Call for Speakers at Gender Odyssey Seattle Conference Workshop and Panel Presentation on Height Oppression.
Sam Davis, a genderqueer transguy from the San Francisco Bay Area, will be presenting a workshop at the Gender Odyssey conference on Friday 8/3, including a panel presentation and group discussion on height oppression. His aim is to create a dialogue strategizing ways that short people who pass as male can use language to empower themselves when being disrespected, bullied, or looked down on (in every sense of the word) for being short.
He is looking for short cis men and trans people who pass primarily as male, who might consider speaking about their experiences dealing with both the overt and the more subtle, pervasive forms of height discrimination we experience. As a progressive community, we have found creative ways to use language and empowering rhetoric to respect ourselves as queer and as trans and as feminists and anti-racists and disability rights activists.
Using these models and other examples of movement-building as a starting point, the workshop aims to articulate what height oppression means, deconstruct how it manifests in everyday interactions, and identify ways to challenge it. Sam is looking for a panel of speakers, including both non-trans men and trans-identified people who typically pass as male, straight and queer, as diverse a panel as possible, to share experiences of height oppression throughout our lives, and name examples of ways different people have found to stand up against it.
Amazingly, it is commonly taken for granted that saying,”Wow I feel so tall around you!” is acceptable, while any other similar comment asserting one’s privilege over another person with a visibly less-valued aspect of physical appearance would be immediately challenged by anyone who considers themselves progressive-minded.
Sam is looking for a panel of speakers who are comfortable talking about what kinds of discrimination they have dealt with over the course of their lives, and how they have survived it with dignity. The panel presentation will be followed by group dialogue brainstorming possibilities to create empowering language for short male-presenting people, and empowering responses to different situations involving discrimination, disrespect, patronizing, bullying, and subtle indicators of being viewed as inferior.
Please contact Sam Davis if you would consider speaking as part of the panel.
He can be reached by email at: samdavis66@sbcglobal.net. He will then arrange a phone conversation to talk more about the particular experiences you might like to bring up, and ways this form of discrimination intersects with different sources of oppression in our culture.
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