In the last six months I’ve given four talks on trans-related topics. I thought I’d share three of them here; the fourth didn’t involve slides like these ones.
The Trans 101: The Workplace
The Trans 101: The Workplace (slides can be seen here) was an base level introduction to vocabulary around trans people, dispelling misconceptions, and discussing discrimination. I gave this at my workplace.
The audience were managers / HR who had very little exposure to trans people other than through popular media. The point I tried to drive through these slides is that discrimination usually doesn’t look like what we’ve been taught it looks like through movies and television; it’s typically a lot more subtle and defensible.
Transmisogyny 101
The Transmisogyny 101 (slides available here), was a talk I gave at Algonquin college. The audience were students that were part of the university’s support group for queer & trans folk. I assumed they already had base-level familiarity with trans issues and privilege.
The purpose of these talks was to talk about how transphobia is particularly directed at women, the representation of femininity vs. masculinity in our society, and how there’s a bias against femininity.
The Trans Narrative & Involuntary Therapy
The third talk was on the Trans Narrative & Involuntary Therapy (slides available here.) I gave this talk to members of the Canadian Counseling and Psychotherapy Association.
The talk was to dispel myths I had encountered time and time again in the policy / counseling sphere around trans people and to talk about how these myths translated into barriers that hurt trans people. I assumed they had some basic awareness of trans people, though that proved incorrect.