"Word of Mouth" Launch

MARSHA BOTZER  

Marsha Botzer has served the LGBTQIA+ and progressive communities for over 45 years. She has served on boards of Pride Foundation, Safe Schools, Lambert House, Seattle Counseling Service, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. She currently serves on the Martin Luther King County Labor Council Executive Board and is a founding member and current Commissioner of the Washington State LGBTQIA+ Commission.

JULES GILL-PETERSON  

Jules Gill-Peterson is an associate professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Histories of the Transgender Child (2018) and a General Co-Editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Her next book, A Short History of Trans Misogyny, will be published by Verso.

DAVID HARRISON 

David Harrison is an actor, playwright and musician. His eclectic career includes being a professional psychic, hypnotherapist and dominatrix. He has primarily created and toured original work - including "FTM" (1994) based on his first year of transition. The show toured internationally over 9 years. His ongoing project at the moment, is stage and web series alter-ego, 60s rock star Reggie Wingnutz. Recent work includes his recurring guest star appearance as Russian spymaster, Ivan Stepanov (opposite James Spader) in Season 8 of NBC's The Blacklist.

ANDREA JENKINS

Andrea Jenkins made history in 2017 as the first African American openly trans woman to be elected to office in the United States. Now serving as Council President, she is also a writer, performance artist, poet and transgender activist.

Jenkins moved to Minnesota to attend the University of Minnesota in 1979. She worked as a Vocational Counselor for Hennepin County government for a decade. Jenkins worked as a staff member on the Minneapolis City Council for 12 years before beginning work as curator of the Transgender Oral History Project at the University of Minnesota's Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies.

She holds a master’s degree in Community Development from Southern New Hampshire University, an MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University and a Bachelor’s Degrees in Human Services from Metropolitan State University. She is a nationally and internationally recognized writer and artist, a 2011 Bush Fellow to advance the work of transgender inclusion, and the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships. In 2018 she completed the Senior Executives in State and Local Government program at Harvard University.

NICKI WARD

Nicki Ward's decades-long advocacy includes environmental issues and extends substantially into the areas of LGBTQ, Disability Human Rights and Community. In addition to private sector board experience, Nicki has also served on volunteer boards of public sector, charitable and institutional organisations.

Her work required extensive coordination between public and private sector institutions, regulatory bodies and the business community. Nicki Ward joined the European Green Movement as a teenager in the early 1970's. Early work focused on conservation and sustainable approaches to problem solving. This was founded on the principle that meaningful results ca only be achieved if they are environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable. Nicki's studies in advanced, economics, government & politics, and mathematics reinforced this foundation. 

While raising a family here, she served as a consultant in science and technology sectors before accepting a long term assignment in senior management with a major financial services company.

CHASE WILLIER 

Chase Willier is a nehiyaw (Cree) Two Spirit transman who was adopted out as part of the 60’s Scoop and grew up in Syilx territory. He joined the RCMP as the second indigenous woman in BC in 1979. He was out as lesbian and later identified as Two Spirit/Trans before he retired in 2010 although he didn’t transition until retirement.

After over 25 years of service, he finally took some time out to address his PTSD which is something he writes about in The Remedy. He is passionate about health and wellness and as such is involved in numerous projects in the Two Spirit/Trans community. His work in Vancouver also extended into areas of safety, justice and reconciliation specific to indigenous peoples whether urban or local First Nations.

Chase is married with a young daughter who is now entering into her second year of school. He is enjoying more time to pursue his own creative projects as well as contracting with Trans Care BC and Trans Focus which is keeping him busier than ever. Chase continues to serve his First Nations people which is a life long committment he has kept when he started his journey many years ago.

Charlie Waltz

“My Unholy Transition”:
How trans communities defined
the modern vampire

Nineteenth-century trans communities defined the vampire as we understand it today. There is a long-held assumption that nineteenth-century gender was completely binary. However, Victorian Studies has been uncovering wide public awareness about trans people. Rapid urbanization created new opportunities for trans communities. Newspapers printed sensationalized stories about “female husbands” and trans sex workers. Sexologists published the first scientific studies of trans phenomena, which ran for multiple editions. At the same moment, Bram Stoker published the genre-defining Dracula (1897). Though not the first work of modern vampire fiction, Dracula distilled these popular ideas about trans people into a new and enduring characterization of the vampire.

FTM Newsletter Panel

KYLAR BROADUS  

Kylar W. Broadus is a Black man of trans experience who has been a pioneer in the movement as an attorney, long-time activist, public speaker, author, lobbyist, and professor. Broadus is known worldwide for his work in the LGBT and Trans movements. 

Kylar subscribed to FTM Newsletter. It was a lifeline. It made him feel connected in a world where it felt that there were few people like him. FULL BIO.

JAMISON GREEN  

Jamison Green, Ph.D. (Equalities Law) is a writer and policy consultant. He is the author of Becoming a Visible Man and a past president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. He lives in Vancouver, Washington.

FTM was founded in 1986 by Lou Sullivan.  Before Sullivan's death in 1991, he passed leadership of the organization to Jamison Green, who led the organization from 1991-1999. FULL BIO.

RUPERT RAJ 

Rupert Raj (age 70) is a Eurasian-Canadian, pansexual Trans Elder, who's been an international Trans Activist in North America and abroad since he transitioned in 1971. 

He was the founding editor of three newsletters: "Gender Review" (1978-85) (the first national transsexual newsletter in Canada), "Metamorphosis" (1982-88) (the first newsletter exclusively for trans men in North America and abroad), and "Gender NetWorker" (1988) (for helping professionals). FULL BIO.

MAX WOLF VALERIO 

Max Wolf Valerio is an iconoclastic poet and writer. He began his medical transition in 1989. He is First Nations (Kainai/Blackfoot Confederacy, Treaty 7), Alberta Canada— from his mother’s side. His essays appear in many places, and he has been featured in several films.

The FTM Newsletter was a lifeline for Max in the late 1980s. He appeared on the cover of issue #24 (1993), and was briefly an Assistant Editor. FULL BIO. 

Elliot Marrow

Trans Perspectives on
Access to Gender-Affirming Care
1960s-1990s

Trans individuals in the 1960s-1980s did not passively receive gender-affirming care given to them by "experts;" instead, they persistently advocated for access to care. However, trans communities are not a monolith, and who should be given care and when was a subject of debate. This talk discusses trans community perspectives as trans individuals collaborated with, supported, challenged, resisted, and subverted the gender identity professionals who delineated criteria for access to care. Divisions within trans communities by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status were particularly striking regarding clinicians' use of comprehensive mental health assessment. The perspectives discussed in this talk were sourced from archival materials, and are part of a larger analysis on the process of assessment for access to gender-affirming care from the 1960s to the present.

Joy Ladin

Jonah, God and Other Strangers:
Reading the Torah from a Trans perspective

In this talk, Joy will share her personal journey and offer her insights and unique reading of gender identity in the Hebrew Torah. She will analyze and reinterpret key texts from a trans perspective--that is, in light of experiences of not fitting into identity-defining roles and categories, experiences of feeling estranged that are particularly acute for transgender and nonbinary people but common to everyone and, the Torah tells us, to God.

K Phoenix

Creating Transgender Identity Maps in Japan

In this lunchtime talk, I draw on the Trans+ Identity Words’ Map (2000s, 2010s, and 2020s) from my interview research of Trans+ people in Japan using their own words from an ethnomethodology and conversation analysis point of view.