Queer Texas 2007 — Targeting Texas Youth

From the “Queer Texas” website:

The Queer Texas Conference is an action-oriented, 3 day-long educational gathering of youth and students from across Texas…The conference will be held at the University of Texas at Austin April 13-15.

Workshops include:

The Drag King Workshop — Curious about drag kings? Who isn’t? Come and learn a little about the drag king community, our performance, and our politics. Then we’ll demo the basics of binding, packing, applying facial hair, and strutting your stuff – and you’ll have a chance to try it yourself! All genders welcome.

The Gender, Race, and Hip-Hop Workshop will screen segments of Byron Hurt’s new documentary film Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes that explores the director’s love of hip-hop culture and his simultaneous conflict with its marketing of hyper-masculine images of men of color, violence, materialism, homophobia, and misogyny. Using an intersectional approach,the workshop highlights the complicated connections between race, class, and gender in media and the larger American culture. Interactive role playing and skits challenge workshop participants to explore their own racialized and gendered stereotypes, followed by an open dialogue about ways to challenge these structures through petitions, targeted letter writing campaigns, and public education.

Trans and Gender Non-Conforming Caucus — This workshop will be an exploration of participants’ experiences with the language they use to talk about their gender experience, the longings in their lives, and their search and successes in finding legitimacy. Language is a powerful force in our lives. Finding the language that accurately describes our gender experiences can be difficult. Longing is a natural part of life. Giving voice to those longings can be a compelling way to find the means to fulfill them. Legitimacy is something many of us strive for in our families, in our communities, and in the world-at-large.

Among the speakers:  Tyrone Hanley of the Nov 2006 “Creating Change” panel on sex workers…which is probably fitting since, sadly, many “transgender” young people are relegated to prostitution in order to survive.  Is this the life into which our schools ought to direct confused and vulnerable young people?