Yesterday's luncheon keynote address was by Dr. Maureen Osborne and her talk was “Observations from Two Decades of Active Listening to the Life Stories of Transgender Clients and their Families: A gender therapist’s journey from reluctant gatekeeper to fellow explorer of the gender frontier” and it was excellent!
She covered so much information that it is hard to remember everything that she talked about (I going to try and find out if her speech is posted online anywhere.) but one thing that I remember is that for many of us we go through a phase where we dress to the nines. I remember when I first came started going out in public used to wear dress and heels with a lot of make-up and that like teenagers we are experimenting with our gender, for some of us we outgrow that phase and settle down when we find our “style.” She also talked about working with couples and families and that around forty-eight percent of the couples stay together. Also mentioned was that sexual orientation is not linked gender identity.
One of the things that she mentioned was about suicides. Most therapist do not lose patients by suicide, the exception is therapists that work with trans patients, what is different about trans patients is that their trauma is not due to their being trans but rather because societal pressure to conform to the gender binary. Society wants to force us into boxes but nature abhors boxes.
In the evening we all headed over to Provincetown Theater for dinner and a play, the play “Debutante Balls” was by Scott Turner Schofield. According to the Fantasia Fair’s website,
Today I am giving my workshop Effective Lobbying.
The fleets in... MacMillan Wharf Provincetown MA on Cape Cod
Updated 8:15AM
Added the part about suicide
She covered so much information that it is hard to remember everything that she talked about (I going to try and find out if her speech is posted online anywhere.) but one thing that I remember is that for many of us we go through a phase where we dress to the nines. I remember when I first came started going out in public used to wear dress and heels with a lot of make-up and that like teenagers we are experimenting with our gender, for some of us we outgrow that phase and settle down when we find our “style.” She also talked about working with couples and families and that around forty-eight percent of the couples stay together. Also mentioned was that sexual orientation is not linked gender identity.
One of the things that she mentioned was about suicides. Most therapist do not lose patients by suicide, the exception is therapists that work with trans patients, what is different about trans patients is that their trauma is not due to their being trans but rather because societal pressure to conform to the gender binary. Society wants to force us into boxes but nature abhors boxes.
In the evening we all headed over to Provincetown Theater for dinner and a play, the play “Debutante Balls” was by Scott Turner Schofield. According to the Fantasia Fair’s website,
"Debutante Balls" is a theatrical stand-up comedy dance through the fascinating culture of the Southern Debutante Ball. Schofield’s wicked sense of self-aware humor and poetic sensibility guide us through the many ways he "came out" into Southern Society (as a lesbian, radical feminist, and finally, as a transgender man), poking fun at gender roles and sniffing the vapors of nostalgia gone-with-the-wind in these modern times.And the play was up to Schofield high standard; it was both humorous and portrayed his transition. I first saw Scott Turner Schofield in 2009 performing “127 Way to Become a Man” at Real Art Ways.
Today I am giving my workshop Effective Lobbying.
The fleets in... MacMillan Wharf Provincetown MA on Cape Cod
Updated 8:15AM
Added the part about suicide
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