Workshops, Lectures, and Speeches
Helen Boyd gives a number of workshops and lectures, all of which can be tailored to your particular audience, conference, and venue. She also, of course, does readings from her books. Check the Booking Info page to find out how to get her to speak at your event.
Lectures and Speeches
- Gender Variance Through the Trans Lens: Transgender identities serve as a useful lens when trying to identify the many forms of gender variance as expressed not just by LGBT people, but also by heterosexuals. Culturally, we tend to make invisible the ways the gender are similar (e.g., the way women remove body hair) which disables us from viewing the “natural” ways gender presents on a spectrum. (Lawrence University, Merrimack College)
- Trans Identities and Cultural Politics: The struggles of trans people focus a new and useful lens on both the issues of gender equality and marriage equality because the transgender rights movement combines aspects of the feminist and gay movements and sits at the crosshairs of the “one man, one woman” kind of logic that has been encouraging people to vote out of fear. (Purdue University, Austin College, Penn State Dickinson School of Law)
- The T in LGBT: Avoiding Bottom Rung Self-Segregation: Letting community goals trump individual identity concerns in order to unify a larger community to fight the real battle for public awareness is not only productive, but vital. (State Museum at Albany)
- Being Out, Being Visible, Being Yourself: Identities and the assumptions that come with them can be just as restrictive as the categories of “man” and “woman” for trans people and similar labels are not only confining for partners while they’re also (mostly) inaccurate, stuck in ideas of “same” and “opposite” that don’t often apply. (Columbia)
- Feminism and Transgender Politics – where feminism and transgender politics coalesce and differ, specifically the ways gender construction and self-determination are ineffably linked. (Women’s History Month at UVM)
Workshops
- Trans Sex and Identity – the ways sexual orientation, gender role, public/private identities coalesce or don’t for trans people and their partners. (Lawrence University)
- Trans Partners – the nature of relational identity, public/private, current/historical sexual orientations and identity. (Columbia University)
- On Activism, Community and Identity: The loneliness of being trans (or being a partner) can be ameliorated with activist politics or support group participation. (CT Outreach Society Banquet)
- Queer Heterosexuals - queering heterosexuality from the inside, through gender roles and public identities. (Hetrick-Martin)
- Uneven Libidos – resolving differences in libido for couples. (Dark Odyssey)
- Monogamy – making a choice, not a default decision. (Dark Odyssey)
- Writing Memoir – engaging the “I” to illustrate theory and experience. (Fantasia Fair, MHVTA)
Panels and Roundtables
- Body Mods and Transgender Identity (Yale) - exploring the why and hows of the choices trans people make concerning their own bodies and identities.
- Trans Partners (Yale, Gender Identity Project) - representing the numerous kind of partners and couples where one or both partners is trans.
Training
- Transgender Awareness – Corporate and Business Training Sessions for both management and co-workers of transgender employees, focusing on Non-Discrimination/EEO Policies, and Diversity.