Gender Identity Groups

Facilitated small groups for discussion and support

• MTF spectrum: Bliss Tyler

  I'm Bliss Tyler, a Latina woman from South Beach. Miami. I started my transition when I was 14 and haven't looked back since. I moved to Boston in 2002 where I met my partner of 8 years. I love fashion and beauty and enjoy meeting young up and coming transwomen in hopes that I can inspire them in some way. I also proudly work as the program coordinator for the TransCEND program of Cambridge Cares. We are a HIV prevention and health education program by and for transgender women. Check us out on the web at transcendboston.org!

• FTM spectrum: Tre'Andre Rivera-Valentine

  Tre'Andre is a queer transman originally from the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. He moved to the US in 1997 and earned a BA from Emmanuel College in 2001. Tre'Andre currently is the Community Programs Coordinator at the Network/la Red working to end domestic violence in the LGBT communities; and DJs on the side as part of the DJ collective Disco Crush.

• Ally/SOFFA group: Jessica Flaherty

  Jessica is the Director of Programs at the Boston Alliance of GLBT Youth (BAGLY). Her commitment to youth work extends over the past nineteen years, and has included professional experiences as youth Program Coordinator for the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts, Conference Organizer for the Massachusetts Peer Institute, BEST Initiative Training Director for The Medical Foundation, and Sexuality Educator for the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services. In 2000 she participated in the National Training Institute at AED's Center for Youth Development and Policy Research lead by Elaine Johnson. As a trainer for the Boston Community Building Curriculum, she worked to enhance the capacity of Greater Boston's grass roots leaders and resident activists to make positive change in their communities. Founding member of the Massachusetts Commission on LGBT Youth and chair of the Committee on Research, Evaluation and Practice, she also sits on the advisory board of The Design Studio for Social Intervention.

• Genderqueer/Gender all over the map: TBD

Writing Workshop: Show Up and Write, with Mal Malme

Writing can be healing. It can be transformative. It can allow us space to explore all that lives inside and gives us permission to discover who we are. And we never know who we may touch with our writing because no one else can write in our individual voice. Writing can also be fun. It can be everything and anything we want it to be. In a supportive space, we will have time to write, using writing prompts or suggestions, and the opportunity to share our writing with one another if we wish. We never know who we will inspire, but be sure it will happen.

Mal Malme is a co-founder and theater artist with Queer Soup Theater, whose recent production We All Will Be Received, premiered at the Boston Center for The Arts in March, 2010 and will be touring this fall. For the past twelve years, Mal has been performing as Dr. Mal Adjusted with The Big Apple Circus Clown Care program at Boston Children's Hospital and Hasbro Children's Hospital. She is a board member and advisor with The North Shore Alliance of GLBT Youth (NAGLY) and is on the Cambridge GLBT Commission. Her solo show, Still Married, about marriage equality and activism, received a 2006 Cambridge Arts Council Grant Award and she was recently honored as one of Boston's Gender Heroes by The Theater Offensive.

High School Organizing: What about the "T" in my GSA?

GSA's are an important vehicle towards acceptance of gender non-conforming and trans students in schools, but they can also pose some challenges around trans-inclusion. In this workshop we will discuss how to work within the framework of a GSA model and discuss strategies for addressing the marginalization of gender non-conforming/genderqueer and trans youth. We will also address ways to effectively work with your GSA towards inclusion and look at how to with other GSA's to create a supportive network for GNC/GQ/T youth activism.

Facilitated by DJ O'Donoghue, Co-chair of the Steering Committee at the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC), Adult Advisor at the Boston Alliance of GLBT Youth (BAGLY) and is pursing a M.Ed. in Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Legal Workshop: Advocating for yourself, others, and your community

Facilitated by M. Barusch. We will start off with a game of advocacy fish bowl super-bingo. (I bet you can't wait to learn what that is!) We'll learn a little bit about different advocacy styles and how to use our strengths and the strengths of our peers to our advantage. Then, we will talk about situations that require advocacy and strategies for advocating for yourself, a friend, or a policy change.

I think that the three most challenging stages of advocacy are: 1) knowing your stuff, including your legal rights, your community needs, the resources available to you, and how to research more information, 2) determining what to ask for, who to ask, and how to ask for it, and 3) how to follow up. In this workshop, we will focus on the first of these and briefly touch on the second and third.

This workshop will require several youth volunteers to help out (there are a variety of tasks, some of which require dramatic flair, while others require excellent listening skills). We will take volunteers on the morning of the youth summit, so if you arrive at the youth summit a few minutes early, please consider signing up to volunteer and see me for 3 to 5 minutes of training that morning.

Theater for Social Change: Tell Your Story Change Your World

Logan and Evelyn

College Organizing

TBD

Performance: Johnny Blazes

Johnny Blazes will be performing with a short workshop for the entire group, and then a longer 45 minute workshop later on in the day.