McGillDaily.com
Brianna Hersey jumps into a hot debate that is still splitting American activists
In 2003 I hopped in a van with some friends and drove to D.C. We were headed to the annual True Spirit Conference. The conference proved to be much more than I expected. According to their web site, True Spirit is about the ?social, physical, emotional, spiritual and relational health of all gender variant people on the female-to-male (FtM) spectrum.? I arrived flush with excitement. It was overwhelming to be in a place where everywhere you looked there were transmen, genderqueers, partners and allies. By the time I left, my thoughts weren?t so optimistic. I was filled with the knowledge that community building is hard work. It is complicated by diverse needs and hardened beliefs about what being trans means.
Everyone at the conference had a stake in the formation of a coherent trans narrative. But class, race, age, sexuality, and ability divided us along cultural, political, and ideological lines. I can?t flesh out my entire experience in this column, but I do want to touch on one workshop I attended on legal strategies to confront discrimination.