Last night I somehow ended up as the planning chairperson for our social club's conference for 2010 in Winnipeg (Manitoba, Canada).
There is no way that a plain male-to-female "crossdressing" conference would work for our social club, as our core membership includes transgendered and transsexuals. At the conference I went to earlier this year, I had a distinct sense of people being excluded, and I would like to make the 2010 conference as inclusive as practical (considering our resources and skills). I expect to go outside of the club and work with other groups in the city -- possibly even an academic component for example. And if I do not entirely succeed for the first conference, I would at least like to have set the tone for the successor conferences, to build towards better inclusion.
Naturally when I think of conferences and people being excluded, I think of transmen. Are you being well served by existing conferences? I don't recall seeing any transmasculine conferences mentioned here. If you have been feeling that something has been missing, what kind of programming do you think might motivate you enough to travel to the center of Canada?
And if you have had an opportunity to go to conferences, then have you noticed particular sub-groups of transmen being implicitly excluded? Something like "These people had a bit of an attitude that 'You are not a real transman unless you _____', and since I don't fit that, I didn't feel entirely comfortable" ?
Thank you,
