Transgender and nonbinary people are frequently viewed as something entirely new, unusual, and indicative of modernity. This set of assumptions has a direct impact on their legal rights, access to treatment, and place in society. However, the archive tells us a different story. This training aims to deliver a critical overview of the history of transgender communities, from priestesses in Ancient Mesopotamia to escaped formerly enslaved people in Civil War America, onto the birth of transgender medicine on the cusp of a World War.
Anchored by fascinating stories of real people from history, in this training we will explore the development of transgender identities and communities, as well as the concurrent development of both medical and legal approaches to the “transgender issue.” Drawing on archival and archeological evidence, this training will provide professionals working in clinical, educational, and advocacy settings with a deeper cultural competence to inform their work with transgender, nonbinary, and other gender variant communities.
What we will Cover:
This training explores the historical, cultural, psychological, medical, and legal contexts that have shaped transgender and nonbinary identities and experiences. Participants will examine how factors such as race, colonization, transmisogyny, and class have influenced transgender communities over time, while also considering the evolution of contemporary understandings of gender diversity. The training will connect historical perspectives with the current cultural climate and highlight stories and archival evidence that challenge common assumptions about transgender and nonbinary people.
Learning Objectives:
- Describe key concepts in the development of contemporary transgender and nonbinary identities
- Describe the historical development of psychological and medical understandings of transgender people
- Identify the development of legal approaches to transgender people and their effects on contemporary trans lives
- Describe how race, colonization, transmisogyny, and class shape historical and contemporary trans experiences
- Describe two different contemporary cultural understandings of gender variance
- Describe the current cultural climate and its effects on trans experiences
3 CE Credits Available
The Gender Health Training Institute is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Gender Health Training Institute maintains responsibility for this program and its content.
Gender Health Training Institute, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors. #MHC-0339.
Who is leading this workshop?
Morgan M Page
Writer, filmmaker, historian
Morgan M Page is a writer, independent scholar, and filmmaker focussed on trans history and culture. She is the co-writer of the award-winning trans history documentary Framing Agnes (Kino Lorber, 2022), and the trans history book Boys Don’t Cry (McGill-Queens University Press, 2022). She served as executive producer on the hit podcast series Harsh Reality: the Miriam Rivera Story, and has appeared as an historian in the documentaries Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate (Netflix) and Enigma (HBO). Since 2016, she has hosted the trans history podcast One From the Vaults. Her writing has been published in a wide variety of academic and non-academic publications, including TSQ, QED: a Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Dazed, and Harper’s Bazaar. For two years, she served on the editorial board for the Research For Sex Work journal. She regularly guest lectures at universities and other organizations across the UK, Canada, and the United States. Originally Canadian, she is now based in London, UK.