November 12th - 19th, 2008
Wed, Nov 12
4pm
Race, Gender Performance and the Making of White Masculinity
Matt Richardson
Silliman College Master's House
Matt Richardson, a scholar, queer activist, and drag artist, is launching Trans Awareness Week with a Master's Tea in Silliman College. Matt will be focusing on experiences in the drag world, as both an artist with his troupe - the Nappy Grooves - and as an onlooker, to discuss the significance of race and gender performance in the making of white masculinity.
Sponsored by The LGBT Co-op at Yale, Silliman College, Women's Gender & Sexuality Studies, The Afro-American Cultural Center, Ethnicity Race & Migration, and LGBT Studies
Thurs, Nov 13
8pm
Opening Night Reception
Trans/Genderqueer Art and Photography Exhibit
Gallery, Afro-American Cultural Center, 211 Park St.
This exhibit of trans/genderqueer bodies by queer activists will open with a reception at the Af-Am House. The exhibit will remain open all week long, but the reception will gather individuals from the community to share their impressions, emotions, and reactions to artwork that challenges our preconceived notions of gender and activism through three different collections: "Animal Heads" (figure drawings by artist Noam Lapid, Canada), "Outcast" (photography by Tamir Lederberg, Israel/Palestine), and "Struggling for Pleasure" (video art/photography by Mats, Zafire, Mario, Lasse, and Signe a queer troupe from Sweden).
Sponsored by The LGBT Co-op at Yale and The Afro-American Cultural Center, with special support from the LGBT Studies Bruce L. Cohen Fund
Fri, Nov 14
6:45pm Shabbat Dinner
8pm Lecture
Sing If You're Glad to be Trans
A dramatic lecture by S. Bear Bergman
Sylvia Slifka Chapel, Slifka Center, 80 Wall St.
*Dessert reception to precede the talk
While the difficult narratives of trans life are valid and deserve our attention, is it not perhaps enough with the all-misery-all-the-time tranny channel? Being trans is not a reason for pity, scorn, shame, or apology. This lecture celebrates trans bodies, communities, awareness, sex, love, particular talents, successes and self-creation with a faultless logic and good humor that may just make you appreciate transfolks (or being trans) in a whole new way.
S. Bear Bergman is a writer, a theater artist, an instigator, a gender-jammer, and a good example of what happens when you overeducate a contrarian. Ze is also the author of Butch Is a Noun (Suspect Thoughts Press, 2006) and three award-winning solo performances, as well as a frequent contributor to anthologies on all manner of topics. Books will be available for purchase at the event.
Sponsored by The LGBT Co-op at Yale, Calhoun College, and Theater Studies, with special support from the Joseph Slifka Center
Sat, Nov 15
9:30-10:30 Performance by All The Kings Men
10:30-midnight Dancing
Drag Ball
Morse College Dining Hall
*Free admission
We are bringing back the troupe All The Kings Men for an encore performance at this year's Drag Ball. Enjoy an evening of gender-bending both on the stage and on the dance floor!
Drag attire encouraged.
Sponsored by The LGBT Co-op at Yale, The Yale Women's Center, Yale GALA, and the UOFC
Sun, Nov 16
4pm
Panel Discussion: Genderqueer and Trans Identities
The Yale Women's Center, 198 Elm St. (next to Durfee's)
This panel will focus on panelists' personal experiences with overlaps and tensions among "genderqueer" and "transgender" identities. What does it mean to be "subversive" with respect to gender, and how does that inform panelists' personal identities? Are transsexual and genderqueer identities mutually exclusive? How have panelists' identities been received within the context of queer spaces and communities? Outside of those spaces? Are there experiences that are unique to genderqueer identity? Just how relevant and applicable is the feminist adage "the personal is political" to individuals' lives?
Sponsored by The LGBT Co-op at Yale, The Yale Women's Center, and the Yale Gay and Lesbian Alumni Association
Mon, Nov 17
5pm
"Before Transgender: Gender and Gay Identity in New York's Gay Liberation Movement, 1969-1974"
Aaron Potenza
WLH 309, 100 Wall St.
Present at the opening salvo of gay liberation, gender variant individuals have been depicted in popular and academic histories as an integral part of the modern gay rights movement. Yet their story, one of declension and marginalization, is rarely explored in ways that illuminate the changing and contested relationship between same-sex desire and cross-gender identification. Looking at the Gay Activist Alliance, the most prominent and arguably the most successful gay liberation group in New York, my work argues that the gay liberation era saw the parsing of gay and trans identities - a shift from a period where transvestism, transsexuality, and cross-gender expression were understood as part of gay life to one in which many gay men and lesbians began to think of same-sex desire as perhaps entirely different from cross-gender identification.
Sponsored by The LGBT Co-op at Yale and LGBT Studies
Mon, Nov 17
7pm
Film Screening: No Dumb Questions and No Dumb Questions: 5 Years Later
followed by a Talkback with Filmmaker Melissa Regan
Office of International Students & Scholars (OISS), 421 Temple St.
Uncle Bill is becoming a woman! This lighthearted and poignant documentary profiles three sisters, ages 6, 9 and 11, struggling to understand why and how their Uncle Bill is becoming a woman. With just weeks until Bill's first visit as Barbara, the sisters navigate the complex territories of anatomy, sexuality, personality, gender and fashion. This film offers a fresh perspective on a complex situation from a family that insists there are no dumb questions.
Melissa Regan has designed award-winning educational software, co-founded an Internet software company, taught math, science and engineering, and published research on innovative uses of technology for learning. Melissa has produced several short documentaries about poverty, gender equality and water scarcity in Africa, and produces an interactive video multimedia series for the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. Melissa has a masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.
Sponsored by the LGBT Co-op, the Saybrook College Shutack Fund, and Film Studies
Tues, Nov 18
12:30-1:30pm
Trans 101 for Religious Professionals
Scott Larson
Yale Divinity School, RSV Room
As part of Yale's 6th Annual Trans Awareness Week, the Yale Divinity School LGBTQ Coalition, along with the YDS Women's Center will be hosting a lunchtime conversation with Scott Larson, MAR '09. Scott will give an introduction to the "T" in LGBT, and talk about some of the issues that trans individuals and their families face, and the ways that religious professionals can be allies to trans communities. Bring a lunch and join the conversation -- all are welcome!
Scott Larson is an out queer transman and studies the intersection of Transgender and Christian Thought.
Sponsored by The LGBT Co-op at Yale, the Yale Divinity School LGBTQ Coalition, and the YDS Women's Center
Tues, Nov 18
5pm
On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us
Kate Bornstein
Followed by a DRAMATalkback
Branford College Common Room
Join author, playwright, and performance artist Kate Bornstein for a dramatic reading of hir signature piece, "On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us," which provides both a welcoming introduction to the notion of sex and gender beyond the binary as well as a deeply moving affirmation of spirit for sex-and-gender outlaws. It will include hir most personal stories, favorite comic and dramatic monologues, and a chapter from hir upcoming memoir. The reading will be followed by a talk back.
Sponsored by The LGBT Co-op at Yale, the Dramat, Timothy Dwight College, and Theater Studies, with special support from the LGBT Studies Bruce L. Cohen Fund
Tues, Nov 18
9pm
Film Screening: XXY
A new film from Argentina, Short Listed for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards
Branford College Common Room
For just about everybody, adolescence means having to confront a number of choices and life decisions, but rarely any as monumental as the one facing 15 year-old Alex (Ines Efron,) who was born an intersex child. As Alex begins to explore her sexuality, her mother invites friends from Buenos Aires to come for a visit at their house on the gorgeous Uruguayan shore, along with their 16-year-old son Álvaro (Martin Piroyanski.) Alex is immediately attracted to the young man, which adds yet another level of complexity to her personal search for identity, and forces both families to face their worst fears.
Sponsored by the LGBT Co-op at Yale, La Casa, and Film Studies
Wed, Nov 19
5-7pm
Trans-Inclusive Health Care Workshop
Jane Ellen Hope Amphitheater (corner of Cedar and Congress St.)
The Yale Nursing School's Student Diversity Action Committee will sponsor this FREE workshop about providing positive, inclusive health care for transgendered, genderqueer, and gender non-conforming individuals. All are welcome.
Dinner will be provided. For food estimation purposes, please RSVP to joan.katko@yale.edu by November 17th.
