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In May of 2014,

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Time Magazine said that our society
had reached the transgender tipping point.

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And that was the headline
on the cover of the magazine that month,

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and they paired that with a photo
of actress Laverne Cox.

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And you may know Laverne Cox's name,

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she is the actress who plays Sophia Burset

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on the incredibly popular Netflix show
"Orange is the New Black".

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Now, I often talk about Laverne Cox

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because she has a pretty important
position in terms of the acting world.

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She is one of the few people

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who plays a trans character,
but is also trans herself.

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She identifies in the same way
as her character.

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So Sophia identifies
as a transgender woman,

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and Laverne Cox holds that same identity.

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Now, lots of people know Laverne Cox,

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which is why I bring her up often

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when I do trainings
about transgender identity.

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But, in those trainings,
questions quickly emerge,

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and those questions tend to revolve
around language and words.

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So here is just a handful,
a tiny sliver of words

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that the trans community uses

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to talk about
their own experiences of gender.

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And again, there are lots more out there

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than just the ones
that you see on this screen.

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We could fill up this screen,
and fill up many, many TED talks

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with just talking about
these different identities.

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But I bring this up

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because the trans dictionary
is not complete, and it's changing.

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So if these words,
you've never heard these before,

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I'm not surprised.

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Right now, online, the trans community
is still making new words

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to describe their experiences
and describe their own ideas

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about their gender identity.

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And that's what's amazing right now,

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and potentially some of the reasons

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why that Time Magazine piece talked about
the transgender tipping point.

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The Internet allows trans folks
to access each other

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in ways that's amazing.

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So communities have started to be built

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in really dramatic and impressive ways.

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And because these trans folks
are able to connect with one another,

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language has emerged,
and language has evolved.

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Let me situate myself
in this conversation.

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I identify as a female-to-male trans man.

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So that means for me,
that I was assigned female at birth

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though that didn't really jive

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with how I thought of myself,
and how I existed in the world.

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I was raised in Alabama,

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which, if any of you know
anything about the South,

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the South has very specific ideas
about gender;

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very specific ideas about what it means

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to be masculine or feminine,
or male or female,

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and I didn't really fit into those ideas.

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And that was OK for a while.

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I existed in sort of a tomboy space,

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for most of my young adulthood,
or my young childhood,

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and I didn't get a lot of flack for that.

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I wasn't really bullied all that much,

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until about middle school, junior high.

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And that's really when I got
the very clear message

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that I was not performing my gender

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in the way other people expected me to.

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And I tried to modify it;
I tried to meet people's expectations,

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but I just failed over and over again
because it didn't feel genuine to me.

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It didn't feel right.

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But I had no idea how to talk about that.

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I didn't have any words to understand
what that meant for a long time.

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Until I was about 23, 24 years old.

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So those of you who are in your 30s,

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- the "old folks" in the room
to the high school students -

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you might remember

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an early social media platform
called LiveJournal.

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LiveJournal was a place
where relatively emo kids like me

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would talk about our parents,
and how mean they were,

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and I would moan and groan
over the new Dashboard Confessional album.

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(Laughter)

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But it was also a place
where you could connect with folks.

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You could connect with folks
who shared your identities,

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or shared interests that you had.

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So you had your own personal blog page,

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but you also had a space
where you could join community groups.

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One day, while I was just roaming
through LiveJournal, bored after class,

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I found a page dedicated
to talking about FTM trans people.

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I found a blog entry by this kid
who was my same age,

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and his name was Blake.

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He was talking about how he came
to understand his gender identity,

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and the words that he used to describe it,

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and his journey on how he understood
what it meant to be

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a transgender person
and a transgender man.

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Within the course of that one blog entry,

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my whole idea of myself shifted.

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I had finally found language.

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I had finally found the words
to understand myself

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through the words of someone else.

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I had never had that before,
and it was incredibly powerful.

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Because language is super important.

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Language is crucial
to understanding ourselves,

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and understanding the position
that we hold within society.

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So any of you who have tried
to learn a new language,

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or you grew up in a household
where multiple languages were spoken,

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you know the importance of shared
definitions and shared meanings of words.

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But even though we might speak
the same technical language,

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it doesn't mean we understand
the words that a cultural group may use

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that we don't belong to,

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or the way that language evolves
and changes over time.

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So I want to talk about some of these
terms that were on that earlier slide,

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and I'll start with
the term "transgender".

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Transgender was coined in the 1960s,

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though it didn't really get adopted
for wide use

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until the late 1980s to 1990s.

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And there's lots of different definitions
of transgender out there,

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but my personal favorite
is the one that's on the screen.

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This is from Susan Stryker,
she's a trans author, historian, activist,

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and she says that her understanding
of the word "trangender",

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it's "the movement across
a socially imposed boundary

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away from an unchosen starting place."

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And the reason why I like
this definition so much

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is that it highlights that I didn't get
to pick where I started from.

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I was born female assigned at birth
and was raised accordingly.

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But it does highlight
that you can move away from that.

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And often, when we talk about
trans folks moving away

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from that unchosen starting point,

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we're talking about transition.

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And the term "transition" can mean
a lot of different things.

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There's no one way to transition,

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and there's no one right way to be trans.

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But transition often refers to social
transitions and medical transitions.

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So a social transition involves
essentially the coming out process:

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discovering for yourself, "What are
the words that feel comfortable for me?",

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"How do I think about my gender?",

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and then communicating that
to other people.

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Be it saying, you know,

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"My name is Jay now,
I want you to call me that,

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and I want you to use male pronouns
when you refer to me."

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And claiming a transgender identity,

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whatever that might mean for the person.

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And a medical transition
refers to medical interventions

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that you could do to your body.

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Medical interventions are vast,

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there's lots of different types of them,

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but not all trans people want
or need medical transition.

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So, some trans folks say,
"This is absolutely necessary."

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"I need access to this kind of care
to feel comfortable with my body,

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to align my body
with the way that I think,

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align it with my mind."

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But again, not all trans people do this.

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So there are some folks
who say, "I don't need that."

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"I feel OK with my body; I don't need
to necessarily modify it too much,"

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- lots of different variations of the way
that folks can medically transition.

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But I'll also put a caveat in here

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that medical transition is expensive.

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It's not covered under health
insurance often,

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so it's out of pocket expenses.

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We're talking about often
medically necessary care

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that people have to pay for themselves.

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And this can range
anywhere from 5,000 dollars,

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on the low end of the various
surgical procedures that are out there,

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upwards to 30,000-50,000 dollars
for just one procedure.

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So this is cost prohibitive often
as well for some folks.

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So it's not for everyone,

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not every trans person goes through
a transition in exactly the same way.

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But let's get back to some of the words

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that we were talking about
on that earlier slide,

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and let's get back
to some historical words

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that you may know
about the trans community.

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So there have been a lot of words that
have been used to refer to trans folks,

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and some of them
have fallen out of fashion.

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Some of them are not being used widely.

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And some of these words
can even be harmful and hurtful

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for trans folks to hear.

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So I'll talk about the term
"transexual" in a minute,

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but I'll start with "transvestite".

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So the term "transvestite" was used
widely in the 60s and 70s

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among transgender communities
to refer to themselves.

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It was a word that trans folks adopted.

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And even to the point

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of one of the earliest social movements
that we know of for transgender people

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included the word
"transvestite" in the name.

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"STAR" stands for Straight
Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.

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This group which was started
by two of the pioneers

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in terms of transgender
history in the United States,

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Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera,

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was a New York City-based group

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that advocated for young trans,
queer, people of color,

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folks who were experiencing
homelessness and poverty,

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in an attempt to advocate for the cause.

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So this word was used
as an affirming term,

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though, con temporarily,
this term is largely offensive.

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The term "transvestite" is not used
by and large really at all today

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within the modern transgender community.

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We'll go back to the word "transexual".

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"Transexual" as a term is
really the oldest word that we have

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to refer to folks who feel

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that their body doesn't align
in the same way as their mind.

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So, "transsexual" con temporarily
is still used, and it refers to

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someone who wants
to undergo medical transition

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or who has undergone medical transition.

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And "transsexual" is a word that has a lot
of baggage for the transgender community.

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Some folks in the community say,

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"That's the word that I use,
that's how I understand my gender."

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Other folks say, "I really dislike that
word; it makes me feel uncomfortable."

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And I tend to fall
on the "I don't like this word;

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it makes me feel uncomfortable"
side of that coin.

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For me at least, the term "transsexual"
has the word "sex" in it;

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that kind of makes us think
"trans" is not really a gender identity,

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but it has something to do with
sexuality and sexual orientation.

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And for me, that feels gross;
it feels kind of icky.

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Though I would never tell another
person, another trans person,

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say, "You can't use that word
because I don't like it."

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If someone identifies
as a transsexual, cool, no big deal.

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I don't identify as a transsexual;
I prefer the term transgender myself,

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but I'm not going to tell another person

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what words they should use
to describe themselves.

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But I will caution you

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that the term transsexual
is probably not the best word

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that you should use on a day to day basis

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unless you know

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that that person identifies
as a transsexual instead of transgender.

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So this idea about language though;

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I want to come back
to contemporary thinking about language

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in the trans community.

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There's a number of different ways

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to think about the words
that the transgender community uses,

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and I want to pose a suggestion
as to how we can think about it.

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So, we can think about
transgender identities

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as binary transgender identities
and non-binary transgender identities.

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Two different ways to think about

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trans folks and the way
that we think about our genders.

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So when I say "binary", I'm referring to

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when we have two categories that are
completely opposite of one another,

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never the twain shall meet.

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So, we live in a very binary world:

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male-female, gay-straight, black-white,

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especially as it relates to gender.

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We have a lot of assumptions about gender

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based on this binary idea
that there are only men and women,

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and they are two totally different groups

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that don't have anything in common
with one another.

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We have trans identities
that myself and other folks

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who work in transgender activism
are starting to call "binary identies",

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so I consider myself to have
a relatively binary trans identity:

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I transitioned from female to male.

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There are other folks
who transitioned from male to female.

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Celebrities like Janet Mock,
Caitlyn Jenner,

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and Laverne Cox
who we talked about earlier,

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but also there are trans men
who are relatively famous

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like Chaz Bono.

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The media talks about binary identities

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as it relates to transgender people.

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This is largely why we don't often know,
non-binary identity folks.

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Because I think,
my understanding of this is

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that binary identities reinforce
our gender ideas.

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They make sense; we don't have
to challenge a bunch of stuff

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to talk about binary identities
like I have;

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it's something that folks
can wrap their minds around

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with a little bit of education.

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But what the media leaves out

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are folks who essentially give
a big middle finger to the binary.

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They say, "Screw your ideas about gender.

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"The ideas we have in society we have
about gender are essentially stupid,

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and I want to make them--
I want to mess them up."

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Non-binary identities,
there's a list of some of them here

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- I'm not going to define all of them.

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You all have the Google machine;

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you all have the power
to look these things up -

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but I'll give you a couple examples

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of folks I know who have
these non-binary identities.

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So first, as someone who identifies 
as a non-binary trans woman,

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she lives in California, 
she's a college student in her 20s

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and works at a local nonprofit

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that works with high school
gay-straight alliances.

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And for her, being 
a non-binary trans woman

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means that she blurs 
the line of femininity.

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She mostly presents 
in relatively feminine ways,

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she goes by a feminine name,
she wears typically female clothes,

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but combines those feminine attributes

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occasionally, with completely rocking out
a mustache and a goatee.

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Because for her, she's not just feminine.

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And to think about herself 
in just that narrow way

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seems inauthentic to her.

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She wants to embrace her whole self, 
and that involves her facial hair.

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Another example of a non-binary identity
is a friend who I know from the South,

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and they identify as agender.

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They use 
the gender-neutral pronoun "they"

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- it's not a binary gender term -

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and for them, they say,
"I don't have a gender.

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"I am genderless, or gender is at least
not a very important part of my life;

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it's not a way 
that I think of myself primarily."

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So these non-binary identities are
challenging our ideas about gender

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in ways that binary identities
sometimes don't do as well.

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They are constantly saying,

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"Your understanding 
of gender in the world is silly,

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and we don't need it;
we can live outside of these boxes."

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So what does all of this mean?

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What do you do 
with all of this information?

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I have some suggestions for you
and some advice, if you'll indulge me.

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The first is listen and learn.

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Listen to trans folks
when we talk about our experiences,

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listen to how we say the words
that are important to us,

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reflect those words back to us,

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and be comfortable learning new things.

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Lots in the landscape of trans identities
could be relatively new.

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Be OK with that.

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It's all right; we'll all 
get through it together.

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Challenge assumptions,

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Challenge those things that nag you
in the back of your head,

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and you don't know why.

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So stop thinking about 
people's body parts

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or what their name used to be,

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or what's really going on with them.

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Take people at their face value.

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Someone says that this is 
how they identify, be cool with that.

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And when you think about 
binary identity ideas,

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try to challenge those.

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And say, "Those don't necessarily matter."

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And be an ally.

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Just like the transgender
dictionary has changed over time,

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the word "ally" has undergone

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a pretty massive transformation
in the past five years.

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Among activist circles, 
"ally" used to be this identity term:

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"I'm an ally," and you get to claim it.

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Almost like a noun.

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"Ally" is no longer a noun.
"Ally" is more thought about as a verb.

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"Ally" is something that you earn.
You do something to become an ally.

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You can also think about an accomplice.

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An ally means being an accomplice
with the trans community

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not just sitting on the sidelines saying,
"Yeah you do that,"

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but it's being active and involved.

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So ways that you can be an ally involve
showing up at trans events.

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Omaha has a large and thriving trans
community and we do stuff.

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Feel free to come.

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When you're invited, we'd love to have
folks come to transgender events.

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Speak up for us 
when we can't maybe do it for ourselves.

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Don't speak over us, don't speak for us,

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but sometimes it's unsafe 
for us to speak out,

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and call someone when they're doing stuff
that's a little transphobic.

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So you might be better positioned 
to do that than I might be.

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It might be really unhealthy 
for me to do that,

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but you could do that with relative ease.

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And also, now that you know better,
do better and help all of us

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not just some of us, break through.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)