At GLSEN 2008 homosexual youth conference in Boston: BACK to main page
Making kids comfortable with transsexuality and crossdressing
The transsexual movement is in the schools and getting bigger
Posted: April 10, 2008
A big part of the GLSEN conference involved transgenderism. The conference's keynote speaker (see below) is a radical transgender activist -- a woman with a beard and sideburns. In recent years the homosexual movement has integrated this into their the school programs.
Six transgender workshops for kids
GLSEN organized six workshops to present it to kids from different psychological perspectives.
 |
Grace Sterling Stowell, a man who dresses as a woman, ran one of the transgender workshops for kids (below) at the GLSEN conference. |
Supporting Gender Variant Youth and Their
Families: Consider Adding a "T" to your GSA
Andrea Razi, LICSW, Intervention Coordinator/Social Worker,
Arlington High School
Jennifer Thomas, LICSW
Attendees will explore the spectrum of gender identity and
consider a model of transgender identity development.
Role-plays will allow adults and youth to further consider
challenges in helping create safe spaces for gender variant
youth to be themselves.
What is theT in GLBT? Transgender Youth Panel
Moderated by Grace Sterling Stowell, Executive Director of
BAGLY (Boston Alliance of Gay and Lesbian Youth)
A panel of young Trans individuals share their experiences
of growing up as transgender and the issues that they have faced as they navigate school, adolescents and young
adulthood.
The Dating Game/Living Genders: The
Embodiment of Self in Gender Non-Conforming
People
Hadley Smith, Co-founder,TRANSLATE GENDER
Shannon Sennott, Co-founder,TRANSLATE GENDER
Chris Pienta, Translate Workshop Facilitator
T.S.:Translate Workshop Facilitator
This experiential group workshop explores the connections
among gender identity, biological sex, and sexuality in
an effort to unravel the complexities and meanings of
"Embodiment"and the language(s) we use to define a Self.
Exploring Gender Non-conformity, Identity, and
the Power of Language
Laura Kuper, Clinical Research Assistant, Former President of
Vassar College's Queer Coalition
Al Ittleson, Student and President of Brandies University's
Umbrella Queer Organization
Come explore transgender identity, and discuss the ways in
which language interacts with the queer community. Focus
will also be on ways to increase visibility without simplifying
or essentializing the experience of transgendered individuals.
What Happened to ENDA?
Abigail Carpenter-Winch, Junior, Cambridge Rindge and Latin
School GLSEN National Jumpstart Team
Caroline Cox-Orrell, Senior, Newton North High School,
GLSEN Boston Board Member
This workshop will discuss the events that passed in
excluding gender identity and expression in the Employment
Non-Discrimination Act. We will also discuss the upcoming
Gender Non-Discrimination Act and discuss the legal rights
of transgender folks. We will use ENDA and the Gender Non-
Discrimination Act to discuss the isolation of trans folks in the
queer community.
HB 1722: Know Your Rights
Abigail Carpenter-Winch, MassachusettsTransgender Political
Coalition Youth Liaison, Junior, Cambridge Rindge & Latin
School Junior
Did you know that in Massachusetts you can be legally fired
from your job, harassed in school, and denied employment
and medical services if you are transgender? Current state
non-discrimination laws do not include gender identity and
expression, but the Massachusetts Transgender Political
Coalition is working to change this with House Bill 1722.
Come learn about it!
Transgender handout
We didn't see much written material on transgenderism, probably because it's gotten so weird and they don't want anything in writing. But this was passed out by PFLAG.
(Booklet): Our Trans Children
Published by PFLAG and given out extensively, this booklet attempts to explain transgenderism as a normal part of life. It is full of medical and
psychological quackery, and frightening with its matter-of-fact description of body mutilation (called "sexual reassignment surgery").
The keynote speech
During the entire day we noticed kids looking confused when women were referred to as "he" and men as "she". They did that with Gunner Scott, the conference keynote speaker, who is clearly a woman with a beard and sideburns.
Gunner Scott is an active member of the tax-supported Massachusetts Commission on GLBT Youth. She is also a very radical activist who runs an organization called Gender Crash.
Gunner herself once publicly described described her group Gender Crash this way:
"Gender Crash is open to all, and is queer positive, dyke positive, bi-positive, and trans-positive. Come read with go-go gender queers with words of action, erotic writing lesbian soccer moms, sweet trans boys with agendas, bears who bake and write about it, poet inspiring truck driving gay boys, devilish dykes, awe inducing poetic transwomen, princess riot girls with diaries, transmen with type written essays, queer Daddies with bedtime stories, Beautiful bisexuals speaking sonnets, butches whispering love poems to femmes and yes you!!!"
Her keynote speech was just a little more toned down. Here's how the homosexual newspaper Bay Windows described it (note the pronoun he):
Activist Gunner Scott, the keynote speaker, told the nearly 500 attendees packed inside English High’s auditorium about his own journey from protesting a nuclear power plant in Springfield during high school to becoming the executive director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC) this year and working to pass a statewide transgender civil rights bill. Scott talked about his first major forays into activism as a member of the Lesbian Avengers for several years beginning in the late ’90s, including protests of the Boston Herald and Bay Windows for refusing to use female pronouns in reporting on the murder of transwoman Rita Hester. He also protested the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival for its policy of barring transgender women from the festival grounds. In 1999 Scott and the Lesbian Avengers planned to ride a bed on wheels in the Boston Pride Parade, a response to the controversy that the group generated when members of the group did the same thing three years earlier. When police told the group that they would be arrested if they rode the bed down the street, Scott said they disassembled it and carried it along the parade route in pieces.
"What was the purpose of this? One, we’re young and we want to be visible, but two, it was also to talk about, for us it was okay for these boys to be on the back of a float with almost nothing on, but it’s not okay for women to express their sexuality," said Scott.
We'll say it again: this is what your tax money is paying to bring into your public schools.
BACK to Main Page
