Philadelphia Trans Health Conference 2016

These are my thoughts after attending two days of the three day Philadelphia Trans Health Conference 2016. The theme of the conference was “Honoring Our Roots” and this is its 15th year. The full schedule and details about this year’s conference are available on the Conference webpage.

Let me see . . . how do I feel about this conference? It was awe-inspiring. I found the conference well organized with a wide ranging set of topics of interest to the transgender community including service providers, families, allies and friends. The Press Release said they expected 4000 attendees with 230 different presentations for the general attendees and there was a professional track for medical and service providers with 44 additional presentations and workshops. The professionals paid a registration fee and they could claim Continuing Education Credits but the general workshops were free for attendees.

Thursday

I attended with two other girls from my local area in New York state. We had to leave early (5 a.m.) and get up earlier (4 a.m.) to get to Philadelphia by 8 a.m. I didn’t get a lot of sleep so was pretty tired. We had a hotel about 10-15 miles away from Center City which had good rates but was bad as we had to battle traffic going and coming, and pay for additional parking. The basic format at the conference was three or four scheduled time slots for one hour presentations with a one-hour lunch and a daily Plenary (keynote) session.

There was an afternoon set of four one-hour time slots for presentations. On Thursday evening, there was a welcoming reception which was in a local nightspot. The event took place in the Pennsylvania Convention Center which is huge with big meeting rooms and smaller breakout rooms. There were nearby amenities including the Reading Terminal Market which has food stalls offering everything under the sun. There was even a local city church which offered lunch for a dollar. I had a salad with chicken and it was great but the Gen. Tso’s Chicken at the Reading Terminal Market was really good.

I was impressed that there were gender-neutral bathrooms all over the place and there wasn’t one problem that I heard of. If the bathrooms weren’t specified, there was bunting over the doorway so all the bathrooms were okay for everyone. There were exhibitors and vendors all over the place.

Another thing which impressed me was the attention to detail the organizers used. There were large rooms which were designated as Kids’ Camp (ages 5–12) and Tot Space (ages Newborn-4 with guardian).

The workshops I attended

We were able to make the 2^nd time slot on Thursday morning so we missed the Welcome and Orientation. I didn’t realize you were not supposed to take pictures so I took a couple on Thursday.

I didn’t realize that Sweden was really an early pioneer in the treatment of transgender people including politics and healthcare. This was presented by a Swedish trans woman and psychologist and was very informative. The 2^nd presentation was “The Power of Positive Thinking” and my friend Angelina did a wonderful job describing her life story. Yes, she’s my friend but it was well received by the people attending. There were usually 50–100 people in attendance in each session unless it was very specialized and then there were usually 25+. A couple of sessions had well over 150 people attend and there were 500 in the Plenary session.

I attended two afternoon sessions. The 1^st was presented by a group from St. Louis called “TransParent” which has started support groups for parents of transgender children and support groups for the kids themselves. There’s a positive result of the networking support. They have allowed the kids to be authentic and each year they have grown (2010: 4 families, 2011:14, 2012: 32, 2013: 57, 2014: 57, 2015: 121 and 2016 an estimated 140 families). There are four chapters in the Midwest. I was very impressed . . . parent to parent networking of kids of any age, teen support for ages 12–15 and kids club for those ages 5–11. The speakers were the executive director who’s a parent of a transgender child, another parent, as well as a medical doctor who has a transgender child. Check out their website.

I also attended my friend Kelly’s presentation about “Bullying and Harassment of Transgender, Gender Non-Conforming, and LGB Students.” She’s from New York state and had lots of statistics and scenarios dealing with the various aspects of bullying. She also spoke about the NYS laws which have been passed or enacted (since the NYS Senate won’t touch GENDA) to support transgender people.

I attended the evening reception which was a meet and greet plus a couple of welcome speeches. By that time, I was pooped so took a cab to the hotel ($25 + tip) and went to bed early so my bunkmates could stay out and party.

Friday

The day dawned early but we made it by the 2^nd set of presentations at 9:15 a.m. I attended “The Importance of Emotional Support During Transition” workshop and it was very gratifying. One of the exercises we did was to write a letter to someone (spouse, family member, friend, other) who has helped in your journey and express gratitude, which I’ve done before and did again this time. It’s critical to find things you can do for yourself but also to get support in your journey from others. I had planned on attending the talk on middle-age in the transgender community but the presenter was a no-show. I opted to attend the “Disability Justice and Trans Justice” talk which was presented by 2 younger trans men and I really didn’t understand what they were trying to say. My bad!

In the afternoon (after meeting Gen. Tso at lunch), I attended the Plenary session which was entitled “Legacy — what does it look like when we win.” There were speeches about transgender community successes and a panel discussion rounding out the idea. It was presented by younger transgender people and well received. I attended a workshop about the transgender community working and studying in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) area and was interesting to see how many younger people (if you haven’t figured it out yet, most people are younger than me) which is part of my background. They were trying to push STEM activity but didn’t have a really good way to measure it. I attended another session which was about transgender identity development based on ongoing interviews with people over time and then finding which are trying to figure out transgender demographics. The last workshop I attended was entitled “Gender Variance and Medicine in History” and included a panel discussion. The panel talked about a variety of subjects including what experiences one has had with health care providers.

When one of my roommates went back to the hotel to change shoes, I took the opportunity to poop out again since I was really tired. My friends stayed out late so I was able to get some additional sleep while they enjoyed downtown. It turns out they were out well into the night so didn’t want to get up for breakfast or even attend the rest of the conference. I was pretty refreshed but since they were late getting up and there was a big storm brewing, we left for home early and made it back before the big storm hit or never hit where we were. I had already penciled in some presentations I wanted to attend but it was not to be.

Nicole Maines (L) with Kristen Nichols of Renaissance.

My thoughts are that this was one heck of a good conference. The focus is transgender and healthcare and there was a good set of presentations and workshops on those subjects. I was surprised that there were so many in attendance, so young, many trans guys, all ethnicities and families. Casual was the dress code of the day. There were a good mix of topics. Having done programming for a conference, it’s no small task to gather as many presenters as they did. The vendor area was full with lots of different healthcare providers, surgeons, book sellers hawking their books, support groups and some others things they were selling. I even got to see the young transgender teen, Jazz Jennings, from afar before she bolted off somewhere. The venue was excellent and while the area is pricey, there’s so much to do outside of the conference. The traffic is a nightmare and parking is around $20 a pop but it was good fun and very informational. I’d give it three stars out of three stars.

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