claim that as an identity either. Honestly, she thinks that having an identity--especially gender identity--is kind of weird: how she views herself depends on the human relationships and interactions that surround her, rather than arising from some intrinsic core sense of self. Emi thinks it's rather traditional from the perspective of her Japanese background: there is no native Japanese word for "identity," and gendered pronouns (he, she, etc.) did not exist in Japanese language until they were invented in order to translate Western documents.
http://eminism.org/faq/basic.html
2011
Dean Spade
Dean Spade is an Associate Professor at Seattle University School of Law. He teaches Administrative Law, Poverty Law, and Law and Social Movements. Prior to joining the faculty of Seattle University, Dean was a Williams Institute Law Teaching Fellow at UCLA Law School and Harvard Law School, teaching classes related to sexual orientation and gender identity law and law and social movements.
In 2002, Dean founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a non-profit law collective that provides free legal services to transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming people who are low-income and/or people of color. SRLP also engages in litigation, policy reform and public education on issues affecting these communities and operates on a collective governance model, prioritizing the governance and leadership of trans, intersex, and gender non-conforming people of color. From 1998-2006, Dean co-edited the paper and online zine, Make. Dean is currently the co-editor of the online journal, Enough, which focuses on the personal politics of wealth redistribution. From 2012 to 2014 Dean was a fellow in the “Engaging Tradition” project at Columbia Law School. His book, Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law was published in 2011. http://www.deanspade.net
Rabbi Reuben Zellman
Rabbi Reuben Zellman was the first openly transgender person accepted to the Reform Jewish seminary Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. He earned his B.A. in Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley and his M.A. in Hebrew literature from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles. He trained for eight years in chazanut (traditional cantorial music) at the School of Sacred Music in New York City. His work center around the LGBTQIA community and Judaism, and he is a strong activist within the community. For more about Rabbi Zellman’s influence in the community, please visit
http://www.bethelberkeley.org/aboutus/rabbi-zellman
2010
Rev. Malcolm Himschoot
Rev. Malcolm Himschoot studied at Amherst College and started seminary at Iliff School of Theology back in Denver in 1999. He published the book Just Add Hormones: An Insider’s Guide to the Transsexual Experience and is the subject of the documentary Call Me Malcolm which documents his personal reflections of the struggles between the Church and transsexuality. Malcolm began working as an associate pastor at Denver Inner City Parish with Pastor Steve Johnsen in 2002 and was ordained as clergy in the United Church of Christ in 2004 and served as interim Open and Affirming Coordinator for the United Church of Christ Coalition for LGBT Concerns. His work focuses primarily on the transformation and wholeness of Christian communities across society s dividing lines. He currently speaks at conferences, churches, and universities across the country. http://www.lgbtran.org/Profile.aspx?ID=215
Girlyman
Keynote: Gender-Bending Music
Really good, really unexpected, and really different” is how Village Voice describes Girlyman’s lyric driven folk-pop. But that can also describe the year that inspired their fifth studio album Supernova, available June 19th (distribution through Burnside). “A supernova is a dying star,” explains Girlyman member Doris Muramatsu, who was diagnosed with leukemia in late 2010. The three founding members of Girlyman (Muramatsu, Nate Borofsky, and Tylan Greenstein) had spent ten years playing and singing harmony together, from early days in tiny coffeehouses, through long opening runs with the Indigo Girls and Dar Williams, all the way to festival main stages and the country’s premier acoustic venues. The band, now a quartet with the addition of former Po’ Girl drummer JJ Jones in 2009, suddenly feared for its future. “I was in the hospital getting blood transfusions and chemotherapy,” Doris continues. “We cancelled a month of tours and thought that was it.” An autobiography of this unique time for the band, Supernova’s thirteen songs resonate with themes of uncertainty and transformation. But the album is not a dirge; instead, the band reaches, as always, for hope. As Slate Magazine wrote, “Girlyman doesn’t wallow in such emotions; the band approaches them frankly, capturing, in a story or a surprising metaphor, a feeling you’ve had but never heard so well-expressed. As of September 2013, Girlyman has officially decide to part ways. After 12 years of being together as a band, [they] decided as a group that it was time.’” http://girlyman.com/
Mara Keisling
Keynote: Transgender Civil Rights
Mara Keisling is the founding Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. Mara is a transgender-identified woman and a parent. As one of the nation’s leading voices for transgender equality, Mara has appeared on news outlets including CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. Mara is regularly quoted in national and local print and broadcast media. Since NCTE’s founding in 2003, the organization has led or participated in coalition efforts that have won significant advances in transgender equality. Mara is a graduate of Penn State University and did her graduate work at Harvard University in American Government. She has almost twenty-five years of professional experience in social marketing and opinion research.”
NCTE website http://www.transequality.org/about/people/mara-keisling-she-her
Dr. Marci Bowers
Dr. Bowers is a pelvic and gynecologic surgeon with nearly 25 years’ experience in Women’s Healthcare. She is a University of Minnesota Medical School graduate and an Ob/Gyn product of the University of Washington in Seattle. Following residency, she remained in Seattle where she practiced as an Obstetrician/Gynecologist at The Polyclinic and Swedish Medical Center. She spent several years in practice in Trinidad, Colorado before relocating in 2010 to the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2007 Dr. Bowers became an international authority on clitoral reconstruction for women who have suffered Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), one of few surgeons worldwide performing functional FGM reversal. She is also a regional expert in aesthetic vulvar surgery and has many years’ history working with gynecologic issues across the full spectrum. She has been the subject of numerous documentaries, articles and features including appearances on Oprah, CBS Sunday Morning and Discovery Health, Newsweek, The Guardian and the Times of London. She is a devoted women’s healthcare advocate and provider.
Dr. Nick Gorton
Nick Gorton is an openly transgender physician. He completed residency and chief residency in Emergency Medicine at Kings County Hospital, Brooklyn, NY. Dr. Gorton has a twice-weekly clinic focusing on transgender patients at the Lyon-Martin Clinic in San Francisco.
He lectures on transgender health care at medical schools and conferences. He has worked as a medical consultant regarding transgender health care for Lambda Legal, the Transgender Law Center, the Northwest Justice Project, the New York Legal Aid Society, and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project.
He is an active member of the American Medical Association GLBT Affairs Committee and the California LGBT Health and Humans Services Network.
http://transhealth.ucsf.edu/trans?page=ab-gorton
Ignacio G. Rivera
Ignacio G. Rivera is a Two-Spirit, Black-Boricua Taíno, queer performance artist and activist who main focus is gender and sexuality, as well as kink and sexual liberation within a class and racial dynamic. They are a founding board member of Queers for Economic Justice. Ignacio is the recipient of a Marsha A. Gómez Cultural Heritage Award from The National Latina/o Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Organization. Apart from their works with films, literature, and spoken word poetry, Rivera is also a sex educator. For more information about Rivera’s work, please visit http://www.ignaciogrivera.com.
Dylan Scholinski
Dylan Scholinski is an established transgender artist, author, and public speaker. He earned a B.F.A. in Drawing and Printmaking at St. Cloud State University and an M.F.A. in Painting and Printmaking at the Pratt Institute. He has appeared on Dateline, 20/20, and Today as well as numerous newspapers and magazines. Scholinski is the author of the award winning book The Last Time I Wore a Dress: A Memoir and is the founder of the Sent(a)Mental Project: A Memorial to Suicide.
Tristan Taormino
Tristan Taormino is a queer feminist author, editor, sex educator, columnist, pornopgrahpic film director, and activist with a focus on sex positivity. Taormino received her B.A. in American Studies from Wesleyan University and has given lectures at universities such as Vassar, Columbia, Cornell, University of Toronto, Yale, Brown, and Princeton. She is the award-winning author of The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women and edited anthologies for the Lambda Literary Award-winning annual anthology Best Lesbian Erotica.
Connect with her via twitter at @TristanTaormino.
2008
Monica Roberts
Monica Roberts, AKA the TransGriot (Gree-oh) is a native Houstonian, GLAAD award nominated blogger, writer, and award winning trans human rights advocate. She's the founding editor of TransGriot, and her writing has appeared at the Bilerico Project, Ebony.com, The Huffington Post and the Advocate. She works diligently at educating and encouraging acceptance of trans people inside and outside the larger African-American community and is an award winning blogger, history buff, thinker, lecturer and passionate advocate on trans issues. Monica seeks to not only end the erasure of African-American trans voices from a movement they played significant roles in starting, but get African-American transpeople and other voices of color more involved in empowering themselves. Her activism focus is educating the TBLG community and allies about our issues and concerns in addition to shedding light about the struggles of GLBT people across the African Diaspora.
http://transgriot.blogspot.com
http://www.glaad.org/profile/monica-roberts
Twitter @TransGriot
2007
Matt Kailey
Matt Kailey was a Colorado-based trans author, trainer, workshop facilitator, educator, and transgender activist. Kailey earned a BA in sociology and Psychology at Iowa State University and an MA in Education from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Some of his works include My Child is Transgender: 10 Tips for Parents of Adult Trans Children and Focus on the Fabulous: Colorado GLBT Voices. His keynote address in 2007 focused on issues of gender and sexuality. Kailey passed away on May 18th, 2014. For more infromation about please visit http://transguys.com/profiles/matt-kailey.
2006
Dr. Pauline Park
Dr. Pauline Park is a transgender activist. Park received a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin Madison, an M.Sc. in European Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Ph.D. in political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is the chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy, executive director of Queens Pride House, and co-founded Iban/Queer Koreans of New York. Park helped negotiate gender identity and expression in the Dignity for All Students Act in 2010 and became the first out transgender person chosen to be grand marshal of the New York City Pride March. The documentary “Envisioning Justice: The Journey of a Transgendered Woman” details her work as an activist in the transgender community. In November 2012, Park was honored as one of “50 Transgender Icons” for Transgender Day of Remembrance 2012.